Farewell to a Phenomenon

By Otto Friedrich

After 109 episodes, Charlie's Angels are folding their wings

Let Our Angel Live is the title of this doomed show. Jaclyn Smith is pursuing a villain who has robbed a client of $200,000, but when she tries to question him, he shoots her. Right in the head. Screams. A smear of blood beside the right ear. So they rush her to the hospital, and there, as one of the studio memos puts it, "the other Angels and Bosley reminist [sic] about their experiences."

There was the time, for instance, when Jaclyn was shot full of heroin and did not even know it, the time the three beautiful detectives all went killer-hunting on the ski slopes at Vail -- all those wildly implausible climaxes that framed the weekly beauty pageant, shoot-'em-up farce and national phenomenon known as Charlie's Angels. "And we're going to decide right now," says Bosley (David Doyle), the den father who romps but never flirts with the Angels, "that it has all been worth it. Every damn minute."

But can Jaclyn be saved? As the doctors go to work, Bosley and the other two Angels retire to the hospital chapel, where a closeup shows a tearful Cheryl Ladd whispering, "Oh, please, God, please." Enter, after a commercial break, a doctor announcing Jaclyn's miraculous recovery: "It was the damnedest thing."

No such miracle came to save Charlie's Angels, for that installment, to be shown June 24, is the 109th and last. At its height, the show was consistently among the top five, ogled by an estimated 36 million people. Its first heroine, Farrah Fawcett, previously known primarily as a model for Ultra-Brite toothpaste and Wella Balsam shampoo, became almost overnight the biggest star in the business. Her poster image adorned thousands of dormitory walls, and thousands of gum-chewing adolescents imitated her long, layered hairdo. But celebrity was an ordeal. Armed guards had to be hired to keep the clutching fans at bay. But at fees of up to $30,000 per week, the Angels got rich. Producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg got even richer, and so did the merchandisers who hawked the cornucopia of pop junk: 4 million Angel dolls, 3 million lunch pails, etc. "It was a milestone," says Doyle. "There won't be another one like it--which opens the way for a lot of people to say, 'Thank God.' "

As with many epochal ideas, nobody seems to remember exactly where Charlie's Angels came from. Perhaps somewhere deep in the tribal memories and seaside fantasies of Southern California. It was Goldberg who suggested, in the summer of 1974, some kind of adventure series featuring female detectives. In the first brainstorming sessions, the heroines were apparently very fierce, all leather jackets and karate chops.

Kate Jackson, then working in another Spelling-Goldberg series, The Rookies, claims credit for some key changes. Says she: "I was pacing the floor in Aaron's office, saying 'O.K., suppose these three girls work for this detective named ... Harry.' And then I saw the intercom on Aaron's desk, and I said, 'Suppose you never see Harry. He always calls them on that squawk box. And suppose instead of tough--mmm ...' And then I saw a picture on the wall of three angels. 'Suppose they're, like, Harry's angels.' "

Harry's Angels? But there already was a detective show called Harry O. Well, what about Frankie? Or, Charlie? What did it really matter? The truth was that nobody thought much of the whole idea. Among those who scorned it was ABC. "They said, 'You're crazy,' " Spelling recalls. " 'It won't work. There has never been an action-adventure starring women.' " The producers thought they might get some lift from a prominent screenwriter, so they assigned Angels to Ernest Tidyman, whose film credits include The French Connection. Tidyman knocked out a draft, then wearily pleaded other commitments.

The first biggie to see the possibilities was Fred Silverman, who had just been hired from CBS to become ABC's head of entertainment. Silverman saw Charlie's Angels as part of a new trend toward shows about women, and he scheduled it in a favored slot (10 p.m. Wednesday) against two other newcomers. Few agreed with his optimism. When Spelling and Goldberg offered to settle a debt to Actor Robert Wagner by giving him a 45% interest in Angels, he said the show was "the worst idea I've ever heard." When ABC-TV President Fred Pierce saw the first actual film, he called up the producers to complain. Says Spelling: "I won't argue with anyone who thinks it is crap."

But somehow, like Dr. Frankenstein poring over a book of medieval arcana, they had stumbled onto a magic formula. Enough of Kojak and what the producers called "the inner-city look"; these settings, they said, should be "glamorous, upbeat and colorful." And let the harem of detectives have svelte names like Sabrina (Jackson), Kelly (Smith) and Jill (Fawcett). Each of them was described with a little phrase to help viewers tell them apart, e.g., Sabrina was "the brainy one," but the scriptwriters devoted much more attention to getting them into bathing suits. And they all ran a lot. The original production notes also emphasized another major point: "It is essential that each of the girls be in jeopardy at least once during every episode."

What "jeopardy" meant, in practice, was ritualistic masochism. The Angels, far from emulating James Bond or even Kojak, were regularly kidnaped, undressed, trussed up and threatened with dreadful consequences. Were audiences repelled by a specimen like "Angels in chains," in which the heroines got captured while investigating a prison farm, then stripped, forced into a shower and finally sprayed with disinfectants? Nearly 20,000 fan letters that week asked for more. But while such sexual eccentricities brought sudden success, they also brought howls of feminist protest, both about the mistreatment of the poor Angels and about the leering domination of Charlie. "We were totally disgusted," says Andrea Dworkin, author of Pornography: Men Possessing Women, "by the way the women were exploited on that show."

Once Angels was established, the producers toned down and then eliminated Charlie's sexist remarks and reduced both the S-M and indeed all sex to largely symbolic situations. It became fairly standard, for example, for one of the Angels to be trapped for long minutes in some burning building. The variety of threats seemed endless--the scalding steam bath caper, for one, or the cruise ship with the homicidal maniac aboard, or the time the face-lift farm was taken over by mobsters.

In one episode, the Angels were even forced (horrors!) to take part in a Bunny-type beauty contest. Such fantasies might interest a psychoanalyst, but they could hardly arouse the censors. Angels acquired the keys to TV success: a reputation for sex without actually being erotic at all, and a reputation for controversy without actually saying much of anything.

Quite apart from its racy reputation, the show proved surprisingly appealing to female viewers, who are said to control the dial after the children go to sleep. Women saw what they were traditionally supposed to be interested in: new clothes (usually trousers), hairdos, makeup. The producers spent nearly $20,000 every week for eight costume changes per Angel per show. Says Spelling: "We hired a designer and gave each girl her own look. As soon as a new fashion was out, such as thigh-high suede boots, we made sure Farrah and Jackie were wearing it. And Farrah's hairdo, well, it had a life of its own."

But the women in the audience came to identify themselves with the fantasy heroines, who at first had seemed so abused but who did work at difficult jobs, solve problems and bring criminals (usually men) to justice. "They saw three attractive ladies beating up bad guys," says Cheryl Ladd, who replaced Fawcett after the first season. "But it was bloodless and harmless. We were very feminine while karate-chopping our way through life."

Symbolism can be overdone, of course, as can the analysis of sex roles. The basic appeal was that the Angels were not only very pretty but rather likable. One could cheer them on in their pursuit of malefactors, wildly firing their pistols but rarely hitting anyone, and one could also cheer them on in their efforts to play scenes that often crumbled into self-parody. "It seems like we did the same old script over and over," says Ladd, "dope runner, crazy family, etc." It was because of that guileless amiability that the show so easily survived the departure of Fawcett: Ladd not only looked just as nice, but she joined the preposterous chase scenes with an enthusiasm that would have done credit to a beagle pursuing a tennis ball.

Kate Jackson did not understand. She kept complaining about the deplorable scripts, produced by a constantly changing stable that ultimately totaled 75 writers. "This show is so light," she once said, "that it would take a week to get to the ground if you dropped it from the ceiling." The producers did not understand either. They eventually fired Jackson as a nuisance and brought in a model named Shelley Hack. This was supposed to be an improvement, for Hack was both a Smith graduate and a well-known New York clotheshorse. Said Spelling: "The girls are tired of having the show referred to as T & A ... Suddenly it's In to be well dressed."

Was the change a success? Hardly ever out of the top ten during its first three years, Angels gradually sank to 17th. Something had gone wrong, and nobody could figure out what. With the acerbic Jackson gone, the remaining beauties sometimes seemed to blur, to look remarkably alike. The producers let Hack go but turned once again to New York City for a solution. This time, after having some 100 actresses read for the part, they hired Tanya Roberts, an off-Broadway hopeful whom the publicity handouts described as "streetwise." Said she: "I'm going to bust my ass."

Too late. As Angels lurched toward extinction, it kept stumbling into new dificulties. ABC rescheduled it against tougher competition on Sunday nights (Archie Bunker's Place and CHiPS), a test that sent its ratings plunging one week to 59th out of 65 shows. There were threats of litigation over the division of profits. With the coming of a new political era, the Moral Majority began trumpeting charges of immorality on the air waves. And Jaclyn Smith, who has won a much publicized new role playing Jacqueline Onassis, announced that she too would depart when the season ended. The dying show never got that far.

In retrospect, it would be easy enough to say that the growing sophistication about women's role in society doomed Angels to a fate it richly deserved. More basic is the fact that no TV show can run indefinitely. After more than 100 weekly variations on the same small idea, even the most oafish viewer manages to lunge toward the knobs and turn to something else. Anything.

But as Angels now spins off into syndication, harvesting new millions not only in the U.S. but in England, Brazil, Taiwan, the men who produce the fodder prepare for new challenges. "Our next show," smiles Goldberg, "is about garbage collectors.''

--By Otto Friedrich.

Reported by Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles

With reporting by Martha Smilgis/Los Angeles

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.