First it was Harvey Milk. Now it’s Liberace. Hollywood is transfixed with its own gay heritage – a heritage that is fading away as gayness becomes just another thing to be, like good at dancing or making piecrust.

Just as The Liberace Museum is closing (where you could wear Liberace’s own clothing, wow), it seems that the script may finally be finished for the Steven Soderburgh-directed biopic about America’s greatest gay entertainer – a man who dressed more flamboyantly and had way more fun than Elton John and Little Richard combined. It is easy to forget that Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world for 20 years, between the 50s and 70s. That’s when money was money, or so I’ve heard.

So who slammed on the brakes?

Cancer did. Liberace was, reportedly, going to be played by Michael Douglas with Matt Damon playing his ousted lover Scott Thorson. The film is based on Thorson’s book – cunningly called ‘Behind The Candleabra’. The story of America’s highest profile closeted lovers was wrestled into screenplay form by Richard Lagravenese, the same chap who wrote the very funny film called ‘The Ref’ (called ‘Hostile Hostages’ in the UK) as well as poignant and funny ‘The Fisher King’ (called ‘The Fisher King’ in the UK).

The puzzlement remains as whether it is good timing (Liberace museum closing down, gay people not dressing up and scaring people anymore) to make a feature film about a man very few people will even have heard of. But there’s a story there if there is a story anywhere: Liberace once adopted the stage name Walter Busterkeys; he’d play along with records onstage and the media said he had the good looks of Cary Grant crossed with Robert Alda. (WAHHHH!).

Then there was the bitchiness. One critic who disliked his show received a written response from the then wildly wealthy Liberace which read, “Thank you for your very amusing review. After reading it, in fact, my brother George and I cried all the way to the bank.”

It wasn’t all fun: his home was broken into and his mother assaulted, but her heavy corset stopped her from being too badly injured. He also famously won a lawsuit against The Daily Mirror for saying he was ‘fruit-flavoured’, implying he was gay. That would have, of course, damaged his career as a family entertainer. Funny how that still seems to be a fear…

The story’s all there: the struggle from Midwest obscurity, the fame, the riches, the lawsuits, the sequins. He even had Barbra Streisand as an opening act. What more could anyone want from a feature film?

That is why we need a Liberace movie. That, and because Liberace straddled that difficult time between being gay and ‘being gay’. He didn’t want to be called ‘homosexual’, and tried to throw the media off the scent by being ‘romantically linked’ to actress Joanne Rio, skater Sonja Henie, Mae West and famous transsexual Christine Jorgenson – like ANY of those women would have made him straight acting. Electricity couldn’t have done that.

Gay and in denial he was – yet he was known as the epitome of showmanship, kindness and flamboyance. He had an evil dark side too, beyond that cute, dimpled smile: Liberace refused to pay his boyfriend palimony and denied their relationship. Some have even said Liberace died HIV-positive.

It’s exhausting writing about Liberace; I can only imagine how exhausting it was to be Liberace. All that’s left to say is that if they made a film about Harvey Milk, Liberace should at least get an HBO special.

So, Mr Douglas, get well soon. There’s a story you need to tell. And fast.