This is Joan Collins: The Television Documentary

 

THIS IS JOAN COLLINS

Despite having a career that has lasted for over fifty years, and despite being one of the last surviving stars from the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, Dame Joan Collins is known for one television role: that of scheming villainess Alexis Carrington on the primetime soap opera Dynasty. Far from being disgruntled by that, Collins is actually quite thrilled by all that Alexis has brought her. It saved her from bankruptcy. It made her internationally known. It even got her a favorable court decision, but more on that later. This is Joan Collins, the documentary of her life, tells the ups-and-downs of the then-89-year-old, unvarnished, with lots of humor and some regrets.

Joan Collins narrates her own story, telling us right from the start that this is her story and will it her way. Her way is to go over scrapbooks as well as old interviews and clips from her filmography, reminiscing about figures living and dead. 

She starts with her showbiz background (Collins is fond of referring to her line of work as "showbiz"). Her father was a theatrical agent, her grandmother Hettie was a performer in "comedy and dance" as Grandma Hettie's photo states. Pushing to train as an actress, Collins went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) and aspired to go into the theater. The lure of three hundred pounds a week, however, got her into film, which RADA disdained. Soon, she finds a mentor in Laurence Harvey, but also a loathsome first husband in British film star Maxwell Reed.

Collins reveals that her first outing with Reed was date rape. Out of a mix of naivete and shock, she marries him, finding him increasingly grotesque. Fortunately, Hollywood calls, and with a chance to flee. None other than Marilyn Monroe warned her about the Hollywood wolves, like Twentieth Century Fox's head Darryl Zanuck. He literally chased her down Fox's halls, pinning her and telling her "You need a real man, honey, a real man" until a makeup artist came along and saved her from Zanuck's clutches. 

Her career hit a certain level of success but not as big a star as everyone hoped. Then came her second husband, musical star Anthony Newley. Marriage, children and a pause in her career left her temporarily fulfilled, until it didn't. Enduring Newley's rampant infidelities, she eventually found her third husband, American businessman Ron Kass. She also found herself facing financial and career crises. Those paled to the greatest crisis in her life: when her daughter Katyana was almost killed in a car accident and required a long recovery period.

It is at what was a low point, even to the point of almost filing for unemployment benefits, when a television role was offered to her. Collins did not know what Dynasty was. She was told only that the character of "Alexis" was a bitch, but super-smart. Channeling her memories of Ava Gardner, Collins took the part and ran with it. A pair of divorces, a fifth husband with whom she has stayed with for twenty years despite the thirty-two-year age gap and the great tribute of a damehood all encapsulate Collins' extraordinary life and career.

Dame Joan Collins has a great sense of humor about much of her career. By her own admission, she called herself a "utility infielder" at the studio. When a film could not get Gene Tierney or Susan Hayward, she observes, they turned to her. Collins has no delusions that her cinematic output will merit many if any Criterion releases. While the nadir may have been Empire of the Ants, she also notes that Empire of the Ants is now a cult film. Whether she notes this with actual pride or genuine puzzlement is a bit unclear. 

When looking over a This is Your Life episode of her life in a recording booth, the host calls her "controversial". "Why was I always controversial?", Collins remarks to us. "What did I do that was so controversial?" A pause later, she remarks, with a touch of slyness, "Just had a few boyfriends. Got married a few times". Shortly afterwards, when recounting her failed efforts to shave a few years off her age when promoting her comeback role in the adaptation of her sister Jackie Collins' book The Stud, she almost laughs at the hysteria the discovery of her true age unleashed. "You'd think I'd murdered a convent full of nuns", she wisecracks. 

Her reminiscences of the people she got to meet, work with, bed with and almost bed with are fascinating. At one party, she saw Paul Newman, James Dean and Marlon Brando sitting together. The Method Actors, she remarks. Brando tells her that acting is a bum's life. Why then did he act if he found it all rather silly and unfulfilling? "Money, doll. Money," Brando replies. She remembers Gregory Peck as the most elegant of her costars but calls Richard Burton a neanderthal who pursued her but got nowhere. She had a brief affair with Ryan O'Neil while married to Newley and came dangerously close to doing the same with Senator Robert F. Kennedy. 

Some of her observations are now amusing to her; she thought her The Virgin Queen costar Bette Davis terrifying and a bully on set to young actresses. Others are sad. Remembering her encounter with Marilyn Monroe, she first described her as looking nondescript until Monroe began talking to her about her experiences with the Fox studios. "You know what they said about me? That I was passed around like hor'dourves". Soon, Collins understood why Monroe was so brilliant with her mix of allure and vulnerable. When she learned of Monroe's death, she grieved for Monroe's pain. She also looked back on with sadness on the raincheck she had with Bobby Kennedy when she learned about his assassination.  

The worst one, however, was when her daughter Katie was almost killed. If memory serves right, she asks quietly, "Do we really have to talk about this?" when remembering how close her daughter came to death. 

Her marriages bring mostly mixed memories. She detests Reed and Peter Holm, husband Number Four. She does not harbor anger or resentment against Newley or Kass. She even worked with Newley in stage and screen adaptations of her beloved Noel Coward. While still horrified at the Felliniesque film Newley made about their marriage, she finds that life is too short to hold anger against the father of two of her children. 

For the most part, however, This is Joan Collins is her looking back with mostly amusement. Looking over her Playboy layout, she remarks, "These are filthy", but it is hard to know if it is said with tongue in cheek, adding that it was the only cover for which she got paid. 

She relishes going over when the publishers Random House sued her for the return of her book advance. At first, she was faltering on the stand and was coming close to losing the case. She was advised to go back on the stand and "become Alexis", the steely but with panache villainess the world loved to hate. The next day, she channeled her alter ego to great effect. When asked about whether she had once titled her book Athena, Collins nonchalantly stated on the stand that at one point she called it Hitler's Mistress. "That is a pretty good Alexis line," Collins observes.

Collins, perhaps more than other actresses from that Golden Age, knows that the public does not want its stars to be like us. "I wonder where the mystique has gone now. I wonder where the glamour has gone," she says. While today's actresses may want to be relatable, Collins holds firm to the notion that stars are something different. She even has positive feelings for Wall Street's villain. "I like Gordon Gekko", she says shyly, which might be the most controversial thing Dame Joan Collins says in the documentary.

Concluding her retrospective, Collins remarks, "But who wants reality?". There's too much of it, and that is not what the public pays you for, she notes. Joan Collins may never rank among the greatest actress of all time, but I think Dame Joan Collins knows it, is at peace with it, and lives the life she loves. This is Joan Collins makes one like Joan Collins, even if we will always hate Alexis Carrington, albeit hate her with glee. 

8/10