‘I Married Joan’: Big-Budget Soap From Court Files
Once, they bought their clothing in the most exclusive boutiques from Rodeo Drive to the Via Condotti--$400 crocodile shoes, fine furs, dazzling gems. Now, they are airing their dirty linen in Superior Court.
The fun couple, Joan Collins and Peter Holm, are to return at 9:15 a.m. Tuesday for Round 2, wherein attorneys for the glamorous 54-year-old “Dynasty” star and her 40-year-old husband for 13 months, a one-time Swedish rocker, will bicker over his demand for $80,000 a month temporary spousal support to keep him in the manner to which he so quickly became accustomed. In July, Collins won Round 1, when validity of their prenuptial agreement was upheld.
Only weeks before that decision by Judge Earl F. Riley, Holm, who had been depicted by his counsel as penniless, flew first class to London, where, grandstanding for the tabloids, he said he was there “to haunt” her and gloated, “In the end, I’ll probably end up with around $2 million. I worked a miracle on Joan’s finances.”
A ‘Deep Love’ For Joan
But in documents filed in court in March, Holm professed his “deep love” for Collins. The papers provide a voyeur’s glimpse of the life style of these rich and famous--from their marriage in Las Vegas on Nov. 6, 1985 (they flew there by private plane, she sporting a five-carat diamond engagement ring), until Collins filed for annulment in December, 1986.
In months of jetting from Los Angeles to Paris to London, they checked into what Holm described in the court filings papers as the “most exclusive and expensive” hotels including the Ritz in Paris, where a three-month stay in a six-room suite added up to a $200,000 bill. Four or five nights a week they could be seen dining out at places where it’s best not to look at the right side of the menu: In London it was Annabels, the Connaught, Langans Brasserie, Tramp, the White Elephant, Maxim’s. Closer to home, they frequented the Bistro Gardens, Chasen’s, La Scala, La Serre, Ma Maison, Spago, Trumps. “At an average cost of $100 per person,” Holm noted.
And afterward, always, they danced. “We danced in the most sophisticated nightclubs and discotheques in the world, such as Tramps in Los Angeles and London, Regine in New York, Paris, London, Monte Carlo and St. Tropez,” Holm stated.
They ate Russian caviar and smoked salmon, sipped vintage wines, bought fine art, skied at Gstaad with Roger Moore and clothes designer Valentino, partied in Hollywood with everyone from Johnny Carson to the Gabor sisters, bought liquor “by the crate” for celebrity-register parties in their 13,000-square-foot home at on Cabrillo Drive in Beverly Hills. In England, they rubbed elbows at Ascot with the Queen, Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
But in court in Los Angeles they were to spend the better part of two days squabbling over ownership of a short-legged ironing board and steam iron, drawers of screws, an electric stapler, a kitchen stepladder, a red metal tool box and three black taffeta stools.
In the 1980s’ version of sacrificing everything for “the woman I love,” Holm portrays himself as the devoted husband and selfless helpmate who guided Collins’ career, untangled her finances and lavished her with gifts and affection, for all of which, he reasoned, he was due half of the $5.2 million she earned during their marriage.
In his court filings is their love story, beginning with their meeting one July afternoon in 1983 in Windsor, England. She had noticed him, he said, and had asked for an introduction, inviting him to escort her to a world premiere of a “Superman” film that night.
“We shared a wonderful evening,” Holm recalled--the film, then on to “the most famous and chique (sic) London discotheque, Tramps, where we danced together all through the night. This was the evening in which I fell in love with Joan. We had both fallen in love.”
But, as luck would have it, Collins had to return to Los Angeles the next day. They parted, she inviting him to come and visit. He knew, “for the first time I had fallen in love” and, a few days later, “missing her terribly,” he called Los Angeles. Collins asked if he might be coming to the United States and, he said, “I made arrangements immediately.”
A New Rolls
At LAX, Collins’ driver picked him up to take him to her home on Bowmont Drive, off Coldwater Canyon. “I was surprised,” he wrote, “that Joan’s main car was a 10-year-old Mercedes. I said to myself that Joan should have a brand new Rolls-Royce.” During their marriage, she would acquire one.
Their reunion, Holm wrote, was “happy and loving”--dinner that night at Ma Maison, then on to a party in progress at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion. “Once again, Joan and I danced into the early hours of the morning. We fell even more in love.” Still, he duly noted, “That night, for the consideration of Joan’s daughter, Katy, I slept in a guest room at Bowmont.”
For a week they spent every possible minute together. “Just to be close to her” Holm visited the “Dynasty” set. Unable to bear the thought of parting from her, he extended his American holiday by two weeks. He doesn’t pinpoint it but sometime during that two weeks, he said, “We made love for the first time and we got to know each other more and more.”
Only a week after Holm returned to Britain, Collins flew over. “It was during this week,” he said, “that we decided that we wanted to be together, wherever that was.” They returned to Los Angeles, to live together on Bowmont Drive.
Of course, Holm noted, “My businesses in England suffered greatly as a result . . . finally I had no option but to sell them in order that I might spend my time with Joan.”
Joan, he had noticed, “wasn’t capable of being an actress and a businesswoman at the same time . . . Joan needed help”--and he was available. “I couldn’t stand to see my sweetheart being unhappy.”
Gradually, Holm “became involved with every aspect of Joan’s financial and business life,” an arrangement he viewed as a “perfect solution.” Now she could concentrate on her career--”The relationship was perfect.” He began writing the checks, which she would later sign, keeping the records, negotiating her deals.
In due time Holm proposed marriage, in a romantic moment on the Caribbean island of Antigua, and, at Christmastime in 1984, they became engaged. “I was happy in my own mind that we would always be together,” he said. “It would be my first marriage.”
For Collins, it would be the fourth. She told the London press, “I’m thrilled. Peter is ideal for me.”
Mr. and Mrs. Peter Holm went abroad as frequently as others go out to dinner. They shopped in Paris, Rome, Milan, St. Tropez--”Travel was always first class.” A friend’s magnificent estate was available to them in Acapulco. In Hawaii, they occupied film producer Allan Carr’s luxurious oceanfront spread.
They owned six cars but, on the Continent, they jetted from city to city by private plane. They bought a “romantic little hideaway”--in fact, a pair of them--on the coast of Southern France at Port Grimaud and, to go with the houses, a 38-foot yacht. They commuted there from Nice by private helicopter, shaving 15 minutes from the time it would have taken to drive.
They skied at Mammoth, outfitted in expensive outfits pour le sport , and under the watchful eyes of private instructors.
They arrived at European airports with “huge amounts of luggage”--more than 40 pieces--transported at huge cost (sometimes thousands of dollars), sometimes including computers, video players and a large-screen TV. When filming the CBS miniseries “Sins” in France, they took along their fully equipped personal gym.
Holm was, by his own assessment, a “stylish” dresser, continually updating and enlarging his wardrobe “in order to enhance my wife’s and my public image.” That meant an outlay of “approximately $20,000 a month,” including accessories. During their 13-month marriage, he estimated, together they spent $600,000 clothing themselves.
Shopping as a Hobby
“Shopping was one of our favorite pastimes,” Holm explained. He favored $2,000 leather jackets, silk ties, expensive watches and silk shirts and he festooned himself and her with “tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry.”
Their new home at on Cabrillo Drive in Beverly Hills, a $2 million pied a deux , was, Holm noted, an all-cash purchase. (Whether it is Collins’ property or joint property is being disputed). He described the house: “Huge master suite, a separate guest house and numerous other amenities, including room to park 20 cars, large pool and fountains, an extensive lawn and terraced walks throughout the estate,” as well as a panoramic view over Beverly Hills and Los Angeles “all the way to the ocean.”
Nevertheless, the property was a fixer-upper. To him, Holm said, fell supervision of a $600,000 renovation--”We hired architects, draftsmen, designers, decorators, builders, carpenters, roofers, plasterers, gardeners, draperers, carpet-layers, heating engineers, wallpaperers, constructional engineers,” all charged with redoing the place “in keeping with our taste.”
This meant “the finest in furnishings,” including custom-built chairs and sofas and electronically controlled curtains.
Remodeling Project
Many a couple has come close to divorce during a remodeling project and the Holmses, apparently, were no exception. “Our relationship had always been a bit stormy,” Holm said, two “outspoken personalities (that) sometimes clashed.” He noted, “This renovation was a major source of our frustration and irritation with each other.”
Just keeping 13,000 square feet vacuumed and dusted can be a trial. “We have always employed a full-time maid and cook,” he said, as well as four other full-time staff “in order to facilitate our life style.” And Holm employed a personal adviser “to assist me in my business affairs,” which were conducted from an office in the east wing, where he had installed computer laser printers and “government-approved shredding machines.”
Deciding that Collins’ “great talent and good taste” and his business savvy were a winning combination, Holm said, he initiated and negotiated “Sins,” a seven-hour miniseries that he described as “very profitable” for them. As executive producers, the couple worked “happily and proudly together. It was the ideal situation for two people so in love,” Holm said.
Buoyed by this success, they followed with “Monte Carlo,” a four-hour miniseries for CBS. “Unfortunately,” Holm noted, “the ratings were not excellent.” However, he added, Collins “was very happy with the financial benefits and the wardrobes that she was able to choose and keep.”
And, he said, their relationship continued to be “wonderful and romantic.”
But the honeymoon ended rather quickly. By February of this year they were in Superior Court, where their attorneys were to face off over the ensuing five months in a domestic showdown in which Holm would try to convince the judge that to maintain the life style he enjoyed with Collins he needs temporary spousal support of $80,000 a month. (That issue is to be decided at the hearing scheduled for Tuesday.)
It has been a prime-time melodrama complete with infighting over access to wardrobe closets, to his-and-her resort homes doors apart on rue de Fer a Cheval in Port Grimaud, charges by Holm that Collins had hidden his 1984 BMW 635 CSI, for which he listed a Blue Book value of $40,000, and an ultimatum to Holm to vacate the Bowmont house or face eviction.
There have been accusations of commando-style sneak attacks in which one party or another spirited away various files and documents from the Bowmont garage.
Holm has maintained that Collins “continues to earn great sums of money due to our efforts” and, at the time they parted, had at least $1.25 million in cash accounts while he, a high school graduate unsophisticated in the ways of American law, and having devoted 13 months to being “manager of the family unit,” is left destitute, jobless and credit cardless, without even resident alien status.
His $150-an-hour attorney, Frank Steinschriber--to whom he said he owes about $75,000--filed papers listing Collins’ 1986 gross income at “approximately $5 million” including wages from “at least 10 different companies.”
But attorneys for Collins claim that, as business manager for “Alexis,” Holm mucked things up so badly that she owes about $1 million in state and federal income taxes and charged that he is unwilling to account for “in excess of $1 million” discovered missing.
Collins’ attorney, William Glucksman, scoffing at Holm’s request for $80,000 a month, called it “an affront to the intelligence of this court” and said it was based “completely on fantasy.” He asked, “Who is this man kidding?” Certified Public Accountant Lawrence Turner in a signed statement noted that Holm or his wholly owned corporation had been paid about $1.2 million during the marriage, from which he paid no living expenses, and pointed out that Collins “is not a bank.”
Picket Line Duty
In July, to draw attention to his financial plight, Holm and friends picketed in front of the Beverly Hills mansion he once shared with Collins.
While he has talked about devotion, she has talked about harassment. Collins obtained a restraining order that forbids him contact with her or her four children from previous marriages. She has charged in court papers that he screamed at her, stalked her, threatened bodily harm and caused her such “extreme stress and anxiety” that she needed medical treatment for heart palpitations.
She has called him a “crazed, irrational maniac, out of control.” What’s more, Collins said, her 6-foot-2 husband carried with him everywhere a padlocked bag and, asked what’s inside, would say only: “Explosives and gold bars.”
Nonsense, responded Holm--”My behavior has never been violent or irrational. . . . I have a deep love for the petitioner and would never behave in the manner characterized in her declaration.” He said that, while he “never hurt or threatened to hurt” his wife, she, unprovoked, once struck him with her open hand while screaming that she hated him.
And, of course, there was 23-year-old Romina Danielson, the other woman, reportedly dubbed “Passion Flower” by Holm. The would-be actress fainted in court in July after testifying that she and Holm had carried on a torrid affair before and during his marriage to Collins.
Will a compromise be reached, or will Holm have to live in poverty? Tune in tomorrow.
