RECLINERS : BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE

In the TV sitcom “Frasier,” the chi-chi apartment of Dr. Frasier Crane would make the pages of Architectural Digest were it not for one piece of furniture: a 1970s recliner with avocado plaid upholstery. Though the chair is lashed together with duct tape and clashes dramatically with the contemporary decor, Frasier’s father refuses to part with it.

Old recliners are often the butt of jokes. They get no respect in the furniture world.

To people like Frasier’s father, however, the right recliner is irreplaceable. Few pieces of furniture can incite such devotion.

Mildred Fishman, a resident of Leisure World in Laguna Hills, is fiercely proud of her recliner. It’s been in her family more than 25 years.

“I’ve had it 14 years,” Fishman said. “I got it from my father. He had it many years, and my brother had it before him. I can still see my father sitting in it.”

She’ll never part with the old chair, which she recently had reupholstered in dark green Naugahyde.

“Some of those new recliners you could lift up with your finger,” she said. “This one’s very heavy. It’s very comfortable. And it’s good-looking. I sit in it every evening when I’m watching TV.”

Some people get downright fanatical about their recliners. They treat the chairs like members of the family.

“We had one customer who actually named his recliner ‘Lolinda,’ ” said Burt Noriega, general manager of Santa Clarita’s Dr. Furniture, which repairs old recliners. “Every time he spoke of the chair, he spoke of it as a ‘her.’ ”

Devotees will hang onto their recliners until they looks like something the cat chewed up (and in some cases, it has).

“They get so bad we won’t even work on them,” Noriega said. “They smell because people live in them. Or they have cats and dogs who sit in them.”

Owners are blind to a recliner’s sags, stains and rips.

Lavonne Lee, sales administrator for Flexsteel in Riverside, which has been making recliners since 1965, couldn’t agree more.

“What they send in here for repair I’d be embarrassed to leave out on my curb for the thrift shop,” she said.

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Flexsteel’s recliners come with lifetime warranties--and a lifetime is exactly how long some customers intend to keep their chairs.

“Their recliners come in here with orange and avocado plaid upholstery or red flannel, and you know the chairs have to be 30 or 40 years old,” Lee said. “And you won’t believe what we find inside of them--credit cards, keys, baby bottles.”

Usually it’s the husband who refuses to give up the recliner, Lee continued. He won’t part with it until his wife insists on getting a new chair or fixing up the old one.

“The chairs are usually well worn, and the hubby doesn’t want to give them up. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to bring them in for a new seat frame. They’re just grieving.”

No other chair is as comfortable, their owners argue, and they’re probably right. After years of sitting in the recliner night after night, they have melded the chair to their body.

“They’ve broken them in,” Lee said. “The chairs have these little dents that fit their rears. And they get more comfortable over time. The guys can’t get rid of them.”

Though women can grow to love them, recliners are mostly a guy thing. It’s typically the male who wants to buy the recliner in the first place.

“Joe insisted on getting it,” Costa Mesa’s Karen Urban said of her husband, Joe, and the 10-year-old leather recliner parked in their living room.

“But once we got it, we all wanted to sit in it. Whoever gets home first is in the chair. And you can’t get in there without the dogs. But as soon as Joe comes home, everyone moves.”

Recliners become sacrosanct to their owners because they’re one place they can go to relax--the dog on their lap, the remote control in their hand and a bag of potato chips in their face.

“You hear it all the time--their chair is their old best friend,” said Maryann Connors, manager of the La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery in Anaheim. “They fall asleep in it. It’s like eating food. Sitting in a recliner gives you comfort. I have a receipt from a recliner a guy bought in 1967. He just brought it in for a service this year. It’s avocado green. He said it was the best darn chair he ever had.”

La-Z-Boy is the oldest manufacturer of recliners. The company got its start when Edward Knabusch and Edwin Shoemaker, two German cousins from Monroe, Mich., created a recliner out of orange crates in 1928. A year later they had covered their invention in fabric, and the La-Z-Boy was born.

La-Z-Boy’s sales hovered at about $1 million until 1960. Then the company introduced a rocking recliner, and sales boomed. Today, La-Z-Boy’s projected sales for 1995 are about $1 billion.

To keep on top of the market, La-Z-Boy has changed the look of its recliners so they don’t look like recliners.

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“They’ve gotten away from brown vinyl chairs,” said John Walz, president and owner of three La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries in Orange County.

“Now recliners come in every style, size and color. You can have a recliner with Queen Anne legs,” he said. His recliners cost $250 to $2,100.

Recliners can fit almost any decor, from Victorian to contemporary. Some companies are offering recliners with high-tech features to further enhance the user’s comfort.

Sharper Image carries a massage recliner ($2,995), which acts as a private masseuse. It can give the user a full roll body massage or knead specific areas, such as sore necks and backs.

Flexsteel also offers recliners with built-in body massagers that knead the muscles from head to toe. Some chairs have special compartments that hold remote controls and cups.

“Now they’re making recliners with everything but built-in refrigerators--that’s what they really need,” Lee said.