Liberace

Liberace is recalled in the diary through a sharp contrast between apparent health and impending death. His brief presence turns the diarist’s attention from a recent office visit to the practical and emotional questions surrounding his remains.

A Recent Image of Health

On February 2, 1987, the diarist notes that Liberace is dying and remembers seeing him at the office the previous year, when he looked healthy. The surprise lies in the distance between those two impressions: the remembered figure seemed well, yet now his condition is described in stark terms.

The Question of His Remains

A week later, Liberace’s situation comes up again as the diarist reflects on Brigid Berlin’s distress about her mother’s approaching death. In the same entry, the diarist wonders why Liberace was not cremated promptly and why an autopsy was not avoided, arguing that the process should have been expedited. The entry offers no further account of his condition or outcome; it records the diarist’s impatience with the delay and the procedures surrounding death.

A Brief but Revealing Presence

Liberace is not developed through extended biography or direct interaction. Instead, the diary places him in two passing reflections: first as a man whose recent healthy appearance makes his decline startling, then as the subject of a practical complaint about postmortem arrangements. This compressed recurrence connects public recognition with the intimate, logistical realities of dying.