Despite The Polo Lounge’s jump from No. 22 to No. 6 on THR‘s annual Power Lunch survey, not everyone has given up on the boycott of the Beverly Hills Hotel — a response to the hotel’s owner, the Sultan of Brunei, implementing anti-gay Sharia law in his home country in 2014.
As James Duke Mason, a gay-rights activist with showbiz genes (his mother is Belinda Carlisle, and his grandfather was the late James Mason), tells THR, “Yoko Ono was going to be staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel recently until David Geffen told her she couldn’t stay there because of the boycott and that she should stay with him instead” in Beverly Hills. (Geffen and Ono declined comment.)
Mason, 24, says the boycott has far from “fizzled,” as THR reported, with Elton John, Ellen DeGeneres, Warren Beatty, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jay Leno, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey still eighty-sixing the hotel. An upcoming protest is in the works in partnership with the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD as well as, adds Mason, “a few other major organizations.”
This story first appeared in the June 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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