WHEN DYNASTY STAR COLLINS VISITED OUR CITY
Actress appeared in play at King’s Theatre
STYLISH to a fault, actor and author Joan Collins brought Glasgow Airport to a standstill when she arrived here in 2004. Cool and sophisticated in pinstripes with matching hat and stilettos, she was every inch the film star.
The newspapers, however, spotted something amiss.
“The 70-year-old, known for her glamorous role as super vamp Alexis Carrington in Dynasty, had clumsily applied her make-up and had lipstick on her teeth,” pointed out the London Evening Standard in horror.
“Fortunately, husband Percy Gibson pointed out the mistake and the packed photocall continued after a short pause. Ms Collins appeared unfazed as she wiped the fuchsia pink gloss away.
“She said: “Oh good, I have been doing that the whole time.”
Joan was in Glasgow to star in the play Full Circle at the King’s Theatre. Alan Melville’s comedy tells the story of a best-selling novelist who confesses to her three children the man in the picture over the mantelpiece is not their father.
Joan told the waiting press pack in Glasgow she though Scottish audiences would love it, adding: “I hope they bloody will, like the others have been, they all have been wonderful.”
She added that she would be staying in a hotel in the city and was hoping to squeeze in some shopping in “that lovely mall”, Princes Square.
Dame Joan was back in the city the following year for a special gala performance of Follies in aid of the children’s charity NCH Scotland, now known as Action for Children.
Joan was born in May 1933, and trained at RADA.
After a string of modelling jobs and B-movie roles, she moved to the US in 1954 to work for 20th Century Fox.
She got her big break in the 1952 film I Believe in You, in which she played Norma Hart, but she will probably forever be best known as the scheming Alexis Carrington in 80s TV soap Dynasty. Joan won a Golden Globe for the role in 1983, and it also made her the highest paid actress on TV at the time.
In an Evening Times ‘Famous Firsts’ feature back in the mid-Noughties, Joan said she knew she wanted to be an actress after she saw her first film.
“It was The Wizard of Oz, and I went to see it with my parents,” she said. “It also helped that my father was a successful theatrical agent and I grew up in a show business atmosphere. Dad sometimes brought home famous entertainment personalities.
“So it was pretty obvious that dad would be my first real agent. When I was 17, he bought full-page advertisements in show business trade papers telling everyone about his ‘beautiful daughter’.”
Joan recalled appearing in her first stage play, Ibsen’s The Doll’s House, when she was just nine, and her first movies.
“My first major theatrical role would be in 1954 at the Queen’s Theatre in London playing Sabrina in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin Of Our Teeth,” she said.
“In 1951, I had a small role as a beauty contestant in Lady Godiva Rides Again. I didn’t figure in the credits, but it was a good start.”
She added: “I really enjoyed my US debut in 1955 in Land Of The Pharaohs, playing an Egyptian temptress Princess Nellifer. My costar was Jack Hawkins.”
Joan has published many books, including her autobiography, Past Imperfect, and launched her own perfume and lingerie ranges.
She told the Evening Times: “I’ve introduced a number of scents, the first of which was called Scoundrel in 1980, when the popularity of the TV show Dynasty was at its height.
“And I marketed my own brand of lingerie back in 1987. I designed it for the average woman who wants to look sensual at times...”
Now 87, Joan was recently pictured with Percy back home in Los Angeles having spent most of lockdown in London. She was also photographed with goddaughter Cara Delevingne, the English supermodel.