Mayor Tom Bradley has begun coordinating arrangements...

Mayor Tom Bradley has begun coordinating arrangements with Spain for the 1992 celebration of Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the New World, but delicacy no doubt will prevent him from mentioning the navigator’s curiously short statue in the County Mall.

“The statue is much smaller than life,” confirmed J. C. Tambe, president of the Patrons of Italian Culture. “He (Columbus) was a rarity in his own age, more than 6 feet tall. But the statue is only about 5 feet.”

Therein lies a tale.

“When the Sons of Italy raised the money to have the statue made (in 1973), they got the OK from the county to put it across the courtyard from the statue of George Washington,” Tambe said. “But Washington was not life-sized. And the county people said they didn’t want Columbus larger than Washington.”

Some older members of local Italian-American groups have complained about the down-sizing of Columbus. But they can take comfort from the fact that in Griffith Park there is only a bust of Norwegian explorer Leif Ericcson, whom some credit as being the first European to reach America.

For the record, however, Ericcson’s bust did appear in Los Angeles more than 30 years before Columbus’ statue.

Nip-and-tuck competition being what it is in the crowded plastic surgery business here, Dr. Sheldon Rosenthal of Encino has come up with a new attention-getter. He’s throwing a lunch Saturday for 300 of his favorite patients at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We know because his publicist told us.

The opening of the Lingerie Museum at Frederick’s of Hollywood makes up for a cultural void that has existed in L.A. since the Exotic Dancers Hall of Fame left San Pedro a decade ago.

That’s when Jennie Lee, curator of the strippers’ shine, moved to the San Bernardino County desert town of Hesperia, hauling along sacred artifacts that dated back to her dancing days as the renowned Miss Forty-Four and Plenty More.

The exhibits included a costume worn by Stacy (Eartha Quake) Farrell, a couch occupied by Jayne Mansfield in one movie, suggestive street signs (“Curves Ahead”) juxtaposed with photos of great strippers, and a poster for an historic appearance by Chesty (73-32-36) Morgan in “the classiest burlesque house in Michigan . . . air-conditioned.”

Memories.

Some analysts were caught off guard when Frank Sinatra became one of the chief architects of political change in Eastern Europe.

As you’ve no doubt heard, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady Gerasimov said the other day that Moscow was embracing “the Sinatra Doctrine . . . you know the Frank Sinatra song, ‘I Did It My Way?’ Hungary and Poland are doing it their way.” East Germany is following suit.

In the era of the Sinatra Doctrine, stubborn hard-liners in Eastern Europe should perhaps keep in mind other tunes by Ol’ Blue Eyes, including: “It’s Over, It’s Over, It’s Over,” “Learnin’ the Blues” and “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”

And then there’s the Nancy Sinatra Doctrine:

“These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

Meanwhile, Playboy Enterprises says it’s launching a Hungarian edition of Playboy magazine.

Haven’t we had enough of Zsa Zsa?