The concept of CHARLIE'S ANGELS was originally thought up by producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg.  It was to feature three female karate experts, but was soon changed to three female detectives instead.  The idea was rejected in 1975, but given the green light in 1976 when Fred Silverman, a television programming pioneer, took over the ABC offices.  The show was to be called “The Alley Cats” and was to be a vehicle for Spelling's young female star of “The Rookies”, Kate Jackson.  It was Jackson who would come up with the show's eventual title.  "I said, suppose they work for a detective named... Harry.  He calls them on a squawk box.  Then I saw a picture of three angels..."  The name Harry was nixed due to the fact that there was already a show called 'Harry O' on the air.

   One thing was borrowed from 'Harry O'.  It was the sexy blonde bit-part player, Farrah Fawcett-Majors.  She was the wife of the famous “Six Million Dollar Man”, Lee Majors, and was successful in her own right as a Wella Balsam hair care model.  Farrah was given the role of the athletic, sexy, and bubbly blonde, Jill Munroe.  Kate Jackson had already taken on the part of the Angels' streetwise Angel, Kelly Garrett.  The final role was Sabrina Duncan, the intellectual Angel.  Even though she was dating a CHARLIE'S ANGELS writer and producer, Rick Husky, Jaclyn Smith still had to audition with hundreds of other pretty hopefuls before earning the role.  After the parts had been cast, Kate Jackson decided she was more fit to play Sabrina, thus Smith and her switched parts.

   The ninety minute pilot movie aired on March 21, 1976.  It teamed the Angels up with two male sleuths, John Bosley and Scott Woodville.  Charlie Townsend's face was never seen.  His voice was supplied by the legendary actor, John Forsythe.  Charlie was the big boss man who would call his three gorgeous detectives up and send them out to solve a mystery.  When the show came to prime time on September 22, 1976, the Angels were now former police women whom Charlie had recruited to become his detectives and the character of Scott Woodville was eliminated.  David Doyle, a veteran stage director and actor continued to play the part of Bosley.  The first episode to air was entitled "Hellride" and featured the Angels working on a murder mystery surrounding a female race car driver.  The show was an instant hit!  In fact, it was the only new show of the 1976-1977 season to land in the top five!

      While viewers couldn't get enough of the three beautiful women, critics and feminists chewed it to pieces.  Goldberg's idea to "inject some really stunning beauty into the genre" of crime shows was not appreciated by raging feminists.  They accused CHARLIE'S ANGELS of setting women back one hundred years and were appalled by all the titillation and suggestiveness of Charlie's double entendres.  One angry feminist saw the show as "a version of the pimp and his girls.  Charlie dispatches his streetwise Angels to use their sexual wiles on the world while he reaps the profits!"  In defense of the show, the Angels weren't just using their "sexual wiles", but their intellect and physical strength, as well, to thwart the killers, thieves, and blackmailers.  Everyone concentrated on what the Angels were wearing (or not wearing) rather than viewing them as good female role models.  CHARLIE'S ANGELS established the fact that a solid cast of women could carry a prime time show.

    Aaron Spelling told TV GUIDE, "On this show, we're more concerned with hair-dos and gowns than the twists of the plots".  Some critics noted that it showed and said so.  Farrah Fawcett would later recall that "one week they didn't have a script so they gave us a Mod Squad script.  They just crossed out the title".  The show would go through many directors the first season.  One unidentified director from the early days of CHARLIE'S ANGELS told TIME magazine that he had "printed scenes that made my stomach turn".  After leaving the show three years later, Kate Jackson would report that the scripts were "so light it would take a week to get to the floor if you dropped it from the ceiling".  One thing is for sure, most viewers weren't watching CHARLIE'S ANGELS the first season for deep philosophical reasons, but to get a look at the three beautiful actresses, most notably Farrah Fawcett-Majors!

   Farrah Fawcett-Majors became a legend within months of the show's premiere.  Her to-die-for blonde mane of hair cascading beyond her shoulders, those crystal blue eyes, and those sparkling perfect teeth were just the beginning.  Farrah's major focal point on the show was her very erect nipples that were always pushing against her too tight shirts -a television first!  In conjunction with the show was her red swimsuit poster, the biggest selling poster of all time!  PLAYBOY magazine said it best in their 1978 commentary on Farrah.  "Farrah could put you in a trance.  She was a blend of f***ing and jogging, and the first mass visual symbol of post-neurotic fresh air sexuality".  Because of her image, as well as Jaclyn's and Kate's, a merchandising frenzy began.  Aside from the CHARLIE'S ANGELS dolls, puzzles, posters, and other various toys, Farrah was seen on beach towels, paperbacks, and even her very own shampoo!  And of course the Angels were on the cover of every major magazine in the country.

    Some of those magazines reported of the rumored backstage feuds between the actresses.  Kate Jackson would later tell TV GUIDE that "...somebody out there is sure that women don't get along together.  So that's what people are looking for - a story about three women fighting".  She was also coined as being the "difficult" Angel.  While on the show Jackson said, "...if you say something to (Jaclyn or Farrah), it's more predictable what they might do.  Farrah might smile.  Jackie might say something sweet.  But I might say something!  Listen, I'm not kidding.  There's a rotten little snitch on the set of CHARLIE'S ANGELS and the minute any little thing at all happens, he's on the phone to one of those grocery store newspapers.  It makes me furious!"

      "The truth is we never fought at all", reported Kate Jackson.  The unknown fact was that the three original Angels became extremely close friends and would continue a relationship that is still strong even today.  As any CHARLIE'S ANGELS fan knows, the original three actresses got together for a 1994 layout for a PEOPLE magazine anniversary issue.  "They said we were vying with each other", said Jaclyn Smith, "but what we were really thinking about was getting some sleep".  How true that must have been.  The three actresses were whisked off to the set at 5:30 AM and worked a grueling twelve hour day.  Rumors circulated that Farrah Fawcett-Majors would have it stated in her contract that she must leave at a certain time to cook her husband dinner.  "I spend only three waking hours a day at home", Kate Jackson said.  "You come home, eat dinner, study your lines and go to sleep", confirmed Jaclyn Smith.  Their lives weren't totally without comfort though.  Each actress had her own $25,000 Pace Arrow mobile home and was constantly being primped and combed out for their next scene.

   It was the fashion and beauty aspect of the show that propelled CHARLIE'S ANGELS to such huge success.  It was one of the most expensive shows to make at the time.  The wardrobe budget alone was approximately $10,000 a week.  Rick Husky was honest when he told TV GUIDE that, "We aren't dressing them in rags.  When a scene calls for jeans, they wear $70 French jeans specially tailored for their splendid behinds".  Spelling would later report, "It's an expensive show.  We are now $2 million in debt!"  An average of $310,000 was spent per episode in the first season.  By the end of the series in 1981, the budget was up to $650,000 per episode.  Spelling believed that if everyone in his shows looked good, then the content and quality wouldn't really matter.  By 1983 he would spend an average of $850,000 for each episode of his prime time soap opera, 'Dynasty'.

   By the end of the first season, everyone pretty much knew that Farrah wasn't going to return to the show.  At the time, fans and critics believed that her head had swelled and that she was going to chase after a movie career.  Some believed she wanted $75,000 per episode, which would have been a giant increase from her hired pay of $5,000 per episode (Jaclyn Smith was also paid $5,000 per episode and Kate Jackson made $10,000 due to the fact that she had more acting experience).  Farrah would only hint that she wanted to save her marriage, which was part of the reason she quit the show.  By the early 1990s, Farrah would tell the real reason she quit.  "...I went into Leonard Goldberg's office and said we've established the show and I don't know if my character's parents are alive or if she has brothers and sisters -why don't we do a show where all the girls go on vacation and they go back to my house.  He said, 'We have a plan.  We have a show.  It works.""  Refusing to be a part of it anymore, Farrah walked out!  After a long dispute with the producers, Farrah was obligated to make six guest appearances on the show over the next three years.  She was also practically blacklisted in Hollywood and was forced to make less-than-great films like “Sunburn” and “Saturn 3”.  In 1984 she would make a spectacular comeback for her portrayal of an abused housewife in “The Burning Bed”.  Despite her continuing achievements, Farrah will forever be thee icon of the 1970s.

   "There's only one Farrah Fawcett-Majors, and how do you replace a phenomenon?", asked Cheryl Ladd upon accepting the role of Kris Munroe, Jill's younger sister.  She reportedly wore a Farrah T-shirt to the set on her first day to break the tension.  She fit right in and the Smith, Jackson, Ladd trio is perhaps the most popular of all the different casts.  Cheryl Ladd wasn't the only thing that changed for the 1977-1978 season.  TV GUIDE writer, Arnold Hano noted that in "the second season the time was changed to 9:00 PM.  Suddenly hordes of young people joined the audiences".  Younger viewers did indeed join the viewing masses and the show would continue to be successful.  CHARLIE'S ANGELS had finished fifth in the 1976-1977 A.C. Nielson ratings and moved up to fourth place for the 1977-1978 season.

    Although there wasn't real feuding going on between the co-stars, tension was exploding on the closed set of CHARLIE'S ANGELS.  Kate Jackson had been forced to turn down the part of the wife in “Kramer Vs. Kramer”, the role in which Meryl Streep won an Academy Award for.  That along with the laborious schedules had taken their toll on Jackson, and she would later admit that she had become difficult.  "I guess I did cause a few problems.  What it comes down to is I got tired of them and they got tired of me.  I'm glad I've finally been able to hang up the halo".  Aaron Spelling, who had created the show for Kate, would tell PEOPLE magazine that "due to problems on the set, Kate's being dropped for the good of the show".

    Enter Revlon model Shelly Hack.  She had little acting experience, only having appeared briefly in Woody Allen's “Annie Hall” and a box office bomb, “If Ever I See You Again”.  The producers of CHARLIE'S ANGELS were more concerned with her personality and chemistry with the other two actresses on the show rather than that of her thespian talents.  After her brief audition, Shelly Hack was sent in for a personality test in which she quipped, "Oh damn it, I didn't rehearse my personality this morning!"  Because Hack was a model, the producers decided to go "back to our glamour period".  Aaron Spelling reported, "Last year we got out of the habit.  When you have three ladies on the show and two of them want to wear beautiful gowns and one says 'Forget it, I want to wear blue jeans', then by human nature the other two will wear blue jeans too".  The show's costumer, Nolan Miller, was delighted by the addition of Shelly Hack.  "...Shelly knows how to wear clothes like a model.  Shelly's a young Kate Hepburn, sophisticated with poise.  Cheryl is like Lana Turner -no hips, full bust.  Jackie has real class -a Gene Tierny type".  The fashion budget would go up, but the Angels looked better than ever!  "Kate Jackson was the fly in the ointment.  She always wanted to wear jeans," commented Miller.  "Men watch the girls.  Women watch the clothes".

   Shelly Hack's character, Tiffany Welles, was unlike any of the other Angels.  She was very educated and very cultivated in music and the fine arts.  Tiffany had a dry sense of humor.  She carried herself with an air of sophistication and always seemed to be a little bit better than the rest.  The actresses on CHARLIE'S ANGELS always felt that their characters weren't very well developed, but due to their great talents, they gave each character something unique and distinctive to remember them by.  Despite the fact that her character was given very little to do, Shelly Hack proved to be a decent actress just the same and gave Tiffany Welles a very unique personality.  Unfortunately for her, viewers weren't smitten with Tiffany's snobbish behavior and the show dropped down to number twenty in the ratings for the 1979/1980 season.

    During the summer of 1979, an ABC lawyer, Jennifer Martin, filed a complaint against Spelling-Goldberg Productions, accusing them of cheating out CHARLIE'S ANGELS creators, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, who wrote the pilot movie, as well as Robert Wagner and his wife, Natalie Wood.  It seems that Robert Wagner had struck a deal with the production team in 1973, creating a subsidiary company called Rona 2.  At the time that Wagner was starring on “Hart to Hart”, he realized he was entitled to half of the net profits from CHARLIE'S ANGELS.  Goff and Roberts were entitled to a little over 6% each.  Spelling and Goldberg claimed that since CHARLIE'S ANGELS began in 1976, their company had lost $10,696,948.  It was claimed that $30,000 of CHARLIE'S ANGELS costs were transferred to the bookwork of Spelling's other hit series “Starsky & Hutch”, a show that Wagner, Wood, Goff, and Roberts had nothing to do with.  It was also suggested that executives at Spelling-Goldberg Productions had taken trips on “The Love Boat” ship, The Pacific Princess, and charged the services to production costs of CHARLIE'S ANGELS.  When an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ended in the fall of 1980, it was determined that Jennifer Martin had "insufficient grounds" for a case.  Spelling-Goldberg Productions attorney, John Van de Kamp said, "It can not be said beyond a reasonable doubt that they were trying to deprive profit participants of what they were due".  Almost a year later in September 1981, a former ABC executive, George Reeves, filed a $250,000 lawsuit in which he claimed that he was used as a scapegoat during the entire scandal, thus losing his job.  Nothing would come of it.  Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, as well as Robert Wagner (Natalie Wood would die in a tragic boating accident in November 1981), would collect their share of the profits through syndication deals as well as from the last two seasons of CHARLIE'S ANGELS. 

    As that CHARLIE'S ANGELS scandal was ending, another problem occurred.  A writer's strike took rage on Hollywood in the summer of 1980 and new episodes of everyone's favorite programs were delayed until winter.  That didn't stop the publicity machine from focusing all their attention on the newest Angel, Tanya Roberts.  "When I heard the CHARLIE'S ANGELS role was open, I kept thinking, I want it.  I deserve it.  It's mine!"  Tanya Roberts breathed new life into the five year old show, but viewers were no longer interested.  Even though her character, Julie Rogers, had a minor criminal record and didn't attend the police academy, but a top school for models instead, audiences assumed that they had seen it all before.

   Aside from having a new face on the show, Charlie relocated the Angels to his new Hawaiian office for five episodes, a throw back to the very popular 1977-1978 season opener, "Angels in Paradise".  That wasn't all that changed.  ABC executives moved the show from its stronghold on Wednesday to Sunday at 8:00 PM against Carol O' Connor's hit show, “Archie's Place” and the new hot cop show “CHiPS”.  After two months, CHARLIE'S ANGELS was once again moved, this time to Saturdays at 8:00 PM, as a warm prelude into Spelling's other extravagant fests, “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island”.  After a long three month hiatus when the show could not be found anywhere on the dial, CHARLIE'S ANGELS returned for four final episodes, the last strangely entitled "Let Our Angel Live", in which Kelly Garrett is shot in the head for the second time during the run of the show (also in "To Kill an Angel").  It was a well publicized fact that Jaclyn Smith's five year contract was to expire and that she would be pursuing other projects.  The Hawaiian episodes were repeated until August 19, 1981.

   "I walked away from CHARLIE'S ANGELS feeling good about myself and my prospects for playing parts I would really enjoy", said Cheryl Ladd in a 1985 interview.  "That experience taught me a great deal as well as giving me the opportunity which doesn't come along very often".  All six actresses on the show would embark on major Hollywood careers, some more successful than others, but to this day they are all still working in the business.  Tanya Roberts had this to say about her days as an Angel.  "I thought CHARLIE'S ANGELS would change my whole life, and in a way it did.  The money was phenomenal the first year (she was hired on at $12,000 per episode), but I'd loved to do a second year, 'cause it would have been even more phenomenal".  David Doyle told PEOPLE magazine that, "Without that show, some of us would be worth about $3.50 a week".  Some of the actresses are fond of their days as an Angel, but not all of them.  When being interviewed by TV GUIDE in 1986, Shelly Hack pronounced her dismay for the show.  "Not another article about CHARLIE'S ANGELS.  Every interviewer talks to me like I'm back from the dead.  I became famous overnight and I hadn't done anything.  One day I woke up and my face was on the cover of every magazine in America".  It would take quite a few years for Ladd, Smith, Fawcett, and Jackson to overcome their TV images.  "Most of the Angels were typecast", said Tanya Roberts.  "After you work on a show for three years, you can be identified to closely with one character.  I was lucky".

   In retrospect CHARLIE'S ANGELS may not have been the greatest show TV show on an artistic level, but it certainly stands out as one of the most enjoyable pieces of Americana.  From beautiful girls in bikinis to slices of action and adventure, CHARLIE'S ANGELS offered something for everyone.  CHARLIE'S ANGELS showed us that women could be beautiful and well coifed and still be intellectually stimulating and physically aggressive.  It spawned dozens of imitators and made six women superstars.  "I can't say this of every show I ever produced", offered Aaron Spelling in 1986, "but I loved CHARLIE'S ANGELS.  In 1988, Spelling considered a new series about female detectives, simply called “Angels”.  Aside from selecting four unknown actresses to don halos, the project never took off.  Rumors are always circulating that there will be a reunion movie, but as Spelling says, "It would be very difficult to get any three of the four originals to do it".

    No television program has been so critically analyzed and discussed as CHARLIE'S ANGELS.  The phenomenon eluded everyone at the time and everyone had an opinion on it.  Although CHARLIE'S ANGELS was never a media darling, it actually did receive three Emmy Award nominations (1976/1977 & 1977/1978 for Kate Jackson as best lead actress in a drama series, & 1976/1977 for Jerry Rosenthal, William L. Stevenson, & Michael Corrigan for outstanding achievement in film editing for a series -"The Mexican Connection").  CHARLIE'S ANGELS ran in syndication for several years, and in the late 1980s the split team of Spelling / Goldberg Productions sold the show to Columbia Tristar and Sony Pictures. In January 1993, cable television's TNT (The Ted Turner Network) began airing the show.  Given the royal treatment by TNT,  CHARLIE'S ANGELS has aired at least five days a week almost consistently for the past three years, and now viewers can recall their fond memories of what the show was really all about.  Big hair and great fun!  Arnold Hano hit the nail on the head in his TV GUIDE article on the show; "CHARLIE'S ANGELS will not wear out your brain.  But then it never intended to".

written by Henry Branham Jr

Charlie's Angels Forever (C)copyright 1995