Roberta Collins: Love Is Strange

How can I have become such a big fan of Roberta Collins, an actress who died in 2008 and an actress with whom my experience is based on one movie - a movie in which she only had two minutes of total screen time that I saw 47 years ago?

Sometimes you just know awesome talent when you perceive it even when no one else does, such when those of us who love Rush heard the virtuosity and intellect in their music back when the critics dismissed them as a pretentious prog-metal outfit.  Roberta Collins had that effect when I saw her in Train Ride to Hollywood as Jean Harlow, though she never got any good notices for it, and no movie critic would have ever taken seriously any actor who appeared in the low-grade, barrel-scraped exploitation movies she starred in in the seventies and early eighties.  Those are the sorts of movies I myself avoid, and I did try to watch a couple of Collins' women-in-prison flicks for a couple of minutes each.  That was all I could tolerate, as, as cheaply made films exploiting sex and violence, The Big Doll House and Women In Cages live up to such reputations.  But Roberta Collins, like Pam Grier as well, proved herself as an actress; she wasn't just some pretty face who was there to titillate male audiences.  She was paying her dues to make it in real movies.

Alas, Collins never worked with name directors like Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Martin Ritt, or Norman Jewison, though she did work with Jonathan Demme - when he was paying his dues making the explitiaton flick Caged Heat. She never got to do serious dramas like Susan Sarandon and she never starred in the sort of rom-coms that usually feature Meg Ryan or Diane Keaton.  When she did act in a big-studio movie, it was usually a small role in what became a flop.  And so my love for her and her acting is based on that one movie - and to be honest, I wouldn't want to see Train Ride to Hollywood again, since there are so many things wrong with it.  Yes, Bloodstone delivered some superb music, but that's what the soundtrack record is for.  Had the movie been much better, so might Collins' career prospects have been better in 1975.              

One movie.  One role.  One actress.  But what an actress Roberta Collins was. She deserved better.  RIP. 😢