Party on: This year Newport Beach has celebrated its centennial. Now city officials are meeting with relatives and friends of the late John Wayne to plan festivities marking his 100th birthday next May 26. Newport Beach’s most famous resident died in 1979. Possible events include a celebrity dinner, film festival and boat parade …
Top that: A membership at Big Canyon (where non-golfer John Wayne hung out) just went for $281,000, or $325,000 counting the construction assessment. Shady Canyon’s current price is $275,000 …
UC Irvine Humanities Dean Karen Lawrence says she’s researched it, and hubbie Peter Lawrence, chief of vascular surgery at UCLA, is not related to the namesake of Sarah Lawrence College. “So I have assured everyone no nepotism is involved in my appointment,” kids the vivacious Karen, who will take over next August as president of the liberal arts school in Bronxville, N.Y. Karen will be returning to the East Coast,she grew up in New Jersey and was educated at Smith, Yale, Tufts and Columbia before joining the faculty at Utah. She came to UCI in 1998. Her new job will stretch a SoCal commute into a bicoastal one. The Lawrences have split time between their Irvine home and an L.A. apartment; the new plan is for Peter to fly back East most weekends. UCI is forming a search committee for a new dean. Karen’s last day is next July 1: “Until then I remain very much involved at UCI” …
Fund-raising vet Terry Jones is resigning after nine years as development chief for the OC Performing Arts Center. He’ll consult for nonprofits, but first he’ll go hiking in Patagonia. A national search is on for his replacement, who will have the task of completing the center’s massive capital campaign …
No comment from Mike Shelton or the OC Register, but the Insider hears the award-winning editorial cartoonist is taking the buyout, though he may still freelance for the paper …
Among those grilled by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the Valerie Plame/CIA leak case: UCI’s celebrated but controversial memory expert Elizabeth Loftus. She took the stand at a pretrial hearing in Washington, D.C., on behalf of indicted former Dick Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Press accounts were unflattering to Loftus. The Washington Post said Fitzgerald “picked apart the psychologist’s testimony until she acknowledged errors and misstatements in her findings.” U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton sided with Fitzgerald and disallowed the use of a memory expert at the trial, saying jurors could use “common sense” to determine the frailties of Libby’s memory (a key Libby defense against perjury and other charges.) Loftus called the Post’s coverage “exaggerated” but added, “Fitz was well-prepared. If you had five to six lawyers able to comb through everything someone wrote over 30 years, you might be able to find some little problem to blow up.”
