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Authors: Dominick Dunne
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some advice?” the interviewer asked. “Write only about what you know,” she told them. Later, when the floor was thrown open to questions from the audience, the audience was told in advance by the interviewer, “Miss Collins will answer no questions about her sister.” Her sister was, at the time, involved in the highly publicized extrication from her fourth marriage.
“It’s nonsense,” said Jackie when I asked her about the rumors of a rift. “We’re very amicable together.”
“I don’t have a rivalry with my sister,” said Joan when I asked her. “People are always saying I have rivalries—particularly with Elizabeth Taylor and Linda Evans. I’ve never said a bad word about another actress, at least in print. And now they’re saying I have this rivalry with Jackie. It’s not true.”
“Let me put it this way,” said Jackie. “We’re not in each other’s pockets, but we’re good friends. We’re not the kind of sisters who call each other every day, but she knows I’m there for her.”
“Jackie lives a totally different life from me,” said Joan. “If I get five days off from work, I take off. I like Los Angeles, but I’m more European than she is in my outlook. I like staying up late. I like sleeping late. I like two-hour lunches, with wine. I do not like tennis, golf, lying by the pool. What I like doing here is to work very hard and then leave.”
“We have a lot of the same friends,” said Jackie. “Roger and Luisa Moore, Dudley Moore, Michael and Shakira Caine. Then Joan has
her
whole group of friends, and I have
my
whole group.”
“I like getting on planes and going on trips,” said Joan.
“
Hollywood Wives
gave me a high profile,” said Jackie. “Before that, in England, I was always Joan’s little sister. I was lucky to have made it in America before Joan hit in ‘Dynasty.’ What I love about Joan is that she’s one of the great survivors. She did things ahead of her time that have since become accepted. She always lived her life like a man. She was a free spirit. If she saw a guy she wanted to go to bed with, she went after him, and that was unacceptable behavior at the time.”
“Oh, God, Jackie, that’s great,” said Joan, touching the emerald of a borrowed necklace her sister was wearing for the shoot. “Is it yours?”
Jackie laughed. “No, darling.”
“You should buy it for yourself,” said Joan. “You can afford it.”
Joan Collins is the embodiment of the kind of characters that Jackie Collins writes about. She is beautiful, famous, rich, was once a movie star, has been what is known in Hollywood as on her ass, meaning washed up and nearly broke, and then resurrected herself as a greater television star than she ever was a movie star. Jackie flatly denies that her character Silver Anderson in
Hollywood Husbands
was based on her sister, although Silver Anderson is a washed-up, middle-aged star who makes it back, bigger than ever, in a soap opera, who “wasn’t twenty-two and didn’t give adamn,” and who “had a compact, sinewy body, with firm breasts and hard nipples.”
Joan has been married and divorced four times. “I’ve always left my husbands,” she said, about Maxwell Reed, Anthony Newley, the late Ron Kass, and the recent and unlamented Peter Holm, who asked for, but didn’t receive, a divorce settlement of $80,000 a month. Her host of romances over the years, which she delineated in detail in her autobiography,
Past Imperfect
, have included Laurence Harvey, Warren Beatty, Sydney Chaplin, Ryan O’Neal, and Rafael Trujillo, the son of the dictator of the Dominican Republic, an affairette masterminded in the fifties by Zsa Zsa Gabor. She currently lives in a house that Joan Crawford might have lived in at the height of her fame. Built by Laurence Harvey but redone totally by Joan, it has a marble entrance hall and white carpets and white sofas and a peach bedroom with an Art Deco headboard and a spectacular view of the city of
“It’s nonsense,” said Jackie when I asked her about the rumors of a rift. “We’re very amicable together.”
“I don’t have a rivalry with my sister,” said Joan when I asked her. “People are always saying I have rivalries—particularly with Elizabeth Taylor and Linda Evans. I’ve never said a bad word about another actress, at least in print. And now they’re saying I have this rivalry with Jackie. It’s not true.”
“Let me put it this way,” said Jackie. “We’re not in each other’s pockets, but we’re good friends. We’re not the kind of sisters who call each other every day, but she knows I’m there for her.”
“Jackie lives a totally different life from me,” said Joan. “If I get five days off from work, I take off. I like Los Angeles, but I’m more European than she is in my outlook. I like staying up late. I like sleeping late. I like two-hour lunches, with wine. I do not like tennis, golf, lying by the pool. What I like doing here is to work very hard and then leave.”
“We have a lot of the same friends,” said Jackie. “Roger and Luisa Moore, Dudley Moore, Michael and Shakira Caine. Then Joan has
her
whole group of friends, and I have
my
whole group.”
“I like getting on planes and going on trips,” said Joan.
“
Hollywood Wives
gave me a high profile,” said Jackie. “Before that, in England, I was always Joan’s little sister. I was lucky to have made it in America before Joan hit in ‘Dynasty.’ What I love about Joan is that she’s one of the great survivors. She did things ahead of her time that have since become accepted. She always lived her life like a man. She was a free spirit. If she saw a guy she wanted to go to bed with, she went after him, and that was unacceptable behavior at the time.”
“Oh, God, Jackie, that’s great,” said Joan, touching the emerald of a borrowed necklace her sister was wearing for the shoot. “Is it yours?”
Jackie laughed. “No, darling.”
“You should buy it for yourself,” said Joan. “You can afford it.”
Joan Collins is the embodiment of the kind of characters that Jackie Collins writes about. She is beautiful, famous, rich, was once a movie star, has been what is known in Hollywood as on her ass, meaning washed up and nearly broke, and then resurrected herself as a greater television star than she ever was a movie star. Jackie flatly denies that her character Silver Anderson in
Hollywood Husbands
was based on her sister, although Silver Anderson is a washed-up, middle-aged star who makes it back, bigger than ever, in a soap opera, who “wasn’t twenty-two and didn’t give adamn,” and who “had a compact, sinewy body, with firm breasts and hard nipples.”
Joan has been married and divorced four times. “I’ve always left my husbands,” she said, about Maxwell Reed, Anthony Newley, the late Ron Kass, and the recent and unlamented Peter Holm, who asked for, but didn’t receive, a divorce settlement of $80,000 a month. Her host of romances over the years, which she delineated in detail in her autobiography,
Past Imperfect
, have included Laurence Harvey, Warren Beatty, Sydney Chaplin, Ryan O’Neal, and Rafael Trujillo, the son of the dictator of the Dominican Republic, an affairette masterminded in the fifties by Zsa Zsa Gabor. She currently lives in a house that Joan Crawford might have lived in at the height of her fame. Built by Laurence Harvey but redone totally by Joan, it has a marble entrance hall and white carpets and white sofas and a peach bedroom with an Art Deco headboard and a spectacular view of the city of
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