Motor City Mania: John Saxon

Whew ... what a weekend. It was a fabbo time at the Motor City Comic Con in Novi, Mich., this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday: wonderful and exhausting, and a great chance to see and talk with a lot of folks out there in the geeky world of pop culture. BRBTV hereby declares this coming week Motor City Mania -- all week long, mind you -- here at the BRBTV News Blog! We're going to be hitting all four shows of BRBTV with this bag of goodies.

First up, the gracious and personable Mr. John Saxon, who played Rashid Ahmed on "Dynasty" ...

Now, this guy, you know as soon as you see him in person, has one of those "I've seen him in something! I just know it!" faces. He's familiar, that's for sure. Could be those hundreds of TV and film roles listed on his IMDb page! "Bonanza," "Night Gallery," "Gunsmoke," "The Rockford Files," "Wonder Woman," all of our favorites and more, spanning five decades. Of course, for us "Dynasty" fans, this familiar face takes us back to the mid-'80s and a certain storyline involving Middle Eastern intrigue and oil leases and the lovely, vixenish Joan Collins.

What was it like to work with Joan Collins? BRBTV had to ask.

"I remember we were having lunch," he said, "and I wasn't really good friends with her at the time. We sat at lunch and talked, and she was just getting started in her career. She was very concerned about getting jobs and asking me all these questions about jobs."

Saxon also reminisced about the AIDS scare of the 1980s, which haunted the "Dynasty" set with the shocking revelation about Rock Hudson, who played a love interest to Linda Evans' character Krystle. In the midst of the AIDS hysteria in Hollywood, Saxon said, Collins was skittish about their romantic scenes. "She didn't want to kiss anyone."

Saxon, who also starred on primetime soap "Falcon Crest" as the father of Lorenzo Lamas' character (now there was some informed casting! Meow!), told BRBTV that of all the wealth of acting he's done, the role that stands out for him is his spin as Chuy Medina in 1966's "The Appaloosa," alongside Marlon Brando.

Photo by Billie Rae Bates / BRBTV