If you are over 40 and someone asks you to play a word association game and
the name Joan Collins comes up, the most common response would be the word
"bitch." The term best defines Joan's iconic role as Alexis Carrington
in the long running 1980s prime time
television soap opera Dynasty, and
in her starring role in her sister Jackie Collins' trashette novel adapted
to the film titled The Bitch (1979). It is also the
opinion of her by the producers of Dynasty when Joan
refused to return to work at
the beginning of the 1985-1986 season until she was given a raise, forcing
the writers to write her out of the first episode of the season, and again
during the final season
of Dynasty (1981)
when appeared in 13 of 22 episodes ecause the producers told her they
couldn't afford to pay
$120,000 salary per episode
her every week. The
same word was used by the producers of the TV mini series
SINS
(1986) when
Joan insisted on 85 costume changes inet a record for most costume changes
in one production.
Joan has also been called a bitch by
Random House,
the publishers of her second volume
of her autobiography s called Second Act areleased in 1996,
following her successful court battle.
Random
House had
demanded that Joan return the $2-million advance it had given her for two
novels, and claimed her submissions were substandard. A New York judge
ruled in her favor.
Some of her fellow actors have also used the bitch word
to describe her such as Russell
Crowe who refused to accept a British charity award after he discovered that
a previous winner was Joan Collins.
She is often referred to by some of her equally bitchy British
colleagues as "The
British Open" because of her her numerous
affairs and marriages, many of which are detailed in her autobiographies.
Her bios are a source on fascinating information about her many marriages,
affairs,and rumors including the allegation that
her first husband
Maxwell Reed tried to sell her to an Arab sheik for £10,000 seven
months after their wedding. She allegedly had
affairs with
Dennis Hopper, Arthur Lowe, Sydney Chaplin, Ryan O'Neal, George Englund (Cloris
Leachman's husband), and Warren Beatty. Her affair with Beatty
lasted a year and a half, and led to a
brief engagement and an abortion. She said of Beatty, "I don't think I
can last much longer. He never stops; it must be all those vitamins he
takes." When someone later inquired if they really had sex seven times a
day, she answered, "Maybe he did, but I just lay there." A few of the men
allegedly Joan turned down for sex were
Frank Sinatra, Robert F.
Kennedy, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Dean Martin.
Joan met her fifth
husband, theater manager Percy Gibson, when she appeared in a touring
production of the play Love Letters in the United States. Gibson
helped edit Joan's novel, Star Quality.
So raise a toast to the super bitch on her birthday with a Nasty Bitch Cocktail
while watching her topless in The Bitch. (1979).
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