ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 20, 1997 TAG: 9701210003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MIAMI
SOURCE: ELINOR J. BRECHER KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The snippets of hair arrived in plain packages.
Seventh-generation wigmaker Joseph Rozini unwrapped the golden strands and studied them, then went to his stock of fine human hair and selected batches that exactly matched the locks.
With his daughter and partner, Ruth Regina Rozini, he fashioned braids, chignons and knots fit for a first lady - in this case, Eva Peron of Argentina.
For years, the Rozini hairpieces were as critical to Evita's fabled glamour and fashion sophistication as her jewelry and hats. Odds are, when you see a photo of her from her heyday - she died in 1952 - she's got one securely pinned to her own tresses.
``I know what she wore and how she looked,'' says Ruth Regina, as the wigmaker's daughter and her own Bay Harbor Islands custom wig shop are now known. ``Daddy told me what to do, and I did it. I did a lot of the styling.''
Peron, she recalls, ``had long hair, but there were times she added pieces to it. ... They were returned to her in special boxes, not the regular boxes from the shop. A velvet box. Something special.''
Regina keeps the Evita styles on display at her shop, atop a sextet of serenely half-smiling mannequin heads. Look for similar pieces on Madonna in the new movie ``Evita''.
``We got all the dignitaries from Latin America,'' says Regina, a tiny, delicate woman whose age is ``one year older than last year.'' Her family moved to Miami from Chicago after World War II. ``We would get pictures or descriptions of what they wanted.''
Eva Peron is one of the few celebrity clients not represented in a photo gallery at Ruth Regina's shop, where scores of heads model women's wigs in every color and style, and scores more hairpieces for both genders lie in glass cases like small, slumbering mammals.
Had Evita, the ex-showgirl, wanted to dress down as Lady Godiva, she could have ordered a head-to-toe cascade of platinum curls. Regina made one once, for about $10,000, for ``a lady who wanted something very, very special. It had something to do with her husband.''
But that's a novelty item. Most of the wigs are real-world styles indistinguishable from an actual head of hair, even to close observers. They're handmade in the shop by sharp-eyed wigmakers wielding tiny needles called ventilating tools, slipping strands in and out of gossamer-light lacy bases fitted to the scalp.
On one table, two identically styled fluffy wigs in slightly different shades of blond await their wearer. She's a local woman involved in charity events and community affairs who will remain nameless. Over the years, Ruth Regina has developed the discretion of a society plastic surgeon.
Unless, of course, the subject is one of the show-business types she made up for screens large and small, as recently as ``Striptease.''
In addition to hairpieces, Regina has been doing makeup for movies and TV since the '50s. She was makeup director for ``The Jackie Gleason Show,'' produced in Miami Beach from 1966 to 1970. With her paints, brushes and false mustaches, she transformed The Great One into the snooty Reginald Van Gleason III, Joe the Bartender and bus driver Ralph Kramden, for the show's ``Honeymooner'' skits.
He's with her to this day, as a gold charm with a diamond-headed stick figure in Gleason's famous ``and-away-we-go'' pose on a chain around her neck. He gave it to her one Christmas.
A small sampling of the stars she's pictured with on her walls: Steve Allen, Loni Anderson, Frankie Avalon, Lucille Ball, Tony Bennett, Milton Berle, Bing Crosby, Tony Curtis, Bobby Darin, Dom DeLuise, Barbara Eden, Elvis, Eddie Fisher, Robert Goulet, Judy Garland, Joel Gray, Bob Hope, Gene Kelly, Al Pacino, Jack Paar, Burt Reynolds, Phil Silvers, Red Skelton, Kate Smith, Tiny Tim, Marlo Thomas, Sophie Tucker and Andy Williams.
Regina made up Herbert Hoover for the former president's appearance on the TV show ``Person to Person,'' in his 90s; Richard Nixon, when the Republican convention came to Miami Beach in 1972; the wife of former Cuban president Carlos Prio Soccaras; and 14 Miss Universes who ``always had to be made up after they won the title because they always cry.''
When a certain mop-haired rock group from Liverpool played ``The Ed Sullivan Show,'' Ruth Regina made sure their noses didn't shine.
The Beatles, she says, ``were very sweet and polite, and I was under security where I would have to be with them from early morning to late at night. We were surrounded by police, but no matter how many police or what security, the girls popped out of the walls.''
Then there was the time notoriously temperamental Jayne Mansfield was still running around her dressing room naked moments before her live ``Gleason Show'' spot. ``I just couldn't look her in the face!'' Regina says. ``So I said, `Miss Mansfield, the whole world is waiting to see your beautiful face. Please sit down so I can get you ready for the show.' She took a liking to me and sat down. She walked out like a vision.''
Regina, the youngest of four sisters, says she was born to make wigs.
``At 7, I was already learning the craft from the old school,'' she says. ``It was the family craft. My father taught me. His father taught him. My father worked in Italy for many years. ... When I was a little girl, I used to sit and sew hairpieces. Instead of going home from school, I went to my parents' place of business and started getting my education.''
Her mother, she says, studied hairstyling with the great Marcel in Paris, who launched a styling technique called the Marcelled wave that was to its day - the Roaring '20s - what the Farrah Fawcett shag was to the '70s.
``I still have her [waving] irons,'' she says. ``I look at them for inspiration.''
Most of her clients are neither celebrities nor society swells; they're women who use hairpieces as accessories, people with medical conditions that cause hair loss, or cancer patients anticipating chemotherapy.
``Usually, as soon as they know they're going to go through chemo, they come in, so I can take measurements of their head, take samples of the hair, decide on the style and put it into work before they even start.''
A first-quality, European human hair wig runs $1,800-$3,000, she says, ``depending on the size of your head'' and the style.
``I have some hair pieces that my father and I made, and they're still like new. He died in the early '50s.''
This hair comes from European ``peasants who keep their heads covered from the sun. They raise their hair, and at a certain time, hair buyers come by, and they cut it off and purchase it. Then it is divided by lengths, cleaned, sorted by colors.''
Less-expensive hair comes from Southeast Asia, but must be bleached and re-dyed.
As for synthetics, Ruth Regina chooses her words carefully: ``Everything has its place in life.''
LENGTH: Long : 123 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: KRT. Ruth Regina Rozini has worked with Eva Peron,by CNBJackie Gleason, Lucille Ball, Elvis, the Beatles and Richard
Nixon.|