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ZADORABLE PIA BRINGS HER PARTICULAR PERSONA TO LONG BEACH CIVIC LIGHT OPERA'S 'FUNNY GIRL'
THEATER PREVIEW

By Janet Wiscombe / Staff Writer

There are lots of details about Pia Zadora worthy of note: She is rich. She is famous. She is beautiful. She can sing.
She also may be one of the only people in the world who's never been to a market or grocery store to shop for food. A staff of housekeepers, gardeners, nannies, pilots, chauffeurs, cooks, hairdressers, body trainers and bodyguards attends to her every need. Well, there was the time she was at her home in Malibu, one of her three residences, when she did go to the store to buy peppermint schnapps.
And, there was the other time - years ago - she was with a friend who stopped at K-Mart on the way back from a horseback riding jaunt.
``I had no makeup on. I was feeling premenstrual and I looked awful,'' she recalls. ``A young clerk asked me if I was Pia Zadora.
``I looked at him and said, `If I were Pia Zadora, would I be shopping at K-Mart?'''
The memory sends her into peals of laughter. She is seated cross-legged in the center of a coffee table in the ``family room'' of her grand Beverly Hills estate where she lives with mega-millionaire husband Meshulam Riklis and their two children.
The coffee table is huge. She is tiny - weighing in at 98 pounds if that. Most grown women of 33 would look ridiculous holding a conversation from the top of a coffee table. Not Pia Zadora. She alights on furniture like a cat - or a teen-ager - accustomed to perching where and how she pleases.
She has taken time out of a hectic rehearsal schedule to talk about her debut as a stage actress in the Long Beach Civic Light Opera's production of ``Funny Girl,'' opening at the Terrace Theater March 2. It's a role she nearly turned down. Last summer when Barry Brown, the newly hired producer of the CLO, offered her the starring role, she offered him a diagnosis: ``You're crazy,'' she told him. ``There's no way I can play (the character) Fanny Brice.''
``I told Barry he was off his rocker. But he insisted I was the only one who could do it.
``I finally started to believe him,'' she notes, adding, ``I know it's been an eyebrow raiser. I'm not what you'd expect.''
No, Pia Zadora in the role of Fanny Brice, the unglamorous Broadway legend from Manhattan's Lower East Side who became a comedy star, is not what you'd expect. It's not just that the part has the name Barbra Streisand scrawled all over it. It has more to do with Pia's particular persona. In the past decade, the dimunitive nymph not only has experienced full-scale flops as an actress, she's also witnessed spectacular success as a vocalist.
``When I did `Butterfly' in '82, the general image people had of me was that I was married to an older man who financed my film career,'' she says, now curled up in a soft leather chair. ``There was a negative awareness of me. I was typecast as a sex symbol. There was all that Sugar Daddy stuff.''
During her brief film career which included parts in the forgetable ``Fakeout'' and ``The Lonely Lady,'' Pia Zadora-bashing became a national sport. One critic called her ``a fabricated personality with a rich husband and a tiny talent.'' Another referred to her as the ``Queen of Sleaze.''
She could have responded to the attacks by retreating to one of her palaces to live the life of a pampered princess. But the thought never seriously crossed her mind.
``I hung in there. I took the hard knocks,'' she says. ``I knew what I was about. I had determination and confidence and my husband was very supportive. He said, `I've had trouble all my life. Keep moving. When people shoot arrows at you, don't stop to pick them up or you'll get shot.'''
In the past six years, she not only had two children, Kady, 6, and Kristofer, 3, who are unquestionably the center of her universe, she also has experienced a remarkable professional comeback.
Following a concert in 1985, Los Angeles Times jazz critic Leonard Feather wrote: ``She has it all; the range, expert intonation, a sensitive feeling for lyrics. It was a musically impeccable evening.''

A star is born

That's all it took. The jokes stopped. The invitations started. A star was born. Pia, the poor little rich girl - a second-rate starlet whose career had been described by People Magazine as an event that ``made the Titanic look like a brilliant success'' - was suddenly a sought-after celebrity out blowing the roof off wherever she performed.
Since then, she's lapped up acclaim for her cabaret act and albums including ``Pia and Phil,'' a medley of torch songs recorded by the London Philharmonic. Last summer, children in tow, she appeared with Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles on a 17-city tour. In only five years, the former Mrs. Riklis, disco sex kitten, had firmly established herself as Pia Zadora, premiere vocalist.
She's a little amused at those who think she's somehow popped up out of nowhere. She comes from a family of musicians. In fact, she's been a successful show biz singer since she was 6. Like her pal Frank Sinatra, she also was born in Hoboken. (``Their mangers are side by side,'' friends joke.)

Bringing up Pia

As a toddler, her parents moved to New York City where her father worked as a violinist on Broadway and her mother as a wardrobe supervisor and ``Mama Rose stage mother'' to her daughter. The tiny girl with the big voice appeared in several musical hits including ``Midgie Purvis'' with Tallulah Bankhead, ``Fiddler on the Roof'' and ``The Sound of Music.''
Though ``successful,'' Zadora doesn't have happy childhood memories.
``The nuns (at her Catholic school) thought I was socially retarded,'' she recalls. ``My mother was so protective I never dealt with my contemporaries. That's why I go totally the opposite direction with my children - going to the zoo, arranging play dates.
``In a way, (daughter) Kady has the same problem I did. She's always with me. She sleeps in bed with me. We had her girfriends over and there were five of us in one bed.
``She's never away from me,'' continues Zadora, who frequently invites Kady on to the stage with her, but says she'd never, ever push her to perform or to take lessons she didn't want to take. ``Once she drew a picture of me and we were joined like two people!''
Though Riklis and children will be at the opening of ``Funny Girl,'' Zadora says her mother has been asked to come to a later performance. ``If she were there, she'd tell me to do this, and tell me to do that, and I'd kill her. She has this little French poodle. I just look at it and I feel bad for that dog. She's very protective of it. She's afraid to let anyone breathe on that dog.
``I look at that dog and think, `That used to be ME!''
The image makes Zadora laugh. At one moment, she likes to project the image of herself as a gutsy, full-throated entertainer with high energy and a strong will. The person she most admires is Madonna - ``because she is outrageous.
``I've longed to be that outrageous,'' she insists, adding teasingly, ``and I'm getting closer and closer all the time.''
She's attracted to the character Fanny Brice because the role ``is a female tour de force. ``It allows me to be a woman and spill my guts,'' she declares.
Her responses to questions seem well-scripted.
But at the next moment, she seems softer, more vulnerable, a whisp of a woman who is quite isolated from life yet would like to participate.
``I want my kids to find themselves,'' she says. ``I want them to be exposed to a lot so they can choose what they want to do. I want to hold their hand in case they fall, and I want to let them sprout their wings.

Gaining confidence

``I was 19 or 20 when I got married,'' she continues. ``My husband raised me. He did everything for me. Now I am more grown up, more confident and gutsy than I used to be. When I travel, he comes and takes care of the kids. He's very supportive.
``I think it's important for people to have their own space and do their own thing,'' she adds. ``You can't live through other people.''
She doesn't even try. She makes it clear that she is the entertainer; her husband of 13 years the industrialist (hotels, shopping centers, clothes), the art collector, the sophisticate.
``I have no interest in art,'' she says simply. The comment would not seem strange if she were not surrounded by a valuable, exquisite collection of art worthy of a major museum. Care has been taken to exhibit the art in large rooms with light floors and white carpets.
As Zadora speaks, staff members pad around the house wearing soft blue surgical booties which are kept in a special gold box near the front entrance. Even guests wear the booties out of reverance for the perfection of the environment.
One of Zadora's publicists, Susan Dubow, used to wear them. She hasn't since she looked down at her feet at the supermarket after leaving Zadora's house recently. She was still wearing her soft blue surgical booties.

A new abode

Likewise, Zadora expresses no interest in the Mary Pickford-Douglas Fairbanks Pickfair estate she will be moving into next year. It's located directly down the hill from the family's current digs. Riklis, who is 64, bought it a few years ago and has received criticism from preservationists for gutting much of it.
``Pickfair is not my baby. It's my husband's project,'' and, no, he hasn't demolished it, she says. ``The architect has razed the kitchen and dining room or it would have collapsed.''
Her interests are her children and her career, in that order. Spare her the world of esoterica. She'd rather spend the day playing games with her kids and eating at McDonald's.
Last week, Kady had her tonsils taken out so Mom canceled all of her rehearsals. Next week, the offical rehearsals for ``Funny Girl'' begin in Long Beach. She has, however, been working on the role for weeks with private coaches and conductors and directors in L.A. and New York.
``What I like best about Fanny is that she had a sense of humor about herself. She was quick and witty but she knew how to protect herself. She wasn't the most attractive, but she had a great deal of confidence and determination. The major part was chutzpah. She had chutzpah.
``Fanny Brice and I are similar,'' she adds. ``That's a catharsis - I love that word!''
She says she's nervous about the large size of the 3,054-seat Terrace Theater, but other than that, feels confident about the show. Besides, she'll be up there with Adrian Zmed, known to TV viewers from his seasons on ``T.J. Hooker'' and from the movie ``Grease II'' in the role of Nicky Arnstein, and with the inimitable Kaye Ballard, who will play the role of Fanny's mother.
``It's a lot harder to go out on a stage alone,'' she notes.
If the show is successful, there is a chance it could wind up on Broadway. Zadora for one doesn't like to flirt with the future. She's got enough to think about today.
She laughs at a question about her long-range plans. ``In 10 years, we'll all be recovering from our facelifts. And (husband) Rik will be married to a 16-year-old!''
From her perch on the coffee table, she giggles with abandon.
Mama Zadora looks 16.

Appeared in PRESS-TELEGRAM, Sunday, February 10, 1991; Section: SPOTLIGHT, Page: E1

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