Poseidon Quickies: Guess Who!

More unusual TV viewing these stay-at-home days brought about the ensuing post. Chances are you'll find this a toughie. I don't think I could possibly have figured out the identity of our young lady were it not for a glimpse at the credits. Maybe some of you are familiar enough to know who she is or perhaps you'll land a lucky guess? The man in the photo is prolific movie and TV actor Warren Stevens. 

The lass in question has chiefly one scene in a hotel room (in a black, full slip.) Though she protests that her dress is off because of a spilled drink, Stevens is skeptical, as is the viewer, especially since her character has already been described as a good time gal by another character.

The man she's been canoodling with is John Crawford, who had a nice, rugged look about him in his younger days. But can you name her?

This particular moment is not shown in the 1958 film, whose title is seen here - Intent to Kill. It was the directorial debut of famed cinematographer Jack Cardiff. (Cardiff shot Black Narcissus, 1947, and The African Queen, 1951, among others.)

If Crawford seems familiar, it's because he seemed to be in every 1970s movie! He was the irate engineer in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and a concerned system supervisor in The Towering Inferno (1974) among countless other roles in film and TV.

Interestingly, the actress we are focusing on had her scantily-clad personage depicted on many of the posters for Intent to Kill even though she has only the one scene and a very little snippet prior to that (and no on-poster billing at all.) The star of the film was Richard Todd, though he shared no scenes with the girl.

I even find it hard to identify her in this studio head shot. She acted for about a decade, mostly in minor movies and episodic TV. Eventually, though, trying a different tack, she would rise to success and become a household name (at least in most of the houses I am familiar with!)

I felt that this early glimpse of her in the movie (far right) was closest to what we expect her to look like. Closer than most of the the prior photos reveal. Figured it out yet? About a decade after this 1958 film, she wrote a book that was a scorcher and a best-seller, but which was banned in some countries. A year later she penned another hot one. In time, she created a string of saucy books, many of them including things she picked up during her acting career and while witnessing close-up the career of her more famous sibling.

Miss Jackie Collins, best-selling novelist! I gave you a couple of very obscure hints in the opening paragraph when I used the words "chances" and "lucky." One of her big hits was "Chances," followed by a sequel, "Lucky."

The one-time starlet parlayed her adventures in Tinseltown and London into a highly successful writing career. "The World is Full of Married Men," "The Stud," "The Bitch," "Hollywood Wives" and "Lady Boss" are some of her well-known titles.

By the time two of her books were formed into the miniseries Lucky Chances, she was promoted right alongside the cast, though she was not in the program herself.

Her sultry, glitzy visage made its way onto the back of many of her books and could be found in advertising for the string of product she produced. 

 

She was constantly re-imagining herself in these portraits before ultimately settling in as a glamorous movieland maven who knew where all the bodies were buried.

The aforementioned sibling is, of course, Dame Joan Collins. Collins was a contract player with 20th Century Fox when her little sis came over from England to try her hand (not to mention having no small amount of fun along the way!)

The two remained close for most of their lives, even while sometimes separated by an ocean. Joan starred in movie adaptations of two of Jackie's books, The Stud (1978) and The Bitch (1979), though that last one allowed for a connotation that Joan sometimes found hard to live with when some journalists proceeded to apply it to her instead of to the character she played.

Becoming an international superstar as a result of her role as vixenish Alexis on Dynasty did little to allay the misguided label. Joan would often offer the axiom, "You can't BE a bitch and play one. It doesn't work." Indeed, her impish humor nearly always poked through Alexis' hyper-dramatic shenanigans. Meanwhile, Jackie was quite famous herself and often appeared on talk shows as a spicy guest when not working on her latest tome.

Despite a rather wild youth and her fount of zesty tales, Jackie Collins was the devoted wife of a husband, Oscar Lerman, who supported her career enthusiastically. Their nearly 30-year union ended with his death from cancer in 1992. After a subsequent 6-year relationship, she suffered another loss when the man also died of a brain tumor. Most shocking of all, especially to her sister who had not been forewarned until virtually the eleventh hour, Jackie herself passed away in 2015 at the age of 77. She'd been grappling with stage 4 breast cancer for six years and it eventually took her life.

Jackie Collins could not find sustaining work in Hollywood, but eventually she let Hollywood work for her as she penned juicy roman à clefs that tantalized her readers and gave her the incredible success she wasn't able to land as an actress.