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Pia Zadora
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Pia Zadora | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | May 4, 1954 Hoboken, New Jersey , USA |
| Occupation | Actress, singer |
| Height | 5' |
Pia Zadora (born May 4, 1954) is an American actress and singer.
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Born Pia Alfreda Schipani in Hoboken, New Jersey, of part Polish and Italian descent. She adapted part of her mother's maiden name (Zadorowski) as her stage name. She appeared as a child actress with legendary Broadway star Tallulah Bankhead in Midgie Purvis.
She attended elementary and middle school in Forest Hills, New York, at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, the same parochial school as Ray Romano and David Caruso.
Zadora's first film appearance was in 1964's cult classic Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, as Girmar, a young Martian girl. Her subsequent career made little headway until she met and married Israeli multimillionaire Meshulam Riklis in 1977. Not long thereafter, she made her breakthrough into public awareness as the "Dubonnet Girl", appearing in near-ubiquitous print ads and tv commercials for Dubonnet aperitifs. Not incidentally, her husband was a major shareholder in Dubonnet's American distributor.
Zadora co-starred with Stacy Keach and Orson Welles in the 1982 film Butterfly, with a steamy plotline revolving around father-daughter incest, and featuring Zadora singing "It’s Wrong For Me To Love You". She went on to win that year's Golden Globe Award as "Best New Star of the Year", amid charges that her wealthy husband had, in effect, bought the award with a high-profile promotional campaign.[1] Zadora's curvaceous image filled oversize billboards on Sunset Boulevard, and rumors circulated about lavish junkets to Las Vegas for members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which sponsors the Golden Globes. Not all critics were enamored of her performance, however; she was awarded "Razzies" as both "Worst New Star" and "Worst Actress" in the 1982 Golden Raspberry Awards.
Zadora next starred in the 1982 film Fake-Out (aka Nevada Heat), a zany women in prison B-movie co-starring Telly Savalas, and in the 1983 film adaptation of a Harold Robbins novel, The Lonely Lady, playing the role of an aspiring screenwriter who achieves success after surviving a sexual assault with a garden hose nozzle. She was awarded yet another Razzie, as "Worst Actress" of 1983. On the basis of her multiple awards, the Golden Raspberry Awards later named her "Worst New Star of the Decade (1980-1989).
Zadora garnered both attention and ridicule that year by posing for the press cavorting in a public fountain and wearing a Tanga Maillot swimsuit. This resulted in many photos of her and her shapely "can" (posterior) at the homonymic Cannes Film Festival. In contrast, Newsweek published what it humorously referred to as a "rare head-on" photo of the actress.[2]
In 1988 she played a small role in John Waters' Hairspray as a beatnik. Waters has never been shy about expressing his ardent admiration for Pia Zadora's work, even interviewing her on one occasion.
She has attained some success as a singer, and has had several hit singles throughout the world. In 1984, she received a nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Her cover version of the Shirley Ellis hit, "The Clapping Song", reached the U.S. Top 40 in 1983, and she had a minor hit with a duet with Jermaine Jackson titled "When the Rain Begins To Fall" in 1984 which she performed with Jackson in the movie Voyage Of the Rock Aliens in which Zadora played a lead role. (In Germany, this song was a #1 hit for four weeks, and in France it also was a major hit.) She released Pia & Phil, an album of standards with the London Philharmonic in 1987. In 1988, she teamed with famed producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and released an album entitled "When the Lights Go Out."
Later in 1994, Zadora played a small role in Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult in the final act in a comedy sketch as she sang in the Academy Awards.
An urban legend has frequently been circulated that Zadora once starred in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank, in which her performance was so bad that an audience member yelled "She's in the attic!" when the Nazis showed up. Zadora has, in fact, never acted in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank; the joke is taken from the book "Solomon Gursky Was Here" by the Canadian author Mordechai Richler. The story was also famously repeated by Bea Arthur on her "On Broadway: Just Between Friends" tour and album.[1][3]
Zadora now lives with her three children (from two former marriages) in wealthy retirement, thanks to ex-husband Meshulam Riklis. Zadora gained notoriety when she and Riklis bought the Beverly Hills landmark mansion Pickfair in January of 1988 and later demolished it. The mansion, former home of early movie stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, was one of Beverly Hills' most famous privately owned properties. To show his "love and affection", Riklis had an oil portrait commissioned of Zadora in the nude. Visitors to the Pickfair Mansion were greeted by the portrait.[1]
Zadora is an active contributor to both Republican and Democratic political candidates.[4]