MovieChat Forums > Sincerely Yours (1955) Discussion > at last, an actor who didn't have to fak...

at last, an actor who didn't have to fake piano playing


My parents were huge Liberace fans. He always loved his audiences and gave them value for their entertainment dollar--especially the older ladies who thought he was tremendous fun. It was interesting to see him in this movie when he wasn't doing that familiar character but of course there had to be enough of that to please fans who went to see the movie. I got a feel for his appeal from watching the movie. He really enjoyed music and making people smile. I didn't know, though, he could do a bit of dancing as well.

The restored version that's on TCM has beautiful color.

One reviewer said in the movie Liberace had the biggest binoculars you ever saw. High-powered, expensive binoculars called field glasses were that big. My parents had a cherished set they let us kids borrow if we were very careful when looking at birds out the window. The field glasses weighed a ton and took muscle to hold up and large hands to adjust easily, but they worked very well. You can still buy big binoculars. (My parents also had cherished opera glasses in a little case that would fit in a purse or pocket.)

If I were going to pick one aspect of the movie that bothered me it would be that people who can't hear do not talk the same way. We constantly adjust for volume. For instance, people who are going deaf often talk much too softly because it doesn't sound right in the head to talk louder. If your hearing came and went you wouldn't be able to adjust immediately. But this isn't a documentary on deafness. Nor is it a documentary on the potential dangers of talking openly in public about private matters. :)

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Yeah, he just had to fake an interest in women instead.

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This movie is from 1955 and I don't think a lot of the Liberace persona that we are so familiar was in place yet. We see his interaction with ladies in the audience and he was probably as risqué as allowed in the movie. Later he would become very flirtatious and used a lot of innuendo and double entrendes in his act. This predates the outrageous costumes by a number of years.

Imsaw him in concert around 1980 and find it interesting that the songs featured in the movie stayed in the act. They show up in most archive footage and were a big part of Behind the Cadelabra.

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