© Copyright - Daily Mail 2005 My Starlet Days - As pinewood celebrates its 70th birthday, Joan Collins, groomed there as a budding young actress, recalls elocution lessons, daring bikinis, and an age when stars really were stars.
As a child, I was a huge film fan and collected not only autographed photographs
of my favourite stars, but scrupulously kept enormous scrapbooks into which I pasted their glamorous images.
And no doubt about it, those stars of the Forties and Fifties, particularly the women, were all stunningly glamorous - not only the Hollywood names but the home-grown crop, such as Margaret Lockwood and Jean Simmons.
Most of these gorgeous ladies starred in movies for the J. Arthur Rank Organisation, since practically every film made in those decades was made under the
Rank aegis - aka ''The Man with the Gong'', so called because of that celebrated muscled figure who struck a vast copper gong in the opening credits.
This year is the 70th anniversary of that bare-chested hunk and of the foundation of the great Pinewood Studios, which today still makes the best of British films.
I tried never to miss those fabulous movies: Britannia Mews, Good Time Girl, Here Come The Huggets and The Blue Lagoon. All are long forgotten and alas hardly even make
it on to TV. Not even videos or DVDs are available.
It''s a great heritage lost and one that I grew to appreciate even more when, still in my teens and fresh out of Rada, I was signed to a contract with the J. Arthur Rank organisation.
Their contract actors and actresses were groomed for stardom at the princely sum of between GBP20 and GBP50 a week. Therefore, I was beyond delighted to find myself among the GBP30a-week group and spending my starlet days at Pinewood.
I was
one of the last actresses to be signed to a contract there, and by then the legendary Rank Charm School - whose graduates included Diana Dors, Honor Blackman, Petula Clark and Sylvia Syms - was being disbanded.
That school had copied the modus operandi of the Hollywood studio system, recruiting pretty - and sometimes pretty talentless - boys and girls aged between 16 and 25, and teaching them how to walk, behave and talk properly.
Received English was then a sort of adenoidal
glottal stop squawk personified by Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter. With this method, they hoped to turn teenagers from ordinary backgrounds into film stars and pinups.
WHEN I wasn''t filming, I spent my days posing in the Pinewood stills gallery. There, the famous photographer Cornel Lucas devoted endless hours arranging me in a variety of ''turn ''em on'' outfits of the time.
These consisted of tight-fitting sweaters and shorts, one-piece boned bathing
suits, bikinis (very daring), black fishnet stockings with stilettos that laced up midcalf or low-cut cocktail dresses with the waists pinched to within an inch of my life.
The fact that I looked extremely sulky and bored in most of the pictures is testament to the fact that as a young girl I was so restless my mother nicknamed me ''Miss Perpetual Motion''. Having to sit still and stiff in artificial circumstances for great swathes of time was pure torture.
Cornie was patient
for the most part, but would occasionally lash out in a fury if, after arranging me intensely for hours and getting his complicated lighting system exactly right, I would sit down rebelliously or insist I had to have a cigarette.
It was unbearably tedious work, but not quite as bad as the endless public appearances we starlets had to attend in various provincial towns, meeting and greeting a series of unmitigated dullards to whom we were instructed to ''be nice to'' as they were
important theatre owners, distributors or, even worse, critics.
To a teenager, whose usual costume was jeans, flat shoes and a sweater, being trussed up into ladylike afternoon frocks, gloves and silly hats was embarrassing, not to mention uncomfortable, but we did look great. Naturally, I didn''t own these types of outfits so I was usually bundled off to the wardrobe department where the dear old ducks who slaved there would kit me out appropriately.
My favourite borrowed
finery was a gold brocade dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in her first film. Wardrobe had to take it out a bit, but when I sallied forth into Ciro''s nightclub on Hollywood''s Sunset Strip, I felt chic and terribly grownup.
At Ciro''s were gathered many of Rank''s finest to participate in a photo-feature for Photoplay Magazine. I mingled with Dennis Price, Margaret Lockwood and even Anthony Newley (whom I would marry a decade later). It was heady, glamorous and as close to being on a real
Hollywood film set as I could imagine.
But I really put my foot in it when I gushed to Miss Lockwood: ''You were my favourite film star when I was a little girl!'' Another fabulous publicity jaunt was attending the annual charity garden party hosted by another movie magazine, where the actresses in floaty chiffon and pearls mingled with the reverential fans.
We stood in little kiosks signing autographs and posing for the occasional happy snap, while extremely polite
photographers from the national papers took sedate photos of us in groups. I was thrilled to meet the glorious Kay Kendall, another Rank employee, who had more charm and charisma than the rest of the stars and starlets combined.
Theo Cowan, the affable and humorous head of Rank publicity, was in charge of teaching us starlets our stuff.
He showed us how to charm and deal with the Press, how to get out of a limo without showing your underwear and how to always behave and look
ladylike. ''Smile, damn you, smile,'' he''d hiss through gritted teeth, and we did.
But I often got a tongue-lashing from him as I hated sucking up to people whom I was supposed to ''cultivate''.
The Press had given me several sobriquets: '' England''s answer to Ava Gardner'' (I sincerely believed she had no worries), ''Britain''s Bad Girl'' (which amused me, since I was still actually a good girl), and my favourite (since I adored her) ''Britain''s best bet since Jean
Simmons''.
I made six films, did four plays and learned a great deal from observing some of the best actors and actresses in the business: Celia Johnson, Jack Hawkins and Hermione Gingold were just three of the giants and for a fledgling actress to study and work with them was indeed an honour and a true gift.
You have to remember there were no videos then, so you had to do your acting homework on the set or at the cinema. Wannabe actors today can study over and over again the
brilliance of Laurence Olivier in Hamlet, Marlon Brando in Streetcar, and De Niro and Pacino in just about anything.
THE GROUNDING I received from my 18 months at Rank prepared me for the following six years in Hollywood, under contract to studio giant 20th Century Fox. There they polished up their contractees with classes in deportment, voice (I had to learn an American accent for my first starring role in The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing) and they were strict about weight.
Arriving at Fox on the first day to be scrutinised by the head honchos, I was immediately put on a diet of bananas, cottage cheese and tomatoes, told to exercise every day and instructed to lose 7lb off my 9st immediately!
When this diet failed (I cheated), they sent me to the studio quack who, as a sideline, gave libido- enhancing injections to the elderly studio moguls.
He put me on a series of slimming pills, which did work. I lost 8lb in a fortnight - and also most nights''
sleep because I became even more hyperactive.
Later, I discovered those little green pills were dexedrine, commonly known as speed. They can be mightily dangerous, keeping you buzzing for hours, and were notorious for being administered for years by MGM to Judy Garland.
Thankfully, I didn''t become hooked as Judy did. But I have to admit nothing has ever worked as quickly and effectively as those pills - the weight fell off me.
But by the time we filmed Land Of The
Pharaohs in Italy, I put the pounds back on because I couldn''t keep away from the delicious pasta - so much so, that during a seductive dance, the jewel that the censors required I put in my belly button to cover my navel kept popping off. Too bad I wasn''t at Rank then - at least in Britain they really liked fuller-figured girls.
So happy birthday to the Man With The Gong, and long may your legend live on. |
