Viva Las Vegas - Liberace

Pianist Wladziu Valentino Liberace made his Las Vegas debut in November 1944 at the age of 25. He'd already taken the showbiz step of changing his name, initially to 'Walter Liberace' and then 'Walter Buster Keys,' and finally dropped his first name altogether.

On his opening night at the Hotel Last Frontier he sized up his audience and decided to delete several of the classical pieces, concentrating on the boogie woogie and popular tunes. The crowd went wild, and Liberace signed a 10 year contract with the hotel.

By 1948 he was headlining at some of the most prestigious hotels in some of the largest cities in the nation - plus Las Vegas.

When Las Vegas got its first official high rise with the opening of the nine story Riviera in 1955, it was Liberace who struck a chord there; his salary made him the highest paid entertainer in the city's history.

Liberace opened at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1972, lured by a salary of $300,000 per week. No other Vegas headliner made more. The city became his legal residence, and he played there about 16 weeks a year.

An ardent collector of art, antiques and curios, the singer used his wealth to buy houses in many of the cities in which he worked, and incorporated his collections into their startlingly elaborate interior schemes. His museum, which opened in 1979, houses a sample of his antiques, custom cars and elaborate costumes and remains a significant Las Vegas tourist attraction, drawing well over 100,000 a year.

As flamboyant in his personal dress as in his taste for unusual collectibles, in his early years Liberace had appeared clad in the concert pianist's uniform of black tux and tails. The diamond shirt studs, multi-coloured tuxes, capes and furs and boas, rhinestones and sequins, all came later. The pianist was known for his frequent dashes backstage to change tossing back the parting quip, "Pardon me while I slip into something more spectacular."

Las Vegas was the place where Liberace developed his much copied stage persona, and he packed Vegas showrooms for most of his life.

In August 1986 Liberace returned to Caesars Palace for a two week engagement. It was his final Las Vegas show. He died in February 1987, aged 67.