Desert Island Discs is one of the longest running radio programmes in the world, first hitting the airwaves in 1942.. First presented by Roy Promley till his death in 1985, when Michael Parkinson took over hosting until 1988 when Sue Lawley took the hot seat.. Sue hosted the show for the next 18 years.. This book from 1990 featured 20 of Sue's favourite guest up to that point, one of which was Joan, who featured on the show in June 1989.... Here is an edited version of the interview, plus the tracks Joan chose as her Desert Island Favourites!.
Joan Collins career may depend on her image, but her survival is due to knowledge of herself. Gloss and glamour are her trademark but she has a healthy understanding of the real value of such things. She enjoys them, of course and makes sure we do too! But at the same time she treat them for what they are, the tools of her trade, not the stuff of life. Away from the cameras she didn't wear full makeup or stunning clothes. She was chic but casual and above all, natural. Everything she said about relationship with her father, her first glimpse of Hollywood or her marriages, was both honest and perceptive. She has a great sense of humour and we laughed a lot throughout the interview. She told me she'd like to play more comic roles, something which in my inexperienced judgement, she would do very well indeed. Interviews with big stars can sometimes disapoint. Only when they feel confident enough to give of themselves do they really work. Joan Collins has that confidence. Tucked up in a scruffy radio studio, she giggled and chatted her way through an exhilarating life and emerged at the end triumphant.
On screen Joan Collins is famous for playing roles that make her appear voluptuous and ruthless. On her desert island she would be altogether different. Alexis Carrington of Dynasty may have been a dangerous predator, but her creator has few of the same characteristics.
"I don't think I could kill and I couldn't hunt. I'm completely hopeless. I do not belong in the electronic society. I can't even work an oven because I find it all terribly complicated. I probably would do better on a desert island because it's just simplicity"
So it was a back to nature Joan Collins who started the programme, climbing trees, finding berries and catching fish. She would listen to music too...
"I would probably have it on all the time, although I would love to listen to the sound of the sea. But when I wasn't listening to that, I would play one of my wonderful eight records!"
Joan grew up in a theatrical family. Her father Joe was an agent and his mother was a dancer back at the turn of the century, with a group called The Three Cape Girls, who used to do the Can Can around the Cape in South Africa. There was something inevitable, therefore about Joan's choice of career.
"The more that I went to the theatre, the more I decided I wanted to be an actress."
London was her main home at that time, presided over by her mother.
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| JOAN WITH JACKIE AND MUM ELSA |
"Mummy was very beautiful and loved clothes and very nice pretty things. But she wasn't glitzy. She was glamorous, but she was very much a mother. She wasn't interested in anything at all, other than her husband, her three children and running her home as well as she possibly could. She was a very good role model in some ways. Of course, I didn't follow it."
Joan's childhood relationship with her father was something that mattered to her very much.
"There was that thing that little girls have in Anglo-Saxon countries of always trying to get the love of the father and the father being rather a distant, aloof, strict, patriachal figure. He was one of those men that are, not cold, necessarily, but not loving and emotional."
Joan decided that she would make her own way in the world. No man was going to rule her life. It's a decision to which she has stuck, although she admits that in later life- 'It would have been wonderful to have been able to marry somebody who was on an equal footing financially. Unfortunately it didn't happen."
What did happen was Joan joined RADA, got her break in films and what Ealing Studios had discovered, Hollywood decided it wanted for its own. Howard Hawks was making a film called 'Land Of The Pharaoh's' in Rome and suddenly needed an actress. It turned out to be Joan's big break..
"It was an American film and they cast a girl to play the wicked Princess Nellifer, but apparently stardom had gone instantly to her head and she started going round telling Howard Hawks and Jack Hawkins what to do. She thought she was the second coming of Grace Kelly and so she was fired immediately. Then they called me, whom they'd seen in a few British films and off I went to Rome. It was divine in those days. It was the height of la dolce vita. So I did the film and then Twentieth Century Fox saw it and bought me from the Rank Organisation.
By this time Joan was just twenty years old, She arrived in Hollywood when it was entering it's last great days. It thrilled her.
"It was still a time of true glamour, of wonderful restaurants, of amazing nightclubs, of glorious premieres, a time when the press still had a certain amount of respect for stars and celebrities. Consequently, stars and celebrities went out dressed up and had a wonderful time. I met within the first week I was there.. Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe. It was quite astonishing, I used to just sit with my mouth open in awe."
I asked Joan about her marriage to Ron Kass. She had written since that as his wife in the early seventies, when she had just had her third child, Katy, she had enjoyed 'almost perfect years'.
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| JOAN AND RON KASS |
"I think that I reached a time of my life when I has done the career. I don't really consider that I was ever really a star, but I was quite well known and had acted opposite some of the most illustrious people in Hollywood and I had decided by that time, although I liked being a star, it wasn't the be all and end all of my life. I really wanted to concentrate on having my children, bringing them up and doing a bit of acting if it came along. So we lived in the house in Highgate and I really couldn't have cared less whether I was a star or not. It was only when, for various reasons, we had to leave England and go to America in 1975 that I became less happy."
At the age of fifty Joan graced the pages of Playboy, it was she says, a statement..
"I was saying that it's not just a girl of twenty three who can look good. I was saying to women..'Look! Maybe you can't look exactly like this but you should know that you can look pretty good'. In this country and in America, getting older sometimes feels like a crime. But people in their 40's or 50's, have more wisdom than those who are younger. They deserve to be appreciated. They should be proud of themselves. When I came into the business I was told by the time I was twenty three I would be all washed up. I remember thinking, that was so unfair and wrong and it wasn't going to happen to me! Life isn't easy. But you bloody well make the best of what cards you've got to play and play them as well as you can."
That could be Joan Collin's motto. Her great achievement is that she has survived, that the actress who was sought after in her twenties, is still at the top. To manage that, you need not only professionalism, but self-knowledge too. She said..
"I have a sort of enthusiasm for life and I don't ever want to lose it. I like my life. I like who I am and what I do and I'm quite at peace with myself."
Joan chose a moisturiser as her luxury and The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde as her book. So with any luck, once rescued, she would return to civilisation in the same delightful condition as when she left it. She deserves that. I think we do too!
JOAN'S SELECTIONS....
Come back to Sorrento - Luciano Pavarotti
We'll Meet Again -Dame Vera Lynn
The Wonder Of You - Elvis Presley
Come Fly With Me - Frank Sinatra
Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut- Puccini
All I Ask Of You - Steve Barton / Sarah Brightman
O Mio Babbino Caro - Puccini
Love Will Conquer All - Lionel Richie
Book : The Picture Of Dorian Gray -Oscar Wilde
Luxury : A Large Bottle Of Moisturiser
(C) 1990 SUE LAWLEY ....
