David Downton’s Sketchbook
Once the bad girl of British B movies, Joan Collins arrived in Hollywood just as the studio system began to crumble, in the 1950s. A flair for comedy and an instinct for glamour kept her busy through a dozen or so movies into the 1960s, before marriage (to Anthony Newley, who would be her second of five husbands), motherhood, and shifting tastes prompted a segue into television. There, she flourished as Captain Kirk’s tragic girlfriend and Batman’s seductive nemesis before horror movies and saucy romps claimed her. She found her groove—to a disco soundtrack—as a rapacious nightclub owner in 1978’s The Stud (and its sequel The Bitch), lingerie classics that led to her casting as Alexis Carrington Colby on Dynasty, her 80s rich-bitch apotheosis. Since then, an uneven C.V. has dimmed her luster not a whit. Currently promoting her latest memoir, Behind the Shoulder Pads—her eighth—Dame Joan powers on, reverse gear unknown to her. She is the last indomitable star.
