Angel delight
‘ONCE upon a time there were three little girls who went to the Police Academy and they were each assigned very hazardous duties. But I took them away from all that and now they work for me. My name is Charlie...”
So began American crime drama Charlie’s Angels as it launched on ITV in 1977 and introduced viewers to an all-female detective team, an unseen boss and his right hand man John Bosley (David Doyle).
Charlie was the mysterious voice on the end of the phone who gave the Angels their latest assignments every week. He never appeared in any of the 110 episodes, but played a pivotal role in the series.
John Forsyth, best known as the wealthy Blake Carrington in long-running soap Dynasty recorded the voice of Charlie, but was never credited to retain the air of mystery about the character.
A different actor was originally cast in the role of Charlie Townsend, but when he did not work out, producer Aaron Spelling called John and offered him the job.
John later remembered how he rushed to the first recording session saying “So, in my pyjamas with my raincoat on, I went down to the bowels of 20th Century Fox with nothing but a microphone and two people standing, one being Aaron, the other being the writer”.
Charlie’s Angels was originally going to be called The Alley Cats or Harry’s Angels until Kate Jackson, who played Sabrina Duncan, suggested Charlie’s Angels.
The original trio included Sabrina, Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith) and Jill Munroe (Farrah Fawcett).
Jaclyn was the last to audition for Charlie’s Angels and the last to leave, but her character was originally going to be killed off in the pilot episode. The producers fought to keep her as one of the Angels.
Aaron Spelling later said in his autobiography, A Prime-Time Life, that although Charlie’s Angels was one of his most successful shows it was also one of the worst-testing pilots in TV history.
Farrah, who left after the first series, later said: “When the show was number three, I figured it was our acting. When it got to be number one, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra.”
Many famous faces popped up in Charlie’s Angels over the years including Christopher Lee, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Kim Basinger, Magnum PI’s Tom Selleck, Jamie Lee Curtis and Patrick Duffy.
Golden girl Farrah inspired hairstyles around the world and her exit from the series was explained by saying her character had left to become a professional racing driver in Europe.
Cheryl Ladd replaced her to play Kris Munroe and Shelly Hack, who played Tiffany Welles, later replaced Kate Jackson in series four. Shelly herself was replaced by Tanya Roberts who appeared as Julie Rogers in the fifth series.
The latest incarnation of Charlie’s Angels, starring Twilight’s Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and
Ella Ballinska, opens in cinemas on November
29, but the original series is still remembered fondly.
The first Angels were kept busy solving crimes at a beauty contest, a health spa, a women’s prison and on a cruise ship. Their adventures became one of the top-rated prime-time shows of the late 1970s, and the opening episode set the tone. Entitled Hellride, it saw the original trio investigate the murder of a female race car driver.
Kate Jackson later said: “When the first year of Charlie’s Angels ended, our friendship didn’t. It just grew stronger through the years. I don’t know what the connection that the three of us have is, but it is there and it is something extremely special.” Jaclyn Smith once said of the original line-up: “I met them both before the show. I met Farrah on a Max Factor commercial and we were each doing different things. And I just remembered thinking she’s from Texas and we both loved our parents and we had a lot in common at that time. I remember thinking ‘I like this girl,’ never thinking that we’d go on and be on a show together.
“It was just that we were two girls doing a Max Factor commercial who had a lot in common...
“I met Kate again at another audition. She always seemed, when Farrah and I started the show, like she knew the ropes and she was sort of the leader, and she was. She was very bright, very articulate, very outspoken.”
Charlie would have been proud of his employees.