Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1956)

“Now, whether a date is cute and measures up, physically, to my girlfriends’ dates, is one of the last things that enters my mind. Naturally, I notice a person’s appearance, but now it is more of an afterthought than anything else. “Certainly, now, I wouldn’t be as inconsiderate as I was with poor Buster (and others!), and I don’t get schoolgirl crushes any longer. I still like to see, and am curious about, certain shows and certain performers, but now the primary interest is with whom I am going to spend the evening. I would no longer enjoy a show unless someone I liked very much was enjoying it with me. “Nor is a fellow’s profession of first importance any longer. I still go out with actors and performers such as George Nader and Gene Nelson. I still enjoy being with actors, still like to ‘talk shop,’ but I am no longer glassy-eyed if the ‘shop’ being talked about is not mine! “I also date boys who are not actors, and I can honestly say that I would enjoy dating fellows, whether they were plumbers, postmen, Marlon Brandos, acrobats, or whatever, for now it is the fellow himself — not the way he looks, or what he does for a living — that matters to me. “As for the kind of man I hope to marry — when, and if, I am asked — to list any (Continued from page 57) and Joan sang out gaily: “Come on in!” Such confusion, such ringing of the telephones! It was obvious that success had suddenly caught up with and overtaken Joan Collins. She might have expected show business would be good to her, since her grandmother had been a chorus girl, her aunt a London variety star, and her father. Will Collins, is now a prominent London theatrical agent. Joan had made the grade by daring to leave merry old England and coming to the United States, where she hoped people would appreciate her more. Not that they disliked her there, but she didn’t impress them as much of an actress. “Didn’t impress them!” As Joan tells it, “In England, I guess I had the worst reputation for acting of any person on the screen. The critics massacred me. They said I generally displayed my two bad expressions and gave my usual bad performance. “Any time a script called for a bad girl or a girl who’d been done wrong by, I got the part. It was so boring. Besides, I thought I was miscast.” Well, maybe they did dislike her — at least her acting. So Joan took John Bull by the horns. Refusing to continue being laugh fodder for the critics, she got the J. Arthur Rank studios to peddle her contract to 20th Century-Fox. Then she hied herself to Hollywood. It’s a nice self, too. She’s a 38-23-36, pert and bouncy — and very honest. “I hadn’t done a picture in England in nine months,” she says, “so I decided life was too short. “Besides, I thought I’d love the relaxed kind of life in America, especially Hollywood. I guess it’s because I’m kind of easygoing.” But now, two years later, she is far from relaxed, for success has set in. However, at twenty-three she has managed to get herself involved pretty well in all sorts of problems that she’ll probably p look back on with amusement. She has fallen in love — hard — and accepted a white mink stole from Arthur Loew, Jr. (whose father is one of the specifications sounds like picking out a car, and I don’t think of my future husband in terms of automatic gear-shifts, brakes and horsepower! In other words, I do not have an Ideal Man in mind. I’ve outgrown the Prince Charming on the White Charger dreamworld. Actually, it’s impossible, in my opinion, to list specific qualities you want in a person until you find the person, and if he has enough of the qualities you admire and like and some, being human, that you don’t like, then you make your lists, compare them, and say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ ” When asked if there was anyone special in her life at present — Gene Nelson, for instance — Piper preferred to change the subject. Returning to the matter of her “growing up,” she again thought of her dearest friend, Leonard Goldstein. “Since the great blow and shock of Leonard’s death,” said Piper, “my eyes have opened — all the way. For, when something as important as this, over which you have no control, happens to you, you do grow up. “Curiously, I’m stronger now, I think,, than I have ever been. When, after Leonard’s death, I had to go back to work on ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’,’ I was afraid I’d never get through it. But I did, and I came out of it knowing that I have a great deal more strength than I thought I had. Shock Trouper heads of M-G-M) as a birthday present. She wore it to see “My Fair Lady” with — yep, Arthur Loew, Jr. But, in the midst of falling in love with Arthur Loew, Jr., she was also in the process of divorcing the husband she married when she was very young and inexperienced. His name is Maxwell Reed and he was quite a British movie star when Joan was still in school. He was tall, handsome, British, and all that. Joan had a crush on him — from afar — and had his -picture on her desk even before they’d ever met. When she was nineteen and still studying at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Joan married him. “Don’t do it,” they told her — all her friends, relatives, parents, self-appointed advisers. “The age difference, you know,” they mentioned. “Besides, you don’t know anything about life yet.” Cocky, stubborn and impulsive, Joan told everybody, “I’m in love with him, and I’ll learn about life from him.” And now Joan was lamenting to me that she had made a bitter mistake and that she only wished she had been willing to accept the advice of some of her elders, because a good marriage was important and she felt a decent attitude toward its conventions has to be maintained. It was quite apparent now, that the guy in her life was Arthur Loew, Jr. — although for a time after coming to America she dated Sydney Chaplin. Her husband, however, had come along to the United States and had sued her for $125 a month separate maintenance — equivalent to asking her to pay him alimony. That made Joan thoroughly indignant. She felt like a wronged wife. Here she was, struggling to make good in pictures, torn emotionally because her marriage was ended, and at the same time defending a suit for separate maintenance. She was caught up in a sequence of events that would have been trying for a person much older and more experienced. Besides, of course, it was costly. Then there was the additional thought “I’ve never been afraid of hard )ii but two years ago I would not have |e< able to stand the pressure, the rusl long hours I have now. It would a\ thrown me. But now it wouldn’t. Ipl ably because I am so wrapped up in I am doing. In other words, the wo important — not Piper Laurie! “I have always tried to do the best in anything I attempt — painting, w: poetry, riding a bike, cooking, as w< acting — and I always shall. And I al shall, I hope, be an actress — but not a capital ‘A’! For now I know then other great things to do in the work sides acting, other great things to b( sides an actress. A housewife, a me lie Beauty and fulfillment, greatness, to| small and humble ways of life, doinj|tl little things you have to do every la working at any job, however modes j i long as you have self-respect — and *v “Now I know that — unless sonpi comes up to me and says, ‘I was goii shoot my wife last night, then I saw^c in “Kelly and Me” and didn’t’ — I never again believe,” Piper laughed, acting is a substitute for life, or for “So now, with my eyes wide open, set my sights, and channeled my 1 anew. I want to be, above all, a Pi happy human being!” ThEjPi f of her next marriage, to Arthur Loev|j Joan’s divorce wouldn’t be finalfi another year. By then — well, young Loew is quite a catch for almost li beautiful gal. And he’s been pursuectl several in his time. L Joan tried to look at it sensibly. Ti a girl who’s made a mistake like Ilk with one marriage,” she admitted top “the year’s waiting time is a good tljh It gives us time to curb our impukre ness!” iL At various intervals during our p versation, Joan had dashed into anc| room and changed into a bathing sui I some pictures . . . talked on the pi! to some fans waiting downstairs . . .1 discussed her latest film. The name of the picture is “Sea%\! and Joan portrays a young nun whi on a shipwrecked raft with two men ^ try to make love to her. “I’m on the raft with these men, tr, to keep order,” Joan explained. “I’m trying to fight off this strong feelii have for Richard Burton. He is cj Biscuit in the picture. Don’t ask me 'i I’ve only read a synopsis so far. T evidently isn’t any script yet.” “What do you wear on this raft j inquired. “I think just a kind of calico slip, see, as I understand it, we get e wrecked in the middle of the night v I’m getting ready to go to bed.” “How do you make out with the! mance that is boiling up within you?” “Well, I want to fall in love, but religious feelings are stronger, and I i the final vows at the end.” So we can all breathe easier about , In a sense, this role is a big triu for Joan: she’d been called back to 1 land to do it — and she’s not playing usual bad girl. Maybe the English j will be impressed. It had already soft( its attitude about her after she’d ( “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing.” then another picture was coming “The Opposite Sex,” in which she . a bath — the same bath Joan Craw took in the original movie version Cc “The Women.” Bathtub fashions haven’t changed i