Born-Again Farrah

You Incurable Skeptics who secretly expected Farrah to fall flat on her pretty face, don't hold your breath. . . . She's winsome (easy for her), breezy, totally unaffected and persuasive. . . ."

Bruce Williamson's assessment in last month's Playboy, of Farrah Fawcett-Majors' performance in her first starring film, Somebody Killed Her Husband, may be prophetic. Or it may not be. The important thing is that Farrah, the one true social/sexual/economic phenomenon of the Seventies, is back among us as an animate media presence--after a year's absence from the tube, a year in which any number of interchangeable Cheryls, Suzannes, Susans and such tried to replace her in the hearts and minds of American men. The chance, it was fat.

While it may not seem that she has been away that long (or at all), it is even more difficult to recall the initial jolt that propelled the public into such an intense love affair. As with Nixon's '72 landslide and the fad for crewcuts, it now seems hard to believe that we fell so hard and so fast for this ex-Texas prom queen with the improbable name, unlikely hair and unseemly teeth. But we did--and how!

Her TV show was in the Nielsen top ten for an entire season. Her poster infused an industry that had been moribund since the mid-Sixties. Her photo appeared on more than 200 magazine covers worldwide and was such common media currency that New Times was able to put her on the cover with the line: "In this Issue: Absolutely Nothing About Farrah Fawcett-Majors!"

Andy Warhol: She's more famous every 15 seconds.

Playboy: Is the clock still ticking?

Warhol: She's going to be around for a long time.

Playboy: What guarantees that?

Warhol: She really is exciting. She has a good-looking husband, too.

Playboy: Did you like Charlie's Angels?

Whrhol: Oh, yeah. I bought a Farrah Fawcett doll.

Playboy: Where do you keep it?

Warhol: Next to my Cher doll. I collect them all.

Playboy: Will Farrah last longer than Cher?

Warhol: She's more famous than Cher.

Playboy: She's more famous than Cher.

Playboy: Have you ever painted Farrah?

Warhol: No, but we're hoping. First we're working on Muhammad Ali.

The Fawcetts do not turn me on. The point is, though, that a name like that does turn people on. It has an absolutely magical effect. You don't have a to think about it. Everybody gets it.

--Marshall Mc Luhan

The best way to gauge the social impact of any phenomenon is to look at the business it generates, and Farrah was a one-woman industry. In that sense, she was spectacularly triumphant over every other pop-cult celebrity of the Seventies: Her show outdrew Howard Cosell's variety show, her poster outsold Billy Beer and New Times never put Travolta on its cover. Meanwhile, just looking like Farrah was good for business, as dozens of look-alikes, nearly likes and almost-likes discovered in small-town, back-street promotions; and the yearning for that look created a boom in the hair-styling trade and prompted more concern for dental care than anything else since the fluoride controversy.

True enough, but why? No one really expected her to happen, not even the TV moguls. They thought that, of the Angels, Kate Jackson or Jaclyn Smith had a better shot to bang the public gong. Farrah was a knockout, true, but Christ--that hair, smile and glow of health belonged in a hot tub, not a boudoir. Sex symbols? Raquel Welch was a sex symbol; Farrah Fawcett was a glass of milk.

Said the public: "Make mine milk."

Farrah epitomized the shift in our social perception of sex, from lurid/sultry to scrubbed/healthy. She was both erotic and wholesome, like a blow job in Yosemite. The Raquels could put you in traction; Farrah could put you in a trance. She was a blend of fucking and jogging, and the first mass visual symbol of postneurotic fresh-air sexuality.

American men were leaving the meat bars and singles scenes for the sauna and tennis court, and she is who they wanted to take along. She wasn't Frederick's high heels but Adidas' sneakers; not a jaded, unapproachable prick-tease but a cheerful, unpretentious adolescent fantasy reincarnate: the ultimate cheerleader.

Sure, this was all illusion; but, in a media culture, what isn't? Who she was (concluded on page 270)Farrah(continued from page 262) didn't matter; what she represented did. She was ours, and she was the original, and the Fawcett-Minors who followed were mere attempts at capitalizing on what we, through her, had created. You can put a girl in gym clothes or a wet T-shirt on the cover of every magazine in the world, but you cannot put her into our fantasies. All you can do is purge the one already there.

And that is what the hype barons of the celebrity industry attempted to do, during that year-plus when Farrah was absent from the tube. From Bisset's wet look to Travolta's disco pose to Tiegs's pink bikini, the name of the game was: Find the next Farrah. Or, failing that, create the next Farrah. But the punch line to that joke was that only we can create a Farrah; the media can merely concoct imitations.

Those of us on the receiving end of mass-culture control damn few things, but fame can be one of them. It is ours to give, at least to any substantive extent, and we resent those who would seize this power through use of the siege cannon of publicity. And we prefer to bestow it, not on overnight icons jerry-built by media manipulators but on sleepers, dark horses, funky no-names with the promise of infinite surprise. Roots, not Washington: Behind Closed Doors. George Wallace, not Nelson Rockefeller. Star Wars, not The Great Gatsby.

We enjoy taking such individuals, isolated and unadored, and making them monumental; striking guerrillalike at the manipulators in a demonstration that we still decide who's really who and who really isn't. Farrah embodied the principle that we set the trends; that the star makers only incline, they do not compel.

And the whole wave of next Farrahs and new Farrahs eventually ran aground on the rugged fact that the "old" Farrah was still very much with us, in scrubbed/healthy, erotic/wholesome spirit, if not in weekly, televised actuality. She wisely took a year away from the public eye, to destrain it, to keep Farrah novelties from eradicating forever the novelty of Farrah; and so now the name of her game is the Big Comeback.

She is back on Charlie's Angels and back in Somebody Killed Her Husband, and there are more Angel episodes and more high-ballyhoo films to come soon (indeed, film number two, The Bind, is just now wrapping up). So now we'll get the chance we've been waiting three years for--the chance to see what Farrah's really made of.

Farrah to Cheryl: I'm Back!

They finally had to send her home. She was causing too much commotion. She's always saying, "I must have privacy--privacy, privacy, privacy." But she's still got her hair out there! She's still out smiling! I said, "God, Farrah, put something on! Put a hat on, put some glasses on, disguise yourself." But she wouldn't.

--actor James Stacy, on a visit by Farrah Fawcett-Majors to the set of his movie Just a Little Inconvenience

I was the one directly responsible for getting Farrah involved in Somebody Killed Her Husband. When I read the script, I thought that Farrah Fawcett should play the role and I recommended her to the producer, Marty Poll. I felt the role was one that would be a good first shot for her: She did not have to carry the picture and it seemed like a good departure from what she had been doing. Once before, when I was casting King Kong, I had proposed her for the Fay Wary role; but then Charlie's Angels came along and that never happened.

--Joyce Selznick, premier

Hollywood casting agent