GEORGE CHRISTY
Princess Lilly Fallah Lawrence and USMC Corporal Douglas Banker at Lilly’s dinner during the groundbreaking for Castle Kashan in Malibu.
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ara. Scarlett O’Hara’s family plantation. Her sumptuous stomping grounds in Gone With The Wind, the 1939 film starring Vivien Leigh as the beautiful Scarlett and Clark Gable as the rougish Rhett Butler. Produced by David O. Selznick, the film won 10 Oscars and is one of the highest grossing box office hits of all time.
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all us crazy, but we dined there the other night with eighty guests at Princess Lilly Fallah Lawrence’s makebelieve Tara high in the mountains of Malibu. To participate in the groundbreaking at Castle Kashan, the manorial estate of Princess Lilly before its devastating destruction by the 2007 Malibu fire. For the celebratory occasion, Lilly created a fairytale Tara where Castle Kashan stood.
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tility companies overloaded a telephone pole that crashed during the fire’s 70miles-an-hour Santa Ana winds. Uncontrollable flames raged in Malibu Canyon, devouring Lilly’s property at five past midnight. Awakening Lilly from her bed, firefighter Dennis Cross, the Westside battalion chief, battled through the conflagration, rushing her to safety. Weeks before, the heroic Dennis Cross and his team rescued a woman who’d been buried for five days.
the massive property, welcoming friends in an antebelluminspired ballgown that the impetuous Scarlett O’Hara would have cried for all night. Billowing ruffles of daffodil-yellow silk organza that New York couturier Edgardo Bonilla sweated over a time frame of six months. Recommended by Monica Reed of Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, Edgardo’s couture collections are sought after by American, European, Middle Eastern, Saudi and Asian fashionables of all ages.
Lilly’s
and the ladies’ tiaras and D-flawless diamonds lighted up the sky, as did the dozen crystal chandeliers provided by L.A. antiquaire Peyman Rezaie. Towering crystal candelabras at every table spilled over with festoons of garnet-red roses.
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fter dinner, USMC Corporal Douglas Banker, in his US Marine dress blues, presented Lilly with the American flag awarded to her late husband Marine Sergeant Bunty Lawrence. Everyone then joined Lilly and Douglas in singing The Star Spangled Banner. Not many know that after 9/11, linguist Lilly served as a translator for the FBI. Nor do many know of the diverse charities that Lilly supports with continual funding for women’s shelters and children’s schools and thousands of prepaid phone calls for our troops abroad, etc.
Here and there we visited
with the beautiful Mojgan Safvadi and her Urgent Care doctor husband Shahriar Daniel Safvati; Dr. Randy Pokomo with wife Cheryl; the historian and antiquaire Peyman Rezaie with daughter Jordan; Renee Taylor who held a fundraiser earlier that week for the Motion Picture and Television Country House; NBC’s Ana Garcia; Occidental Oil’s Jina Chanel; California Closets’ Leslie and Scott Siegel; Lois Aldrin; Kim Devore; Raul Rodriguez, who designs dozens of eye-candy Rose Bowl floats year in and year out; actor Robert Cash, a cousin of singer Johnny Cash; Dr. Hillary Chollet with wife Maureen; Lilly’s director of security Craig Martin.
fter the Wolfgang Puckcatered dinner of six courses, Wendy Burch, the KTLA anchor, announced that the huge property had been blessed by the Chumash tribe centuries ago. “Sacred earth,” says Lilly, who named the Castle after her father Reza Fallah’s birthplace in Persia. Reza served as the renowned global ambassador for oil under the reign of the Shah of Iran, the Shah all the while wooing the teenage Lilly, whose heart fox-trotted elsee discussed Joan where. Collins marrying theater manilly created her Fallah ager Percy Gibson in London Tara in a grand marquee over everal decades ago, next February. “I feel more Loretta Young was embarking myself with Percy,” Joan admiton a world tour. Loretta ted to the Daily Mail, “than I Page 6 | October 12, 2012
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Celebrity Photo/Scott Downie
Andrea Gold
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he Fallahs’ Persian hospitality overwhelmed Loretta. She stayed for nine months at the Tehran Hilton penthouse as their guest. Loretta later related she’s never known such generosity. Mahin asked if we received a gift from Loretta for this kind introduction? Not. We didn’t expect any, knowing as we did and do that some movie stars are different from thee and we. Mahin then gifted us with a handsome pair of turquoise and gold cufflinks that she designed and that we treasure.
ever have with anyone.” Many were amused that d u r i n g M a d o n n a ’s concert tour in Toronto, lodging as she did at the posh Hazelton Hotel, she demanded the removal of every toilet seat in her suites and that they be replaced with brand new thrones. Is this Standard Operating Procedure wherever the Material Girl flops?
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n irresistible virt u o s o Kristin Chenoweth and Lois Pope during the Capuchin monHeroic Dog Awards dinner, presented by Lois, key is NBC’s at the Beverly Hilton. most valuable commodity this fall,” reports Benjamin Wallace words, earns $12,000 an in New York magazine. Her episode, travels business class, name is Crystal,18, who plays wears shorts with a hidden diathe pint-sized Dr. Rizzo, a med- per, is nuts about “peanuts, pisical assistant for Justin Kirk, the tachios, bananas, chocolate, young veterinarian, in the net- Nutella, grapes, yogurt, a work’s new comedy series weekly egg for protein, and, off-set, spiders and flies.” Animal Practice.
“The most powerful pet
in Hollywood” headlined the Los Angeles Times. Her trainer Tom Gunderson bought and named Crystal when she was two-and-a-half years old. Wallace writes that she sleeps with Tom and his wife and sometimes his kids at their Antelope Valley home, dozes at least eight hours a night.
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apuchin monkeys have a life expectancy of 40 to 50 years. Her castmates and crew are convinced Crystal “is single-handedly making Animal Practice a hit.” Online at www.bhcourier.com/georgechristy.cfm
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allace finds that Crystal has “an IMDB page longer ... and more hit-studded than most actors three times her age.” He cites American Pie; 3:10 to Yuma; Dr. D o l i t t l e ; Zookeeper; We Bought A Zoo. Walking the Red Carpet for Hangover Part II Crystal posed in “a pink gown, pearl necklace and corsage … unflappable, pogo-ing and mugging for the paparazzi“. We next anticipate Crystal red-carpeting in Dolce & Gabbana couture.
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rystal recognizes 60 different English
Photo by Jeff Minton for New York Magazine
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planned visiting Burma to buy rubies. “Anywhere else?”, she asked. Why not Tehran for its precious turquoise? Did we know anyone thereabouts? Yes, Lilly to the rescue. Introduced to Mahin and Reza, Loretta was entertained royally, including endless white-glove dinners at the Shah’s palace.
Crystal stars with Justin Kirk in NBC’s Animal Practice and has been annointed “the most powerful pet in Hollywood.”
BEVERLY HILLS