Sincerely Yours

A Romance with Liberace's stellar piano skills, colorful sets and costumes, humor, sadness, drama, and a feel great story. This is a different side of Liberace, playing the part of a serious concert pianist. I had read reviews which panned this movie and Liberace's acting. I bought it and watched it, and now love it immensely. Lee's piano playing is shown from much closer views than on the many videos online. The camera here shows multiple angles of his hands on the keys giving a view of his strong hands flying all over the keyboard with ease and relish. Wow! Lee has a beautiful and masculine wardrobe to enjoy, and some crisp tuxedos. The sets are gorgeous. The supporting cast is top notch, particularly his manager William Demarest, Dorothy Malone especially and Joanne Dru as his love interests, and the incomparable Lureen Tuttle. Alex Nicol plays a soldier, Lori Nelson is a wealthy young wife, Richard Eyer is a young boy to his Grandpa James Bell. They all add to a well-played romance with spectacular hands on the piano. Malone would win an Academy Award the following year for Written On The Wind. She looks like she is having a lot of fun with Lee in this movie. The screenplay is good, written by Irving Wallace (novels The Prize, The Fan Club, screenwriter for many films, and father of David Wallechinsky who wrote What Really Happened to the Class of '65.) The film has just enough words to provide the story. The story is well directed and grows along with Tony, who becomes an empathetic, completed person, richer by far than before. My friends and I have movie nights, and I have a large collection of serious drama and extreme action DVDs. I grew up in Manhattan in the '60's and '70's going to high theater, world class ballet, and musicals and am a big movie fan, but not so much with musicals. However, this is a great little movie with great piano playing and a love story to boot. It is not intended to be Gone With The Wind or Camelot. And Liberace is a grandly entertaining pianist, and not a trained actor, and yet he displays good acting. I am enjoying this DVD thoroughly. In fact I watched it three times in 24 hours! I was smiling a lot and also with a tear or two. Mine to savor and watch and cherish. An Aside - This parallels Liberace's near death in 1963 due to acute kidney failure, eight years after he made "Sincerely Yours". He was told to finalize his papers, and he started giving away gifts, money and buying houses for friends. He ended up getting healthier and better and his kidneys started working again and the death sentence was gone. The physicians said it was likely due to his altruism and the well-being it instills in the giver. And the rest is Showmanship history.

Lots of wonderful piano playing from beginning to end. The scene in the nightclub where he demonstrates boogie-woogie is worth the price of admission, killer! Also the chopsticks piece is wonderful. We all knew he was a wonderful showman, but the scope of his piano skills, is breathtaking. A surprise – he was a pretty good actor too.

One of my favorite older movies. Was also a favorite of my Mom. Nice wholesome movie.

Great movie

I watched this movie on TCM. After seeing BEHIND THE CANDELABRA, I was curious about it Do you know what? It wasn't half bad! Okay, it's not agreat movie and Liberace was no great actor. I didn't say he wasn't an actor, just not a great one. The best thing this movie does for Liberace is preserve many of his piano performances in a way that only Hollywood could do. He is playing a concert pianist (what else?) and so the first half of the movie is his on-stage act circa 1955-1956, when he first becama a major TV star. His clothing has not yet reached the costume party stage and his on stage antics are relatively subdued. This allows the piano performances to take center stage and they are great! In fact, many of these numbers were re-created for BEHIND THE CANDELABRA. The script is a re-make of and old George Arliss (and Bette Davis) movie called THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD, and even if it is hokey, it suits Liberace to a tee. The Pianist loses his hearing and begins to question his purpose in life. He learns ASL and with the aid of a pair of binoculars, starts to meddle in the affairs of needful people he sees in the park downstairs and across the street from his penthouse. Well, he only helps three people and even these three are hardly worst case scenarios. His love interests are female. Well, it was 1956. There is Joanne Dru in a lovely subdued performance as his secretary who loves him but her love goes unnoticed. Dorothy Malone is a flashy Society Girl who he falls in love with. The love scenes are laughable now that so much is known about his personal life. The film is populated with memorable actors from the 1950s including William Demerest, Lori Nelson and Lurene Tuttle. You will also spot an unbilled Guy Williams. The film has a happy ending for all the participants. Lee even does an on-stage Tap-Dance exit toward the end of the film that will have you rolling in the aisles. More importantly, it doesn't have any of that salacious garbage that was in the biopic. I imagine that Lee would prefer to be remembered this way than that other way.

Quick now, who was the least likely musical talent to ever have hoped they'd make it as a star of the silver screen? If you guessed Luciano Pavarotti in Yes, Giorgio or Cyndi Lauper in Vibes, then you've never seen Liberace in the 1955 howler Sincerely Yours. With his moist eyes, congealed smile and mortician's manners, Las Vegas headliner Liberace was doubly miscast here as a talented concert pianist who is also a practicing heterosexual. Somebody must have realized just how ridiculous this project was, because how else would you account for this scene: when secretary Joanne Dru offers up a choice of PR opportunities - "How'd you like to ride an elephant for the circus?" then, "Would you like to be king of the avocado festival?" and finally, "Open a new aquarium?" -- Liberace is miffed at their inappropriateness to someone of his stature and storms into his bathroom, where his roommate and manager, William Demarest, is taking a bubble bath and chewing on a very large cigar. As if the tableau alone were not enough, Liberace tosses Demarest a washcloth and says, "Don't forget to wash behind. . . your ears." But the real fun begins as gorgeous, rich Dorothy Malone understandable mistakes Liberace for a lowly piano teacher and haughtily informs him, "When your family has money, you're supposed to be accomplished. So I learned to paint, to ride, to dance, even to try and play the piano. Some people are born listeners--I'm one of them. But my family won't be convinced until I get a letter from you, saying I should stick to Mediterranean cruises and canasta." Just as you're about to grab a pen and paper to take care of this matter yourself, Liberace sneers at Malone, "Where did you practice your scales - reaching for martinis?" Now that these two have expressed their mutual contempt, Liberace proposes marriage: "Did you ever wonder what it would be like spending a lifetime married to a musician?" he queries Malone. Just in case she's been overwhelmed by his charm, he goes on to warn her, "It's not easy competing with a concerto!" But hey, it's not easy competing with 10 percent of the male population either, right? Malone is too in love to heed warnings, not even the one she gets at Liberace's concert from serviceman Alex Nicol, who utters words any bride-to-be should pay attention to: "He respects the classics, but from a sitting position - not from his knees." Meanwhile, up on stage Liberace is bouncing on his bench, rolling his eyes ecstatically, and smiling in such delirious self-enchantment he appears to be deep inside his own musical remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Just when you're thinking you'd rather go deaf than listen to one more note from Liberace, he does. This situation puts an end to his concert career, allowing him to mope around his swanky Manhattan penthouse and, in Lana Turner style, to make many of the 29 costume changes that won this movie it's place in cinema history. Dim bulb Malone isn't the first girl to wonder why her fiance hasn't been taking her calls, but she's probably the first to be given this excuse: "He's deaf." Putting on a bright face, Malone insists they should marry anyway, explaining, "I fell in love with a person, not a pianist." Actually, of course, he's neither, but it's a nice thought. His spirits restored, Liberace embarks on a 12-week course in lip-reading that goes by in what feels like real time. It all pays off, though, when we get to see how he applies this new skill. Leaning off his terrace while holding a big pair of binoculars, Liberace scans Central Park some 30 stories below. That's right, he's become a full-time, long-distance lip-reading voyeur. To get full mileage out of this plot point, Liberace's hearing returns, and he races down to Central Park to eavesdrop in person on the latest twists in the two-hankie saga he's been lip-reading from afar. It seems that young Lori Nelson is pulling a Stella Dallas on her white-trash mother (Lurene Tuttle) by telling her she'll never fit in with Nelson's ritzy in-laws. After Nelson leaves, Liberace takes the heartbroken Tuttle in hand and happily buys her just the heels, hats and evening gowns he might have picked out for himself. That night he goes with Tuttle to a charity fund-raiser where all the snooty blue bloods are charmed by Tuttle, particularly when she talks Liberace into performing "The Beer Barrel Polka." Then, as divine punishment for this musical lapse, Liberace is struck deaf all over again. A still hearing-challenged Liberace is casually gazing through his binoculars one night when his eyes settle on none other than his beloved Malone with his serviceman pal Alex Nicol in what is certainly a romantic rendezvous. Amazingly enough - since it's pitch-black outside - he reads their lips to learn that Malone is in love with the other man. What will Liberace do? It all ends happily with Liberace so quickly reconciled to life without wedded bliss that he hops up from his piano and tap dances "Tea for Two," which is meant to have you asking, "Is there no end to this man's talent?" You'll more likely be wondering, "Is there no end to this movie?" Well, yes there is, and it happens to have been the end of Liberace's chances at a starring screen career, too.

Great oldie

Instead of looking at made for t.v. biographical movies about Liberace, why not see the real thing. I go back so far that I remember watching his B&W t.v show in the 50s and I saw him once in concert in the early years before he became so flamboyant. I'm glad to say that they toned down the whiney voice for this movie and he seems to be speaking in the lower registers which, as I remember from the concert, was his original voice. This movie was made early in his career and he looks handsome. He didn't do a bad job of acting. Actually very little acting was required of him as at least 2/3s of the movie is him playing the piano. This is a remake of an old movie called The Man Who Played God. It's a good story, a bit sappy but then most of the movies in those days, especially those starring entertainers were pretty sappy. But, it's well done and even touching in several places. It was a perfect vehicle for him. I'd actually rather watch this movie than DVDs of any of his concerts. It's a nice movie to have to remember a one of a kind entertainer. I enjoyed it.