Drama in Courtroom: ‘Other Woman’ Collapses on the Stand in Collins Case

It was the stuff of prime-time soap opera at its best. And at its worst.

There was Joan Collins, as glamorous as the venal Alexis she plays on television’s torrid “Dynasty,” sashaying her way across the courtroom in a canary yellow bolero jacket and tight white skirt. She laughed. She wept. She charmed.

There was onetime Swedish rock star Peter Holm, tall and nattily dressed in a shimmering gray silk Italian suit, his coiffed blond hair hitting just below the collar. Estranged from Collins, he insisted that he still loved her. She snickered.

There was a young would-be actress in white, the “other woman” who collapsed on the witness stand after stunning the courtroom by admitting to a passionate affair with Holm before, during and after his marriage to Collins. Romina Danielson, 23, said Holm called her his “passion flower.”

Audience Packs Court

And there was the full house. Old ladies who had taken the bus in just for the performance, men who got there hours early to grab a seat, and a crush of reporters and paparazzi from around 1952998688photographing every emotion-filled glance.

Only this was the drama of real life and the 54-year-old Collins was playing herself, a woman outraged that Holm, 14 years her junior, would demand that she pay him $80,000 a month in temporary spousal support after a marriage that foundered after 13 months.

On Thursday, the third day of what was supposed to be a two-day run at the downtown Los Angeles Superior Courthouse, the tangled scenario played like a hit soap opera. Represented by flamboyant divorce lawyer Marvin Mitchelson, Collins sat, as she had for two days before, sipping Evian mineral water from a plastic cup as Danielson testified in a whispery voice of her liaison with Holm. Smiling with vintage Alexis-style haughtiness, Collins frequently glanced back in triumph at her secretary, her personal attorney and the two, sometimes three, bodyguards sitting behind her in the courtroom.

Sporting a large diamond solitaire on her left hand and clad in a form-fitting tank-top dress, the dark-haired, lilac-lipped Danielson said she was living at the home of her future husband, Axel Danielson, now 80, when Holm asked to meet her. The former rock star, a friend of Axel Danielson, said he found her voice “charming” on the telephone, she testified.

A sexual relationship flourished between the two, she said, and Holm dubbed her his “passion flower . . . a flower that’s that red. Its color gets deeper and deeper as you look at it.”

She said Holm told her she was “sexy, fantastic” and had “a way of making a man feel good.” She testified that the former Swedish singer wanted her to bear his child and live with him after his marriage to Collins ended.

Free-Thinking Millionaire

Speaking haltingly, she said Holm convinced her to marry the elderly Danielson because he was a millionaire and a free-thinking Swede who would allow her to do anything she wanted. Holm told her that his relationship with Collins was only a way to get what he wanted financially, Danielson testified.

Holm told her that “it takes a couple of years until I can accomplish what I want financially,” the visibly flustered Danielson testified. “Then we could be together. . . . After two years, he could split . . . from Joan Collins.”

As dramas go, it seemed like a script tailor-made for television at its tackiest. Especially when Danielson looked skyward, slumped in her chair and slithered to the floor, sobbing wildly.

The audience in the jammed courtroom gasped, Collins stood up and walked past the prone woman and out of court. Paramedics were summoned and the proceedings halted as Danielson was carried off.

Collapse Called an Act

Later, outside in a courthouse hallway, Holm dismissed Danielson’s story as a fabrication and called her collapse an act.

“Her motive is clear,” Holm said. “She wants to be famous, to sit on the stand there and to be dramatic.”

And Holm knows drama. Recently he picketed outside Collins’ Beverly Hills home and earlier had barricaded himself for nearly two days in another home owned by the actress.

Separated from Holm in December, 1986, Collins had testified earlier that she agreed to wed him only after the two signed a prenuptial agreement that she claims provided him with 20% of her gross income only while they were married. Collins earned more than $5 million last year and the $1 million that went to Holm is all that is due him, she said.

Holm has hotly disagreed, claiming that the agreement only covered how he would be supported during the brief marriage and had nothing to do with divorce proceedings. He testified that he spent the money to augment his designer wardrobe, to buy gifts for Collins and to otherwise support himself. Holm claims that he is entitled to the property and income that any husband is due under California’s community property divorce law.

The trial this week is to determine the legitimacy of the prenuptial pact and whether Holm should be paid the $80,000 he has requested in temporary support. A divorce or annulment of the marriage is yet to come.

The next act is scheduled for today.