loplop
June 25th, 2009, 10:12 AM
A best-selling poster. An oft-copied hairstyle. A single season on a 1970s detective show.
These were the signature elements of Farrah Fawcett's career, but to reduce that career to those bullet points is, perhaps, missing the point of the huge impact she had on popular culture in the mid-'70s.
Farrah Fawcett, who died today at the age of 62 after a long battle with rectal cancer, was just another working actress in 1976. She'd gotten some attention as the wife of Lee Majors, then a huge star as "The Six Million Dollar Man," and her for her work opposite David Janssen on the private eye drama "Harry O." Then came two separate but conveniently-timed jobs that briefly made her one of the biggest stars in the world.
The first was the poster. Tame by today's standards, it featured a very tan Fawcett lounging in a one-piece bathing suit, running a hand through her wavy blonde manes and flashing a sexy but innocent thousand-watt smile at the camera. The second was the job on "Charlie's Angels," a drama about three beautiful (and frequently bra-less) female detectives that ushered in a wave of what came to be called "jiggle TV."
The poster was released around the same time as the "Charlie's Angels" premiere, and together turned Fawcett into a phenomenon. She wasn't a classic beauty like "Angels" co-star Jaclyn Smith, nor (at the time) the acting talent of "Angels" lead Kate Jackson, but something about her Southern California look -- inviting yet oddly wholesome, playful and down to earth -- on both the show and the poster spoke to that moment in time. "Angels" was an enormous hit from the start, and thanks to the poster (still one of the best-selling ever), Fawcett became its breakout star.
Her image was everywhere -- even when Fawcett herself wasn't. The feathered hairstyle she wore on "Charlie's Angels" became known as The Farrah Flip and was copied by women worldwide. (Only The Rachel, Jennifer Aniston's hairdo from the early seasons of "Friends," can be considered as influential a TV haircut.)
Women wanted to look like her, men wanted to get to know her better (assuming they didn't fear a bionic beatdown from Lee Majors), and even the critics who accused "Charlie's Angels" of being the end of Western civilization couldn't stop watching it.
Then, after only one season on "Charlie's Angels," Fawcett decided she wanted out of the show that had made her a global icon. Whether she was doing it out of ego and ambition, or because she felt the workload (and popularity) of "Angels" was hurting her marriage to Majors, the move backfired. She and Majors separated in 1979 (though their divorce wasn't final until 1982) and Fawcett proved unready -- either as a performer or as a canny selector of material -- to be a movie star.
Time Magazine dinged her performance in 1978's "Somebody Killed Her Husband" by claiming she "gets into serious trouble every time she opens her mouth to speak. Giggling and shrieking fits aside, her voice is flat and expressionless; her face cannot convey any emotion other than blissful self-absorption." Her other two post-"Angels" vehicles -- the 1979 thriller "Sunburn" and the 1980 sci-fi disaster "Saturn 3" -- did no better with either critics or moviegoers, and Fawcett's brief window of superstardom slammed shut.
After becoming an easy punchline for jokes about both '70s fashion and overly-ambitious celebrities, Fawcett reinvented herself with the 1984 telefilm "The Burning Bed." Playing vengeful spousal abuse victim Francine Hughes, Fawcett showed that she had grown leaps and bounds as an actress from her "Somebody Killed Her Husband" days, and was rewarded with the first of her three career Emmy nominations.
Fawcett used "The Burning Bed" as a springboard for a second career as a serious actress, following it up with critically-acclaimed performances in both the stage and film versions of "Extremities" (as another victim of sexual violence who turns the tables on her attacker), "Small Sacrifices" (as a mother who tries to murder her three children while blaming an imaginary attacker), "Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story," and more. For the most part, her medium was the made-for-TV movie, though she occasionally returned to the big screen. (Robert Duvall cast Fawcett as his wife in "The Apostle.")
Though Fawcett never again approached her "Charlie's Angels"-era fame, she remained in the public eye thanks to her relationship with actor Ryan O'Neal, with whom she had son Redmond in 1985.
In 1997, while promoting, at age 50, her first appearance in a Playboy video, Fawcett was a guest on "Late Show with David Letterman," where she appeared both skeletal and mentally unbalanced. Letterman made it into a running gag in the years since -- when Joaquin Phoenix had a similarly bizarre guest stint a few weeks ago, Letterman said, "We owe an apology to Farrah Fawcett." -- but when I asked Fawcett about it two years later, while she was promoting the TV-movie "Silk Hope," she shrugged it off, saying the weird behavior was her mother's idea.
"She's the one who said, 'Just go and have fun, have a sense of humor,'" Fawcett insisted. "I think it got blown out of proportion.¤.¤. I mean, maybe I was guilty of being a bad talk-show guest."
The naked video and the Letterman appearance (and maybe her short-lived celebreality show "Chasing Farrah") are all that TV viewers among a certain age may know of Fawcett. But for a brief period, thanks to that poster, that hair and that show, she was as "it" an It Girl as Hollywood has ever seen.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/farrah_fawcett_actress_and_cha.html
These were the signature elements of Farrah Fawcett's career, but to reduce that career to those bullet points is, perhaps, missing the point of the huge impact she had on popular culture in the mid-'70s.
Farrah Fawcett, who died today at the age of 62 after a long battle with rectal cancer, was just another working actress in 1976. She'd gotten some attention as the wife of Lee Majors, then a huge star as "The Six Million Dollar Man," and her for her work opposite David Janssen on the private eye drama "Harry O." Then came two separate but conveniently-timed jobs that briefly made her one of the biggest stars in the world.
The first was the poster. Tame by today's standards, it featured a very tan Fawcett lounging in a one-piece bathing suit, running a hand through her wavy blonde manes and flashing a sexy but innocent thousand-watt smile at the camera. The second was the job on "Charlie's Angels," a drama about three beautiful (and frequently bra-less) female detectives that ushered in a wave of what came to be called "jiggle TV."
The poster was released around the same time as the "Charlie's Angels" premiere, and together turned Fawcett into a phenomenon. She wasn't a classic beauty like "Angels" co-star Jaclyn Smith, nor (at the time) the acting talent of "Angels" lead Kate Jackson, but something about her Southern California look -- inviting yet oddly wholesome, playful and down to earth -- on both the show and the poster spoke to that moment in time. "Angels" was an enormous hit from the start, and thanks to the poster (still one of the best-selling ever), Fawcett became its breakout star.
Her image was everywhere -- even when Fawcett herself wasn't. The feathered hairstyle she wore on "Charlie's Angels" became known as The Farrah Flip and was copied by women worldwide. (Only The Rachel, Jennifer Aniston's hairdo from the early seasons of "Friends," can be considered as influential a TV haircut.)
Women wanted to look like her, men wanted to get to know her better (assuming they didn't fear a bionic beatdown from Lee Majors), and even the critics who accused "Charlie's Angels" of being the end of Western civilization couldn't stop watching it.
Then, after only one season on "Charlie's Angels," Fawcett decided she wanted out of the show that had made her a global icon. Whether she was doing it out of ego and ambition, or because she felt the workload (and popularity) of "Angels" was hurting her marriage to Majors, the move backfired. She and Majors separated in 1979 (though their divorce wasn't final until 1982) and Fawcett proved unready -- either as a performer or as a canny selector of material -- to be a movie star.
Time Magazine dinged her performance in 1978's "Somebody Killed Her Husband" by claiming she "gets into serious trouble every time she opens her mouth to speak. Giggling and shrieking fits aside, her voice is flat and expressionless; her face cannot convey any emotion other than blissful self-absorption." Her other two post-"Angels" vehicles -- the 1979 thriller "Sunburn" and the 1980 sci-fi disaster "Saturn 3" -- did no better with either critics or moviegoers, and Fawcett's brief window of superstardom slammed shut.
After becoming an easy punchline for jokes about both '70s fashion and overly-ambitious celebrities, Fawcett reinvented herself with the 1984 telefilm "The Burning Bed." Playing vengeful spousal abuse victim Francine Hughes, Fawcett showed that she had grown leaps and bounds as an actress from her "Somebody Killed Her Husband" days, and was rewarded with the first of her three career Emmy nominations.
Fawcett used "The Burning Bed" as a springboard for a second career as a serious actress, following it up with critically-acclaimed performances in both the stage and film versions of "Extremities" (as another victim of sexual violence who turns the tables on her attacker), "Small Sacrifices" (as a mother who tries to murder her three children while blaming an imaginary attacker), "Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story," and more. For the most part, her medium was the made-for-TV movie, though she occasionally returned to the big screen. (Robert Duvall cast Fawcett as his wife in "The Apostle.")
Though Fawcett never again approached her "Charlie's Angels"-era fame, she remained in the public eye thanks to her relationship with actor Ryan O'Neal, with whom she had son Redmond in 1985.
In 1997, while promoting, at age 50, her first appearance in a Playboy video, Fawcett was a guest on "Late Show with David Letterman," where she appeared both skeletal and mentally unbalanced. Letterman made it into a running gag in the years since -- when Joaquin Phoenix had a similarly bizarre guest stint a few weeks ago, Letterman said, "We owe an apology to Farrah Fawcett." -- but when I asked Fawcett about it two years later, while she was promoting the TV-movie "Silk Hope," she shrugged it off, saying the weird behavior was her mother's idea.
"She's the one who said, 'Just go and have fun, have a sense of humor,'" Fawcett insisted. "I think it got blown out of proportion.¤.¤. I mean, maybe I was guilty of being a bad talk-show guest."
The naked video and the Letterman appearance (and maybe her short-lived celebreality show "Chasing Farrah") are all that TV viewers among a certain age may know of Fawcett. But for a brief period, thanks to that poster, that hair and that show, she was as "it" an It Girl as Hollywood has ever seen.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/farrah_fawcett_actress_and_cha.html