Collapse of Pageant Takes Dreams With It : Beauty contest: Entrants come from thousands of miles, paying their own expenses and $2,595 entry fee, only to see the event canceled. Organizers blame each other.

They came from across America, many from small towns where a shot at success in Tinseltown seemed as improbable as it was desirable.

But they had done it, these young women who stand under 5-feet-5. They had made it to Los Angeles to compete in the USA Petite Model Pageant. From places like Payette, Idaho; Greene, Iowa, and Okemos, Mich., 15,000 had tried and 88 had survived the cut, to come here as finalists.

They had to raise thousands to pay their own way, but there would be gifts and prizes, and they would be able to rub elbows with agents and maybe land a contract that would give them their start.

It all looked good: the swanky Westwood hotel, the vice president of Aaron Spelling Television as the producer, a “Beverly Hills 90210” cast member to emcee the event.

Then things started to go wrong, seriously wrong. The bad meals, the long hours of waiting, the seeming lack of organization, walking a picket line at the Aaron Spelling offices when they expected to be walking down a runway, and the humiliating treatment at the hands of video cameramen who concentrated on tight close-ups--particularly on the finalists with rounded figures.

Finally, there was Saturday morning, when the show’s director abruptly canceled everything and walked out of the hotel.

Inside, the contestants were stunned by the news, which meant they had spent thousands of dollars for nothing, that they would have to go home and explain to their friends and sponsors that making it big in L.A. had turned into a big flop.

On Sunday night, when they should have been crowning Miss USA Petite Model 1994, the contestants were packing their bags.

“I’m a farmer. I should be home planting corn,” said Jeff Dye of Greene, Iowa, whose daughter, Amy, was a finalist. “It’s a bizarre deal.”

On Sunday, the sniper fire was thick between the two businesses responsible for producing the pageant--USA Petites and Tony Shepherd Productions. Each side blamed the other for sinking the annual show and turning it into a fiasco. And the source of the problem, as anyone might expect, was money.

At that swank Westwood hotel on Sunday, contestants and their relatives were shaking their heads and trying to figure out what had happened.

From interviews with a number of contestants and their parents, the picture that emerges is one of quasi-chaos, which began shortly after they checked into the Westwood Marquis Hotel last Wednesday.

Almost from the beginning, they said, there didn’t seem to be anyone in charge.

Instead, they said, they found:

Required contestant interviews by pageant officials that were delayed until they became late-night sessions. Hairdressers and makeup artists who were first overworked, then nowhere to be found. Meals, at $20 apiece, that consisted of little more than snack food. Eshelle Lechot, 23, of Payette, Idaho, said she finally resorted to the $12.95 hotel buffet to keep her strength up.

“It was just terrible,” she said.

One thing that might have contributed to a lack of order was that Ann Lauren, the president of USA Petites, was otherwise engaged in trying to save the show. Last Monday she was informed by Tony Shepherd, the program’s producer and vice president of talent at Aaron Spelling Television, that he had to have $31,120 no later than Thursday to meet his payroll and other expenses.

He also said he would be out nearly $70,000 if payments were not made. When the money wasn’t paid, Shepherd pulled out.

“I cannot begin to express how badly I feel for those girls,” he said Sunday. “They didn’t do anything wrong.

“I’m one guy,” he said. “I had to make sure I wasn’t going to have to sell my house to pay the bills.”

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Lauren’s side held quite a different view. Her lawyer, Barry Rothman, said Sunday that there was no payment schedule in the contract and that it was Shepherd’s fault the production was in disarray.

“It’s extremely curious to me how someone can jeopardize himself by abandoning the production,” Rothman said. “What we definitely have here is a lawsuit.”

The Thursday cash deadline came and went. On Friday, the contestants said Lauren informed them they were going to picket the Aaron Spelling offices where Shepherd works.

Karin Leofanti, 23, of Oxford, Mass., said she and many other contestants did not want to picket, and that Lauren ended up screaming at them in the hotel lobby. Leofanti added that Lauren cursed one of the contestant’s mother.

“There is a clause in the contract that says if you do anything to embarrass this production, you will be booted out,” Leofanti said. “She should be booted out because she is the one who embarrassed us.”

After Shepherd walked out, contestants said, two new men took over the video camera work, which a number of entrants described as both demeaning and amateurish.

“They did not even know how to run a camera,” said Deanna Boyd, 23, of Des Moines, Iowa. “I just couldn’t believe it. They could have been two guys who just happened to be walking by.”

Lechot put it more succinctly: “They were total sleazeballs.”

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Other contestants talked about the money they had spent in preparation for the pageant--the dresses, the shoes, the swimsuits.

“It’s true, we have spent a lot of money that we would not have spent otherwise,” said Tuti Abdullai, 21, of Sterling, Ill., who figures she had spent or raised about $3,000 getting ready for the contest.

“Out here, $3,000 is probably peanuts, but in the Midwest, it’s something,” she said.

They also wonder what they will tell friends and relatives who helped them raise the required $2,595 entry fee.

“It makes me look like a total fool,” said Natalie Pietura, 20, of Chicago.

Ditto for Lechot, who, with her husband (being single is not a requirement), runs a truck customizing business.

“What are you supposed to say to those people when you go back?” she asked. “I busted my butt to get those business people to sponsor me. Then in one day it all comes crashing down.”

Many of the contestants are scheduled to leave the hotel today, though a number left soon after Lauren announced the show’s cancellation Saturday morning. Rothman said all the contestants would receive word within the next week or so about what the next step would be by Petites USA.

So was there a villain in all this? Leofanti, for one, thinks not.

“I don’t think there was a villain,” she said. “But I think there was a lot of financial mismanagement.”