Pia Zadora
Pia Zadora (born May 4, 1954) is an American actress and singer.
Early life
Born Pia Alfreda Schipani to an Italian American family in Hoboken, New Jersey, she took her mother's maiden name as her stage name. She appeared as a child actress with legendary Broadway star Tallulah Bankhead in "Midgie Purvis"
Film career
Her first film appearance was in 1964's infamous Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, as Girmar, a young Martian girl. She won a Golden Globe as 1982's "Most Promising New Star," but also won "Worst New Star" in the 1982 Golden Raspberry Awards. She starred in the 1983 film The Lonely Lady. She won the now defunct "Best New Star of the Year" Golden Globe for the film "Butterfly" despite the fact that she actually made her acting debut eighteen years earlier. There were rumors that her wealthy husband, Israeli multimillionaire Meshulam Riklis, who financed the movie, bribed the critics. Her movie career has been a series of lows, with no hits, and with further Golden Raspberries to her credit, including "Worst New Star of the Decade" in the 1989 Golden Raspberry Awards.
She has attained some success as a singer, and has had several hit singles throughout the world. In 1982, 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. (In Germany, this song was a number 1 hit for four weeks.) She released Pia & Phil, an album of standards with the London Philharmonic 1987.
Later in 1994 Pia played a small role in Naked Gun 33 1/3 in the final act in a humorous comedy sketch as she sang in the Academy Awards.
An urban legend has frequently been circulated that Zadora once starred in a stage 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. [1]
Private life
She now lives with her children (from two failed marriages) in wealthy retirement, thanks to ex-husband Meshulam Riklis, a wealthy Israeli business man and the owner of McCrory's. 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, and its destruction gained Zadora intense criticism.