Joan Collins

Joan Collins enters the diary through two Los Angeles encounters in 1985: a greeting at a television studio and a crowded celebration for The Love Boat’s thousandth guest star. She is also connected to Warhol’s portrait practice by her reminder that he still owed her a painting, an obligation the passages leave unresolved.

Los Angeles Encounters

On January 3, 1985, Warhol visited a studio across from Formosa Restaurant, where Dynasty was filmed and the writers of The Love Boat were working on his episode. Joan Collins had just finished shooting when he greeted her; he described her warmly as great. The entry places their brief exchange within a busy production setting, with roughly five hundred people working at the studio, rather than recounting a longer conversation or a formal interview.

The Unfulfilled Painting

During that same studio visit, Collins told Warhol that he still owed her a painting. The diary records the reminder but gives no account of when the promise originated, what image the painting was to depict, or whether he eventually made it. It therefore establishes an outstanding personal and professional obligation without resolving its terms.

The reminder sits within a period when portrait commissions were a major source of Warhol’s income. His usual process began with about sixty Polaroid photographs of a sitter, from which he selected images to be prepared as silkscreens; the diary does not say that Collins’s promised painting went through this process. The distinction matters: her claim is documented, but no completed Collins portrait is identified in these passages.

The Love Boat Celebration

On March 31, Warhol attended The Love Boat’s thousandth guest star party at the Beverly Hilton with Jon Gould. Collins was there too, and Warhol had his picture taken with her for fifteen minutes. He thought she then did not go into the dinner, since nobody saw her inside; the diary presents this as his impression, not a confirmed account of her movements. The brief photo session and uncertain departure make Collins’s appearance part of the event’s public spectacle, while leaving the earlier painting obligation—and its outcome—open.