Beverly Hills native Lorraine Holnback Brodek brought a little Hollywood magic with her when she moved to Arizona in 1971. She quickly became a doyenne of local media, establishing the Friends of Public Television (now Friends of Arizona PBS) on Channel 8. As chairman, she ran telethons that raised millions of dollars to “build new TV facilities at Arizona State University and provide quality entertainment.” In 1979, she launched the Warner Bros. Catalog (now the Warner Archive, made up of thousands of films and TV series from the old studio vaults) as vice president of direct marketing. Holnback Brodek has also authored four books, including her memoir, A Nobody in a Somebody World: My Hollywood Life in Beverly Hills, which includes stories such as when she “was terrified watching the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz” before discovering Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the character, was her Sunday school teacher. That moment “put a new perspective on films.” Now living in Wickenburg, Holnback Brodek is still involved in the arts – she serves on the Del E. Webb Center for the Performing Arts executive board and aims to spread the message of hope through her work as a humorist, which is “seeing the humor in the outrageous events that occur in life.”

FUN FACT!

Her then-home was on the cover of PHOENIX magazine’s February 1971 Special Homes issue.