New Angel in Town
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television NEW ANGEL IN TOWN BY MARVIN KITMAN How many Charlie's angels can dance on the head of a pin?" a) four; b) two; c) 19; d) eight is enough; e) don't know; f) don't care. That was the...
...Sure, it's easy to make fun of Charlie's Angels...
...With so much at stake, ABC had to be very careful...
...In tonight's episode," Imus would announce, "we'll see Frankie's angels corner the bad guys and yell, 'Don't move-or we'll blow your head off.'" But at least Charlie's Angels is nonviolent...
...it's even a great American institution, like the Green Mountain Boys or Roger's Rangers...
...Artistic breakthroughs would have to wait...
...This trend toward numbering characters may lead to a television version of The Sunshine Boys called "2 Old Men 2." Yet if the hiring of Cheryl Ladd last spring was risky, it also held out the promise of a breakthrough...
...1. Actress must have genuine imitation blonde hair that she is willing to grow longer if necessary, especially late in the season, as the public forgets whats her name...
...In fact, it is a model for all action-adventure series this year— ABC's relatively gentle saga of World War 11, Operation Petticoat, and the post-Vietnamese War period piece Love Boat, also on ABC...
...3. Ability to look cute and bouncy in a T-shirt...
...Did she decide to enroll in Actor's Studio with Lee Strasberg...
...Production for this year's Angels was scheduled to begin June 1, and I fully expected Farrah to be on the set...
...The other 8 per cent were in the hospital recovering from auto crashes, incurred while trying to get home to catch the opening...
...The rest had been told by their private physicians that one more peek at an angel could mean-the Big One...
...Demographic studies have found that 92 per cent of all American males between the ages of 18 and 37 were at home on Wednesdays at 10 p.m...
...She can run faster with shorter hair...
...The explanation for Kris' sudden presence impressed him even more...
...She was to play Kris Munroe, sister of archangel (others feel she is the devil incarnate) Jill Munroe, otherwise known as Far-rah Fawcett-Majors...
...In the 38-65 age bracket, almost 100 per cent tuned in to Charlie's Angels...
...2. Teeth...
...The situation didn't matter...
...Less drag...
...True, the girls carry guns, but they hardly use them, remaining content to stop criminals by throwing sugar in their eyes or hitting them on the back of the head with their purses...
...Usually, the girls don't have to go to such elaborate lengths to foil the heavies...
...Farrah easily copped the Emmy for the best head of hair on a cop last season, beating out James Garner of "The Rockford Combs...
...The angels never chase anybody in cars, although they have used skateboards...
...She apparently had not heard that this was merely a TV show, that Charlie would be saved in the last scene, and everything would end happily...
...a) Garth Gimble...
...Did Farrah wake up at 5 a.m...
...Had the incredible and unexpected occurred...
...Less chance of being caught by an ungentlemanly criminal...
...1 mean, she could have gotten it caught in her gun while firing and blown out her brains, so to speak...
...I'm here...
...A seven minute segment at the start of each hour-long Wednesday episode, from 10:02 to 10:09 p.m., had at least one braless girl trying on a wet T-shirt or jumping up and down to test Newton's law of gravity, or showering...
...Maybe she was just pulling my leg, or acting...
...the only important thing was that the girls wore different T-shirts every week-and that no less than one was braless...
...Their most effective strategy for bringing desperadoes to their knees, however, is making eyes at them...
...The hirsute lovely simply couldn't get along on her weekly TV salary of $7,5OO-$lO,O0O...
...Erasmus wrestled with it, as did Tilden and Boys High...
...Cheryl fit the bill (as could thousands of actresses in the greater Los Angeles area), but, in all honesty, she was not Marvin's angel...
...Her hair was so incredible, I'm amazed she's alive...
...While Cheryl doesn't resemble Farrah Majors (she looks more like Peter Frampton), she has better individual features-nicer eyes, ears, nose, and teeth...
...Thomas Aquinas devoted tomes to it...
...Despite this bias, 1 could see that Cheryl had her strong points...
...I expected this because she had a contract with Spelling and Goldberg that specified she was supposed to report for work on June 1. Come September, 1 assured everyone, we would once more see her on our home sets, her lovely hair flying naturally in the wind being whipped up by super tornado fans off camera...
...The correct answer, as everyone now knows, is none of the above...
...In one of my favorite episodes last season, a guy with a .44 magnum was going to shoot the angels...
...Had she run off to join the Peace Corps and teach Third World children how to do their hair...
...that day to find herself meta-morphised into a revolutionary nut...
...The fellow couldn't figure out how to shoot through the net...
...Would having four instead of the regular three angels ruin the show, disturb its balance...
...It's enough for Kate Jackson, the angel who comes closest to looking like a real person, to shout, "Don't move...
...It would give Charlie's Angels four of a kind, a pretty good hand in any game...
...Farrah is a critic of good character, not a lawless person...
...c) all the above...
...Anybody can understand Einstein," Chesler maintained, "but it takes a special mind to see the intelligence in Charlie's Angels and Kung Fu...
...To all this Cheryl added a certain depth...
...Of course, I am not implying that she matched the standard set by Farrah, which is to real acting as scaling Washington Heights is to mountain climbing...
...Anyone as beautiful as she is, I kept telling my self privately, wouldn't do anything so ugly as ignoring a contract...
...In the beginning there was Rock Follies, the early 1970s Thames of London series featuring three girls trying to make it small in the rock music industry...
...Spelling and Goldberg were taking another risk in that the magic number on television in the present decade has been three...
...I think I had better go take a cold shower before I become completely unhinged by this cultural phenomenon...
...Since I'm sure none of you have ever watched the show, let me explain how it achieved its stature...
...The qualifications for the job are as follows...
...Don Imus, the ex-early morning New York radio disc jockey, used to ridicule it by reciting the synopsis of an imaginary program entitled "Frankie's Angels," starring Linda Lovelace, Marilyn Chambers and Glorious Bliven...
...And there's also a show called Three's Company (ABC...
...Crazier things have happened in showbiz...
...But that all depended on Farrah Fawcett-Majors coming back to the show...
...b) Barth Gimble...
...My first choice was Southern-fried angel Dolly Parton...
...They prevented disaster by casting a net over his head...
...watching the program...
...By hiring a fourth, Spelling and Goldberg were also covering their rears, for there was a chance that Farrah would not return to the show when second-season taping began in June...
...It's no contest in the hair department, though...
...And my worst secret fears were confirmed-there would be no Farrah for Charlie...
...Clearly, then, the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, or rather the head of an ABC programming executive (to get the right answer you have to ask the right question) was not only of philosophical but of theological import as well...
...Besides, she would never disappoint her fans, who are legion...
...You see, Jill thought Kris was attending college, but the younger sister was actually in the nearby police academy...
...The Munroes are not what you would call one of your close families...
...It is not for nothing that one scholar, the respected Lewis Chesler, who has penned many famous dissertations on television as an art form, said Charlie's Angels has the most brilliant writing since Kung Fu...
...On September 14, the two-hour premiere night-perhaps twice as difficult for an angel-my heart went out to Cheryl Ladd as she tried to fill Farrah's clogs...
...TV critics, too, were in a dither, and I heard a seminar was being planned on the subject at the world-famous Walter A. Annenberg School of Communications for the fall term...
...The public obviously feels that it sees enough of Farrah on her commercials and wants to leave Wella enough alone...
...That begat ABC's Sugar Time (originally titled Girls Girls Girls), a series about three maidens trying to make it small in the American music business, and NBC's 3 Girls 3 about guess what trying to make it in TV...
...The price of a bottle of shampoo in Beverly Hills these days is outrageous...
...Charlie's Angels (ABC) is a great cultural institution, like Scull's Angels...
...So there would be only three angels on the show, after all...
...4. The acting talent of a snail...
...Still, 1 must admit that it was with trepidation and reluctance, not to mention trembling hands, that I picked up the June 1 newspapers...
...That was the most important question in television land during the summer, ranking right up there with "Who is more obnoxious...
...Yet Cheryl could read her lines, and no one will forget her immortal first words, "Hi...
...1 myself signed three petitions begging her to stay...
...Nevertheless, Cheryl's hair is nice, and far better for detective work...
...To illustrate his point, he noted how cleverly Jill (Farrah) was dispatched to Spain to race cars...
...She was properly preoccupied with getting her hair the right shade and the right tousle, and she seemed genuinely concerned about the danger her boss, Charlie Townsend, was in (he had been kidnapped from his yacht in Hawaii...
...The talk was she had acting aspirations that were going unfulfilled...
...But enough...
...The right number of angels became a hot topic when Spelling-Goldberg Productions shocked intellectual America last spring by hiring a fourth angel, Cheryl Ladd...
...More important, the latest ratings indicate that Cheryl has not hurt the show's popularity...
Vol. 60 • October 1977 • No. 21
