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6 days ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile |Lindsay Hoffman
In 1915, Helen Gibson found herself in a plane flying over Los Angeles arguing with the pilot. “He refused to let her jump out of the plane,” author Mallory O’Meara exclusively tells Closer. “Helen said, ‘I’m going to jump out of this plane either way.
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1 week ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile |Katie Bruno
Few people can brag that the future Queen of England made them a cup of coffee, but it happened to former royal gardener Jack Stooks. “I was at her garden one day. She came outside and said, ‘Would you like a drink?’” he exclusively tells Closer.
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2 weeks ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile |Fortune Benatar
As Wuthering Heights’ Catherine Earnshaw, Merle Oberon runs through a gamut of emotions over her tumultuous love affair with Heathcliff, played by Sir Laurence Olivier. “I’m yours Heathcliff,” she tells him on her deathbed. “I’ve never been anyone else’s.”Even as Merle played the quintessentially British heroine in the big-screen adaptation of a master work of English literature, she was hiding a big secret about her heritage.
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2 weeks ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile |Rick Egusquiza
As she fled her home during February’s California wildfires, Anjelica Huston’s phone rang. “[Jack Nicholson] called and asked if I was all right, and if I had someplace I was staying,” she told The Guardian. “That’s the bottom line with he and I — when the chips are down, he’s there.”From 1973 until 1990, Anjelica, 73, and Jack, 87, carried on one of Hollywood’s most legendary on-off love affairs despite his inability to remain true.
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3 weeks ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile
There’s a saying that “dead men tell no tales.” But Thomas Noguchi, once hailed as Los Angeles’ “coroner to the stars,” knows that’s not true. “In my memory…there is a montage of tragic scenes,” he wrote in his 1983 memoir. “The body of the beautiful Marilyn Monroe, her hand outstretched in death toward the telephone by her bed. Robert F.
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3 weeks ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile |Lindsay Hoffman
Julie Rogers Pomilia didn’t realize her grandfather was famous until her second grade teacher called her up to her desk. “Do you know who that is?” the teacher asked, pointing to a stack of magazines with Roy Rogers’ face on them. “I said, ‘Yeah, that’s my grandpa,’” Julie exclusively recalls to Closer.
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3 weeks ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile
After 20 years as Grey’s Anatomy’s Dr. Meredith Grey, Ellen Pompeo is thrilled to be playing a very different character on the limited series, Good American Family. “I’ve been dying for something else to do for years,” she recently told The New York Times. “I’ve always wanted another opportunity. I finally have it. Yes, it’s scary. It might be the craziest, dumbest thing. But I’m going to trust in the universe.”Ellen believes that fate has always played a big role in her life.
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3 weeks ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile
Janis Ian performed as the musical guest on the premiere episode of Saturday Night Live with a raging fever and strep throat. “Everybody in the cast was very nervous because they’d never done live TV,” recalls Janis, who adds that performing live “was no big deal” to her. “I sang, I did my job, and then I left.”A professional singer since the age of 14, Janis, 73, earned the biggest hit of her career, the bittersweet tale of teenage longing, “At Seventeen,” in 1975.
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4 weeks ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile
Kelly Stewart-Harcourt recalls watching monumental world events — from the first American in space to the Kennedy assassination — with her parents in the library of their home at 918 N. Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. “About 5 or 5:30, we would gather in the library and Dad would turn on the news,” Kelly tells Closer about their daily ritual. “Mom and Dad would make their vodka and tonics. My sister and I would have our Shirley Temples.
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4 weeks ago | 
closerweekly.com | Louise A. Barile
In 1966, John Lennon gained early entry to a London gallery and angered artist Yoko Ono by eating an apple from her display. “Yoko was shocked and upset,” writes David Sheff. “The piece was about the cycle of life — the apple would rot and eventually disintegrate. It hadn’t occurred to her that someone might take a bite out of her sculpture.”A mountain of text has dissected every aspect of John’s life, but very few writers have centered on Yoko.
