Pia Zadora -- Back Again and Standing Tall

To contact us Click HERE


Be true to yourself as long as you don’t hurt anyone else.Be who you are. You only live once. It’s all about honesty and the world youlive in. Honesty is important even when it hurts someone else’s feelings.

The above sums of the philosophy of Pia Zadora and how sheis now living her life. She has had more careers in her lifetime than most. She madeher Broadway debut when she was seven years old in a play with Tallulah Bankhead!She won a Golden Globe in her twenties. She made a few “wrong turns” in hercareer and then, thanks to Frank Sinatra, she began singing with symphonyorchestras. She performed from Carnegie Hall to The London Palladium and wasbeginning to be taken very seriously in this business. Then Life happened. Sheleft the business for fifteen years to raise a family. She recently returned toperforming AND New York tin a new cabaret show. This February, 2013, was herfirst appearance in New York since appearing in Crazy for You in 1995.
I am a fan of Pia’s. My mom was in NewYork this weekend for my birthday, her FIRST TIME EVER IN NEW YORK! We celebrated at Pia’s show Saturday night. We are both excited that we saw her.She is at the top of her game and not to be missed. I was also very excited to sit down and talk with her earlier this past week. She returned to the New York stage for anexclusive five-show engagement at The Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd Street,ending a 15-year hiatus from the New York stage. Her new show, “Pia Zadora --Back Again and Standing Tall,” which the native New Yorker premiered on theWest Coast in 2011, recently played the prestigious Smith Center in Las Vegasthis summer. 

Pia made her Broadway debut in Midgie Purvis starring Tallulah Bankhead

I posted on Facebook on Monday that I was going to beinterviewing Pia later that afternoon.

I have to be honest. All of thequestions but one was not acceptable…at least to me. Why people are interestedin salacious gossip and/or innuendo is beyond me.
I am interested in what makesa person tick, what their life experiences have been that have brought them to THISpoint in their lives.  
I call itcelebrating a person’s body of WORTH!
I’m excited to be celebrating theone and only Pia Zadora!
Born in New York, Zadora was first a child actress onBroadway -- appearing with Tallulah Bankhead, and later with Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof -- and in film,appearing in Santa Claus Conquers theMartians in 1964.  
For her breakoutfilm, Butterfly (1981), she won aGolden Globe Award for New Star of the Year appearing with Orson Wells. In 1984she was nominated for a Best Female Rock Vocal Performance Grammy Award.
Alsoin 1984 she had a hit duet with Jermaine Jackson that reached #1 in severalEuropean countries. Pia’s first experience in this business was with TallulahBankhead! What a way to start! The show was called Midgie Purvis. Pia’s recollections are that Tallulah was anextremely charismatic, iconic, and very passionate. Burgess Meredith directedit. The premise is that a childish 50-year-old woman leaves her dismissivefamily, disguises herself as an 80-year-old woman, and becomes a babysitter.
Sheends up corrupting the children she is baby sitting.  She teaches them to smokeand smoke. Pia was seven years old at the time.
That carried off stage as well!She was wild. Pia would go in her dressing room and Tallulah would say, “Here,Darling, take a sip of this. It will help you. You’ll feel good.” On stage, thesmoking consisted of some sort of powder puff device. Off stage, Tallulah triedto show her how it was really done so that people would believe her!   Then there was Divine and John Waters who Pia worked with inthe original Hairspray. All of theseiconic people left an imprint on Pia in terms of helping to model and shape herlife. She likes to walk straight ahead and be brave.
All of these icons sharethat quality. They were her biggest role models.One of Pia’s fondest memories goes back to when she was inFiddler on Broadway. Also in the cast was Bette Midler; she played Tzeitel.They used to hang out together and had a lot of fun. The girl who played themiddle sister was Liza Minnelli’s best friend. Although Pia was ten, theyincluded her with them. They would go dancing and dinners and partying.
WhenPia went to see Liza six months prior to this at the Hilton in Vegas, it waslike two school girls seeing each other again. They were yelling and screamingtogether backstage. It was as if they both were reconnecting with their past.They were eleven and twenty one again. That is a wonderful fond memory.
Another great memory for Pia was having her daughter. Piamarried businessman Meshulam Riklis in 1977, when she was 23 and he 54. He usedto joke about the age difference. When she got pregnant, he said, “Thank God! Now,you’ll have someone your own age to play with.”
What makes Pia unhappy? Seeing people who are suffering andin pain or sick or dealing with real challenges and dealing with life strugglesand what they have to endure. This is why she does what she does. She wants to alleviatetheir challenges…even for a short while through her music. She desires to makepeople feel better and understand that we all suffer throughout life to varyingdegrees.     We talked about LIVE entertainment and why it is still soimportant.
Pia is right when she says you cannot replace the experience of aone on one LIVE performance. This is one reason why she loves cabaret andintimate settings like The Metropolitan Room in New York and The Razz Room inSan Francisco.
It is a form of performance art in which you can share with youraudiences the story of your life and look in their eyes and impart yourfeelings and your lessons and your stories, no matter how you desire to phraseit and make an impact on them one on one. Has she ever lost her concentration on stage? It is inevitable!When she was ten, she was in Fiddler onThe Roof with the legendary Zero Mostel!

One night the curtain went up atthe wrong time and Mostel dropped a candlestick and it rolled across the stage.They went with it. When you are in a play, you become the character andimprovise and go with whatever happens. You must pretend that it didn’tdistract you while remaining in character. Once, Pia was appearing in a supper club about fifteen yearsago. At the time, Pia’s daughter had a Pomeranian named Baldie because of abald spot on his head. One night the audience was reacting to something goingon on stage behind her. She turned around to see Baldie. He had followed her ontothe stage. Because of the physical resemblance of Pia and her daughter, he usedto mistake the two.
They also walked the same way. Pia refers to this as a “truckdriver kind of a walk.” Upon seeing Baldie, Pia quipped, “Oh my God! My old wighas followed me out on stage.” It cracked the audience up.

Frank Sinatra with Pia Zadora

Then there was the time she was opening for Frank Sinatra.She had these quick changes between gorgeous Bob Mackie gowns.
They werethrowing shoes and etc at her. Within 45 seconds she was trying to make agraceful entrance back on to the stage. As she made her entrance, she heard agasp. She looked down to see that she was pulling on to the stage practically awhole roll of toilet tissue on her heel! She didn’t have much a comeback forthat one except that there was no time for her to go to the bathroom betweencostume changes! She told the audience someone must have stuck that on herheel. The biggest change that Pia has seen since first startingout is social media.
There was NO internet when she began in this business.
Nowshe can see practically everything she ever did on the internet and You Tube. Technologically,everything has gone beyond its original scope. Along with that, theentertainment industry has lost part of its personal touch. I asked Pia about her creative process and he she preparesfor a new project. She tells me she has ADD.
While we were talking on Monday,she was spiraling because of the list of things she had to do that day prior toflying to New York for this engagement. While we were talking, she chipped anail. So add a trip to the manicurist to her already full list of things to do.She says the only way she can contain and/or confine herself to the task athand is to meditate which she tries to do when she is in one of her ADDclusters. When all else fails, she gets a massage. It takes her a while to calmdown but eventually she gets to that place where she can start thinking aboutwhat lies ahead and what needs to be done. These thoughts are ever present whenshe first wakes up in the morning. She tries to go for long walks to sort itall out. What she wants to do or say or what she wants to sing all starts toform. With this particular show, she has a great team surrounding her. This isher “come back” show. She took a fifteen year hiatus to “torture myself.” Shehad two young young kids traveling with her when she got pregnant with herthird. They had no frame of reference and needed to settle down and go toschool. She needed to give them a normal life. She couldn’t keep doing what shewas doing. As a child, she didn’t have a normal life. She was always travelingand working. At the point that she decided to take a break, she was a singlemother. She ended up settling down herself to give them a normal upbringing andfifteen years quickly came and went. She got married a couple of times duringthat period. Her NOW husband is her FOREVER husband. He is a policeman.
Theymoved to Vegas where he was on the force. They still live in Vegas. Heryoungest is now fifteen and basically independent. They started seeing shows. Afriend asked Pia to come onstage and do a number and she realized how much shehad missed this. Singing full blast while driving her son in carpools was funbut being on stage was much more fun. She started pointing together this new show,a show in which Zadora slips into a number of jazz, Broadway and popularstandards from “Great American Songbook,” the Grammy-nominated Golden Globewinner updates us on her colorful life, her career and her growth as an artist. The show is created by the Emmy-winning director and choreographer WalterPainter; the Emmy-nominated Academy Awards writer Jon Macks, and the Tony andPeabody Award winner Larry Grossman. The music direction is by legendary Sinatra pianist VinnieFalcone, who leads a five-piece all-star band, that includes Jay Leonhart onbass, Ronnie Zito on drums, Joe Lano on guitar, and Ned Ginsberg on keyboards.Bob Mackie has designed the gowns. It’s going to be a fun run.  To reach this audience, she has done manyprint and radio interviews. I was lucky that she fit my interview in as well.She did The Huffington Post last week. She is going to be on The Joy BeharShow. No one reads newspapers anymore!  In the list of icons above that made an impact on Pia, onename is conspicuously missing. He stands in a class alone. Frank Sinatra.
Theyspent a lot of time together. They traveled together. They did a cross countrytour, Don Rickles, Frank Sinatra, and Pia. Prior to that, she was appearing inFlorida with Jackie Mason. Sinatra was a friend of Mason’s and came to see theshow. The next day she received a dozen white roses. The card read, “Youknocked them dead, kid from the guy with blue eyes.” Two hours later, hispeople called her and asked if she would like to open the show for Mr. Sinatra. 
It came after a time in which she had been doing a lot of pop music in Europe. Shehad a number one song in France in which she had a duet with Jermaine Jackson.She also had a Grammy nomination in ‘85 for Best Rock Vocal Performance Female,for "Rock It Out." Sinatra changed Pia’s musical direction.  She then did the Pia and Phil album. She sang classic standards with the London PhilharmonicOrchestra and she did it well. These are standards that Sinatra recommendedwhen she was with him. That album started her on her Carnegie Hall, KennedyCenter, London Palladium and Pyramids in Egypt tour. That led to symphonies allaround the country. The tide turned musically for Pia because of Sinatra. Hehad a major impact on her.  
The things that Pia has enjoyed the most came later on inher career. That would include Hairspray withJohn Waters, Naked Gun: 33 and a Third.In the beginning, it was really an experimental process. The later part of hercareer has been about choosing things that she has fun with. She also lovessinging the standards.
This is also where she has had the most success.  One of my platforms is arts in education. Pia also feels that it is very important. It is important tohave a strong background in music. Pia comes from a musical family. Her fatherwas a Broadway and concert violinist. He did both Broadway and classical.
Heworked in the pit on La Cage Aux Folles, Porgy and Bess, and many others.
He wasconstantly practicing and had a very strong work ethic. He had studied inEurope. His mother was an opera singer. She started Pia vocalizing when she wasthree. Pia later on went to Julliard. A lawyer goes to law school. Why shouldn’tsomeone in music have the same type of education? Everyone needs to study theircraft.What would she tell her 25 year old self? Youth is wasted onthe young! The one thing that she tells her kids which they don’t realize yetis that they will not be young forever. It really does go quickly as corny asthat may sound. You turn around at 25 and then you’re 50! They have to seethis! Jump on that horse and ride it. It is so fleeting.   
What she is doing now is what Pia really loves doing. Shedesires to keep doing it. The greatest change facing Pia in today’s industry iskeeping herself fresh and in the NOW and real and being true to what shedesires to do despite all the other influences around her.
Technology is sodifferent from where it was twenty five years ago. There are so many differentthings happening that are distractions. They can be alluring but once must staysimple and true to what you are doing and not suffocate the art. Pia has beenmostly out of the public eye for the past fifteen years. It is now all aboutre-establishing herself. Many have a preconceived idea of who and what she isall about because of who she was in the past. She has to enlighten them becauseit really is not who she was and certainly who she is not now. She is alsoconnecting with an audience who don’t know who the heck she is. There is awhole new audience out there and listening to the kind of music Pia desires tosing. This music is timeless. A lot of pop stars are now doing the standards.The old and the new are merging and Pia is re-introducing herself. We talked about Carol Channing receiving the 2013 KennedyCenter Honor.
We are both in agreement that Carol is the consummate andultimate musical comedy entertainer. Pia’s father was a violinist for Hello, Dolly for its entire run. Hepassed away about fifteen years ago. Pia knew Carol when she was a small child.Pia last saw Carol six months ago when she appeared with a symphony in PalmSprings. Carol Channing is the one and only. She has no competition. She standsalone.  There is more of grounding within Pia since leaving thebusiness fifteen years ago. She understands herself more now.
She understandswhat she desires to do and wants to do better as opposed to the many random choicesthat were made by both her and those she surrounded herself with. When she wasyounger, she had such a hard time with all the controversy surrounding her. Thatcomes with being young and “crazy.” That has all changed in a good way.  The business has also grown and evolved. She considers itmore of branching out than changing.
When it comes to these gorgeous Bob Mackie gowns, sheconsiders them a second skin. She says she sleeps in them! Pia has held on tothese dresses even after she stopped working. She couldn’t let them go. So whenit came time for her to start working again, there were a couple of gowns thathe made for her when she was pregnant. She has taken them in and going throughthese gowns, she has been reconnecting with the memories of her concert careerand all of the places that she traveled to.
They have become a part of her.After she has “whatever”, she hopes that will live on somewhere.
This next question comes from Myles Savage of The Platters.Has Pia shared any love today?  (This wasasked around 12 Noon EST on Monday. She was in Vegas) 
She had just woken up.The night before, she had accidently kicked her little Papillion in her sleep.She yelped and immediately Pia grabbed her to comfort her. 
She ended up pettingher for about an hour and a half. THAT was the love she had shared prior to mycall.
“Pia Zadora -- Back Again and Standing Tall” performed five times on four consecutive evenings. For upcoming schecule of other entertainers, please visit www.metropolitanroom.com.

I can’t wait to welcome Pia back to New York again and cheer her on!

Thank you Pia Zadora for the gifts you have given to the world and continue to give!


With grateful XOXOXs ,

Check out my site celebrating my forthcoming book on Hello, Dolly!
This book will be a celebration of this great American classic.
 If any of you reading this have appeared in any production of Dolly, I'm interested in speaking with you!

Do you have any pics to share?

If you have anything to add or share, please contact me at Richard@RichardSkipper.com.

NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED.  FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY!


Please do what YOU can to be more aware that words and actions DO HURT...but they can also heal and help!    
                My next blog will be...My interview with Frank Anzelone: A Director's Take on Hello, Dolly!


Thank you, to all the mentioned in this blog!

  Here's to an INCREDIBLE tomorrow for ALL...with NO challenges!




TILL TOMORROW...HERE'S TO AN ARTS FILLED DAYRichard Skipper                       
This Blog is dedicated to ALL THE DOLLYS and ANYONE who has EVER had a connection with ANY of them on ANY Level!