Jacqueline Jill “Jackie” Collins OBE was born on October 4th 1937 and died on September 19th this year from breast cancer. She was the younger sister of actress Joan Collins and older sister of Bill.
Jackie was expelled from school at 15 and had a brief affair with Marlon Brando who was 29 at the time. She began acting and singing with Joan and appeared in various television series such as Danger Man, The Saint and Minder, but started writing seriously in 1968 and had her first novel The World is Full of Married Men published. This novel was regarded as being a bit risqué and was banned in a few countries.
Jackie Collins held dual citizenship: British (by birth) and U.S. (by naturalization, from 6th May 1960). She married her first husband, Wallace Austin, in 1960 and divorced in 1964. They had one child, Tracy. In 1965, Jackie married for the second time to art gallery and nightclub owner, Oscar Lerman. They had two daughters, Tiffany (born 1967) and Rory (born 1969). Oscar also formally adopted Jackie’s daughter, Tracy. Lerman died in 1992 from prostate cancer. In 1994, Jackie became engaged to Los Angeles business executive Frank Calcagnini, who died in 1998 from a brain tumour.
Jackie Collins wrote 32 novels and her books have sold over 500 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages. Eight of her novels have been adapted for the screen, either as films or television mini-series.
Jackie Collins was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to fiction and charity.
The Stud – 1969
Fontaine Khaled is the wife of a wealthy Arab businessman, Benjamin Khaled. She spends his money on her nightclub, Hobo, partying, shopping and her lovers. She hires a manager, Tony Blake, to run her club, but it is understood that his job security is dependent on him satisfying her sexual demands. Tony loses interest in Fontaine and turns his attention to her young step-daughter Alexandra, who uses him to make another man she is interested in jealous. Tony, oblivious to this fact, pursues Alexandra while at the same time double-crosses Fontaine by making a deal with businessman Ian Thaine to buy his own club by saying that Fontaine is in on the deal. Meanwhile Benjamin’s attentions stray to model Dolores after he finds out about Fontaine’s various affairs. When Fontaine is faced with Benjamin divorcing her and Tony double-crossing and leaving her to set up his own club she puts the wheels in motion to turn the tables.
Thrill – 1998
This high-suspense tale pulses with deadly obsessions and relentless desires in the seemingly perfect world of a gorgeous film actress. This was Jackie Collins’ most outrageous, erotically charged New York Times bestseller and is a sexy, shattering roller-coaster thrill ride! From chic New York and the exclusive Hamptons to the hungry heart of L.A. She could have any man — but the one she can’t resist is a mysterious lover with a shadowed past. As their jolting affair skyrockets with electric passion, shocking secrets break through their hidden traps — in a brilliantly twisting story that sparks with the explosive Jackie Collins’ touch.
Drop Dead Beautiful – 2007
The story focuses on the character Anthony Bonar (Enzio Bonatti’s grandson), who is seeking revenge against the Santangelo family as Lucky Santangelo is
responsible for the deaths of his grandfather and father. Lucky’s daughter – the rebellious teenager Maria, also known as “Max” arranges to meet up with a mysterious boy on the internet, in the hopes of making an ex-boyfriend jealous. However, the mystery boy turns out to be a middle-aged man named Henry, who has a hatred for Max’s mother Lucky as she did not cast him for a movie which she developed a few years ago. On the day of meeting Henry in Big Bear, many miles away from her Bel Air home, Max meets the nineteen-year-old Ace.