Cinzano of the vermouth market in Europe was measured in the low single digits, sales that placed it a distant second to Martini. As a result of a 1997 merger, Grand Metropolitan became Diageo; two years later, Diageo sold Cinzano to the privately held Gruppo Campari. The Cinzano bicycling team had a central role in the film "Breaking Away". Cinzano was well known in Britain for its humorous television advertisements featuring Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins. One of these featured the pair on a plane journey, with Rossiter accidentally hitting the "recline" switch on Collins chair, causing her to spill a
Joan Collins Richard Fleischer from a screenplay by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett, and starring Ray Milland, and Farley Granger. The CinemaScope film was released by Twentieth Century-Fox, which had originally planned to put Marilyn Monroe in the title role, and then suspended her when she refused to do the film, which lead to Collins casting. MGM borrowed Collins for "The Opposite Sex" (1956), a musical remake of "The Women" (1939) with Collins in a part originally played by Joan Crawford. The following year Collins returned to featuring in Fox films where she played a nun in "Sea Wife" (1957). "Sea Wife"