SHEA FIDDLES AROUND TO GET READY FOR ‘DREAMERS’

“I’ll just check my violin,” said John Shea handing the instrument to the hotel desk clerk before leading the way out to the swimming pool.

A wise move. You look a little silly taking a violin out to the pool--unless, of course, you’re a member of a serenading band.

And Shea isn’t as far as I know. What he is, of course, is the New York actor who made his mark as the journalist in Costa-Gavras’s 1982 thriller “Missing.” So what’s he doing fooling around with a fiddle?

“Practicing, that’s what,” he said. “I play a Viennese concert violinist in my next film and I’ve got to make it look authentic.”

Shea, together with Kelly McGillis, leaves today for Israel to make the movie “Dreamers” for director Yuri Barbash. It’s a story set in Palestine just after World War I when many Viennese Jews were fleeing the rising tide of anti-Semitism.

“And that’s the reason I took it,” said Shea. “I’ve never seen another film that covers that particular period of history--when the roots of so many of today’s problems were planted. It answers a lot of questions that have always puzzled me.”

Shea really does have to look as if he’s playing properly--for later a famous Russian violinist will actually play the pieces. “But my bowing and fingering must look right,” he said. “So I’ve been practicing for months.”

For Shea this has been a busy year. He took over from Tom Hulce in “The Normal Heart” in London’s West End, made a musical comedy for the BBC “Coast to Coast” and now has a French movie opening here shortly--”Honeymoon” in which he stars with France’s Nathalie Baye.

Directed by Patrick Jamin, “Honeymoon” is about a French woman (Baye) who, deciding to remain in the U.S. after a visit here, goes to a marriage bureau and picks out a husband by computer.

In this way she’s able to get a green card and stay. One night there is a knock at her door and a man appears. “Honey,” he says, “I’m home. How about fixing me a drink?” He is the husband.

“I love the story,” said Shea, who with intensive tutoring, learned sufficient French to do the movie both in French and in English. “And I’m really proud of it. I did a lot of preparation for it. This character I play is a real psychopath, so fascinating that I entered him for analysis at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. They told me the only other actor who had ever gone to them for help with a character was Monty Clift--and that was back in the ‘50s.”

Shea first gave them the script to read and then discussed the actions of his character.

“I wanted to be absolutely sure there were no inconsistencies in the script,” he said. “I’d say: ‘In the film I do such and such. Does that seem right to you?’ And they’d tell me.

“And it was interesting. At the end they said, ‘Watch out for this director (Jamain wrote the script with Philippe Setbon). He’s written a totally accurate portrayal of a dangerous psychopath. . . . ‘ “

Shea laments that fact that, although he’s been busy, he has not made a Hollywood movie since “Windy City” two years ago.

“It wasn’t a big hit,” he said. “And since then, all I’m offered is the stuff other actors have turned down. So rather than make someone else’s castoff, I prefer to go to Europe and Israel and make things I care about. But I would like to work here again.”

STILL WAITING: Raquel Welch has been flying in and out of town a lot lately from her New York base. And one of her first ventures since her triumphant court case against MGM over her dismissal from the 1980 movie “Cannery Row” (she was awarded more than $10 million) will be to star as Libby Holman in a four-hour CBS mini-series.

Produced by her own company the telefilm with concentrate on singer Holman’s life and times between the two world wars ending with her indictment for shooting her tobacco heir husband Zachary Smith Reynolds (charges were later dropped).

With $10 million in the bank you might have thought Welch would not have been in any hurry to get back to work. But with appeals and legal maneuvers none of that money has yet been paid.

However, there is one consolation. It is now on deposit at 10%, I’m told. Which means if the appeals drag on for another two years that’s another $2 million for her to sock away.

QUOTE--from Madonna: “Books are my next favorite thing after kissing my husband (Sean Penn).”