Biography

Lena Zavaroni hails from the tiny town of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, off the West coast of Scotland. She was born on the 4th November 1963; her surname is straight Italian, handed down from her immigrant grandfather. Lena herself spoke with a rich, irresistible Scottish brogue. Her parents — Victor and Hilda — were also talented performers in their own right. Victor played guitar, and Hilda sang.

Lena had started singing at the age of two, but she was a mature six when she made her first public appearance. She took part in talent contests at the “Winter Gardens” in Rothesay. She won so often that the organizers asked her not to come back! Later she took part in a singing act with her Father and Mother.

Phil Solomon

It was during the summer of 1973 that the Lena Zavaroni success story really began. Record producer Tommy Scott happened to be on vacation in Rothesay and heard Lena singing in the “Athletic Bar” with the Zavaroni Family Band. Tommy’s old buddy; 60’s impresario Phil Solomon takes up the story.

“I was looking for a girl singer at the time. Tommy rang me up and said he’d found a sensational girl up in Scotland, so we flew up to Glasgow and took a ferryboat to the Isle of Bute. On the boat, Tommy suddenly turned to me and said, ‘Oh, incidentally, the girl’s only nine!’ I could have killed him. He knew I’d dealt with kids in the past and had vowed never to work with them again because they are too much trouble. Anyway, Tommy kept insisting that this child was different, but I was in a dark mood by the time we got to Rothesay. We picked this little girl up and went to a deserted dance hall called “The Pavilion” to see her act. Her Uncle and Father accompanied her and suddenly I heard this incredible voice singing the theme from “The Godfather”. It took only eight bars, and I knew this was a fantastic talent.”

From this moment, under the management of Dorothy Solomon, partner of Phil Solomon, Lena enjoyed outstanding success.

Opportunity Knocks

Lena’s unique talent was introduced to the unsuspecting British public on Thames Television’s “Opportunity Knocks” at the end of 1973. For five weeks running she topped the viewers voting polls. She rocketed to fame with her recording of “Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me” in January 1974, which reached the number eight slot in the British chart. She was the youngest–ever artist to appear on BBC Television’s “Top Of The Pops” show.

Easter 1974 saw her first performance before a major audience at the “Opera House”, Blackpool. In America she pulled off a show–stopping performance in a Hollywood charity show starring Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball, where Lucille Ball commented; “You’re special. Very special and very very good.” Lena followed that appearance by guest starring with outstanding success on US television’s “Carol Burnett Show”. She even shared a dressing room with Liza Minnelli. She had become a world–wide star.

When you are 11 years old and the hottest thing in curls since Shirley Temple, life is child’s play, or so it seemed. Lena once gravely announced: “I’d like to be a grown–up star and retire when I’m an old lady of 30, then I’ll buy a caravan and travel all over the country.” That was her schoolgirl ambition.

Singing for the President

1975 proved to be an excellent year: Sell–out concerts at the “London Palladium ”, extensive television appearances in the United States and Finland and a theatre tour of South Africa. She also appeared — needless to say with great success — in Japan, Germany, Holland and Austria, where her single “Ma He’s Making Eyes At Me” entered the chart at the number seven spot, only one week after it’s release. She also won a Silver Disc for sales of more than 250,000 copies of this single, and at the age of 11 she was invited to go to the White House to sing for President Gerald Ford.

Other landmarks in her career include a memorable appearance on BBC Television’s “Morecambe and Wise Show”, appearances at two Royal Charity Galas, and in 1976 she performed in the “Royal Variety show”.

Lena and Bonnie

A new chapter in Lena’s life began that same year when she joined the “Italia Conti stage school” in the London Borough of Stockwell, where she met the child star Bonnie Langford. Later, the two starred together in a television show, “Lena and Bonnie”. Lena has made extensive stage and television appearances in Britain, and was the youngest star ever to headline her own summer show at the Congress Theatre, Eastbourne, for the 1977 season. She also appeared in her own TV series called “Lena Zavaroni and Music”, the first of which was screened on BBC Television in May 1979.

By July 1977 Lena was said to be Scotland’s richest teenager. Talking about the impact of her overnight success she once commented; “Everything changed so quickly. I had never seen lifts or escalators or even traffic lights. I went from a council house on an isolated island to a posh hotel in Piccadilly, with shopping trips to Harrods.”

One of Lena’s BBC TV Shows, “Lena Zavaroni on Broadway”, was chosen as the BBC entry for the 1978 “Golden Sea Swallow” festival in Knokke, Belgium, where it won the Silver Award. Despite all this success, Lena was a very troubled child star, with talent most of us could only dream about. In the early seventies she had the world at her feet, until the press got to her and described her as somewhat “cuddly”. This started her on the downward slope of the deadly slimmer’s disease, anorexia nervosa. She was still a child, somebody who had to grow up so very fast indeed to cope with the pressures of fame. By the end of 1979 the strain began to show. It was at stage school that the first signs of cracks in her confidence appeared when her weight fell to 35kg. She explained the root of her illness.

“When they tried to fit me into those costumes, they would talk about my weight. I kept wondering how they expected me to fit into these dresses. I was a plump little girl and I was also developing into a woman. I wanted to be just right for them but I had to go to all these breakfasts, dinners and lunches.” She added: “I only became fanatical about not eating when the pressure became too much. I just wanted to have a nice shape.”

The Lena Zavaroni Show

In the summer of 1979, when Lena was 16, she returned to the Isle of Bute to visit her parents. She’d been working hard in a summer season called “The Lena Zavaroni Show” which included the comedy duo Cannon and Ball, Berni Flint, and the outstanding song and dance team of that time Second Generation. I tell you she was absolutely brilliant! (I should know, I was there.) The venue was the “Spa Theatre” Bridlington.

By the time she returned to the Isle of Bute she was looking very thin. Lena spent her 16th birthday at Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital, complaining of a stomach upset and feeling listless. For the last two months she had been suffering from nerves. From time to time over the next two decades she would fall pray to anorexia. When in better health, she would talk enthusiastically of a return to performing full–time.

At 17, Lena was starring in her own TV series. Glamorous costumes and hairstyle changes; using all the speed and efficiency of the make-up artists. Preparation for the series took a long time. Each show took a week to rehearse, starting at 10am and finishing at 5:30pm each day. It’s not surprising that Lena enjoyed nothing better in her free time than relaxing quietly at home. “I’m not exactly a hermit” she said “but I do like to stay in.”

In November 1982 at the age of 19, Lena was back in hospital recovering from her anorexia. She wrote through the Daily Mirror:

“The reaction from the public to my illness has been tremendous. I am really very grateful for everyone’s concern and for all the kind thoughts.”

Bad times

Eventually the family moved down to London because of her illness. Everybody was worried about her. They tried seeking help from different specialists, psychiatrists, hypnotherapists even a Harley Street specialist. They tried acupuncture they tried everything they could think of. It just didn’t seem to come together; her illness had taken over her life completely.

This was not a happy time for Lena, her Mother was drinking heavily, and her parents separated. Lena continued to get worse. Between 1982 and 1984 Lena hardly worked at all. It seemed that at the age of 19 her career was over, but in 1985 she made a comeback in a summer season in Blackpool; she even claimed to be cured, in a television interview with Terry Wogan, but only a year later her anorexia forced her to stop work again. Her illness took its toll.

A normal life

Lena became obsessed with the idea of living a normal life. She met Peter Wiltshire “ a computer consultant ” and on Saturday 30th September 1989 at St. Mary’s Church Finchley, they married. Afterwards they held a reception at “The Forte Hall”, Enfield. All she wanted from him was lots of hugs and kisses and to lead a normal life, but the marriage lasted only 18 months. It was also about this time that Lena’s Mother, Hilda, committed suicide. After her divorce, Lena moved to Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, to be near her Father and his second wife Christine. In 1987 she announced that she was giving up show business.

In 1993 Lena made a rare TV appearance, she was 27, and by now it was impossible to hide the punishing affect the illness had had on her body. During the program, she read from a book some words of comfort for someone going through tough times. Shocked by her television appearance, cousins Martha and David visited Lena in her flat, distressed by how she looked they persuaded her to return home with them. She stayed with them for a year, in this time she put on weight and even sang with her Father, at a family New Year celebration.

Although she had improved, David and Martha wanted Lena to get professional help. After seeing a television program about the Montreux clinic in Canada, run by Peggy Claude-Pierre, Martha contacted Peggy who agreed to meet Lena during a visit to England. Lena was looking very ill and seemed to be giving up, so Martha took a photograph of Lena and said: “If you want to help you’ve really got to do it now.” Within 24 hours Peggy had arranged for Lena to fly out to see her. Over the years Lena had been in several such clinics and talked to dozens of specialist, but so far no one had been able to find a cure for her illness. She now weighed only 3 and a half stone, and Peggy Claude–Pierre seemed like her last hope.

Veil of grayness

Peggy became involved with anorexia after both her daughters had suffered from the illness. The philosophy of the clinic is to build patients self–esteem. Lena appeared happy at the clinic and quickly put on weight, she was just under 6 stone. She began to worry about her weight, and told Peggy that something else was wrong with her Neurologically, that an anorexic clinic could not cure. She often referred to it as “static”. She described it as a Veil of grayness and noise that she couldn’t see or hear past. She often said that she couldn’t feel a hug or that she couldn’t hear a kind word. “I feel as though I’ve given away my soul, I don’t have it any more, I’m dead inside.”

Last hope

Lena returned home to her flat in Hoddesdon and quickly fell into her old ways. Alone in her flat — claiming disability allowance and receiving help from the show business charity “The Water Rats” — she became more and more obsessed with her “static”. She was convinced that her last hope was to have neurosurgery. Eventually a surgeon at the “University Hospital Of Cardiff” agreed to give Lena a Leucotomy. This is a controversial operation only carried out in extreme cases of depression. The operation involves inserting a probe into the brain to sever nerve pathways that control emotion. The singing sensation who was just 4ft 10ins tall, had battled with anorexia nervosa from the age of 13. She said she could not live with the increasing torment and suffering from the depressive illness. She felt depersonalized, she felt she had no feelings or future, she described this as torment.

On the 7th September, she underwent the rare operation. No one will know if the operation was successful, as three weeks later, on the 1st October 1999, 35 year–old Lena developed a chest infection and died from bronchial pneumonia. Dr. Lawrence Addicott recorded a verdict of death by “Natural Causes”.

Her Cousin Margaret told Sky News:

“It has been a long fighting battle for her, but she is at rest now. I wouldn’t say she was depressed, she just went within herself. She didn’t want to go out anywhere; she didn’t want to be in too much company. She had all her family around her in Hertfordshire, I wouldn’t say she was unhappy but I would say that her anorexia had controlled her for the past 20 years.”

Singer Bonnie Langford, who was at stage school with Lena, paid tribute to the prodigy. Ms. Langford said:

“I am deeply saddened that such a lovely person is no longer with us. She was an incredibly gifted and very sweet person. It is a tragedy that she died so young.”

Lena was finally laid to rest on the 15th October 1999.