A young woman is at the altar about to marry a man she doesn’t love when she sees her dead fiancé among the guests.
Sarah looked in the mirror and tucked her favorite gold chain out of sight. This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life, but she felt like crying.
“Now, don’t you cry!” the makeup artist said quickly, putting powder under Sarah’s eyes. “You’ll ruin my work!”
Across the room, Sarah’s mother smiled weakly. “Tears of joy,” she said, but she knew they were tears of sadness.
What should have been Sarah’s dream wedding had turned into a nightmare. Sarah adjusted her wedding dress and felt the weight of her engagement ring against her chest. It was a delicate ring with a tiny diamond, very different from the large ring now on her left hand.
“This is your choice,” Sarah told herself softly. “Now that David is gone, it doesn’t really matter who you marry.” The man she was marrying was nice, but he was chosen by her father.
Frank Melville was the son of Sarah’s father’s business partner. Their marriage would strengthen a business deal that had made both men very rich.
Sarah’s true love, David O’Reilly, had died three years ago in a terrible car accident. David was her driver when Sarah was a young celebrity, always chased by paparazzi.
It should have been the happiest day of Sarah’s life, but all she could think about was David.
Sarah remembered how she sometimes caught David watching her in the car’s mirror. She would look away. Then one night, she drank too much at a club, or maybe someone slipped her something.
Feeling sick and helpless, she called David. He came right away and helped her out of the club when she couldn’t stand.
To her embarrassment, she vomited, and David held her hair back and rubbed her back, saying comforting words. He helped her clean up and took care of her.
From that moment on, Sarah started watching David. Eventually, she convinced him to go on a date with her. They fell in love, and one day David gave her a delicate ring with a tiny diamond.
Sarah had been living the wild life of a party girl until she met David.
She happily said yes, thinking her parents would also be happy about her marrying a driver who had no money.
“But Daddy,” Sarah cried, “you always said what mattered was that I was happy!”
“You can be just as happy with a rich man,” her father replied. “Forget O’Reilly; he’s a loser.” But Sarah loved David and fought for their love. She believed her parents would eventually accept him.
That happy day never came. Instead, Sarah got a phone call while she was with her family. She saw her father go pale.
“Sarah, be brave, my love,” he said gently. “It’s David; there was an accident, a terrible accident…”
Sarah screamed and her father held her tightly while her mother sat nearby, twisting her hands and biting her lips.
That was the last day of her old life, the life where she believed in lasting love and happy endings. Two months later, Sarah told her parents she was pregnant.
They wanted her to end the pregnancy, but she refused. “This is all I have of David, and I’m having this baby!”
They had to give in to her strong will, especially with her grandmother on her side. Gran had real power in the family. Sarah’s father reluctantly accepted the pregnancy, and they spread the rumor that the father was a billionaire.
Sarah’s little girl was born, and for once, the family didn’t make a big deal out of it. Little Rachel’s existence was a secret. Soon after Rachel was born, Sarah’s father began pushing her toward Frank Melville.
Sarah sighed and lowered her delicate lace veil. “I’m ready,” she said. She picked up her bouquet and allowed her mother and bridesmaids to lead her downstairs to the waiting limousine.
A man in a wheelchair arrived at the church first. He wore a dark suit and had a bunch of wildflowers in his lap. When the usher asked him who he was with, he said, “The bride.”
He hadn’t seen Sarah in almost two years, but he turned on the TV yesterday and saw her. “Socialite Sarah Farmin, who has been away from the city’s social scene, is about to get married!”
“Not if I can help it!” David cried, turning off the TV. He remembered waking up in a hospital two years ago with his legs useless.
His mother, who had breathing problems, had been crying at his bedside. Then Sarah’s father, the powerful Greg Farmin, walked in. “You’re crippled,” he said bluntly. “What kind of life is that for Sarah? You know she’ll marry you, but you’ll be half a man.”
“What do you want?” David asked.
“I want you to stay away from Sarah. Let her believe you are dead so she can live a happy life,” Farmin said. “In return, you and your mother will get the best care money can buy.”
So David agreed, and Farmin kept his promise. David slowly got better, but his mother eventually died.
“I can’t let her do this,” David thought. “I have to tell her I’m alive.” So, when Sarah walked down the aisle with her father, David waited for his moment.
When Sarah reached Frank and the best man, her father gently lifted her veil and kissed her forehead. Just as he was about to give her away, a voice interrupted.
“Sarah,” it said. “Please don’t do this.”
Sarah turned and saw David in his wheelchair, wildflowers in his lap.
“David?” she whispered, shocked. “Oh my God, David? I must be dreaming…” Was he a ghost or a hallucination?
“It’s me,” David said, wheeling toward her. “I’m alive, but I thought you’d be better off without me.”
“Without you?” Sarah gasped. “I’ve been DEAD without you! The only thing that kept me alive was our baby, our little Rachel.”
“Baby?” David asked, shocked. “You had a baby?” He turned to Greg Farmin. “You never told me about the baby!”
“Daddy!” Sarah cried. “You knew David was alive and didn’t tell me?”
“I wanted to protect you,” Greg said defensively. He turned to David. “You gave me your word and took my money.”
“You paid him to stay away?” Sarah yelled. “You broke my heart!” Turning to Frank, she said with a sad smile, “I’m sorry, but I can’t marry you. I’m going to marry the father of my child.”
Sarah walked back toward David and hugged him. “You marry that man, and you’ll end up with nothing,” Greg shouted. “You won’t get a cent!”
Sarah’s grandmother stood up, looking at her son coldly. “Shut up, Greg. It’s not your money to give away. It’s mine, and I think Sarah and David deserve it all!”
Sarah and David got married and lived with little Rachel in a small house they bought with their own money, even though Gran wanted to buy them a luxury apartment. They knew they didn’t need luxury now that they had each other.
Joan Collins Turns 91: Photos of Her Transforming Appearance through the Years
Her childhood was unconventional as she grew up during the Blitz period. Years later, Joan thought it would be great to do a film about growing up with her sister during this era but her dream hasn’t come to fruition.
Even so, the actress said that as the war continued, she was just a child, unaware of the bombings. She would collect fragments of debris from the streets and store them in her cigar box each evening.
She narrated, “We would draw silly pictures of Hitler. We were evacuated 10 or 12 times. We would be in the tube stations, and people would be playing their harmonicas and singing.”
Despite the chaos, Joan Collins, who deeply loved her Anglican Briton mother, realized that she did not want to live the same life her mom lived. “Mummy was the 1950s housewife, very sweet and very docile,” she explained.
The actress had previously said that her mom, who died at the age of 52, died very young because she never spoke back to her husband.
oan also shared that “My father never held back. I saw him as a figure to look up to more than my mother. I loved her to death but I considered her to be weak and I hated all the clothes she wore.”
The actress’s mother consistently wore girdles, suspenders, stockings, tight bras, underpinnings, and corsets, which Joan disliked.
Joan, who took great care in her appearance, was voted the most beautiful girl in England by a photographers’ association when she was 18. The newspapers asked her dad what he thought about her daughter’s position, he replied, “I’m amazed. She’s a nice-enough-looking girl. Nothing special.”
At this point, Joan had departed from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), developed a passion for French existentialism, admired the singer Juliette Gréco, and dreamed of becoming a celebrated stage actress.
The focus on her appearance was even more as her film career progressed. Joan disclosed that in Hollywood, she faced daily verbal abuse.
She recounted how the makeup department gave her cruel nicknames, such as “Moonface” due to her baby fat and “Scrawny Legs” because of her thin legs. She remembered the department as a large group of women who were particularly harsh and unkind to her.
In 1955, when Joan was 22, she was cast in the biopic about Evelyn Nesbit “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing.” Evelyn was considered the most beautiful girl in New York and Joan was to play her.
So, one day, Joan who was still in the Juliette Gréco character and thus had no makeup and was in jeans with scruffy hair, ran into her director Richard Fleischer. Richard told her, “Oh my God, I cannot look at you – you are so ugly. You cannot go around like that – put some makeup on, get your hair done, get a proper dress.”
Just like her career, Joan’s personal life also had its ups and downs. When she was 17, still a virgin, the actress went on a date with actor Maxwell Reed, aged 31. He spiked her rum and coke and raped her.
“I was 17, but I was the equivalent mentally of 12. We did not have sex education,” she noted. Shockingly, Maxwell became the actress’s first husband. When asked why she chose to marry her rapist, she answered, “Because I come from a generation where if you’re going to have sex, you get married.”
However, when Joan learned that Maxwell wanted to give her to older men for $12,710 a night as long as he could watch, she stood up for herself. After four years of marriage, the two divorced.
In her 20s, Joan lived with several men, including Sydney Chaplin and Arthur Loew Jr. She also had an affair with a married man who was eight years her senior. As much as the man was handsome, witty, and fascinating, Joan said the affair was utter hell and she never engaged in one again.
Hollywood men, including directors, also went after Joan. In her autobiography, “Behind the Shoulder Pads,” the actress revealed that she was offered the role of Cleopatra in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film on the condition that she got along well with Buddy Adler, the head of Fox, and the chairman of the board.
Joan, who was disgusted by how directors and producers, who were old men, took advantage of young actresses said no as she never wanted to be a part of that. The Cleopatra role was given to Elizabeth Taylor.
In the memoir, Joan also wrote about having an abortion when she got pregnant at 26 with her fiancé, Beatty, a 23-year-old aspiring actor. Beatty convinced Joan to abort the baby because it would derail their career. Years later, she agreed with him, noting that if he had a baby, she would have had to say goodbye to her acting career.
Joan went on to have three kids. She had her first two, Tara and Alexander with her second husband, Anthony Newley. Her last child, Katyana, is with her second husband Ron Kass.
The actress’s third husband was Peter Holm and she is now married to Percy Gibson. Joan announced that she was engaged to Percy in December 2001 and then the pair got married in 2002 at Claridge’s Hotel in London, in front of 175 guests.
The lovebirds, who have been together for over two decades, met when Joan was featured in a touring production of the play “Love Letters” in the US. The Peruvian-born theatre manager also helped Joan edit her novel “Star Quality.”
Many people talked when Joan and Percy Gibson got married because he is 32 years younger than her. Joan was asked to comment on their age difference and she said, “Well, if he dies, he dies.”
In 2023, Joan gushed about her marriage saying that she had found the right man in her current husband, “Oh yes, Percy and I have been married for 21 years and it’s just marvelous.”
Now, Joan is in her 90s but she still has the youthful charm and grace in her presence. When asked if she has had cosmetic procedures done, the actress simply said with a shrug, “If people want to think I’ve had surgery, then…”
Joan added, “You can tell [I haven’t] because I have lines and jowls. When I see women around my age I think: ‘Oh, really? My gosh, I look quite a bit…’ I think I look pretty good!”
The movie star is also needle-phobic and just couldn’t bring herself to have cosmetic work done on her. She attributes her good look, perfect complexion, and youthfulness to staying out of the sun.
She added that her mom taught her to moisturize her skin and use night cream, something she also taught her daughters. Joan’s lovely appearance still amazes her fans.
In April 2024, Joan enjoyed a fun photoshoot for the New York Times Fashion and Style section. She looked radiant in a white cardigan paired with an off-white cap and black trousers.
A fan, amazed by her look, said, “You are simply iconic, dear one, and stunning ♥️♥️.” Another admirer commented, “You always look so beautiful♥️.”
When she turned 90 in 2023, a fan shared a picture of Joan taken on the streets. The actress was in a modest flower dress styled with a white coat, a sun hat, and sunglasses. The fan captioned the post, “Happiest of birthdays to Dame Joan Collins, who turns 90 but easily looks at least 20 years younger.”
At 91, Joan Collins is content with both her personal and professional life. Retirement isn’t on her agenda, as she plans to continue working because of her passion for it.
She acknowledged that performing her one-woman show and staying in a different hotel each night was exhausting, but the enthusiastic audiences and her love for her work made it a rewarding experience.
Leave a Reply