Ravings of the Loquacious Madman

By SUSAN STEWART [New York Times]

Farrah Fawcett, an actress and television star whose good looks and
signature flowing hairstyle influenced a generation of women and bewitched a
generation of men, beginning with a celebrated pinup poster, died Thursday
morning [June 25, 2009] in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 62 and lived in West
Los Angeles.

Her death, at St. John’s Health Center, was caused by anal cancer, which she
had been battling since 2006, said her spokesman, Paul Bloch.

To an extraordinary degree, Ms. Fawcett’s cancer battle was played out in
public, generating enormous interest worldwide. Her face, often showing the
ravages of cancer, became a tabloid fixture, and updates on her health
became staples of television entertainment news.

In May, that battle was chronicled in a prime-time NBC documentary, "Farrah’s
Story," some of it shot with her own home video recorder. An estimated nine
million people viewed it. Ms. Fawcett had initiated the project with a
friend, the actress Alana Stewart, after she first learned of her cancer.

Ms. Fawcett’s doctors declared her cancer-free after they removed a tumor in
2007, but her cancer returned later that year. She had been receiving
alternative treatment in Germany and was hospitalized in early April for a
blood clot resulting from that treatment, according to her doctor, Lawrence
Piro. He also said her cancer had spread to her liver.

Ms. Fawcett’s career was a patchwork of positives and negatives, fine
dramatic performances on television and stage as well as missed
opportunities.

She first became famous when a poster of her in a red bathing suit, leonine
mane flying, sold more than twice as many copies as posters of Marilyn
Monroe and Betty Grable combined. No poster like it has achieved anywhere
near its popularity since, and, arriving before the Internet era, in which
the most widely disseminated images are now digital, it may have been the
last of its kind.

Ms. Fawcett won praise for her serious acting later in her career, typically
as a victimized woman. But she remained best known for the hit 1970s
television show "Charlie’s Angels," in which she played Jill Munroe, one of
three beautiful women employed as private detectives by an unseen male boss
who (in the voice of John Forsythe) issued directives and patronizing praise
over a speaker phone. Her pinup fame had led the producers to cast her.

Ms. Fawcett and her fellow angels, played by Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson,
brought evildoers to justice, often while posing in decoy roles that put
them in skimpy outfits or provocative situations.

"Charlie’s Angels," created and produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard
Goldberg for ABC, was a phenomenon, finishing the 1976-77 season as the No.
5 network show, the highest-rated television debut in history at that time.

Ms. Fawcett was its breakout star. Although she left the show after one
season and returned only sporadically thereafter, the show’s influence –
among other things, it inspired two much later feature films starring
Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu – was so indelible that she was
forever associated with it.

The series, whose popularity coincided with the burgeoning women’s movement,
brought new attention to issues of female sexuality and the influence of
television. Commentators debated whether the show’s athletic, scantily clad
heroines were exemplars of female strength or merely a harem of pretty
puppets doing the bidding of a patriarchal leader.

As the show’s most popular star, Ms. Fawcett became another sort of poster
girl, for the "jiggle TV" of the ’70s, and a lightning rod for cultural
commentators. Chadwick Roberts, writing in The Journal of Popular Culture in
2003, described her "unbound, loose and abundant hair" as marking "a new
emphasis on femininity after the androgyny of the late ’60s and early ’70s."

In 1978 Playboy magazine called Ms. Fawcett "the first mass visual symbol of
post-neurotic fresh-air sexuality." She herself put it more plainly: "When
the show got to be No. 3, I figured it was our acting. When it got to be No.
1, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra."

Ms. Fawcett acknowledged that her sex symbol status was a mixed blessing. It
made her famous, but it often obscured the acting talent that brought her
three Emmy nominations, most notably for "The Burning Bed," a critically
acclaimed movie about spousal abuse.

"I don’t think an actor ever wants to establish an image," she said in an
interview with The New York Times in 1986. "That certainly hurt me, and yet
that is also what made me successful and eventually able to do more
challenging roles. That’s life. Everything has positive and negative
consequences."

Ferrah Leni Fawcett was born in Corpus Christi, Tex., on Feb. 2, 1947. Her
father, James, worked in the oil pipeline industry; her mother, Pauline, was
a homemaker.

After dropping out of the University of Texas, Ms. Fawcett moved to
Hollywood to pursue acting. She soon found work in commercials for Wella
Balsam shampoo and Noxzema shaving cream, among other products. A Noxzema
commercial in which she shaved the face of the football star Joe Namath was
shown during the 1973 Super Bowl.

Ms. Fawcett also found acting work in television, landing guest roles on "I
Dream of Jeannie," "The Flying Nun" and other sitcoms. She appeared in four
episodes of "The Six Million Dollar Man," whose star, Lee Majors, she had
married in 1973. When Ms. Fawcett was cast on "Charlie’s Angels," she had a
clause written into her contract that allowed her to leave the set every day
in time to prepare dinner for Mr. Majors.

She was billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors until 1979. She and Mr. Majors
divorced in 1982.

The poster that ignited Ms. Fawcett’s career was shot at the Bel Air home
she shared with Mr. Majors. "She was just this sweet, innocent, beautiful
young girl," said Bruce McBroom, who took the photograph. Searching for a
backdrop to Ms. Fawcett in her one-piece red swimsuit (which she chose
instead of a bikini because of a childhood scar on her stomach), he grabbed
an old Navajo blanket from the front seat of his 1937 pickup.

After leaving "Charlie’s Angels" to pursue a film career (she came back for
guest appearances for two more seasons), Ms. Fawcett made three forgettable
movies in quick succession, then salvaged her reputation by returning to
television. In 1981 she starred in the mini-series "Murder in Texas," as the
wife of a doctor who is subsequently accused of murdering her; in 1984 she
made "The Burning Bed."

Both movies were shown on NBC, and both performances received strong
reviews. In "The Burning Bed," Ms. Fawcett was one of the first prime-time
actresses to forgo cosmetics in favor of a convincing characterization.

In 1983 she played another victimized woman who fights back – a
vengeance-seeking rape victim – in the Off Broadway production of
"Extremities." She took over for Karen Allen, who had replaced Susan
Sarandon. Ms. Fawcett went on to star in the film version of the play in
1986.

Other roles followed in film and television – she won praise again in the
searing 1989 television movie "Small Sacrifices" – but throughout, Ms.
Fawcett tended to attract more attention for her looks and personal life
than for her professional accomplishments. Her long relationship with the
actor Ryan O’Neal, with whom she had a son, kept her on the gossip pages
long after her television work had become sporadic. In recent months she and
Mr. O’Neal had been living together. Interviewed by Barbara Walters this
month on the ABC program "20/20," Mr. O’Neal said that he had asked Ms.
Fawcett to marry her and she had said yes.

In 1997 Ms. Fawcett negated much of the respect she had earned as an actress
when, during an appearance on "Late Show With David Letterman," she promoted
a bizarre body-painting Playboy video and appeared ditsy to the point of
incoherence.

But later that year she appeared in the acclaimed independent film "The
Apostle" as Robert Duvall’s long-suffering wife, and her critical star rose
again – only to be dimmed by publicity about a court case involving a former
companion, the director James Orr. Mr. Orr was convicted of assaulting Ms.
Fawcett and sentenced to three years’ probation.

In addition to Mr. O’Neal, Ms. Fawcett is survived by her father, James, and
her son, Redmond James Fawcett O’Neal.

Though her career was volatile, Ms. Fawcett’s fame never diminished after
"Charlie’s Angels." She tried to capitalize on her celebrity with the 2005
reality series "Chasing Farrah," but it was a critical and ratings flop.
Writing in Medialife magazine, Ed Robertson described the series and its
star as "a living example of a talented actress whose career has been turned
into a parody by poor decisions."

Ms. Fawcett herself described her career succinctly. "I became famous," she
said in her 1986 Times interview, "almost before I had a craft."