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Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN
CNN Films’ “Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story” will air on Sunday, June 27 at 9:00 p.m. ET.
A year after British writer Jackie Collins died after a private battle with breast cancer in 2015, a list was published for her 21,784-square-foot home – an 8-bedroom Beverly Hills property that’s blessed with clean lines and pop art -Color blocking from. David Hockney’s pool painting “A Bigger Splash” was inspired.
The origins of the house were fit for a love story – something Collins knew a thing or two about.
She captivated millions of readers in the 1970s and 1980s as a rebellious romance novelist who spelled out the details of pulsating desire. Her confident female protagonists, who never settled, have starred in more than 30 different novels and eight film adaptations over five decades. Collins was a self-proclaimed feminist – though her kind of sex-forward feminism wasn’t always warmly welcomed – and she was known for her big personality and her eye-catching love for the leopard print.
“(Jackie) changed the way women have sex,” said pop culture critic Wednesday Martin. Recognition: Brian Aris / CNN FILMS
“She put female sexuality at the center of the world and people have gone mad,” said pop culture critic Wednesday Martin in the new CNN Films documentary “Lady Boss,” taken from the title of Collins’ 1990 novel. “It changed the way women have sex; women have to be selfish in bed thanks to Jackie Collins.”
But the house, which had a personality that suited her – it had numerous desks and was populated with bronzes and paintings of big cats – was a love letter born of Collins’ own romance. Her second husband, club owner Oscar Lerman, had worked with architect Ardie Tavangarian to bring her architectural vision to life before Lerman died of prostate cancer in 1992.
Architect Ardie Tavangarian helped bring Collins’ vision for her home to life. His photos show the house when it was completed in the early 1990s. Recognition: Ardie Tavangarian / Arya Group
“Oscar was more on the management side and she was more on the creative side,” Tavangarian said in a telephone interview. “She was very clear about what she wanted. And we basically helped her bring it together.”
“They planned every element of this house,” recalls Rory Green, Collins’ daughter, in “Lady Boss”. “It was pretty nice; it was almost like a museum. That was her fantasy. “
A whirlwind romance
Collins met Oscar Lerman in his London club Tramp in the mid-1960s after a tragic first marriage to businessman Wallace Austin, who died of suicide, and when her ambitions to become a Hollywood actress, according to “Lady Boss”, fizzled out. As the sister of Joan Collins from Dynasty, Jackie had always sought the spotlight but hadn’t found her way into it.
It was Lerman who encouraged her to finish her first book, “The World Is Full of Married Men,” she said in an archive interview in the documentary. The book, published in 1968, was about an advertising manager who starts an affair, but it’s the two women who prevail. It was an instant hit.
“I had written all my life, I had written a lot of half books that I hadn’t finished and he was the first to say to me, ‘It’s absolutely great and you can do it,’ and so I got it Made it, “said Collins.
Their advertisements were the stuff of romance novels. Her daughter Tracy stated on “Lady Boss” that her mother actually had two marriage proposals, so she took both of them on vacation with Tracy to see who would treat her daughter best. Lerman emerged victorious.
Collins wrote 32 books during her lifetime, half a billion copies of which have sold. Recognition: Brian Aris / CNN FILMS
By the time Collins and Lerman had two more daughters in 1980 and their family settled in sunny California, she had launched a number of bestsellers. She began writing her most famous anti-high society novels, including Chances, Hollywood Wives and Lucky.
When Lerman was diagnosed with cancer in 1989, he and Collins began planning their new Beverly Hills home based on their ideas.
“I think in many ways she didn’t know how to deal with (Lerman’s diagnosis),” Collins’ longtime friend and business manager Laura Lizer said in the documentary. “She just thought if she got on with her life it just wasn’t there. And they decided to build a new home.”
A house suitable for Jackie
When the couple commissioned Tavangarian to design their house, he was in his late twenties and was inspired by the clean lines of the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier of the early 20th century.
“(Collins) wanted more modern European architecture, which is what I’m doing,” he recalls. “Their vision was to create something to entertain (guests) and show their art in a very clean, contemporary light.”
The two-story house had a guest house at the back, and they decided that a 30-meter gallery of art would connect the two.
“She was extremely visual and understood spaces,” said Tavangarian of Collins’ modern taste. Recognition: Ardie Tavangarian / Arya Group
“She was also very much in love with Art Deco … She has this incredible number of Tiffany lamps and these different objects,” said Tavangarian. “We created these showcases and rooms to display.”
Tavangarian’s photographs from this period show modern, light-flooded, airy interiors with beige-colored walls and light-colored wood and cream-colored furniture that are intended to compensate for her art. The minimalist, white, geometric exterior, punctuated by palm trees, opened to a long terrace in the background that surrounds the deep turquoise blue of the Hockney-inspired rectangular pool.
After three years of planning and construction, the house was finished in 1992, but Lerman’s health did not allow it.
“He was so determined to get the house ready for Jackie,” said Collins’ friend Barbara Davis on “Lady Boss”.
The Beverly Hills home is called “museum-like” because of its clean lines, skylights, and artwork. Lerner died before they could move into their new home together. Recognition: Ardie Tavangarian / Arya Group
Lerman died before they could move in and, as Tracy related, Collins retired to her new study after his death to write in seclusion.
“She really didn’t handle (his death) well,” said Tracy on “Lady Boss”. But, she added, Collins kept a strong facade. “She had learned to survive and Jackie Collins was always there for her.”
Collins stayed in the house she planned with Lerman for over two decades, until her own death a year 77 years old after a six year battle with cancer. According to the Los Angeles Times, the house sold for $ 21 million in July 2016, but Tavangarian believes it will always be hers.
“The house was Jackie,” he said. “The house was around them.”
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