Liberace day with his gimmicky act, his showy but careful piano playing, his non-stop promotions, and his gaudy display of success, but he remained largely unaffected, as preserved by the famous quotation, first recorded in a letter to a critic, "Thank you for your very amusing review. After reading it, in fact, my brother George and I laughed all the way to the bank." He used a similar response to subsequent poor reviews, famously modifying it to "I cried all the way to the bank." In an appearance on "The Tonight Show" some years later, Liberace reran the anecdote to Johnny
The Way of All Flesh That It Matters": "Once upon a time I discovered Samuel Butler; not the other two, but the one who wrote "The Way of All Flesh", the second-best novel in the English language. I say the second-best, so that, if you remind me of "Tom Jones", or "The Mayor of Casterbridge", or any other that you fancy, I can say, of course, that one is the best." The Way of All Flesh The Way of All Flesh (sometimes called Ernest Pontifex, or the Way of All Flesh) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler that attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873