Racing Numbers: 4.6.8 Lucky Colour: Blue Lucky Day: Thursday

Magazine Magazine Stateside with Gavin Wood in West Hollywood Respected journo wins award

■ Hi everyone, from my suite at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and

Suites comes this week's news.

Recognition for Robert ■ The annual Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites Media Award 2020 has been won by respected journalist and Walkley Award winner, Robert Penfold .

At a glittering function Robert was presented his award from Ramada Managing Director Alan Johnson.

Not only was Robert celebrated, but the Australian director Rod Hardy was also celebrated and recognised with his vast body of work from directing the early Homicide and Division 4 shows to Battlestar Galactica, The X-Files, Leverage and Burn Notice. Two very fine Australians doing incredible work both in Australia and around the world.

The Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites is like the mecca for all Australians to get started in a new country. When you come to stay after all the lockdowns have been lifted and the airlines can fly to LA you will hear the Australian accent all over the hotel and surrounding retail outlets.

Remembering an icon ■ Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, model, and singer. Famous for playing comedic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s and was emblematic of the era's changing attitudes towards sexuality.

Marilyn died 58 years ago and her legend still lives to this day. On August 5, 1962, the movie actress was found dead in her home in Los Angeles. She was discovered lying nude on her bed, face down, with a telephone in one hand.

Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room. After a brief investigation, Los

Angeles Police concluded that her death was "caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide."

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson in

Los Angeles on June 1, 1926.

Decades after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains a major cultural icon.

You will find Marilyn resting in Crypt No. 24 at the corridor of memories at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, right beside Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.

77 Sunset Strip ■ In the summer of 1958, Dean Martin and his business partner, Maury Samuels, bought a former restaurant called The Alpine Lodge.

Dean Martin's real-life restaurant, located at 8524 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, was featured in the TV series 77 Sunset Strip. The show's character 'Kookie', played by Ed Byrnes, was a pseudo-hipster working as a valet at Dino's.

The 1950s show was filmed entirely on the Warner Brothers lot, but the opening 30-second sequence was filmed in front of Dino's Lodge.

Survey Says ... ■ Eighty-one percent of black Americans said they would prefer if police spend the same amount of time or more time in their neighborhoods, according to a Gallup survey. The survey, which also includes responses from other racial and ethnic groups, indicates that 20% of black respondents said they want an increased police presence, 61% want the same presence, and 19% want less. The support for current policing levels was fairly consistent across racial lines, with an average of 67% of Americans saying the current level of time police spend in their area is adequate. Asian American respondents expressed the greatest preference for decreasing police presence, with 28% favoring this option, the survey shows.

When asked how frequently they interact with police, 32% of black respondents said very often or often, compared with 28% of Hispanic respondents, 22% of white respondents, and 21% of Asian respondents, according to Gallup. Among black respondents 39%, said that they were not too confident or not at all confident of receiving positive treatment, compared with 22% of Hispanic respondents, 22% of Asian respondents, and 9% of white respondents. The survey is part of the Gallup Center on Black Voices, which is "devoted to studying and highlighting the experiences of more than 40 million Black Americans: tracking and reporting on progress on life outcomes and a life well-lived."

Ramada boss Alan Johnson with

Nine Network correspondent Robert Penfold

Gavin Wood

From my Suite at the Ramada Plaza Complex on Santa Monica Blvd

Marilyn Monroe

Come and visit us ■ If you are considering coming over for a holiday to see the stars later on in 2020, then I have got a special deal for you.

We would love to see you at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites, 8585 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood.

I have secured a terrific holiday deal for readers of the Melbourne Observer and The Local Paper.

Please mention 'Melbourne Observer' when you book to receive the 'Special Rate of the Day' for your advance bookings.

Please contact: Jennifer at info@ramadaweho.com Happy Holidays, Gavin Wood

Out and About

Helen’s biopic debuts ■ In 1966, Helen Reddy arrived in New York with her threeyear-old daughter, a suitcase and $230 in her pocket.

She had been told she'd won a recording contract, but the record company promptly dashed her hopes by telling her it has enough female stars and suggests she has fun in New York before returning home to Australia.

Helen, without a visa, decides to stay in New York anyway and pursue a singing career, struggling to make ends meet and provide for her daughter.

There she befriended legendary rock journalist Lillian Roxon, who becomes her closest confident.

Lillian inspires her to write and sing the iconic song I Am Woman along with Australian singer-songwriter Ray Burton which became the anthem for the second wave feminist movement and galvanised a generation of women to fight for change.

She also met Jeff Wald, a young aspiring talent manager who becomes her agent and husband.

Jeff helps her get to the top, but he also suffers from a drug addiction, which gradually turns their relationship toxic.

Helen moved from New York and stayed at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites before settling into Los Angeles.

Caught up in the treadmill of fame and dependent on Jeff to manage her professional life, Helen found the strength to take control of her own career and keep pursuing her dreams. The biopic debuted on Stan this week.

Nuclear jitters ■ August marks 75 years since the US dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

It killed 80,000 people immediately and tens of thousands more in the aftermath.

The US dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days later, Aug. 9.

On Aug. 15, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his country's unconditional surrender for WWII.

Some 75 years later global non-proliferation efforts are "In jeopardy." Russia and the US, which account for 90 per cent of the world's nuclear arsenal, are modernising their programs, and the New Start Treaty focused on arms reduction is teetering on the brink of failure.

US won’t listen to Gates ■ Bill Gates continued his unbridled criticism of the United States' response to the coronavirus pandemic on Sunday, calling America's testing system "insanity" and stressing that the country was now facing "a pretty dramatic price" both in human death and wasted money.

Gates said it takes far too long to receive coronavirus test results in the US. "You can't get the federal government to improve the testing because they just want to say how great it is," the Microsoft co-founder-turned-philanthropist said. "I've said to them, look, have a CDC website that prioritizes who gets tested. That's trivial to do.

“They won't pay attention to that. I've said don't reimburse any tests where the result goes back after three days. You're paying billions of dollars in this very inequitable way to get the most worthless test results of any country in the world."

On the topic of America's lockdowns, Gates pointed to countries in the European Union that faced the Coronavirus outbreak earlier than the US and instituted more coordinated lockdowns. "What's impressive is that Italy, France, Spain, who had a wave before us, managed as they fell off to keep even the parts of the country that hadn't had the intense epidemic from creating a second wave," Gates said. "In the case of the United States, they opened up their bars. They didn't do much in the way of wearing masks.

“And so those areas became this second wave," he added. Gates has pledged $1.6 billion to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, with $100 million going towards coronavirus vaccines.

Most recently, he argued that the CDC's COVID-19 response was "muzzled" by a White House that refused to offer proper leadership during a time of crisis.