It's relatively rare to find a star who's a hit in multiple arenas — publishing, movies, television, even the stage — but Jackie Collins left a legacy in all.
But most of all, fans around the world are wondering: What will we read at the beach now that Jackie Collins is gone?
Her passing from breast cancer at age 77, on Saturday in Los Angeles where the British-born beauty had long lived, came as a shock to millions, famous and not, because she chose to keep her illness of more than six years to herself and close family.
Her survivors include her three daughters and six grandchildren, and her elder sister, actress Joan Collins, 82, who did not find out she was dying until a few weeks ago. As famous and flamboyant as Jackie, Joan Collins was devastated by her death.
Jackie Collins said, in a final interview on Monday with People magazine, that she wanted to control her dying days, just as she had sought to control her wildly successful life, which in many respects reflected the plots in the 500 million books she sold worldwide.
Those novels, as delectable as cupcakes and just as filling, combined a distinctive form of sex-saturated female empowerment, Hollywood glamour, pots of money and fame, and a rollicking good time — or "bonkbusters," as the British put it.
Put another way: Collins was selling zillions of erotic novels — more than four times as many — long before the three Fifty Shades of Grey books, by British novelist E.L. James, which have sold about 90 million.
From her books, the TV series and movies made from them, Collins made a lot of money for herself and her publisher, St. Martin's Press.
"She was an innovator whose creativity, fearlessness and wicked sense of humor entertained millions of readers around the globe," said Sally Richardson, president and publisher of St. Martin's Press, in a statement. "She took great pride in writing 'kick ass heroines' who took readers on a wild ride. We were thrilled and honored to go on that journey with Jackie. I speak for myself and everyone at St. Martin's Press when I say we will miss her beyond measure."
Collins' books might not be included in the literary canon compiled by stuffy academics, but for millions they were huge fun to read. She told People she wants her gravestone to read: "She gave a great deal of people a great deal of pleasure."
Carol Fitzgerald, president of the Book Report Network, said Collins was a "tireless promoter" with a genuine interest and curiosity about her readers and the business of publishing. By the time she died, she had 155,000 followers on Twitter, for instance.
"She never took her previous success for granted and worked tirelessly promoting each new book with new-found joy, seeing it as a reason to get out and connect with her fans," Fitzgerald said. "She saw the fascination that our culture has with celebrity and fame long before it became the huge business that it is today...Cannot think of who will 'take over,' she was just a power unto herself."
At the end, Collins had no regrets.
"I did it my way, as Frank Sinatra would say," she told People. "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."
The plot, as USA TODAY described it, will be familiar to her fans: Lucky is dealing with "a vengeful enemy, a drug-addled Colombian club owner, and a sex-crazed Italian family." That's just for starters. Her teenage daughter, Max, is becoming the "It" girl in Europe's modeling world and her Kennedyesque son, Bobby, is being set up for a murder he didn't commit.
The book debuted at 36 on USA TODAY's Best-selling Books list. Collins has had 22 USA TODAY best sellers. The Power Trip in 2013 reached 23 on the list. Book seven in the Santangelo series, Goddess of Vengeance, reached No. 28 in 2011.
Collins wrote more than 30 novels, plus one cookbook.
Her first, 1968's The World Is Full of Married Men, was banned by Australia and South Africa, and condemned as "filthy and disgusting" by romance writer Barbara Cartland, due to its cheerful depiction of extramarital sex in swinging '60s London. The publicity about the scandalous book only helped sell more copies.
She was never "bashful writing about sex," she told the Associated Press years later.
Her first smash hit, 1983's Hollywood Wives, sold more than 15 million copies, leading to sequels and a TV miniseries in 1985 starring Anthony Hopkins, Candice Bergen, Angie Dickinson and Suzanne Somers.
As Collins told Vanity Fair in 2010, Hollywood Wives was controversial, too. "The Hollywood wives hated me," she said. "I got beneath the façade and into the mansions. Now it's become part of the language."
She was right: Just ask anyone who never missed an episode of Desperate Housewives or Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
She was thrilled, although she knew the queen, 89, had probably not perused such titles as The Stud and The Bitch. But the queen always knows what to say to anyone.
"It's quite something to write books," the queen told Collins, according to Collins and accounts in the Daily Mail.
"And I said, yes, especially for a school dropout," Collins recounted. "I'm British through and through and to meet the queen and come to (Buckingham) Palace is great."
Read more at: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2015/09/20/jackie-collins-legacy-pulpy-fun-hollywood-glamour-and-sexy-good-read/72518642/http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2015/09/20/jackie-collins-legacy-pulpy-fun-hollywood-glamour-and-sexy-good-read/72518642/
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