Abandon taste, all ye who enter here. Behind this door in the Helmsley Palace tower sits Jackie Collins, head of Hollywood trash collection, gleaner of great celebrity rubbish, the woman who knows the most awful stories about the most famous people and . . . really, darlings, do come in.
At the moment, she`s dishing rock stars, particularly one who was getting ready for a concert tour of Japan and ”well, you know how these musicians are always asking for absolutely bizarre things in their contracts? Like, `We want three dozen orange M&Ms next to the bed,` right? Anyway, this time he decided he`d order 15 virgins for his hotel suite.”
This, she says he said, was a gag. You know, ha ha.
”So he didn`t give it a second thought, got to Japan and guess what he found waiting in his room! Fifteen of them! He was so embarrassed. Had to shoo them all away.”
Collins guffaws, her luscious laugh sweeping her out of one salty tale and into another-this about a dinner she had with an aging Rolling Stone and his latest love.
”The girl was very pretty, looked about 22 but sounded incredibly stupid,” reports Collins, who also is very pretty, looks about her age (47)
and sounds incredibly-British. ”Later I found out why. She was 13!”
MORE THAN ENOUGH
More? With Joan`s ”writerly” sibling, there is always more, stored away in a mainframe brain beneath a heap of back-combed hair and between two big sparkly earrings. When the time comes for another novel-and it comes, critics would say, rather too often-she calls up the juiciest bits, tones them down because ”nobody would believe the truth,” then cleans up on the best-seller lists.
Thanks to the naughty ways celebrities comport themselves, and the passion with which they gab about it, Collins has managed in less than 20 years to produce a dozen very fat books chocked with schlock and inimitably titled.
”The Stud.” ”Sinners.” ”The World Is Full of Married Men” (not to forget its sad corollary, ”The World Is Full of Divorced Women”).
”Hollywood Wives” and ”Hollywood Husbands.” And now, still steaming from the Simon & Schuster presses, ”Rock Star.”
Some sample lines: ” `Come over here, woman,` he said, his voice thick with desire. She didn`t need asking twice.”
Okay, okay, here`s some more: ”Placing the tray on a table, she went to him willingly. His arms reached up, pulling her onto the bed and. . . .” Hey, buy your own book.
NOTHING YOU`D READ
None of Collins` novels has put her in contention for a Pulitzer, so, of course, you haven`t read them. Seventy-five million other people have, and they are the ones who`ve made her rich. Collins doesn`t necessarily look it today. A woman 5-foot-8-either slighty porky or va-va-va-voom, depending on your dominant hormone-she`s wearing a simple black T, simple black slacks, a simple black jacket with fake-leopard insets and complaining about driving a simple old Caddy. She swears she never gets her nails done.
A ruse, darlings. Earlier this year, the British magazine Money toted up the Collins girls` combined fortunes at $26.25 million, putting them a few notches below the queen but still among Britain`s 12 wealthiest women.
”Rock Star,” with a breathtaking first printing of 500,000 hard-bound copies, will no doubt add a few more pence to the pile. At any rate, it already has stirred a guessing game about the true identities of its three protagonists, struggling singers who variously do drugs, drink a lot, mattress-hop, hit the skids, sell their souls-the usual-on the road to glory. A DAY OF RESEARCH
Before she wrote, Collins diligently researched, spending 24 unspeakable hours with a rock group she won`t name. This on top of 20 years of being married to disco mogul Oscar Lerman, so you can just imagine what`s in her attic.
”I`ve already had everybody calling me saying, `Well, darling, of course there`s nobody I recognize. But (protagonist) Kris Phoenix-he`s Rod, isn`t he? Or is it Eric? No, no, it`s one of the Beatles, right?` And I say, `Do you really think so?` ”
Oh, Jackie, you vixen.
”I will say that there are real things in my books. And probably the people are real people. But I will never say who! Everyone can guess. That`s the fun of it.”
Alas, not as much fun as before.
When ”Hollywood Wives” came out in 1983, for instance, women ambushed Collins right on Rodeo Drive and accused her of writing about their washed-up actor-husbands and how dare she! They got hopping mad and Collins had a whee of a good time. With ”Rock Star,” though, nobody`s denying anything. Bummer. The other day, she went on Oprah Winfrey`s TV show to drum up sales and who was there but Gene Simmons of the rock group Kiss, wearing more makeup than Collins and telling worse stories.
”He was talking about how he`s had 2,000 women in 10 years,” she gasps. ”It was quite a shock to me to realize that rock stars were going to admit it all-and more-and be proud of it. I mean, I don`t think I could write a book about a man who`s had 2,000 women in 10 years.”
WHAT ABOUT JOAN?
All right, then, could she write a book about a woman who`s had five husbands? Some people were sure they saw big sis Joan sashaying across the pages of ”Hollywood Husbands,” but as Jackie told them at the time, ”If I had written her, it would have been a far different story.” Likewise, Peter Holm-this before his Barnum & Bailey divorce from Joan-thanked her for portraying him so nicely in the book, and she had to remind him, ”Peter, if it was you, it would have been a whole different character.” Collins clucks. ”How right I was!”
Oooh goodie, venom. ”No, really, he`s all right,” she sighs. ”I mean, my sister`s had five husbands. I say hello, goodbye.”
Jackie`s had only two-the first a fellow in the clothing trade who married her at 18, fathered one of her three children and then died, overdosing on an antidepressant. But that (and a fling with Brando) was long ago. Today, she says, she lives ”a very domestic life” in Hollywood, ”with a fabulous husband, three great kids, dogs. You know, there are some people who think, well, she writes all (about) these very fast people, so she must be very hard or a very-you know, that kind of person. But I`m just an observer, just reflecting on what I`ve seen and heard.”
BUTTING INTO HOLLYWOOD
Collins has been hanging around Hollywood on and off since she was 15, when she got the boot from a boarding school in Britain for smoking, and Daddy Joe, the big London theatrical agent who died recently, exiled her to live with Joan. Presumably, what she has ”seen and heard” since then would make the Library of Congress look like a magazine rack. And the collection grows. At night, when she`s not nursing a scotch and tapping out a novel, she goes to Hollywood parties, notebook in purse, ready to dash off to the loo to scribble down the particulars on who`s doing what to whom.
Ah, home life and high life. ”A good balance,” assures Collins.
You`d think Joan would ask for advice. ”But she doesn`t. Foolish. Very foolish. I`m very good at giving advice.”
Jackie could have given her pointers, too, on writing novels, which is Joan`s new line. Her first potboiler is expected out by year`s end, but frankly, dears, Jackie hasn`t seen so much as an exclamation point of it. ”I don`t even know if it`s written,” she says breezily.
MEOW
”But good luck to her, if that`s what she wants to do. I think everybody will always perceive her as an actress, though. I don`t think she`s any great threat to Sidney Sheldon. Or myself.”
Catty. Very catty. It`s the sort of thing that`s led the media to speculate that the Collins girls don`t get along, when actually ”we`re very good friends. I think the press would love to have us as dire rivals and enemies. But we`re not. She`s great. She`s a survivor. She`s a terrific character-but not in one of my books. Which is not to say she might not be in the future. `Hollywood Divorces!` ” Collins crows.
Fifteen nymphs in a rocker`s hotel suite may be a joke. A Jackie Collins book called ”Hollywood Divorces” is not. In fact, she`ll start on it real soon, right after she: finishes the novel next in line, ”Lady Boss”; writes a script for an NBC mini-series based on two other novels, ”Lucky” and
”Chances”; acts as executive producer for the ”Hollywood Husbands”
mini-series; and wraps up negotiations on film rights to ”Rock Star.”
Still, critics tend to be less than kind to her. ”Extremely vindictive,” as she puts it. ”They`ll review me, as opposed to the book. Like, who does she think she is? The other thing is that I don`t look bad, and they resent that. You know, if you`re a writer, you`re supposed to look like the back of a bus.”
A LITERARY DRAW
You`ll get no apologies from Collins. She loves what she writes, contends that she does it better than anybody else and considers it a, er, public service. ”There are people who tell me they never read a book before, but now they read mine,” she says proudly. ”I think, well, maybe they will go on to something more literary, if that`s what they want. But I was the one who got them into the bookstore!”
Very noble. But seriously, did you hear about the young thing who was having her nails done at Jessica`s on Sunset and gabbing to the manicurist about the big-deal producer who adored her and was leaving his wife for her?
”It`s all little cubicles, so everyone can hear what everyone else is saying,” Collins goes on. ”So there was this pause, and the woman in the next cubicle stood up, leaned over the partition and said, `No, darling, he`s not. I should know. I`m his wife!”`
Exit Collins, laughing. –
