Racy novelist was a ‘trailblazer for women’
Jackie Collins never felt bashful writing novels about erotic sex
Jackie Collins, the bestselling author of dozens of novels including Hollywood Wives that dramatized the lifestyles of the rich and the treacherous, died Saturday.
Collins died of breast cancer in Los Angeles, publicist Melody Korenbrot told The Associated Press. Collins was 77.
“She lived a wonderfully full life and was adored by her family, friends and the millions of readers who she has been entertaining for over four decades,” Collins’ family said in a statement. “She was a true inspiration, a trailblazer for women in fiction and a creative force. She will live on through her characters but we already miss her beyond words.”
Unlike her older sister Joan Collins, the Dynasty actress who was a direct part of the 1980s Hollywood glitterati, Jackie Collins chose to document L.A. lives in her pulpy, page-turning fiction.
Collins wrote what she knew, and that meant stories of sex, glamour, power and more sex, a lot more sex. She began her literary career saying more than some wanted to hear, and eventually became the kind of author from whom readers could never get enough, providing a precursor to the culture of Desperate Housewives and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Collins told The Associated Press in a 2011 interview that she “never felt bashful writing about sex.
“As a writer, you can never think about who is going to read your books. Is it going to be my mom? My children? A lot of people say to me, ‘Oh, I read your books under a cover with a flashlight when I was really young and I learned everything I know about sex from you.’ ... I think I’ve helped people’s sex lives. Sex is a driving force in the world so I don’t think it’s unusual that I write about sex. I try to make it erotic, too.”
Born Jacqueline Jill Collins in London in 1937, her first novel, The World is Full of Married Men, was a story of sex and show business set in “Swinging London” in the mid-1960s. It came out in 1968 and became a scandalous bestseller, banned in Australia and condemned by romance writer Barbara Cartland.
Collins followed in the 1970s with books like The World is Full of Divorced Women and Lovers & Gamblers.
By the 1980s, she had moved to Los Angeles and turned out the 1983 novel she is still best known for, Hollywood Wives, which has sold more than 15 million copies. It came at the same time that her sister hit the height of her own fame on Dynasty. Dynasty producer Aaron Spelling would also produce the 1985 hit TV miniseries of Hollywood Wives, which featured Candice Bergen, Angie Dickinson and Suzanne Somers, among others.
It led to follow-ups like Hollywood Husbands (1986), Hollywood Kids (1984) and Hollywood Wives: The New Generation (2001).
The books made Collins a celebrity in her own right, and she loved the part, looking, living and behaving more like an actress than an author. In many ways, her own persona was her greatest character.
Collins embraced Twitter in her later years, and loved the engagement with her over 150,000 followers.
Collins was married twice, the second time to art gallery and nightclub owner Oscar Lerman in 1965. Lerman died in 1992. She was then engaged to Los Angeles businessman Frank Calcagnini, who died in 1998.