[EDITOR'S NOTE: According to Joan Collins, she submitted the complete manuscript for "A Ruling Passion," on schedule. The manuscript follows the outline she devised with Random House editor Rosemary Cheetham, she said. But after Cheetham resigned, her new editor lost faith in the project and told her "nobody is interested" in the book's characters. To back out of the contract, the publisher created the ploy that she didn't finish her work on time, Collins said. In this Dec. 11, 1995 affirmation in support of motion for a summary judgment, Collins recounts her deteriorating relationship with her publisher.]
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF' NEW YORK
COUNTY OF NEW YORK
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RANDOM HOUSE UK LIMITED and RANDOM HOUSE, INC.,
Plaintiffs,
-against-
GEMINI STAR PRODUCTIONS LIMITED, JOAN
COLLINS and MARTIN D. SINGER, as Trustee of the
Irving P. And Mary Lazar Trust,
Defendants.
AFFIRMATION IN SUPPORT OF MOTION FOR
SUMMARY JUDGMENT
Hon. Ira Gammerman Index No. 114874/94 PC -#9803
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JOAN COLLINS, affirms the following facts under penalties of perjury:(1)
1. I am a defendant in the above-captioned matter, President of my co-defendant, Gemini Star Productions Limited ("Gemini"), and am submitting this affidavit in support of my and Gemini's motion for partial summary judgment dismissing the fourth, fifth and sixth causes of action set forth in the second amended complaint verified April 23, 1995, and in support of Gemini's motion for summary judgment on its first and second counterclaims against Random House, Inc.
2. Although I am best known as actress, having had a successful career on the stage, on screen and on television for many years, I have also achieved a certain recognition and success as a best selling author. In 1978, I wrote Past Imperfect, An Autobiography, which was published in 1978 and was a worldwide bestseller. Subsequently, I wrote and published in England The Joan Collins Beauty Book, which was also a bestseller in 1980, and a year later, Katy, a Fight for Life, which was intended to reach a much smaller audience.
3. In 1988, my novel, Prime Time, was published in the United States by Simon & Schuster and in England by Century. Prime Time was the first novel that I had ever written, and, I am happy to say, it found a wide acceptance throughout the English-speaking world. Indeed, it was among the top all-time best-selling first novels published since 1945, and so recognized by Publishers Weekly.
4. In 1990, my second novel, Love and Desire and Hate, was published successfully in the United States and in Great Britain, and in 1993, My Secrets, a beauty book, was on the English bestseller list for many weeks.
5. Because of the incidents giving rise to this lawsuit and the dispute over the two books which I wrote for plaintiffs in this case, I did not publish a novel for some time after Love and Desire and Hate. However, earlier this year, the third novel of mine to be published, Too Damn Famous, was released in England by Orion Press, and once again, found a place on the English bestseller lists. That novel will be published in May of 1996 in the United States by Dutton.
6. My original publisher in the United States was Simon & Schuster and in Great Britain, Century, which subsequently merged with Hutchinson and in 1990 was acquired by Random House, Inc. and changed its name to Random House UK.
7. In 1988, Gemini and I entered into a two-book agreement with Century Hutchinson, the first of which books was Love And Desire And Hate, which, as I have noted, was published successfully in Great Britain in 1990. My publisher in the United States was Simon & Schuster, and although Love and Desire and Hate was also published successfully by that house, for reasons which have nothing to do with this lawsuit, it became clear in 1990 that it would be appropriate for me to seek another U.S. publisher. Accordingly, I asked Irving P. Lazar, my agent, to try and find another publisher for my next novel. During the spring of 1990, he advised me that he was negotiating with Joni Evans of Random House, and subsequently I learned he had entered into a two-book deal with Random House pursuant to which that house would acquire the U.S. rights to my next two novels. That contract and my personal guaranty of it, copies of which are annexed as Exhibits A and B hereto, were executed in the late spring of 1990.
8. In December of 1990, I submitted an outline via Mr. Lazar to Joni Evans, and I met with her at my home in California on February 19, 1991, at which time we worked on a revised outline for my novel.
9. In June of 1991, Ms. Evans and Rosemary Cheetham, the English editor who, along with Joni Evans, was jointly responsible for editing my book, met with me over a three-day period at my Los Angeles home. That meeting resulted in a plot outline which it was my intention to turn into the first novel required under the contract.
10. I spent the summer of 1991 at my vacation home in the South of France and spent most of that summer writing the first novel which I had agreed to deliver in the contract based on the agreed-upon plot outline. Although the contract provides at paragraph 28(a) that only the first half of my first manuscript was due by September 1, 1991 (and also provides that I had 90 days grace after that date within which to deliver the manuscript), in fact I finished the entire manuscript by the end of September and delivered to Random US and Random UK a complete manuscript for a novel tentatively entitled, A Ruling Passion, based upon the outline that my editor and I had created. A copy of that manuscript is submitted as Exhibit MS-1 with this motion.
11. Shortly after delivering the manuscript of A Ruling Passion, Rosemary Cheetham resigned as a result of the discharge of her husband, who was Random UK's chairman at that time.
12. Although it is not clear whether or not Ms. Cheetham read the manuscript before she resigned, it is clear that Joni Evans, the editor at Random US, and her staff were not pleased with it. On October 22, 1991, I received a letter from her, a copy of which is annexed as Exhibit C, in which she told me that "the book has a long way to go." However, at this point, I still had every reason to believe that Ms. Evans thought that the manuscript that I had submitted could, with the proper editorial assistance, be turned into a published book. Her letter was sent to me while I was on tour with a stage play. Because my schedule called for me to travel across the United States over the next five months, I was unable to meet with her. Since I had not had the benefit of detailed, substantive comments, it was impossible for me to work on the manuscript during that time.
13. My tour took me to New York in February of 1992, and while in New York, I had several meetings with Joni Evans and other members of her staff, including an associate by the name of Julie Grau.
14. In those meetings, Ms. Evans and Ms. Grau made clear that Exhibit, C seriously understated the intensity of their reaction to my manuscript. It was not merely a matter of their not liking it; they wanted it completely rewritten. For instance, Ms. Grau told me that the plot (which followed closely the outline I had agreed on with Joni Evans and Rosemary Cheetham in June) would have to be junked because "nobody is interested in" the type of characters I had agreed to write about.
15. Essentially, therefore, my U.S. editors wanted me to start again from ground zero and to write a completely new book! As a result, early in March of 1992, I had a meeting with Joni Evans and Julie Grau, as a result of which we came up with an entirely new plot which I assumed (since my contract delivery date for my first book had come and gone and since Random US had clearly rejected the first manuscript) was to be the plot for Work #2.
16. After our meetings in early March, Julie Grau wrote Joni Evans a memorandum of our discussions which Joni Evans (after some additional conversations with me) turned into a four-page plot outline of the new book and which she and Julie Grau sent me on April 3.
17. Ms. Evans and I had some additional correspondence with respect to the plot that she and I had worked out together, and in late April I delivered to her a number of pages representing my most recent efforts.
18. Initially, I got back a very positive response. As appears from her fax to me dated May 1, 1992, a copy of which I attach as Exhibit D, she thought that the first few pages were "quite good -- lively, fast-paced, nicely populated." In that same letter, she also told me that she would like to set up a system so that she could review the chapters of my new cook as I wrote them. Unfortunately, no such system was ever put into place.
19. Sometime in June 1992, I moved again to my home in the South of France where I began to write Work #2, the working title of which was Hell Hath No Furry, although at times it was also known as Atlanta or Athena, after the changing name of its main character. I spent most of the late spring and summer of 1992 working on this manuscript, and while I got some feedback from my editors, much of it was inconsistent and difficult to work with.
20. For instance, in June 1992, Kate Parkin, who had succeeded Rosemary Cheetham as my editor at Random UK, faxed to my agent that my new material was fine "at this first draft stage." However, two days later, I received a letter from Joni Evans which made it clear that she was not pleased with the way things were going.
21. In any case, I continued to write and to send pages to my editors. What I did not discover until much later was that my editors -- at least my British editors -- without telling me (and in spite of the fact that I received from Random UK only encouraging reactions) had already decided that they no longer wished to continue with the project.
22. For instance, on June 12, 1992, Simon Master, the publisher of Random UK, apparently found a copy of a draft letter that Joni Evans proposed sending to my agent, which had been faxed to Kate Parkin. He sent a note to her on the cover page of the fax, which I annex hereto as Exhibit E, and in which he told her that "maybe the time has come to look for a way out or possibly a renegotiation which might lead to the former."
23. Apparently, Random UK's attitude was communicated to Random US since barely two months later Ms. Parkin faxed to Joni Evans, reminding her that she already knew that Random UK " . . . would like to take any opportunity offered to cancel this contract. Bizarrely enough, this fax from Kate Parkin followed only by a day a fax in which she commented on pages which I had sent to her, telling Ms. Evans that "I agree with you -- it's a vast improvement and even, in parts, quite startlingly inventive.'
24. Naturally, I had no idea of my editors, dissatisfaction, and although I was surprised that despite her several promises and my repeated telephonic invitations (and despite the fact that I knew Joni Evans had spent a week or so working with Michael Caine in Europe that summer on his book), she never made any attempt to arrange to come to work with me at my home in the South of France. In any case, using the new plot outline that I had been given as a guide, I worked all summer on this manuscript, unfortunately without any editorial input.
25. On September 21, I shipped the manuscript of Hell Hath No Fury -- the second book that I had written for Random US under the current contract -- to Joni Evans and Kate Parkin. A copy of that manuscript is submitted herewith, identified as MS-2.
26. On October 6, 1992, I received a response from Joni Evans to the manuscript that I had submitted, which made it clear that Hell Hath No Fury did not please her any more than had A Ruling Passion. Indeed, she wrote to me suggesting that she put "an editor on site" to work with me.
27. On October 26, I wrote to her, agreeing that the manuscript needed heavy replotting but telling her that I thought I could do it without the help of an editor. I promised her that I would send her 100 pages by the end of that year. On November 2, she wrote back to me, expressing her skepticism both with my plan of reworking the manuscript on my own and with some of the specific changes that I had referred to her (Exhibit G).
28. However, she agreed in that letter to give me the chance ("I'll be happy to let you carry out your plan for the next few months"), and so once again, I began to work, this time trying to revise the manuscript of Work #2, and in December 1992, I forwarded the first 100 or so pages of it to her, along with an outline of the balance. That material is submitted herewith as Exhibit MS-3.
29. Unfortunately, as I learned as the result of discovery in this case, in early November she had been told by Alberto Vitale, the chairman of Random House, that is no longer wished to keep open Turtle Bay, the imprint that had been created especially for her. Apparently, she spent much of November and December negotiating with Mr. Vitale for her professional life, and it appears that she was not about to devote any time in that period to reviewing or editing my manuscript.
30. This would explain why, when questioned about it at her deposition, she had only the vaguest recollection of the manuscript which had been submitted in late 1992. Annexed as Exhibit F are pages 315 through 317 of the transcript of Ms. Evans' deposition of November 29, 1995, which makes clear how little impact my redraft had made upon her.
31. The lack of impact of my third submission is made even clearer by the fact that on February 9, 1993, Random US wrote to me and to Gemini, claiming that we were in default for failure to deliver a satisfactory manuscript despite the fact that we had at that point delivered two and one third manuscripts, as well as an outline for the remaining two-thirds of the third work.
Dated: London England
December 11, 1995
/s/
Joan Collins
NOTES
(1) Counsel have agreed that in view of the fact that I am presently in London, England, where I reside, I may submit this statement in support of my motion under penalties of perjury rather than under formal oath administered by a notary public.
