WEHO Makes Book With Lorna Luft ...Cedes Liza to NY, NY

Lorna Luft is one courageous woman...three times a survivor. At "Weho Reads" last week, she wasted no time choosing West Hollywood's #1 star of all time. She went to the place where every star instinctively knows never to end up as the result of having created their own demise. Still- this was the place into which Luft was about to take a giant leap in front of a packed audience, with no one to stop her. Could it be possible she suddenly lost all perspective in a room full of people who came to see and hear HER...not her legendary mother, not her more famous sister, and in feeling too comfortable, she was about to let down her guard and pave her own way, unobstructed, to that dubious somewhere that has been the place of no return for even Hollywood's most famous stars?

This actually IS the "somewhere over the rainbow," the metaphor of life after death, that has been a popular interpretation of what Yip Harburg had intended, when he wrote these lyrics, while others have maintained he was advocating for endurance...a softer shout out, to refuse to succumb, no matter what. Of all the lessons one would assume the child of a superstar has learned, in the aftermath of success of such magnitude, that had been like a force of nature... superstardom, once unleashed, is like a tornado and beyond anyone's full control. Endurance is everything, so it seemed incredible that the daughter of Judy Garland was about to violate one of Hollywood's Forbidden rules she had to have known by heart...the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you when you choose a favorite in public. It is a virtual law of physics in the entertainment business that insecurity is in equal proportion to the magnitude of a celebrity's fame, even the most famous movie stars may feel diminished, if a brighter light is shining somewhere else. For the serial insecure, it's as if someone intentionally threw them shade, a yin yang that binds together feeling adored and deplored...a syndrome I call...

..."The Marquee de Sade."

Elizabeth Taylor is one of the few superstars whose brazen brand of honesty gave her the courage to claim, for attribution, that Ava Gardner was the most gorgeous woman she had ever seen. Decide for yourself whether this had been in earnest, the signature confidence of a woman, who was considered even more gorgeous and irresistible to men, or had it been a savvy message to the woman who was off in Mexico with her husband, shooting a movie together...code for: "Hands off...bitch!"?

Hard to believe that Judy Garland's daughter would presume to go where only Liz Taylor had gone before. No matter how many people were packed into this exclusive West Hollywood event, specifically in honor of Lorna Luft, who among us, doesn't enjoy seeing a traffic accident of such magnitude, there are no survivors? Proof of an aspect of human nature that supersedes every learned quality at the highest tier of being human, including kindness, empathy, civility, respect, dignity, is when people slow down to gawk at a catastrophe that happened to someone else...anyone else but them. Luft even revealed that her mother kept a book filled with news clippings of the most gruesome carnage, like a post apocalyptic diary, of sorts, that she would peruse routinely, to remind herself:

"Things could always be worse."

It seemed incredible, then, that this was about to happen in West Hollywood, no matter what...the same town where John Belushi met his untimely demise. It seemed as if fate was about to reach in again, and grab Lorna Luft, as if an eye for an eye revenge, one might envision as punishment for rainbow degradation, since only months prior, her mother's most personal rainbow in West Hollywood had been disgraced. It's always in movies one can find comparable harm, as it seems developers had done in Weho, what they had done in the movie Poltergeist, and had used trickery to trample over sacred memories of beloved ones. Petitioners had cried out for signatures to support and save the Rainbow Bar & Grill, but what resulted instead is a tall version of a triple wide billboard, that last had been sighted for having blighted its way through Hollywood, after big footing its way into the category of "billboard," but is self-admittedly: "TALL WALL." Weho has been known as a safe place for authentic billboards- they actually were made famous on Weho's Sunset Strip, but on this very boulevard of dreams, the sight of a rainbow has been all but obliterated in its entirety... the iconic Rainbow sign is no longer present nor visible when driving to the West...but we needn't go to Oz to reference the Wicked Witch of the West, as a courtesy to "Wicked."

Culver City has Sony Studios, which had the budget to commission a world famous sculptor to create a huge installation of a Rainbow and charges admission to walk through its gates, just to see it at its base. West Hollywood is much like the perennial first movie by an independent director, who never has a studio's big budget, and is compelled to generate a work of art on a relative shoestring budget, that often is the best work of all. Weho's authenticity includes a sense of innocence even when it had been a lawless town, where gangsters and celebrities sought refuge from the spotlight, it also is equivalent to a stray no one else had claimed, and ironically, or not, it was the place where famous people always wanted to be.

Weho doesn't make a grab for vanity, but every year Vanity Fair makes a grab for Weho, where it holds its world famous Oscar party. The Wizard of Oz doesn't have a single frame that features a rainbow and the Rainbow Bar & Grill is a legendary rock and roll club, but it holds an authentic connection to Judy Garland, because it once had been owned by Vincent Minnelli and where he proposed to her. It also is where Marilyn Monroe & Joe DeMaggio had their first date.

If there is such a thing as destiny, it was about to happen here, at "Weho Reads"...it had all the makings of a multi-media, multi-generational, omni directional collision of such catastrophic proportions...that could only happen in West Hollywood. When fame turns against a city and a person, both of whom have ties that reach so far back into the past, with no degrees of separation from every famous star who ever was...most likely inclusive of Kevin Bacon but maybe not...I don't know for sure. Just three days before the premiere of "A Star Is Born" with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, could this be anything but destiny's way of saying to Lorna Luft,

"Time's up. Been there, done that, next!"

Was she about to be pulled down by a double undertow, not just as Judy Garland's daughter, but with the complications of being a Luft, not a Minnelli, was she also the target of the husband her father replaced, who may have been stirred awake by the indignity of having his rainbow bridge to his former wife, and their daughter, Liza Minnelli, big footed out of existence by the subterfuge of a developer's tall wall? Could this have been the crossroads of fate, compounded by what may have been perceived as an insult, when the Mayor of West Hollywood declared it Lorna Luft Day, and in doing so, went out of his way to take a pass on Liza Minnelli, as a hand off to the Big Apple, which had been the one and only mention of her name the entire night?

In such a scenario, looming over everything would have to be the ghost of Grace Kelly, whose fans have been waiting for the moment she would be vanquished and acquitted of the scurrilous accusation that consumed all of Hollywood and haunted her for the rest of her life. Was she about to get her just rewards for her patience and dignity, after she had been accused of stealing Judy Garland's Oscar when she was named Best Actress for "The Country Girl?" Even oddsmakers in Vegas had said Garland was the runaway sure thing...could this have been a back to the future ride, that hitched onto Hillary Clinton, also? When a President's Bride and a Princess Bride, both, are unable to free themselves from an overwhelming sense of distrust that has lingered over them undiminished, seemingly forever...could it be anything other than a warning that our culture has wrapped itself around the globe and has the world in a choke hold?

It seemed almost a foregone conclusion, Lorna Luft would be made to pay the price of what had preceded her, over which she had no control. This is the stuff of Greek tragedy, when the House of Atreus is cursed, everyone gets shackled...it's the story of Oedipus, and even more so, Medea...when children are used for payback, there is no fairness, no justice for innocence, when a perceived crime has such magnitude. It seemed inevitable, that Luft would be compelled to make spectacle of herself, and dive head first into these vengeful, tragic waters, in front of a packed audience who would bear witness.

So it went, without hesitation, when with wild abandon, Lorna Luft embraced one celebrity, neither a fan favorite, nor one likely to have graced the cover of "People" magazine.

Lorna Luft is a three time survivor...she has endured the tangled web of rumors, innuendo and facts, that altogether is her story as we have been told ... it's her very own MGM lot in life. Of the two celebrities she embraced at "Weho Reads," only one, she credits, for having "saved my life." Lorna Luft wanted everyone to know her mother had a great sense of humor, and that it had been her saving grace, that helped her through a life time of monumental challenges.

Luft also proved she was all human, all pulled together as her own person and what makes her all Weho too...she is a survivor of breast cancer and a brain tumor, and she couldn't say enough about the incomparable care and medicine she received at Cedar Sinai hospital, located in West Hollywood, where surgeons and all their support staff, and I quote her, verbatim, "saved my life."

Her book is titled in full: "A Star Is Born: Judy Garland and The Film That Got Away." It is a first person account about the most controversial film of Judy Garland's career. It was released to universal acclaim, in terms of reviews, by critics, and the majority of the cast and crew, inclusive of the head of Warner Brothers notoriously hard to please, Jack Warner, who is credited as Producer with Sid Luft. What happened after the film's initial release is what makes this version of A Star Is Born, different in every way possible than any other... what happened is as unlikely as Judy Garland's superstardom and Lorna Luft's 3-time life time championship. It also makes a defacto case that the newest "A Star Is Born" is the fifth version, not the fourth.

Luft told a hilarious anecdote about a cloak and dagger detective hunt, in which she, movie critic, Rex Reed, and Liza Minnelli's godmother, Kay Thompson, had been lured by an anonymous caller, to follow a virtual maze of bread crumbs, that would lead them to a mysterious screening room, where they were told they would find a copy of the print of the original movie, that had disappeared...it seems, now, for good. Frankly, it has the makings of a movie of its own, "Desperately Seeking Susan" meets "Garbo Talks"...maybe not.

Is "The Film That Got Away" meant to be ironic? You decide...I'm not going near that one.

The next WEHO READS event is scheduled for Friday, September 28

WeHo Reads: Patt Morrison and Larry Mantle
Friday, September 28, 2018, 7 pm
City Council Chambers at the West Hollywood Library
625 N. San Vicente Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90069
The Friends of the West Hollywood Library and the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division will present Los Angeles Times journalist Patt Morrison in conversation with KPCC radio host Larry Mantle, discussing Morrison’s new book Don’t Stop the Presses! Truth, Justice, and the American Newspaper, on Friday, September 28, at 7:00 p.m. in the West Hollywood Park Public Meeting Room/City Council Chambers, 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069. The evening will include a book signing and a reception to celebrate the Library’s seventh anniversary, and is part of the City’s WeHo Reads literary series.

Books will be for sale by Angel City Press. A book signing will follow the conversation. The Friends of the West Hollywood Library will host a reception as part of this event.
For more information, call Friends of the Library at 323-929-2359 or check Facebook @WeHoFOL and @WeHoReads.
Admission is Free. Parking is free with validation. RSVP requested: https://wehoreadspattmorrison.eventbrite.com