Joan Collins

The Making Of A Sleaze Queen

The NAKED Films Of Joan Collins

Written By: Colleen Wanglund
Mondo Film & Video Guide Contributor

At 77 years of age Joan Collins has had a long and notorious film career. She has been married five times and has recounted numerous affairs in her autobiography Past Imperfect, including Dennis Hopper, Ryan O’Neal, and Sydney Chaplain (son of Charlie). Joan was even engaged to Warren Beatty. She has been given the not so flattering nickname The British Open because of her liberal lifestyle, saying “I have always tried to live my life with enthusiasm and pleasure.” She can say that again. Ms. Collins has also accused her first husband British movie star Maxwell Reed of trying to sell her to an Arab sheik while they were still married!  With the backdrop of an extremely colorful personal life, Joan Collins probably made her biggest mark in trash movies.

The sleazier the better, it seemed. Her official website touts all sixty of the films she has made as well as her television career, but she is probably best known for such soft-porn sleazefests as THE BITCH (1979), THE STUD (1978), and HOMEWORK (1982). Even the horror movie SHARON’S BABY (1975) (released in the U.S. as THE DEVIL WITHIN HER) was a trashy, soft-porn affair. She posed for Playboy’s 1983 Christmas issue and has even attempted to follow in her sister Jackie’s footsteps by writing her own trash novels. Joan was actually sued by Random House to regain the $2 million dollar advance saying her submissions were “substandard”….she won in court. Her books have been published instead by Hyperion Books to little fanfare.

Joan Collins movie career began with an uncredited role as a beauty contestant in 1951’s BIKINI BABY. She had parts in movies such as LAND OF THE PHARAOHS (1955), THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING (1955), ESTHER AND THE KING (1960), and THE EXECUTIONER (1972). In ALFIE DARLING (1975) about a womanizer who meets his match and the sequel to ALFIE (1966) which starred Michael Caine, Ms. Collins is cast as one of many love interests and can be seen romping around nude. In SUNBURN (1979) starring Charles Grodin and Farrah Fawcett Joan plays a minor character who is glamorous (as usual) and a sexy seducer of men….no stretch there. In quite a lot of her movies, Joan Collins plays some sort of glamour queen preening for the camera or she’s a manipulative bitch with very shallow personalities.

All her roles have played up her obvious sex appeal including the 1982 movie HOMEWORK in which Joan stars as the mother of a student who attempts to seduce another student. While originally filmed in 1979 under the title “Growing Pains”, HOMEWORK attempted to cash in on the popularity of the older woman/younger man craze of the early 80s. Billed as the next PRIVATE LESSONS (1981) the movie was an obvious rip off of THE GRADUATE (1967). Prior to its release, the producer of the film added more sex scenes using a body double (which was quite obvious) but never mentioned it wasn’t Joan.

Joan was cast in the no-budget monster horror/monster movie EMPIRE OF THE ANTS (1977) based very loosely on H.G. Wells’ story of the same name. She plays sleazy real estate agent Marilyn Fryser who is trying to separate quite a few people from their money on some shady land deals in the Florida Everglades. What Marilyn and her unsuspecting marks don’t know is that the area has been taken over by giant ants! Directed by Bert I. Gordon (FOOD OF THE GODS 1976) the movie is best known for its rather unique and quite unforgettable and comical special effects. The ants were photographed in a tank with photographs of the Everglades behind them and then enlarged. The cast and crew worked to make the prop ants look as though they were actually moving and the cast did all of their own stunt work. Ms. Collins has said EMPIRE OF THE ANTS was one of her worst experiences ever. She relates her experience on the set in her autobiography:

“The water was absolutely disgusting, foul green slime. It probably hadn’t moved in two thousand years and it was thick and warmish. I tried to keep my head above the loathsome liquid while acting convincingly terrified. I swam as fast as possible to the sanctuary of the camera barge. Under the water my legs and feet became entangled in the submerged giant roots of a swamp plant. I thought of swamp snakes and kicked with all my might, trying to untangle my legs from this moving mass of God knows what. I crawled onto the barge like a beached whale, blood oozing from at least a dozen cuts on my legs and from the gash over my eye. I’d swallowed some of the putrid water and felt definitely ill.” Apparently playing a sleazy character wasn’t as fulfilling in this flick as it was in some of her other films. Regardless, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS has become a cult classic among horror/monster fans and they generally cite her performance as a reason for liking the movie so much. Ms. Collins was even awarded a Saturn Award for best female actress in a sci-fi film. Not too shabby.

In 1978 Joan would appear in THE BIG SLEEP based on the Raymond Chandler novel of 1939 and a remake of the 1946 Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall classic. Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is hired by General Sternwood (James Stewart) to find out who is blackmailing him and his daughters. Marlowe discovers a pornography ring that the General’s daughter has gotten involved with. While largely faithful to the original novel, this version contains plenty of gratuitous sex. Joan’s part of Agnes who is in league with the blackmailers however is a small one and we only see her bitchy personality. Believe it or not, Ms. Collins leaves her clothes on for this one. It was directed by Michael Winner (DEATH WISH 1974) who was regarded to be a general jerk, a sub-par filmmaker, and a shameless name-dropping snob.

The next two movies to star Joan Collins would prove to be among the sleaziest, trashiest films of her career. Based on the original trash novels written by her sister, author Jackie Collins THE STUD (1978) and THE BITCH (1979) were the two movies that, according to Joan would reignite her acting career. They were both generally panned by critics but became huge commercial successes. In THE STUD, directed by Quentin Masters, Joan stars as Fontaine Khaled who is married to a very wealthy but very boring businessman. In an attempt to fill a void in her life Fontaine buys a nightclub called The Hobo and hires Tony Blake (Oliver Tobias) to run things. Fontaine and Tony embark on a torrid love affair behind her husband’s back but Tony soon turns his attention to Fontaine’s much younger step-daughter Alex (Emma Jacobs).

Alex sees this as an opportunity to get back at Fontaine for hurting Alex’s father. While not containing too much sex, there is still a very steamy elevator scene which Fontaine later watches with friends. There is plenty of booze and debauchery to go around with Tony jumping from bed to bed to bed. Olive Tobias later said the stereotyping he garnered from this movie ruined his acting career. I guess getting naked only worked for Joan.

THE BITCH which is a sequel and also based on a Jackie Collins novel has much more sex and can really be called soft-core porn. Fontaine is still at it, running her nightclub in between affairs and she is a bitch. This time she is having some financial trouble and the Mafia is trying to move in on the club. As with the first movie, there are plenty of scenes with dancing and drinking but this movie is far steamier than its predecessor. Ms. Collins obviously has no trouble acting out sex scenes or prancing around nude in front of the camera. Both movies are pretty bad and seem nothing more than a showcase for Joan Collins and perhaps to increase sales of Jackie’s trashy novels. Commenting on Fontaine in THE BITCH Joan said “She appears to have the world by the balls, but underneath she’s trying to solve the problem of loneliness, which I think is the universal problem of all rich people.” Okay Joan. The two movies did attract attention from Aaron Spelling and the creators of Dynasty and Joan got the role of Alexis Carrington, which would end up the biggest role of her career.

The television show DYNASTY would rocket Joan Collins to super-stardom. Produced by TV guru Aaron Spelling and created by Richard and Esther Shapiro it was ABC’s answer to CBS’s nighttime soap opera DALLAS. DYNASTY centered on the Carringtons an oil-rich family headed by Blake (played by John Forsythe) and his new bride Krystal (Linda Evans). Blake is divorced and his children don’t like his new bride. Even the servants treat her with disdain. The first season in 1981 saw less than stellar numbers but in season two the addition of Joan as Blake’s ex-wife Alexis DYNASTY became one of television’s top-rated shows.

For most of its run DYNASTY was hugely popular and so was the character of Alexis. Aaron Spelling said of her casting “what really turned the show around was the introduction of our JR Ewing—Alexis Carrington Colby.” Alexis was an evil and shallow bitch and Joan played her perfectly. Her glamour and sex appeal were played up by the lavish costumes created for the show by Nolan Miller. Even after a catfight with Krystal Alexis was always perfect….not a hair out of place or a stitch of makeup needing to be touched up. The show itself was outrageous in its portrayal of spoiled rich people….booze, drugs, betrayal, and of course sex. About DYNASTY Joan has said it was “the opportunity to take charge of my career rather than waiting around like a library book to be loaned out.”

The end of the 1985 season saw a huge cliffhanger but when the show began again in September of that year Alexis was nowhere to be seen. Joan Collins took a huge risk in holding out on the show to get a bigger raise. They could have easily killed off her character with the cliffhanger but it paid off for her and Joan was given a bigger salary and back in the show. Spinoffs were eventually launched but with the 1986 season the show started a steady decline in the ratings. Even Ms. Collins’ bitchy alter-ego could no longer save the show. According to Joan by the last season in 1989 the producers had asked her to take a pay cut in the form of limited appearances. She was seen in only nine episodes in that final season. Joan did win a People’s Choice Award for her role as Alexis and received six Golden Globe nominations.

In 1983 Aaron Spelling and the creators of DYNASTY turned out the made-for-TV movie MAKING OF A MALE MODEL. It starred Joan Collins (of course) and John-Erik Hexum in a skin and sex fueled vehicle to advance the popularity of Joan and DYNASTY. Collins is Kay Dillon a woman with her own modeling agency. In search of new talent she discovers Tyler Burnett (Hexum) who at first refuses Kay’s offer but soon changes his mind. He is plucked and styled and through a good chunk of the movie is bare-chested….pure cheese. Tyler’s roommate Chuck Lanyard (played by Jeff Conaway) is an aging, drug addicted model on his way out. Tyler and Kay begin an affair, he wants more, she says no and he becomes a drunken has-been. Cliché is an understatement. Kay needs help to keep her agency so she goes to Tyler and asks him to finish the job he walked out on. He does and the day is saved. YAY!! He literally rides in on a horse. This is quite a sleazy movie for television.

There is coke-snorting, big hair, sex, and models dumping champagne on each other. Fun and debauchery all around. It turned out to be a big hit for the network even with one of the cheesiest lines ever delivered. Tyler does a commercial for a men’s cologne called Fever and his line is “Try it….and let her catch the fever.” Trash at its finest! On a more somber note John-Erik Hexum died tragically in an on-set accident of the television show COVER UP in 1984. In between takes, Hexum began playing around with a prop gun that had not had all of the blanks removed. He put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, killing himself when the paper and wax projectile discharged.

Joan Collins has had a long and storied movie career. Full of bitchy, shallow, and manipulative characters, lots of tits and ass, and a bawdy sense of humor she seems to have thoroughly enjoyed her career….trash and all. She continues to work to this day, although not in the sexy roles she had when she was younger (believe it or not, she shuns plastic surgery). Her hair isn’t as big and the shoulder pads are gone but Joan’s enthusiasm for life continues to flourish. Her fifth and current husband Percy Gibson is thirty-two years her junior. Joan has said about the characters she played that she “always preferred playing somebody with balls….the villain roles are always the most interesting.” She definitely played the villains with gusto.

I thought another interesting quote from Joan’s autobiography involves her working environment. “I loathe conflict, and I loathe not getting along well with people, so I always try very hard to be on the best terms with the people I work with.” That’s funny because word has it that Ms. Collins was notoriously difficult to work with. I guess living life with enthusiasm and pleasure also involves the use of rose-colored glasses.

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