Who killed Lena Zavaroni? The life and death of a child star

Don't put your daughter on the stage

She's a bit of an ugly duckling

You must honestly confess

And the width of her seat

Would surely defeat

Her chances of success.

Yet could Coward have anticipated the modern age effects of fame, manifesting in major mental health problems?

The writer was certainly aware that fame, more often than not, requires talent, that talent usually has to be accompanied by a perfect body shape and facial beauty. Coward also understood that success can be fleeting, and when it departs it leaves behind a husk, where a once-formed person had existed.

But with each passing decade the effects of fame have become harsher. Young performers, according to a university survey conducted for A Minor Consideration, an organisation which includes current and former child actors, are now three times more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs than the average person.

And Coward could never have imagined the internet, an awesome platform for those who live to pass judgement on those who try to entertain. Slut shaming. Body shaming. Cancel culture. These are just some of the attack weapons on the vulnerable.

Yet, young people who enter showbiz (there are more than 112 drama colleges in the UK, countless stage schools and youth performance centres) aren’t often given lessons in how survive. The Journal of Phenomenological Psychology reports that young people certainly aren’t offered up classes in subjects such as “Wealth, Temptations and Family Impact.”

It highlights that they certainly have no expectation of developing “mistrust, isolation, and an unwillingness to give up fame,” or that “being in the world of celebrity is a process involving four temporal phases: love/hate, addiction, acceptance, and adaptation.”

And what happens if a young hopeful reveals a degree of talent, has some success – but fails to adapt to fame – and then finds that the entertainment industry no longer values them?

That horrific scenario was, sadly, played out by a young Scot who become world famous in the 1970s. Lena Zavaroni was just 10 years old when she appeared on TV variety show Opportunity Knocks in 1974 and went on to become a singing sensation.

Zavaroni, who grew up in Rothesay, became the youngest person in musical history to have an album in the Top 10. She appeared on US television with Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball. The young Scot went on to perform at the White House for President Gerald Ford.

But the story didn’t run to a happy ending. Zavaroni, who sang music hall hits such Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me and Personality struggled to develop from precocious little girl to teenager. The singer’s stock in trade was the offering up of vaudevillian, deep-throated gutsy adult vocals, while appearing in children’s frilly blouses and long white socks.

Zavaroni, the subject of a new stage play Lena by Tim Whitnall, which is being premiered in Greenock this month, was separated from the children’s life she would have known, thrust into an adult world of grown-up demands.

Becoming a teenager and attending stage school in London, Zavaroni struggled to cope. She became depressed. She developed anorexia nervosa. While at stage school her weight dropped to just four stones.

Don't put your daughter on the stage

Though they said at the school of acting

She was lovely as Peer Gynt

I fear on the whole

An ingénue role

Would emphasise her squint

The tiny singer, who was just four feet, 10 inches tall, explained in one interview the pressure she felt under. “When they tried to fit me into these 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. I only became fanatical about not eating when the pressure got too much. I just wanted to have a nice shape.”

Lena Zavaroni’s mental health worsened to the point she threatened to take her own life. In attempting to deal with the depression she agreed to a partial lobotomy.

Writer/actor Tim Whitnall agrees that little Lena’s story is not only timeless, but frighteningly relevant to the modern era in which so many seek fame. “When I was writing this play, I spoke to Alex Yellowlees, a consultant psychiatrist at the Priory Clinic and he made an interesting point.

“Alex said that if you take a child on the edge of puberty and you change them, they stay changed forever. If you take a nine or ten-year-old girl and you stick them in the spotlight, then you can have serious problems. If that spotlight is the school playground that can be difficult enough, but if it’s the internet and it goes out to the world, then that’s very different. It’s there for ever.”

The writer adds: “And if you are changing rapidly and every day you are forced to confront your image it can be extremely formative. This was certainly the case with Lena. Then when you are appearing on the likes of a TV show with Liza Minnelli or Cher, the pressure is immense.”

Former child star Lindsay Lohan has echoed that comment. In her first post-rehab interview, she told Oprah Winfrey; "You're a child who is working. You have a job. That job is a hard job. Everybody thinks being a child star is glamorous. But when you're on a show, you are often carrying a whole show and you know that. You have to pull it off. You have to know your lines.”

Whitnall, a Bafta and an Olivier Award winner, is eminently qualified to write about the impact of fame upon the forming mind. “I suppose it goes back to my own experience,” he recalls during a break from rehearsals. “I went from a very rural background to working the fleshpots of Soho. [Starring in Elvis as a 16-year-old]. I could look around me and see sex was a currency. I could see youth was a currency.

“I’m lucky in that I that I realised what was happening all around me, that people were on these crash and burn trajectories, coming into the industry and having one hit, and trading off that for a career. I’ve worked with ex-pop stars, former child stars, big actors and big names. And I suppose I’ve learned of the pitfalls.”

He adds, smiling: “I suppose I’ve done something right because I’m still here and that [debut] was 44 years ago. But as a writer, I’ve been aware that nothing seems to have changed really. We haven’t learned the lessons from Lena, who was a trailblazer for child stardom.

“I just wanted to tell that story and all that it entailed.”

Whitnall points out that Lena Zavaroni initially viewed performance as a hobby. She was in no way prepared for the avalanche of interest which was to fall upon her after being discovered by Glaswegian record producer Tommy Scott while she was singing in her parents’ chip shop.

“Suddenly, when she appeared on Opportunity Knocks, she won five weeks in a row. It was unheard of. And so, this is the story of how fame affects people, but it’s also the story of an incredible performer. She was truly exceptional.”

The story is told in flashback. We meet Lena at the end of her life, and the story then stems off into two narrators, one ‘reliable’, her father, Victor, played by Alan McHugh. And the other ‘unreliable’, Hughie Green, played by impressionist Jon Culshaw.

“Hughie was a bit like Simon Cowell. He could call the shots in television, labelled ‘Mr Starmaker’.

“Jon plays Hughie as a sort of engineer, yet a man who doesn’t get oil on his fingers. He’s an omnipresent figure who tells you the story from his perspective.”

One of the themes of Whitnall’s stage play is the impact upon the parents of a child set on stardom. They have to cope with the fact their daughter/son is being offered up to a world which preys on vulnerability. “I want audiences to wonder how they would feel if they were the parent of a child offered the world at the age of 10?”

Many would open their arms and grab at it. The money is life changing. “Victor saw it as a chance to set her up for her entire life. And it was.” (Lena Zavaroni’s mother Hilda later took her own life.)

The challenge of playing Lena Zavaroni is a daunting one. How to capture that charisma, the singing talent, yet also show a mix of a once-confident, cheeky young girl who would throw tantrums – and is also incredibly vulnerable?

Erin Armstrong, who has starred in BBC drama Shetland for 10 years, plays Lena. “I watched footage of when Lena was young. And you realise that even though she is a child and she’s sweet and naïve, she acts like an adult when she is singing, convincing that she really knows about love or whatever. And she could tell a story so well. But then you have to remember she was just a little girl.”

It’s not compulsory for a child star to grow up to be an unbalanced adult. There are lots of Ron Howards, Donny Osmonds and Hayley Mills’ out there. But the children need to be well supported.

Erin Armstrongexplains she had a gentle introduction into performing, via the PACE theatre school in Paisley. “For me it was never about fame. This was an enjoyable hobby. And when I was 16 and the auditions came up for the part in Shetland, which I was lucky enough to get, I was clueless about the whole process.

“It was at that point my mum, who’d been a figure skater, asked me if I’d enjoyed the whole process and when I said I’d loved it she said she would reach out and try for auditions for other things.”

Armstrong found an agent and success continued. But she was well aware of how fickle showbiz can be. “I’ve since gone on and trained to be a teacher. I’m not reliant on acting. I’m not sitting here wondering what I’ll be doing in four weeks’ time. And the teaching keeps me grounded.”

Teaching also offers Armstrong an insight into the problems of the developing mind. The actor points out that anorexia is not only a known illness, but far more prevalent than it was in Lena Zavaroni’s day, with some 1.25m sufferers in the UK today.

“Nowadays, in primary schools, children are developing eating disorders. There is such a big pressure on them. Kids don’t go out to play now. They have to grow up so quickly. And they look at YouTube or whatever and see things they shouldn’t perhaps be seeing.”

Psychologist P.A Adler points out that celebrities, as a result of “the conception of their selves held by others” and the reflection of their image as a “glorified self,” begin “objectifying their selves to themselves.”

Did Lena Zavaroni become so confused she objectified, then rejected herself? Did the anorexia develop as a result of the pressures to perform? To be very good? Was it the demands of appearing on stage looking like a primary school girl?

Erin Armstrong doesn’t have all the answers, but she appreciates the pressures on Lena Zavaroni’s mind. “I didn’t know who she was when I landed this role, but this story is so relatable. It’s certainly a show young people should see.”

Would the little singer still have had problems had she not become famous? Tim Whitnall says we will never know. “Was it genetic? I can’t be sure. But whatever was going on was heightened by how she was treated by the press and the massive pressure she was under.”

It's a loud voice

And though it's not exactly flat

She'll need a little more than that

To earn a living wage

On my knees, Mrs Worthington

Please, Mrs Worthington

Don't put your daughter on the stage

Lena Zavaroni, who had a short-lived marriage, suffered both a tormented and ignominious end, living on benefits in council housing in Wales. She died at the age of 35 from pneumonia in 1999.

Hers is a salutary, yet deeply sad story.

Yet, you can’t present an audience with relentless depression. Has the writer managed to punctuate the darkness with flashes of light? “I think so,” he says. “I’ve got an amazing cast who understand how to bring stories to life. And when I began to write this play I said to Victor, ‘Look, we can’t dodge the tough issues in this play.’ But I hope I’ve got it right and we get to show a real balance.’”

He adds: “We want to educate and inform. And entertain. I want the people to leave the theatre and ask themselves what they think happened to Lena.”

Who is the villain in the piece? Is it Hughie Green? “The monster is this awful disease that demanded she stay slim.”

Tim Whitnall believes that audiences will appreciate the phenomenal talent Lena Zavaroni had, and how she came to ‘blow television audiences away.’

He also finds it incredibly sad that the Scottish singer didn’t manage to work through her demons. “I can remember seeing Lena on television as a child. She was sensational. And since then, I’ve looked at the careers of Dusty Springfield and Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette, at how they’ve reinvented themselves over the years.”

He adds, in soft voice. “I’d loved to have seen that happen to Lena. There is no reason why she couldn’t have gone on to starring in Chicago or recording with a hip-hop producer. That amazing, astonishing talent that became lost would have shown through.”

Lena opens at the Beacon Arts Centre on Wednesday March 16. See www.beaconartscentre.co.uk

Child Stars Who Crashed and Burned.

1. Judy Garland became drug and alcohol dependent

2. Michael Jackson became drug dependent, his closest relationships with children

3. River Phoenix, the actor died of drug overdose

4. Jack Wild, the actor and singer, was an alcoholic by the age of 21

5. Lynsey Lohan underwent stints in rehab, convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol

6. Drew Barrymore was in drug rehab aged 13, attempted suicide

7. Britney Spears gave testimony to a Los Angeles court that she had been held against her will in a psychiatric institution and denied agency over her reproductive rights and her romantic relationships

8. Justin Bieber, drag racing at 3am in a yellow Lamborghini with a ready supply of drugs and alcohol, and a lingerie model for company.

9. Macaulay Culkin, the actor received three one-year suspended prison sentences

10. Tatum O’Neill began taking drugs and alcohol at the shockingly young age of 9 and became addicted to heroin.