Release Date:

Summer 2007

Article:

Dinner with Legendary Joan Collins . . .

Whoever would have guessed that there was an intense rivalry between Dynasty stars Joan Collins and Linda Evans when the two actresses went out on a recent nationwide theatrical tour? I couldn’t shake Joan’s right hand when we met for dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio restaurant at The Venetian because it was still injured from an on-stage kick she got from Linda when they toured in the comedy, Legends.

“It will never get any better,” Joan told me, pointing out the angle her knuckle was bent. Gracious and ladylike, she’d only say: “It’s something I never want to experience again, and to be honest, I never even got a ‘sorry’ or an apology.” The actresses had starred together in Dynasty from 1981 through 1989. Joan was with fifth husband Percy Gibson, long-time friends Max and Judy Bryer , her former assistant and Dynasty stand-in, and I’d invited current November Playboy model, Denise Pernula, who is featured in the nude-pictorial of the girls from the Palms Playboy Club.

“I was in Playboy a long time ago,” laughed Joan, who went on to explain the 12-pages she shot with famed photographer George Hurrell earlier in her long career. Frankly, she looks so great today–without any plastic surgery or botox–you’d expect her to say YES again to Hefner if he asked!!!

Joan and Percy, who live today between London and New York, had driven over from Los Angeles in her beautiful antique 1983 Silver Shadow Rolls Royce, but almost got into trouble.

“We ran into one of those blinding sandstorms kicked up by the winds,” said Percy. “For safety, having heard of the multiple pileups, we immediately pulled off the I-15 between Barstow and Baker when it started kicking up and just waited it out.”

On their return journey to LA yesterday, their route home was diverted because of the blazes near the California mountaintop passes. Joan and I talked up a storm about her aversion to computer and internet technology despite the fact she’s planning a new book to go with her previous best-sellers.

“I wasn’t going to do another one, but there are still a few things I have to set straight,” she laughed. Joan also revealed that our mutual friend, 007 spy actor Roger Moore is writing his memoirs now he’s hit 80, and his book will be titled, “My Word is my Bond.”

We also talked about the bad overly aggressive behavior of Hollywood’s paparazzi photographers.

“You wouldn’t think they’d chase after the two of us like they do with Britney–why does she insist on not wearing her underpants?” she asked. “In all my years of TV and movies I have never seen such appalling behavior with both the starlets and the lens-men. We posed for them when they asked, but they just wouldn’t quit or leave. They even tried to follow me into the store next door to the Ivy restaurant where we’d had lunch.”

Postrio chefs used Wolfgang Puck’s personal recipe to prepare the Joan Collins pizza of smoked salmon and caviar that he named after her when he first started his Spago empire in Hollywood. They also surprised her with a chocolate raspberry cake made in the shape of a film-reel can complete with white-chocolate exterior spool! Joan, who is Britain’s first lady of film and received the prestigious Order of the British Empire (OBE) from Queen Elizabeth II, will be off to London mid-November to throw the switch in the British capitol’s annual Christmas lights ceremony.

That led us into a conversation about the current ongoing jury inquest into the late Princess Diana’s death. Joan revealed she’d been on Italian designer Valentino’s yacht when the Princess, who was romantically linked with Hollywood producer Dodi Fayed, was seen on his neighboring yacht near St. Tropez.

“I knew Dodi and Valentino knew the Princess, so we were going to invite them over for lunch and drinks, but they were surrounded by armed police trying to keep the crazed photographers away so they never got the invitation. So hard to believe that, days later, they were killed in the tragic Paris tunnel-crash. Even though she’d broken up a short time earlier with a doctor, there was no question they were already romantically involved–to put it delicately,” she said.

Before leaving the Venetian, Joan and Percy played blackjack in the casino and yesterday morning had a farewell breakfast with Planet Hollywood owner Robert Earl where they’d stayed in a super-suite.

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