Warren Beatty’s proposal was offally seductive, says Joan Collins
Her wedding ring was hidden inside her favourite dish — liver. Now it is up for sale!
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Warren Beatty and Joan Collins on a date in 1959. He later gave her a diamond and pearl ring, but they never married BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; BONHAMS |
When Warren Beatty asked Joan Collins to marry him, he hid the engagement ring in a tub of offal.
The Bonnie and Clyde actor had returned to the couple’s New York apartment in 1960 “laden with Jewish delicatessen delights”, including her favourite treat, chopped liver.
“He must have known that I would consume that first, so imagine my surprise when I found that massive ring inside the container as I greedily ladled myself a spoonful,” Collins recalled this weekend. “He then announced that we were engaged.”
In what might be considered a perk of being married five times — and engaged more than that — the actress has decided to sell her engagement ring from Beatty, as well as the one given to her by her second husband, the actor, singer and songwriter Anthony Newley.
Collins, 88, joked that she was selling the rings because, “like everything else, my fingers have put on weight”, though the real reason is that “jewellery is meant to be worn, and these pieces belong to a different time in my life”.
She met Beatty, the younger brother of Shirley MacLaine, in 1959, when he was an unknown actor; their eyes met across a restaurant where he was dining with Jane Fonda.
They embarked on a whirlwind romance and were engaged the next year. Collins wore the unusual ring — gold encrusted with diamonds and pearls — when she filmed the religious drama Esther and the King, “since it fitted in with the biblical costumes”.
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SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; BONHAMS |
The new owners may hope that it proves luckier for them than it did for the Dynasty star. Collins had an intense and tumultuous relationship with Beatty — she once wrote that “he needed to have sex several times a day, which often wore me out” — and had an illegal abortion because she feared the impact on their careers of having a child.
His infidelity meant they broke up before they tied the knot, though they remained friends. There were persistent rumours that the lothario, now 85, was having an affair with his Splendor in the Grass co-star Natalie Wood. Beatty was said by one biographer to have slept with almost 13,000 women.
Collins later began a relationship with the actor and singer-songwriter Anthony Newley. The pair married in 1963 and had two children, Tara and Alexander, before divorcing in 1970.
The actress said that Newley, who as a child played the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, David Lean’s 1948 film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, gave her the pear-shaped ring “shortly after I told him that I never had any diamonds. It was my first diamond ring.”
Her third husband was the American music executive and film producer Ron Kass, whom Collins married in 1972 and divorced in 1983. She sought an annulment of her fourth marriage, to the Swedish pop star Peter Holm, just over one year after marrying.
Collins married her fifth husband, the film producer Percy Gibson, at Claridge’s in 2002 — and returned to the central London hotel recently to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary with a party. Collins said the white-tie event was “reminiscent of the glamour and romance of the 1930s and 1940s, with candlelight and trailing orchids and a wonderful big band playing the romantic ballads of the time”. She added: “Everyone was enchanted, so I think people still love elegance and style.”
The actress, who divides her time between London and Los Angeles, believes that a return to partying after the end of pandemic restrictions will see jewellery and high fashion coming back into style.
Collins’s jewellery has been a success at previous auctions, with five items raising more than £200,000 for a children’s hospice in 2020.
Beatty’s ring will have a guide price of up to £7,000 when it goes under the hammer at Bonhams in London on April 27, while Newley’s diamond band could fetch as much as £8,000.
Neither will be presented in chopped liver!
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