Every out-of-work actor waiting tables at Santa Monica, California's hippest beach bistro wants to take Rhonda Shear's order. A stand-up comic and the host of USA Network's campy B-movie showcase USA: Up All Night, Shear is too busy to notice four table jockeys flipping coins to win the honor of serving her. At the moment, this scenic wonder of mile-high blondeness is merrily mining one-liners from her Playboy photo shoot. "Great idea I had for me to spend hours holding a pose popping out of a clothes drier, right?" she says, sounding like a cross between Raquel Welch and Joan Rivers.
"By the end of it, I was hanging by a pubic hair. When Lainie Kazan told me she broke her leg doing her Playboy shoot years ago, I said, 'Good thing nobody asked me to do that position.'"
For Shear, too much--whether it's jewelry or anything--is never enough. Consider her traffic-stopping miniskirt, wraparound sunglasses or spangly earrings, which could double as chandeliers at Zsa Zsa's house. Her career is likewise in overdrive, with stand-up comedy gigs, two TV pilots awaiting goaheads, a Rhonda's Guide to Hollywood movie, her Rhonda 900 phone lines and a forthcoming array of Rhonda merchandise. She digs deep into her handbag to fish out mash notes from nighthawks addicted to her friday late-night TV show, which she often hosts from a heart-shaped bed.
Up All Night features such B-movie gems as Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell and Satan's Cheerleaders. "I'm a total media slut and a terrible, terrible tease," confesses the woman whom fans have dubbed their Midnight Morsel and Princess of Perpetual Blondeness. "I have a steady boyfriend, but I'm a flirt. I want every guy to feel he could have a date with me." Thousands are feeling just that way thanks to Shear's booming 900 lines. "When a company approached me because of Jessica Hahn's success with Love Line, I told them, I'll do it only if it charges tons of money,'" she says, fluffing her hair. "So, for $4.95 a minute, guys can talk to Rhonda's Friends, or they can call Rhonda's Fun Line for $1.99 a minute. People leave messages that are more risqué than my fan mail. On Rhonda's Private Phone Club, I'm the madam and all the girls walk around serving phone, not liquor. Something for every guy." She is a one-woman industry. "I'm starting to layer the fluff," she says, "with substance. I'm so focused." Who says comedy isn't pretty?
