Entertainment

Behind-the-scenes look at the costumes and sets of the new Liberace movie, ‘Behind the Candelabra’

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The King Neptune outfit is one of Liberace’s most famous, having dazzled audiences first at the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans, then later at Radio City Music Hall, Atlantic City and Caesars Palace. “It was 26 feet around, and on both the interior and exterior, there is an entire sea scene with fish and coral and waves and starfish,” says Furr Soloman. Thanks to an enormous number of rhinestones, pearls and sequins, the original cape weighed in at more than 200 pounds.

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Mirojnick’s version of the King Neptune outfit took three weeks to create, and features impressive embroidery and appliqué.

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“Caftans are a fabulous garment to design because they say an awful lot in a very simple way,” says Mirojnick, of the look she created above for Michael Douglas. “Anything that you put with them makes that much more of a statement.” Mirojnick found two pictures of Liberace in caftans, and used this concept for scenes that took place at his home. “I thought, well, if there’s a black-and-white and a black-and-red, there have to be a hundred more,” she says. “So I went to town.”

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Liberace, surrounded by his extravagant trappings, poses in 1978 for a TV special, “Leapin’ Lizards, It’s Liberace!”

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Liberace had a $55,000 marble bathtub in his Las Vegas home.

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Part of a set that Cummings built, this tub is an exact recreation of the tub in Liberace’s Las Vegas home. Cummings had seen the tub, so he had its measurements. When one of his shoppers was calling around, he stumbled upon the perfect puzzle piece. “This guy in North Hollywood goes, ‘Are you talking about Liberace’s tub? The one in Las Vegas? My father put that tub in,’ ” says Cummings, who then hired him to build the re-creation.

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“You can’t say Liberace and not think about jewelry,” Mirojnick says.

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All of Liberace’s jewelry is documented, so Mirojnick was able to have exact re-creations (above) made in precious metals and veneered.

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Cummings recreated Liberace’s Vegas home in part by using Zsa Zsa Gabor’s Bel-Air home (above), which was decorated in a similar style. Her husband, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, loved everything Cummings did, but had one complaint. “He said, ‘Why haven’t you done the piano keys in the pool, Howard?’ ” says Cummings. “I said, ‘Well, Frédéric, to do that, I’d have to drain your pool, put the keys in, and then I have to fill your pool back up. And then after we shoot, I have to drain the pool again and then I have to restore it.’ ” In the end, Frédéric got his piano keys — by footing the bill.

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Liberace’s original fox fur with a 16-foot train was designed by furier Anna Nateece. “His was virgin fox and real. It was very real,” says Mirojnick, who created a 20-pound faux-fur version lined with sequins and ribbed in triple rows of rhinestones, like the original. Mirojnick’s version is on display through the weekend at the HBO store at 1100 Sixth Ave.

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This elaborate piano was one of Liberace’s actual pianos. It now belongs to Debbie Gibson, who loaned it to the production team free of charge.

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This Liberace look is known as his “Lasgana” outfit. “Liberace used to say he loved that costume because he could eat lasagana, and you would never notice if he spilled on it,” says Furr Soloman. Thorson (left) would wear a chauffeur’s uniform in Liberace’s shows, to escort him on stage in a Rolls-Royce. Mirojnick’s version of the chauffeur look is on display through the weekend at the HBO store at 1100 Sixth Ave.

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The real Liberace and Scott Thorson were fur real as they boarded a tour bus in Las Vegas in 1982.

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The bedroom of Liberace’s Vegas home featured an elaborate Sistine chapel-esque painting on the ceiling. Cummings was unable to copy it exactly due to copyright issues, but got around it by using similar elements, hiring an artist to paint a version of it. And that carpet. Oh, that carpet. “Even Scott Thorson, in his book, comments on the baby-blue carpet that was in the bedroom,” laughs Cummings. “[Liberace] had a thing for wall-to-wall, slightly shaggy carpeting. He also liked AstroTurf.”

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Mirojnick found this shirt at a costume shop in LA at the very beginning of the project — and knew she had to have it but wasn’t sure for what. She eventually realized it was perfect for Thorson once he began his descent into drugs. “He was kind of nuts at that point,” she says. “In that crazy kind of pattern in very graphic red, white and black, how better can you say it? ‘Things have changed!’ ”

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These columns get a shout-out from Michael Douglas in the movie. “Douglas wanted to start this tour of the house,” says Cummings. “He said, ‘OK, Howard, I wanna know about everything in the room.’ So I started telling him about what [everything] was based on, and for some reason that got called out. It was so kind of hairbrained because an Ionic column, that’s like basic architecture. It’s not something you would tell somebody. It was so hokey that it worked. It was so Liberace. “Oh, they’re Ionic!” like they’re some kind of special column.” There were so many Greek statues in the film, as seen here, that Cummings even had to repurpose one he had painted gold for the strip club in “Magic Mike.” “I began to name them,” he laughs.

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In one scene, Michael Douglas’ Liberace has his live-in boy (Cheyenne Jackson) don a matching outfit. “We can’t forget, he always had a full bib of ruffles,” laughs Mirojnick

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“The horse head is actually Zsa Zsa’s,” says Cummings. “I liked it so much, I just kept that one.”