It is difficult for one to say enough about someone like Dame Joan Collins. She has witnessed major entertainment industry changes and lived an incredible life. Coming from England to Hollywood when it was still in its Golden Age, she was in the last group of actors to be ushered through the studio system.
“It wasn’t all chauffeurs and champagne,” Collins said in the documentary This is Joan Collins (2022). In this new documentary, Collins narrates the story of her life, while looking through scrapbooks and watching film clips, interviews and home movies. The documentary chronicles her life from childhood to today with husband Percy Gibson.
Throughout her career, Collins was built up as a sex symbol, with headlines like “Bundle from Britain” or “Global Glamour Girl.” She was painted as someone who was a homewrecker and lived a life of scandal, according to her 1978 autobiography Past Imperfect.
“I was outspoken, yes. Never a diplomat, I have always found it easier to tell the truth than beat around the bush, but the outrageous stories that proliferated about me surprised even the publicity department,” she wrote.
“Why was I always controversial,” she wonders in the documentary. “I had a few boyfriends, got married a few times.”
Collins was an early feminist, doing what she wanted. In a time when it was deemed improper and immoral, she lived with her romantic partners when they weren’t married, calling herself a serial monogamist in the documentary. But she also refused to use the casting couch when it came to getting a role. “I would not be nice to or sleep with or even kiss anyone for a job or a part, no matter how tempting the role that was offered,” Collins wrote in Past Imperfect.
Appearing in her first film in 1951 — Lady Godiva Rides Again (or Bikini Baby in the United States) — Collins is still acting today. “They used to say that female stars are finished at 27,” Collins says in the documentary.
Budding star
Entertaining and acting was in Collins’s DNA. Her paternal grandparents were in the business — her grandfather, Will Collins, an impresario and grandmother, Henrietta Collins, was a dancer. Collins’s father, Joe Collins, was a theatrical agent and her mother, Elsa Bessant Collins, was a dancer. Collins herself became entranced with films and entertainment and was eager to become an actress, according to Past Imperfect.
But before her name was synonymous with silver screen glamour, Collins’s goal was to be a serious dramatic actress and perform on the stage. She attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, or RADA, in London, where “films” was a bad word, she said in her autobiography. While she was attending RADA, she was approached for modeling and film jobs. At first she resisted accepting her first film role. “I don’t want to be in films. I want to be on the stage,” she told theatrical agent Bill Watts, according to her 1996 autobiography Second Act.
With her third film role in Judgment Deferred (1952), Collins made the decision to leave RADA. “It’s either RADA or the films. You cannot do both, my dear … There are no serious actors in films. They are just attractive faces who cannot act,” Collins quotes Sir Kenneth Ralph Barnes, director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, in Second Act.
In her early films, critics compared her to Ava Gardner or Marilyn Monroe, according to Second Act. Collins’s big break and first major role came in I Believe in You (1952). In the film, Collins plays a juvenile delinquent who works with a probation officer, played by Celia Johnson. The film cemented the bad girl image that followed Collins for the rest of her career.
Her next big break came with the Technicolor epic, Land of the Pharaohs (1955), directed by Howard Hawks. Filmed in Italy, Collins played the evil princess Nellifer, who is the downfall of the Pharaoh. Collins wears elaborate costumes, including a two piece number that showed her belly button — this was against the production code. Wardrobe decided the solution was to glue a ruby red button into Collins’s naval, which pacified the film censors.
Hollywood Career
During the filming of Land of the Pharaohs, 20th Century Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck saw Collins’s rushes and was interested in signing her to a film contract. Collins was off to Hollywood and signed with 20th Century Fox. For her first Hollywood film, Collins acted with Bette Davis and Richard Todd in The Virgin Queen (1955). But it was Collins’s next film that would be her biggest to date.
Collins was cast in the biographical film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), where she played model Evelyn Nesbit. The Technicolor drama follows Nesbit and her romance with an older, wealthy man, Stanford White, played by Ray Milland, and a younger man Harry K. Thaw, played by Farley Granger, who is jealous of White and eventually marries Nesbit. The three get involved in a notorious murder trial. In the new documentary, Collins said she loved making this film.
Fox pulled out all the stops with the film, dressing Collins in over 20 costumes designed by Charles Le Maire. Since Nesbit was American, British Joan Collins worked on an American accent with actor Jeffrey Hunter, according to Past Imperfect.
“I’ve never seen The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, so I have no idea how good or bad it is,” Farley Granger said in his autobiography. “However, up there with Strangers on a Train, it was one of the more enjoyable filmmaking experiences in Hollywood.” Granger remembered Collins as being beautiful, fun and liking her enormously.
20th Century Fox loaned Collins to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a star-studded Technicolor film, The Opposite Sex (1956), a musical remake of The Women (1939). Long before her famous fights on the television show Dynasty, The Opposite Sex yielded one of classic Hollywood’s most famous cat fights. In the film, Collins plays Crystal Allen, a role she compares to a prototype Alexis Carrington of Dynasty. She considered this her first grown-up role.
“She was all woman and all bitch. Sexy, conniving and shrewd, she was the embryo Alexis,” she wrote in Past Imperfect. Crystal Allen is a show girl and has an affair with the husband of Kay Ashley Hilliard, played by June Allyson. In one scene, Crystal and Kay have a confrontation and Kay is supposed to slap Crystal. “I wasn’t concerned that she (June Allyson) had to slap my face,” Collins wrote. “…Then June hauled off and belted me. This little lady with her tiny hands had a punch like Muhammad Ali.”
Today, viewers can see in the scene that Collins is slapped so hard that one of her earrings flies off. Allyson wrote in her autobiography that each woman was given different directions – that Collins would pull back, and Collins was told that Allyson wouldn’t hit her.
Collins career continued in Hollywood, acting steadily in films until the early 1960s. She was still cast in bad girl roles in films like Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys! (1958), playing the sexy neighbor of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Occasionally she got to play against this stereotype, like in the role of a nun in Sea Wife (1957), playing opposite Richard Burton. Collins also co-starred with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the last of the “Road” films, The Road to Hong Kong (1962).
Retiring for Motherhood
But in the early 1960s, Collins’s life shifted. She asked for an early release from her 20th Century Fox contract, and she married her second husband, English actor Anthony Newley, and began raising a family. Together, they had their children Tara and Alexander. “Motherhood was really exciting, and I loved every minute of it,” she said in the documentary. As they settled in Los Angeles and raised their children, Collins decided to retire.
But as Newley became busy with his career and the children started school, she became discontented and realized she wanted to continue acting. She turned to television work, appearing on TV shows like Star Trek and Batman in 1967. Her children were thrilled to visit the set of Batman, Collins wrote.
During her marriage to Newley, she performed in the X-rated autobiographical musical comedy written and directed by Newley, Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969). Filming on the beaches of Malta wasn’t pleasant. After realizing Newley was unfaithful, the two separated and divorced. “It has never been my style to stay on a sinking ship,” Collins said in the documentary. Towards the end of the 1960s, she made 12 movies in three years. “None of these films was particularly groundbreaking, but I was doing what I loved best: working,” she wrote in Second Act.
In 1978, she acted with Robert Mitchum in The Big Sleep (1978). She said Mitchum was one of the best screen actors she’d worked with. While his character played rough, she said, “Fighting with Mitchum was like playing with a kitten.”
Collins had a rocky time in the 1970s and finding acting work was difficult. “If I’d thought that being an unemployed actress at 25 or 30 was depressing, being unemployed in my early forties was an eye-opener,” she wrote in Second Act. She had television jobs that were “nothing to write home about, but they covered the mortgage. It was a frustrating period, because in some quarters I was still considered a star, yet I wasn’t being offered rewarding work.”
A career renaissance
Then came a career renaissance for Collins. It was inspired by a bestseller, The Stud, written by her sister, author Jackie Collins. Collins asked Jackie for the film rights and for her to write the screenplay. After pitching the script for two years, the steamy story was put to screen. Collins faced backlash in the press for being over 40 and appearing semi-nude on screen, she wrote in her autobiography. With the success of The Stud (1978), Collins was cast in the follow-up, written by Jackie Collins, The Bitch (1979). Because of these sensual, bad girl roles, Collins found herself typecast again.
“I discovered that my tag of ‘sultry, nymphomaniacal bitch’ was one that the public loved and actually believed,” she wrote in Second Act. “No matter that I was a mother of three and a stepmother to another three, that I was married, albeit to my third husband, and that I didn’t live the sybaritic, hedonistic man-eating life.”
Enter Alexis
However, the image ended up helping Collins rather than hurt her. She got the role of a lifetime when Aaron Spelling was casting the most evil of them all, Alexis Carrington, in the nighttime soap opera, Dynasty. Alexis was the ex-wife of Blake Carrington, played by John Forsythe. She was banished by Blake and kept away from her children after she was unfaithful.
In her first on-screen appearance of the television series, Alexis appears as a secret witness in a murder trial in the first episode of season two, “Enter Alexis.” Entering the courtroom in a wide-brimmed hat and dark glasses, Collins had one of the most deliciously villainous roles on television. Alexis was a smart, scheming, cruel and sometimes evil character with the goal of destroying Blake Carrington. Alexis and Blake’s wife, Krystle, played by Linda Evans, are immediately enemies, and television audiences loved to watch the two spar.
Collins made Alexis a character that you loved to hate and anticipated her onscreen appearances. She played the character with humor and biting wit that was fun to watch. Collins described Alexis as a “wonderfully meaty role.” She was a steely woman but played with style while wearing high fashion. With Alexis, Collins believed she was playing a woman that many women wished they could be. Alexis was someone who didn’t let anyone stand in her way, believes in herself and is also powerful, Collins wrote in Second Act.
Collins went from being an actor with a shaky career to being one of the most well-known women in the world. She also won a Golden Globe for the role in 1983. “The last time that I won an award was for the most promising actress of 1957, so it has taken me a bit of time but I’m really happy to have it,” Collins said in her acceptance speech. During this time, Collins was immortalized with a wax figure at Madame Tussauds, had a perfume line and she posed for Playboy magazine in 1983. “Being a woman of ‘a certain age,’ I felt that revealing what I did in Playboy was a definite plus for women … I felt I was breaking the ageism taboo that so many women feared and dreaded,” she wrote in Past Imperfect.
Beyond Dynasty
Dynasty was on the air for nine seasons and ended in 1989. After the show ended, Collins fulfilled her original goal and performed on the stage and acted in Noël Coward plays on the BBC. Similar to her sister Jackie, she also turned to writing. In addition to memoirs and beauty guides, Collins started publishing fiction novels in 1988, including Prime Time and Love and Desire and Hate in 1990. Her most recent books are the 2015 novel The St. Tropez Lonely Hearts Club and her 2021 memoirs, My Unapologetic Diaries.
Collins is still acting to this day with several upcoming films in post-production. In 2018, she had a reoccurring role on the television series, American Horror Story.
Despite a glamorous life filled with Nolan Miller fashions, gold Mercedes-Benz cars, trips to St. Tropez and caviar, Joan Collins’s life has not been without pain and struggle. “I know I’ve had a lucky life, but I’ve had my fair share of sadness,” Collins said in the documentary, with periods of lack of work and four marriages that ended in divorce.
Her first husband, actor Maxwell Reed, date raped her and she married him out of guilt. Reed was abusive and possessive. She immediately realized her fourth husband, Peter Holm, was a mistake. When they were separated, he barricaded himself in their home that was for sale and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to evict him, according to a July 1987 Associated Press article.
Collins lost her mother in 1962, when her mother was only in her 50s. Collins grieved that her mother never got to meet her grandchildren, she wrote in Second Act.
One event that shook Collins’s world was when her 8-year-old daughter, Katy, was hit by a car in August 1980 and sustained traumatic brain injuries. For two months, Collins and her husband/Katy’s father Ron Kass stayed close to the intensive care unit where Katy was cared for. “It’s hard to talk about even now,” Collins said in the documentary. Today, she says that Katy’s accident is the worst thing that ever happened to her. Katy recovered and by Jan. 1981, was walking, talking and writing. Part of why Collins accepted the role on Dynasty was the California climate for Katy. Collins later detailed the events in the 1982 book, Katy: A Fight for Life.
“Basically, I’m a survivor,” Collins said in the documentary. In addition to trauma in her personal life, Collins survived being a young female in Hollywood, a business where her father said women were finished before they were 23 and men were predators. She lived through the decline of the studio system and the rise of television popularity, all the while avoiding the casting couch.
Despite the sadness, Collins still continues to flourish. In 2015, she received what she called the greatest honor of her life when she was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).
In 2002, Collins married for the last time to her husband Percy Gibson. She said in the documentary, “I finally found my true soulmate and husband forever.”
