An 'Evening With Joan Collins' is a recipe for perfect entertainment!
Judy Bryer
Robin Leach and Joan Collins at South Point on Saturday, Nov. 29, 2014, in Las Vegas.
Monday, Dec. 1, 2014 | 8:55 p.m.
Glamorous Joan Collins is as gorgeous onstage as she is offstage, and she had audiences for her three nights of shows at South Point spellbound by her saucy stories and sassy exploits, and let’s not forget the Nolan Miller glittering gowns in her onstage wardrobe.
“An Evening With Joan Collins” is an unabashed, no-hold’s-barred and brilliant dissection of her 60-year showbiz life story from early days as a young hopeful in London to pushing back against Hollywood casting-couch wolves and jealous rivals.
Joan names names without fear: Frank Sinatra tried to woo her with a plane ride on his private jet from London to Hamburg, Germany. Film mogul Daryl Zanuck said that he would be her biggest and best lover. Joan gave Bette Davis a public dressing down, and the latter kicked her across the studio complete with film clips.
She even told of her clash when she first met Jerry Lewis, and fearless Joan knew that he was in the audience Saturday night alongside me. The names, larger than an agent’s Rolodex, are dropped fast and furious. Candid must be her middle name.
It’s delicious gossip of the first order, and Joan relishes the telling of the titillation. She shows the photo of Peter Sellers in a Nazi uniform turning up at her home in a London Jewish neighborhood. Who would have ever guessed Gene Kelly would be the sloppiest kisser in Tinseltown? But he did give her valuable advice to use stunt stand-ins, which she ignored in many of her movies.
She promptly rolls the screened scenes and outtakes of her “Dynasty” fights with rival Linda Evans. Those were real fights without stand-ins and no pulled punches, so real in fact that the director had to call “cut” louder and louder.
It’s a royal romp for the actress who was awarded the prestigious Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. She talks about her five husbands and proudly introduces the latest, Percy Gibson. They’ve been married 11 years in a wonderful, happy relationship. In addition to producing and directing the show, he hosts the audience Q+A post-show.
Over the years being right there on the scene with Joan, I’ve chronicled many of her escapades. From when she was casting handsome hunks for “The Bitch” and “The Stud” based on her sister Jackie Collins’ books. From her “Sins” miniseries on the French Riviera with George Hamilton to her disastrous engagement and wedding to Swedish rogue playboy Peter Holm and other adventures.
She’s fun, flirty and friendly. Joan is glamorous, yet gracefully gritty. She’s sexy, smooth as silk and yet can pack a punch inside a velvet glove. Add the witticisms and sarcasm that emanate from her mouth that are Winston Churchill worthy winners, and you have the perfect recipe for entertainment.
Dressed in stunning silver sparkling pants and a blue shiny blouse, she dazzled from the stage decorated simply with a throne chair, a phone on a pedestal and two side screens to display the videos and movie clips.
It was a wonderful, charming and humorous one-woman show. She held the audience in her hand captivated by her stories, secrets and scandals. Nobody wanted it to end; it was that fabulously fascinating.
At dinner afterward in Don Vito Italian, she told me that she’d love to return for more shows next year. “I waited to come to Las Vegas to do the show for a long time,” she said. “It’s been absolutely wonderful. I enjoyed myself so thoroughly that I don’t want to leave.”
She promised to be back, and I can assure you that she will. Joan is one woman who really says what she means.
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