THE SPECTATOR .. NOVEMBER 16TH 2013 ..

Joan Collins's notebook: Captain Phillips is great, but Gravity sent me to sleep

Plus: Thank you Valentino, Tom Ford, William Boyd et al for making my book-launch party so swell

Joan Collins 16 November 2013

All eyes on the Philippines this week, and rightly so. Godspeed to those American and British ships making their way to the devastation in Leyte and Samar. It’s sad, though, that the global news machine can only process one disaster at a time. The world has all but forgotten the tropical storms and floods that have battered Acapulco in the past two months. It’s a lesser tragedy, with mercifully a much less significant death toll, but nevertheless it tears at my heart. Acapulco was my youthful stamping ground, the most glamorous, exciting, beautiful place I had ever been. At 22 I went on holiday there for a week and stayed for another six. It was a playground for some big Hollywood names, and the surroundings reflected their standards of hedonism. I followed in their footsteps like a panting little puppy, water-skiing around the gorgeous, unpolluted bay for hours, eating in fabulous restaurants and dancing all night. Alas, no more. These days it feels as if the drug cartels have taken over: everyone who owned a villa triple-locked their doors and hired hefty security guards. Most of those I knew eventually sold up and left.

The Oscar race has begun in earnest, with a few good movies on release and some terrible ones. I agree with all the praise for Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips — but not about Gravity, the film which has the lovely and talented Sandra Bullock being pulled about in space on what looks like an umbilical cord. It sent me to sleep. I dragged Percy and Ivan Massow to see another film I had high hopes for, having read four-star raves from several critics. Sadly it was such a pretentious boring dud that we left halfway through. It amazes me that critics can be so enthusiastic about what was — we all agreed — a dull second-rate film, and yet give lukewarm and bad reviews to truly entertaining and original movies. (Blue Jasmine was underrated this year, for instance.) I keep re-learning that the ‘critics’ choice’ is most emphatically not mine.

It was enormous fun collating photographs for my new illustrated memoir, Passion for Life. There are more than 500 images in the finished book, but the most exciting find, for me, was a cache of early-20th-century photographs and scrapbooks belonging to my late Aunt Pauline, which now forms the bulk of the chapter on my family. As the pictures show, we were a showbiz tribe. My grandmother entertained the troops in ostrich feathers and lace-up boots during the Boer War, my Aunt Lalla played opposite the 1920s matinee idol Jack Buchanan in a West End revue, and Aunt Pauline revealed more than a hint of legs and bare bosom as a showgirl and flapper. My grandfather and father, who were agents and theatrical entrepreneurs, oversaw them all, and reminded me of a famous Mel Brooks line: ‘Judge, I confess I’m a lying, backstabbing, stinking cheat — I can’t help it: I’m a Broadway producer!’

It’s been ten years since Percy and I took the last flight of that beautiful bird Concorde. We went from New York to Heathrow — and how the tears and the champagne flowed as we landed. Even the fire department got into the act and sprayed three planes with their hoses as a gesture of farewell. I still miss it. A trip to New York that took less than three-and-a-half hours can now take over nine. One devastating crash sealed the fate of a sleek achievement of Anglo-French ‘entente’, and now Concorde flies no more. Rest well, our streamlined friend, though I yearn for your return.

Throwing a party is always enjoyable and my book launch had all the ingredients for a marvellous one. The venue was No. 41, next to the Westbury Hotel, a glamorous nightclub with a fleur-de-lys carpet, Titian-style baroque paintings, burgundy velvet banquettes and a magnificent mirrored bar. One hundred and twenty souls were invited and I thought that, as often happens, many of the celebrities wouldn’t show. I was so wrong. Shortly after the designated hour, Tom Ford arrived, the epitome of masculine glamour and style, closely followed by A.A. Gill and Tim Jeffries, no slouches in the dandy department themselves. Then, within what seemed the blink of an eye, Jeffrey Archer, Lynda La Plante, Peter James and William Boyd turned up, closely followed by Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Tamara Beckwith and Amanda Eliasch. Hairstylists to the stars Nicky Clarke and Charles Worthington threatened scissors at dawn. Towards the end, in swept Signor Valentino Garavani accompanied by Giancarlo Giammetti and the photographer Mario Testino — like a second-wave assault on Normandy. I’m still on a high just thinking about it. To paraphrase Frank and Bing, what a swell party this was.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 16 November 2013

THE SPECTATOR .. AUGUST 17TH 2013..

 

Joan Collins’s notebook: Fighting libel and rude houseguests 

I recently had to spend a great deal of time attempting to clear my name from a ludicrous assertion in an actress’s memoir that I and my then husband Anthony Newley had invited her and her then husband to strip off and watch some porn together.  She continued that I had very kindly presented the couple with chicken, steak and fish for dinner, all of which, due to the convenient absence of my maid for the evening, I had single-handedly concocted. I’m no Nigella in the kitchen and allergic to seafood, so I wouldn’t know how to cook a fish if it stood up on its fins and issued instructions. Now, my culinary talents were the least of my concerns with the offending mention, and I’m pleased to report my name was immediately removed from the story. But I was stunned that her publishing company — a major one at that — had not instructed their lawyers to run through the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb before publishing it, which by contrast my publisher has done extensively with my next book, Passion for Life.
I have just finished reading Peter Evans’s engrossing new book The Secret Conversations, about his chats with Ava Gardner when she was considering writing her autobiography. As a child I adored Ava Gardner, and when I was a young actress she became my idol. She was known as ‘the most beautiful animal in the world’ and was a true original, whose salty, expletive-ridden dialogue and intimate but hilarious descriptions of her marriages to Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra contributed to her status as a movie legend. They don’t make ’em like that any more, and Peter’s book paints a fascinating picture of a once beautiful woman living practically in anonymity in London, after a stroke at 64 destroyed her looks. Sadly, Peter died the day he delivered the manuscript, a bittersweet but fitting end to an affectionate relationship between author and subject.
In the book, Ava recalls the junior studio publicists who were instructed to station themselves at all the 1950s hotspots and saloons like Mocombo, Ciro’s and the Coconut Grove to prevent photographers taking unflattering photographs of their contract players.  Nothing but the most attractive snaps of their stars would be allowed to make their way into the movie magazines. How things have changed since then!  Now the most popular photos of celebrities are those in which they look the fattest, drunkest or ugliest.
An oldie but a goodie from Benjamin Franklin: ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.’ I love my house guests and family who regularly visit our villa in Provence, but I have wielded my scythe on those who have irritated me intensely. We have a very relaxed ambience in the house, minimal staff and just a few rules: only plastic glasses down by the pool; lock the bedroom doors in case of the odd roaming burglar wants to help him- or herself to your valuables and passports; and don’t recline on the new pool mattresses unless you put a towel beneath your wet or sweaty body.  Quite reasonable, we think, but I’m amazed by how often these simple rules are utterly ignored. ‘Do you mind not putting your shoes on the mattress?’ I asked one older gentleman. ‘Why? They’re clean,’ he snapped as one of his feet shot out, leaving a grass stain behind.
Another guest, after having breakfast, lunch and dinner chez nous for four days, was reluctantly press-ganged to contribute with the rest of the group in taking us out to dinner one night. ‘God, this is a fortune!’ he exclaimed loudly at a restaurant we frequent, causing much craning of necks from fellow diners and then addressed the waitress angrily, ‘I wasn’t looking to buy the restaurant, you know!’ I’m also quite surprised that some houseguests, when we are lunching or dining out because of their desire to sample a Saint-Tropez hotspot, say to Percy ‘Oh shall we share this?’ when the check comes. But most of our guests are fabulous, and I’d much rather spend time with them than attend the overcrowded parties that proliferate in the Saint-Tropez haute saison.
We did attend a few parties this year, most of which were pretty dull — they serve masses of the dreaded shellfish and are populated by far too many people who consider themselves the dernier cri of the beau monde. And why do most of the men shake hands with manly-man vice-like grips that make your fingers crack? I may have to convert to Islam, so that a nod of the head and a hand to the heart is considered a polite greeting. I don’t know how the Queen does it. Watching some of these men dance is pretty hysterical.  They say you can tell how a man makes love by the way he dances.  If that’s the case, then most of the Saint-Tropez partygoers must be pretty sorry in the sack.
According to a television programme I watched recently on the subject of waste, many councils are now insisting that householders divide their garbage into no less than nine separate containers.  They must also check each individual piece of trash to ensure it’s the correct one for the bin. Isn’t that taking anal retention too far? Sometimes, for example when colleagues desperate for attention criticise me in the papers (or accuse me of sordid sexual practices), I feel like that harried housewife in the days when rubbish was collected door to door.  When she answered the door and the bin men announced ‘Garbage!’, she replied, ‘Send it up!’

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 17 August 2013 & 17 August 2013 AUS

THE SPECTATOR .. JOAN'S DIARY .. DECEMBER 2012..

American Notebook » The Spectator

The latest entry from Joan's popular Diary entries in 'The Spectator' magazine appears in the special Christmas issue now on sale.. However you can click the link above to read it now!!