A Nobody in a Somebody World: My Hollywood Life in Beverly Hills

Caught with her funny companion, Erma Bombeck, on that morbidly hot August day in the depths of the Grand Canyon, without a smidge of shade or water, the picture was grim for these two dear friends...as grim as the Reaper. The next thing they knew, their knees buckled and they hit the sand as if an old miner had "knocked 'em over with his pick ax." This was followed by their stomachs tossing up whatever fluid they had left in their dried-out bodies. Seasickness in the sand. Not good. Gasping for air, they rolled under a craggy crag from which a scorpion skittered and quietly groaned for a moment in unison. That's when Erma mumbled her obit.

And it was then and there that Lorraine said in a promise to God that if he/she let her live, that "I swear I'm going to write a book." And Erma agreed that if she died first, Lorraine could write a book. And lo and behold the book's title would be "A Nobody in a Somebody World." The inspiration came the day Lorraine was in her grubbiest of clothes pruning roses in the front of her Beverly Hills home. A ball-capped dad driving his Lampoon Vacation family in their weathered station wagon pulled up and hollered at her, "Hey! Are you somebody?"

Lorraine says that the great thing about being anonymous is that an unknown can walk among us while quietly gathering mundane material and then retell everything after the main subjects die or are too old to recognize their names. You will learn what it's like for a non-celeb to end up in the film business where your husband produces two of the worst movies ever with Oscar-winning stars. You will follow her in her garden as she relives a photo shoot gone terribly wrong for a feature in the Ladies Home Journal magazine. The experience is trumped by the nationally publicized event of hundreds of frenzied Iranian rioters destroying those roses in her front yard with tornado-like intensity. Read along as her reputation is trashed by her appearance on a #1 game show. This is a book that shows truth is way funnier than fiction and that an unknown person can turn her crazy, sometimes bawdy, amazing stories into a wonderful collection all bound together in "A Nobody in a Somebody World." Enjoy.