Fontaine Khaled (Joan Collins) is the London wife of a wealthy Arab businessman. She spends his money on her nightclub, Hobo, and her rather hedonistic partying lifestyle. She hires a handsome manager, Tony (Oliver Tobias), to run her club, but it is understood that his job security is dependent on his satisfying her nymphomaniac demands. Tony loses interest in Fontaine, as she treats him like a plaything, and turns his attention to her young stepdaughter Alexandra Khaled (Emma Jacobs), who uses him to get back at Fontaine after she discovers a video tape of Fontaine and Tony having sex in the Khaleds' private elevator, cheating on her father. Fontaine then dumps Tony and is divorced by her husband for adultery.
Additional footage involving disco dancing was added for the US release. This footage involved members of the UK dance troupe Legs & Co., appearing (uncredited) as discotheque patrons.
Production notes
Joan had asked her sister Jackie for the film rights for free and Jackie agreed whilst contributing to the screenplay.
Joan met producer Brent Walker at the Cannes Film festival in 1977. He became excited by the project as it was proposed as a British alternative to Saturday Night Fever.
Both Joan Collins' husband, Ron Kass, and Jackie Collins' husband, Oscar Lerhman, also acted as producers on the project.
A successful soundtrack album was released on Ronco Records to tie-in with the film. The album contained twenty tracks, including original material penned by Biddu specifically for the film, as well as a number of major British chart hits which were licensed for use in the film. The majority of the tracks were disco flavoured, although some non-disco tracks were also included. The album rose to number 2 on the UK albums chart, kept off the top spot by the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack album.[2]
Made for $600,000, the film grossed over $20,000,000 internationally.[3] The film was one of the most popular movies of 1978 at the British box office.[4] It did not perform well in the United States, which Brent Walker blamed on American International Pictures' handling of the film, including the "slapdash dubbing" of the British lead actors' voices.[5]
Legacy
The film helped to revitalise Joan Collins' career and she credits The Stud and its sequel The Bitch (1979) with bringing her to the attention of Aaron Spelling and Esther Shapiro, the producers of Dynasty in 1981. However, Tobias later claimed that his part in the film led to typecasting and ruined his career.
