‘Vanity Fair Portraits’ at LACMA

Sibling rivalry has never looked more glamorous than when Annie Leibovitz shot the high-profile sisters Jackie and Joan Collins in Los Angeles for Vanity Fair in 1987, at the height of the “Dynasty”-era excess. Competing, cantilevered cleavage and dueling baubles were just the half of it. Rumor has it that tensions were high between the actress and the author because Joan, right, had signed a multimillion-dollar book deal with Jackie’s publisher.

“Jackie was the Queen of Dish, and Joan was the Queen of Soap. The two of them were white-hot, and you could see that success on the page,” says David Friend, who, along with Graydon Carter and Terence Pepper of the National Portrait Gallery, co-curated the LACMA show featuring this portrait and others from Vanity Fair. Adds Friend, “Who wears sunglasses in a limousine?” The exhibit of 130 photographs from 1913 to 2008, including iconic shots by Man Ray and Cecil Beaton, makes its only U.S. stop in Los Angeles.