Jackie Collins Dies at 77
Jackie Collins, author of many bestsellers such as Hollywood Wives (Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books), died of breast cancer on Saturday at the age of 77.
The author of over thirty novels, Collins helped define the genre of detailed, glitzy, rich and famous Hollywood stories. Her books were full of sex, power plays, and ambition. They offered fun, over-the-top stories with a quick pace and plenty of plot twists.
People conducted the last interview with Collins on Sept. 14 in which she publicly reveled her diagnosis for the first time:
“I did it my way, as Frank Sinatra would say. I’ve written five books since the diagnosis, I’ve lived my life, I’ve traveled all over the world, I have not turned down book tours and no one has ever known until now when I feel as though I should come out with it.”
Her most recent book is The Santangelos (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample), the ninth title in a long-running series that began in 1981 with Chances (Hachette/Grand Central).
Her first novel was The World Is Full of Married Men, which the NYT reports was banned in Australia and South Africa due to its overt depictions of extramarital sex.
According to Entertainment Weekly, every book Collins published has hit the NYT Besteller list.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone interested in the genre has not discovered Collins, but for those few who are ready to try her writing for the first time, a good beginning is Chances the first in the series she devoted much of her career to developing or the stand-alone Lovers & Players (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press) for a vintage taste of her trademark style.
While promoting The Santangelos she told Access Hollywood Live, that she was working on a memoir entitled Reform School Or Hollywood. If it makes it to press (and no word on that yet) it will include her affair with Marlon Brando, “to this day, he is the most beautiful guy I’ve ever seen.”