STAGE : Life After Alexis : Always in the public eye, Joan Collins hits the road in ‘Private Lives,’ hoping to prove herself onstage

Joan Collins heads off the airplane with three camera crews jostling to record every moment. A local TV reporter is scurrying alongside, her microphone in Collins’ face as all of them descend upon a small group with a sizable “Joan Collins Fan Club” sign.

Holding the sign is rock musician David Nash, who is also proffering a photograph of Collins in “The Opposite Sex” from 1956. As she leans over to autograph the photo, the young man comments that she must have been 16 or 17 when the picture was taken. Not at all, she corrects him: “I was 12, darling.”

Hardly. But you’d never know she’s pushing 60 now. Never truly offstage, she is as glamorously coiffed and dressed in an airport lounge as she was all those years on TV’s “Dynasty.” What’s her beauty secret, somebody calls out, as the entourage moves toward baggage claim. “Good genes,” she replies. “And luck.”

Collins is in town to headline Noel Coward’s classic play, “Private Lives,” here for two weeks en route to a Broadway opening in February, and the accompanying media circus is clearly designed to drum up business. But celebrity sometimes works against her. Although she did well by “Private Lives” in London, reviews here and elsewhere have been assessing her performance on TV and in real life as well as in Coward.

Best-known as “Dynasty’s” sexy, smug and nasty Alexis Carrington Colby, a part that made her a mega-star at the age of 50, the 58-year-old Collins has set out to prove she can do romantic comedy as well.

Coward first created the dueling Amanda--a woman described in the play as “jagged with sophistication”--and Elyot for Gertrude Lawrence and himself in 1930. Norma Shearer played Amanda in the 1931 film version, while assorted Broadway Amandas have included Tallulah Bankhead in 1948, Tammy Grimes--who won a Tony for the part--in 1970, and Maggie Smith in 1975.

As if that weren’t daunting enough, Elizabeth Taylor toured in 1983 in the role of the woman falling in love again with her ex-husband and did so with her ex-husband Richard Burton. Taylor and Burton even played Los Angeles’ Wilshire Theatre, where Collins opens Wednesday for three weeks, and did so on the way back from Broadway.

“I knew she hadn’t ever done stage in America, and I didn’t know what to expect,” concedes Arvin Brown, who is directing Collins and leading man Simon Jones in this production. “Everyone always wonders about actors who had primarily film and TV histories and what they will be like onstage, but she was enormously directable. She moves well, has a good voice and is able to project both the comic and emotional intentions. She really is a stage animal.”

Collins has wanted to play Amanda since she was on vacation from London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and played the French maid in “Private Lives.” Amanda “is just a fascinating character. She’s so mercurial which is very appealing because I’m mercurial. But she’s also extremely romantic, very witty and wise. (And) what appealed to me was not just Amanda but the combination of (Amanda and ex-husband Elyot) and the play itself. I love the play.”

She was too young for the part in the early ‘50s, then went off to be a celluloid sex kitten in dozens of mostly forgettable movies and TV shows that kept her busy until “Dynasty.” And she couldn’t persuade Britain’s Chichester Festival Theatre to do “Private Lives” in 1980--although “The Last of Mrs. Cheyney,” which she did instead, moved on to the West End for four months (“before ‘Dynasty,’ ” she points out.)

Then came “Dynasty.” But when the show finally came off the air in 1989 after nine seasons, the diva again started promoting a revival of “Private Lives.” London producer Michael Codron wanted to produce the show, and after taking some time off to finish her fifth published book, Collins opened with the play in September, 1990, in Bath. Two weeks later, the five-member cast headed off to London for a limited four-month run.

Enter Charles Duggan, a 38-year-old San Francisco-based producer who had produced Edward Duke’s one-man show “Jeeves Takes Charge” here and abroad. Duke was appearing as Victor, Amanda’s pompous second husband, in “Private Lives,” and Duggan went to London to catch the show.

Duggan had met Collins in Acapulco but never seen her onstage and admits he didn’t know what to expect. He was, however, quite impressed. “I knew I had to go to dinner afterward and was relieved I didn’t have to make anything up--she was delightful.”

The actress asked for his comments on her performance--which he gave her--and a few months later they saw one another again in Acapulco. Collins, Duggan and others were in the swimming pool at lyricist and composer Leslie Bricusse’s house when a call came through for Collins that an earlier deal to take “Private Lives” to Broadway had fallen through. Collins turned to Duggan, “and I said, ‘Sure, why not.’ Then we spent eight weeks negotiating the deal.”

Saying “the road is where you make your money,” the producer persuaded Collins to do 16 weeks on tour, plus eight on Broadway. Box office has been excellent so far, adds Duggan. He says it cost slightly over $1 million to open on tour, “and if it keeps going like this, we will have recouped all of it by the time we open on Broadway.”

He also gave her the new production she wanted, complete with new sets, director and, except for Duke, an entirely new cast. Collins approved her fellow performers but emphasizes that this is no star vehicle. “I wouldn’t want to do a star vehicle. Even ‘Hamlet’ really isn’t a star vehicle. Ophelia, Gertrude and Laertes are important. Hamlet just has the most lines.”

While both San Francisco newspaper reviewers later called the production a “star vehicle” anyway, Collins’ co-stars agree with her appraisal--publicly, at least--and praise her generosity. “I can’t deny I wondered what she’d be like,” says leading man Jones. “I thought this may be tricky, but it isn’t tricky at all. She’s simply a hard-working actress.”

Good thing, since these people spend a lot of time together. They spent Thanksgiving here, for instance, and will spend Christmas on the road as well. The tour will then be in Los Angeles, one of Collins’ three home towns, where she will be joined by her children: Tara, 28, who sings and plays guitar in a rock band; Sacha, 26, who is studying directing in London; and Katyana, 19.

When her children aren’t around, Collins does bring along family--of sorts. Generally close at hand is her assistant and friend Judy Bryer, who has worked with her in one way or another since 1968, when Collins was still married to Anthony Newley. The show’s press person, Pete Sanders, flies in and out from New York, supplemented by local people in each city. And her beau, British art dealer Robin Hurlstone, flies in and out from London.

Collins’ marriages to actor Maxwell Reed, Newley, producer Ronald Kass, and Swedish pop star Peter Holm, not to mention her engagement to Warren Beatty long, long ago, got considerable publicity and she is understandably chary about discussing her handsome young companion. Asked about Hurlstone, she says: “He’s 33, and as Noel Coward would say, ‘We’re terribly terribly happy.’ We’ve been together almost four years, and that’s all I’m going to say because he’s very private. He hates the spotlight, and I respect him for that.”

What’s it like to tour the country doing “Private Lives?”

Collins quotes actor Edmund Kean on his deathbed: Replying to a young actor who asked him, “Sir, what is dying like?” Kean replied, “Dying is easy. It’s comedy that’s difficult.”

It is particularly difficult for a celebrity. London theater-goers sometimes sat in the front rows with binoculars, and the scrutiny hasn’t stopped on this side of the Atlantic. She must be made up all the time, because there is always someone with a camera or a piece of paper to autograph.

To avoid celebrity-seekers, she sometimes even wears a disguise to shops and movie theaters. “It’s a myth that actors can’t go out and not be recognized,” she says, just before heading off to a film. “Even Princess Diana, who’s the most photographed woman in the world, can walk around and go to cinemas and things.”

But Princess Diana probably never told the huge “Tonight Show” audience that she disguised herself in blue jeans, raincoat, head scarf and dark glasses. Collins remarks that she was in a shop the other day when someone came over and said, “ ‘So happy to have you here, Miss Collins,’ and I asked, ‘How did you know it was me?’ He said, ‘Because I saw you on Jay Leno and recognized the disguise when you came in.’ ”

Even parties are hard work. After opening night, for instance, her sleek white limo arrives at Lia Belli’s mansion in Pacific Heights where she is instantly whisked away to a side door by a security person. As everyone else parties downstairs, she is upstairs hidden away. And when she makes her appearance a while later, people almost lunge at her as a huge microphone dangles over her head capturing every word.

Besides the rigor, night life on the road is generally minimal. Restaurants in most cities are closed by the time the show breaks, for instance, although in Denver, some restaurants kept their kitchens open for Collins and crew. Her weekly treat is a movie--this week “Beauty and the Beast,” last week “The Addams Family,” the week before that “Cape Fear.”

“What people don’t understand is how hard it is,” says Collins. “First of all (there’s) the unbelievable energy that you bring onto that stage; the tension and the electric undercurrents that are seething through your body are enormous. Even when I was in London, I would sleep until noon. Then I’d sort of totter out and have lunch with a few girlfriends, maybe do a bit of shopping, see a friend or go to an art gallery. And then, I’d have to go back and rest.

“It’s just like being an athlete. You have got to do it all right because your health is at such a premium. If I get sick, Charles is going to lose a fortune.”

That means eight hours of sleep a night, regular meals and enough time to exercise. She hasn’t exercised for three days, she says--there was no time and she was exhausted--but the usual routine is 100 sit-ups, some pushups, “and a few sort of waist stretches, nothing exotic or Cher-like.”

She has to exercise, she says, because of “that stuff in Act II.” That’s when she does the Charleston and the splits. She kicks a magazine out of Elyot’s hands, breaks a record over his head, hits him with flowers, even throws chocolates at him. She shoves him into furniture and throws him onto the floor. By the time the curtain has come down, the stage is a shambles.

She and co-star Jones are also pretty worn out, and now that they’ve eliminated the second intermission, the two performers have only a few minutes between the fight scene and Act III. But performing eight times a week is just the start. The tour lingers in few cities more than a week or two, and daytimes are often used for travel or rehearsal.

Moreover, Collins’ major assignment is to get people into the tent. On her day off two weeks ago, she flew to San Francisco for a newspaper interview. She used her day off between Phoenix and San Francisco to fly to Los Angeles for “The Tonight Show.”

Most tour stops begin with airport receptions, then move on to hotel or theater press conferences, followed by a parade of reporters and camera crews. Besides meeting with the local press in each place, Collins is usually one or two cities ahead by phone, or doing long-term magazine interviews pegged to the Broadway opening. Other cast members also do interviews, Sanders says, “but basically it falls on Joan.”

There is, for instance, an interview suite at the posh Clift Hotel here. It isn’t her suite--that’s on another floor--but a tastefully sterile place where TV cameras can set up in one room while print journalists are on standby in another. Ask her a question, and she’ll answer it: Yes, she did earn $120,000 an episode at “Dynasty,” but only the final year. And no, she didn’t get $3 million for her last book; she got $3 million for her last two books.

In Houston, Cartier hosted an in-store champagne reception and put costume sketches based on a Cartier design in store windows. In Phoenix, Neiman Marcus hosted a tea for about 20 elegantly dressed women who lined up so that each could have her picture taken with the actress.

“She’s a great sport,” says press rep Sanders. “I present a lot of things to her, and she’s turned down remarkably few.”

When Joan Collins was growing up in London, she says, she couldn’t decide whether to be a journalist, fashion designer or actress. She made her stage debut at 9, playing a boy in Ibsen’s “The Doll’s House,” and wrote her first novel at 11. There was even a time she thought about becoming a detective and went around the house taking everybody’s fingerprints.

But not for long. Before she’d even turned 20, she was off making movies. From “The Woman’s Angle” in 1952--and comparisons to Ava Gardner and Jane Russell--she moved on to “Land of the Pharoahs,” “The Virgin Queen,””Tales from the Crypt” and dozens more.

Films like “Empire of the Ants” helped pay the rent, she’s said more than once, and the rent’s a lot higher these days. She calls herself tri-coastal, with homes in Los Angeles, London and the South of France, and one can’t even estimate her clothing budget. She was frugal when she started out, she said once. “But when you work, you deserve a better lifestyle. You’ve earned it. I’ve worked bloody hard for my money.”

That she has. In addition to acting and producing, she’s amassed separate fortunes at writing and merchandising. Besides a book about her youngest daughter’s recovery from a near-fatal accident, there have been “The Joan Collins Beauty Book,” and her novels “Prime Time” and “Love and Desire and Hate.” Her autobiography, “Past Imperfect,” she says, “was sort of easy because all I had to do was write about my life. So it didn’t have to have a plot.”

She’s not peddling blouse or lingerie collections anymore--”that was a long, long time ago”--but there is still “Spectacular” perfume. Her eyewear line, she says, “is the most successful celebrity eyewear” and she sells her jewelry line on a cable shopping channel.

She would like to do more TV and film, but concedes, “I realize that any actress over 40 has a hard time finding roles. As you get older, it doesn’t matter how you look--people think of you as your age. And you know the way the business is--it’s still sexist to the extent that you can have Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson or Robert Redford, all of whom are in their 50s, playing romantic leading men. But I don’t see too many women in their 50s--not even Jane Fonda anymore.”

That’s about as philosophical as she chooses to get. “I do very little self-analyzation,” Collins says at one point. “I’m always reading these articles on Cher or Dustin Hoffman and they know themselves so well, and they’ve given so much thought to themselves and what they think and how they feel and what’s shaped their lives. I just get on with it. I know actors who are 63 who are still going to a shrink. That’s pretty pathetic--if you’re not happy with who you are by the time you’re 40, you might as well give up.”

Collins’ own private life has long been a fairly public one. What hasn’t been in the papers, particularly during the high-profile last divorce from Holm, she’s put into either her autobiography or her novels. Both her novels were bestsellers (although the New York Times called “Prime Time” “a tepid, hackneyed affair”). Factoring in her dissatisfaction with the show’s scripts at its end, she says, “the whole of my life during ‘Dynasty’ was infinitely better than some of the scripts we were doing.”

Duggan intentionally opened “Private Lives” in Denver, home town of the Carrington clan. He swears they didn’t know “Dynasty: The Reunion” miniseries would be airing the very week they launched the “Private Lives” tour, but it certainly didn’t hurt publicity efforts.

“She’s very proud of Alexis,” says Duggan, “but it’s a burden on her.”

Adds Duke: “The problem is that she’s an icon and therefore people want to throw things at her, which is very unfair.”

While the Variety rave in her press kit calls the show a “marvelous party” and her performance “sly, stylish and self-assured,” reviews in the United States and London have been mixed. And nearly every one of them mentions “Dynasty” too many times for her stage colleagues.

“She was hurt by the (less-than-favorable San Francisco) reviews,” says Jill Tasker, who plays Elyot’s second wife, Sybil, “and I can’t blame her. I would be hurt by that too. It must be very frustrating to have people refuse to judge you on your talent but instead on a mythical character like Alexis on ‘Dynasty.’ It makes us all very angry. If the critics would just stop trying to impress one another and relax with it, they’d appreciate the wonderful job she’s doing onstage as Amanda.”

Collins has no plans to head off the stage. Expected in February on Arts & Entertainment is “Tonight at 8:30,” a series of Noel Coward one-act plays starring Collins that appeared earlier this year on the BBC. And she says she’s open to more live theater, particularly new plays. “Private Lives” and “Mrs. Cheyney” were both revivals, she notes, adding: “It’s like kissing a lot of frogs--you have to read a lot of schlock to find a good play.”

Just give her a chance, Duggan urges: “It’s a joy for (us) when people say how surprised they are with her performance and that she can do comedy so well. She loves people to discover she can act. If we come into Los Angeles and New York and that’s the reaction, great. Let them come in doubting.”