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IT WAS SUPPOSED to be one last goodbye for Eduardo Tirella (right), a onetime performer and popular milliner who hung with Frank Sinatra before becoming a talented decorator, art curator, and in middle age, a promising movie set designer. Tirella, a gay war hero and Italian-American (back when that was still considered “ethnic” in America) was on the cusp of Hollywood success at 42. A good friend of Sharon Tate, Richard Burton, and other actors, Tirella had just spent a decade curating art projects for the many estates of Doris Duke — then the richest woman in America.

But, having designed the sets of Elizabeth Taylor’s and Tate’s , Tirella was moving on. He’d arranged to join his partner, artist Edmund Kara, who sometimes