Sadly Farrah Fawcett is no longer with us, but one things for sure, to many men and women of her time, they will remember her as the ultimate pin up girl, women wanted to look like and the arm candy all men wish they would go home too.
Ferrah Leni Fawcett was born on 2nd February, 1947 in the coastal city of Corpus Christi, Texas. She was the second daughter of Pauline a homemaker, and Jim Fawcett, an oil field contractor. She later changed her name to Farrah.
Fawcett attended John J.Pershing Middle School in Houston, Texas and from 1962 – 1965, she went to W.B. Ray High School, where she held the title of “Most Beautiful Student” for all four years.
It was the fall of 1965, when Fawcett enrolled at The University of Texas in Austin. There she planned to major in microbiology and joined the Delta Delta Delta sorority. The following year, she was discovered by a celebrity publicist who wanted her to move to California to work as a model. Inititally her parents forbid her to go, however, her persitance prevailed and they finally conceded when she told them she would do it for a while and then return to finish her studies, so they accompanied her on the trip to Hollywood. Within two weeks of arriving, she was signed up to a modeling agency. Immediately Fawcett was inundated with offers for television and pictorial/poster work. Any plans of returning to school fell by the wayside.
With her pictures appearing in the most popular magazines around America, she was quickly noticed by casting agents and she started landing small parts in forgettable movies, such as 1970’s “Myra Breckinridge”, her role an ingenuous blonde.
Fawcett remained in Hollywood.
Lee Majors a handsome young actor was working on the set of “The Big Valley” an American television series, when Dave Gershenson, his publicity agent came across a picture of a young woman who had just come to Hollywood looking for a break in her modeling/acting career. Gershenson knew that Majors would like the Texan Beauty and made a few calls and obtained her contact details. When Farrah first heard from Majors, she thought he was the rudest man she had ever encountered.
Majors was working on set and during a brief break rang the all girl boarding house where Fawcett was staying. On the answering machine a simple message “Please tell Farrah that Lee Majors will be by at eight oclock to pick her up”. Later Majors explained to Fawcett that when you work on set, you can’t always get back to the phone and he didn’t want her to make other plans. After laying her eyes on him, it seemed that this handsome actor genuinely wanted to take her out, as quite clearly he could have had his pick of Hollywood girls.
That first night out together, Fawcett spent part of the night in the ladies room being sick, something Lee thought at the time was a hint that she didn’t really want to go out with him in the first place. But despite the rocky start, Majors wasn’t going to let her slip through his fingers, and the next day he sent her a bakers dozen of long stemmed yellow roses. Fawcett was touched by his thoughtfulness and from that moment forward, they became inseparable, and were soon seen and photographed at all of the Hollywood hot spots and social events.
They began dating in 1968. Majors and Fawcett were married in 1973, the 5th anniversary of their first date. The wedding was held at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, California.
Their garden ceremony hosted 150+ guests. Fawcetts sister Diane had the role of matron of honor, and Harvey Yeary, Majors father was best man.
Majors and Fawcett flourished during the mid seventies as they became TV’s golden couple. While Majors career was in full flight, Fawcett’s was yet to take off. She managed to have quite a few guest appearances on television shows, even joining her husband on the set of “The Six Million Dollar Man” for four episodes. But that was all about to change for her in the year 1975. Fawcett got a small part in “Logan’s Run” and in 1976 was cast in “Charlie’s Angels”.
Fawcett was cast along side Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson as three glamorous ex policewomen who went to work for the Townsend Detective Agency as private investigators for a unseen boss played by John Forsythe. The show was an instant hit.
Though with success, cracks started to surface in Fawcett’s once perfect marriage. From earlier reports of wedded bliss, there were now reports of jealousy and bitterness between the two. Long shooting schedules and weeks apart didn’t help matters.
Lee was out of town filming in Toronto and agreed to keep an eye on best friend Ryan O’Neils daughter Tatum who was also in the city, and in return, O’Neil said he would keep an eye on Farrah. Majors later found out that the two were involved, and he doubly betrayed by both his wife and his best friend.The couple officially separated in the late 70’s but it wasn’t until 1982 an official divorce was announced. It took 30 months of legal wrangling and four days or arguing in court before their marriage formally ended.
It was during her first season with the show that Fawcett posed for Photographer Bruce McBroom. With peroxide blonde free flowing locks, a dazzling smile, and skintight red swimsuit, Broom had the perfect ingredients to a bestselling 1976 poster of Farrah Fawcett, that found it’s way into so many young boys bedrooms across America. Farrah’s famous poster first appeared in Life Magazine in 1976, and with sales over 12 million, Farrah was the most popular pin-up of the 70’s.
The image catapulted Fawcett to superstardom. Her layered hair was adorned by women all over and became known as “The Farrah” cut and style. A shampoo company saw a quick buck and jumped on the bandwagon by releasing a shampoo in her name too.
Despite her overwhelming popularity, Fawcett chose not to return to the show after the first season. Aaron Spelling the director/producer of the show was not amused. He sued the actress for breech of contract. When faced with a 7 million dollar lawsuit, Fawcett and Spelling came to an agreement that she would make periodic guest appearances over the next few years and they cast Cheryl Ladd as her younger sister as Kris Munroe.
Fawcett turned her attention to film roles, with more depth to them. Sadly, her appearance as a ditsy blonde in the movie “Cannonball Run” were more the stereotypical roles that came her way.
All during this time, Fawcett and O’Neil have a sometimes on, sometimes off relationship between the years of 1979 through to 1997. Together they have a son, Redmond in 1985.
In 1984, Fawcett tried her hand at producing as well as starring in the movie “The Burning Bed”. The movie is based on a woman driven to kill her husband after suffering physical abuse for years. For her performance, Fawcett received an Emmy nomination.
She also won critics over with her performance in the movie “Extremities” where she played a rape victim who turns the tables on her attacker.
1989, she played a mother who shot her children in another mini-series called “Small Sacrifices” receiving her second Emmy Nomination. A third Emmy Nomination would come from a movie she appears in called “The Guardian”.
Throughout most of the late 1980s and early 1990s Fawcett’s projects came from TV movies.
For many years Fawcett was approached to take her clothes off for movies roles and photo shoots and she resisted for years, however at the age of 48, having been approached by Hugh Hefner, she agreed to do a topless shoot for Playboy Magazine. The magazine sold over 4 million copies. She returned to the magazine two years later and also did a spread for Vanity Fair.
Fawcett’s career was at an all time high, but that couldn’t be said for her personal life. After 15 years of a very turbulent relationship with O’Neil, Fawcett decides to call it quits. It wasn’t that long before she found herself in the arms of Hollywood Director James Orr.
In 1997 Fawcett appeared on the Letterman show, and her incoherent behavior led many to speculate as to whether or not she was abusing drugs or alcohol or both.
In 1998, Orr was arrested for physically attacking Fawcett after she turned down his marriage proposal. He was later convicted of assault and battery.
In 2000, she starred in the film Dr. T and the Women alongside Richard Gere and Helen Hunt. She also began seeing O’Neil off and on again.
Theirs no question that Farrah Fawcett was one of the most beautiful women of the 70’s. But one thing that no-one can avoid is getting older. The sad truth of the entertainment industry is that the older you get, the less job opportunities that come your way. This and for this reason mostly, celebrities feel the pressure to undergo sometime extreme transformations in an attempt to hold onto their youth. Fawcett was not immune to this pressure and underwent many surgeries. Towards the end of her life, she was barely recognizable.
2006 and Fawcett suffered a series of personal losses that were close to her, one of those being the man who sued her, Aaron Spelling. The other was her mother Polly.
A strong and healthy looking Fawcett reunited with Jackson and Smith for a tribute to the late Charile’s Angels creator Aaron Spelling at the Emmys in 2006. This same year John Forsythe was diagnosed with colorectal cancer after surviving quadruple bypass surgery in 1979.
By the year out, the cancer curse that had hit her co-stars in Charlies Angels, Kate Jackson (breast cancer) and Jaclyn Smith (breast cancer) earlier, was flowing through her body too. Journalists referred to it as the “triple curse” when Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer.
Both Smith and Jackson are survivors. When Fawcett rang Smith to give her the news, Fawcett in her humor said, what was it, the water we were drinking??? Clearly Fawcett maintained her humor, which was hard to do in the face of cancer.
In 1987, Kate Jackson was on the set of a movie when she felt something was wrong with her body, after repeated warnings to schedule a mammogram, Jackson consulted her doctor and he sent her to have her first mammogram of her life. The results confirmed her fears, she had a malignant growth in her left breast. She couldn’t even feel it. It was microscopic. For the first time in her life, she was faced with the question, did she want to live or die. If you choose life as she did, its never the same. Smith cancelled a flight to New York and rushed to her friends side. Four days after the diagnosis Kate underwent a lumpectomy in which a malignant tumor and a small amount of healthy breast tissue surrounding it were removed. The following year her mammogram showed everything as normal. But the following year, they found microscopic cancerous sells in the same breast, and Kate immediately underwent surgery to remove part of her the breast and later had reconstructive surgery. Kate has been cancer free for over 20 years.
Thirteen years after witnessing Kate Jacksons personal struggle, Smith was shocked to discover a lump of her own in 2002. After hearing the doctors diagnosis of breast cancer, she said “take it off”, “just take it off”. After her doctor examined the results of her tests, her particular kind of tumor was best to deal with using radiation and a lumpectomy. Thankfully with early detection Smith was able to avoid a mastectomy and she to has been cancer free ever since.
But this was not to be the same outcome for Fawcett. In August 2006, the girls came together to honor Aaron Spelling at the 58th Annual Emmy awards who had passed on.
While the reunion was a joy for Fawcett, in the days following she began feeling pain and fatigue, but wasn’t sure what was wrong. She didn’t see a doctor straight away, waiting until September for an appointment. After he sent her for tests, the diagnosis was returned, she had anal cancer. Farrah took the news bravely initially, but once it sank in, she cried for days, then one day she woke with a determination like she’d never had before. A determination not to let it defeat her, she would take it head on and fight it to the end.
Cases of anal cancer are quite rare. If caught in its first stage, there is an 80% curability rate. The diagnosis reunited her not only with the girls, but with O’Neil who became her constant companion as she went through successful chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
Fawcett was given the all clear for her 60th birthday, but Fawcett and her family were completely devastated to learn that the disease had returned three months later. She received the news after a routine check up discovered a malignant polyp, smaller than a pea. Then the news turned to bad to worse when it was discovered it had spread to Fawcetts liver. Hope started to fade, but Fawcett continued to fight for her life.
After finding that standard cancer treatments were ineffective in her case, she decided to travel to Germany to seek alternative treatment not available in the United States. Alana Stewart went with her and at the request of Fawcett, she took her home video camera to document the journey.
Fawcett’s hair, the mane that completed her, started to fall out from the treatment she’d received. O’Neil kept the hair and still has it in his home.
In 2009, an advanced screening of her documentary was held but Fawcett was to weak and heavily medicated to attend. The movie that follows her journey from start to finish is a painful yet uplifting testament to her courage and strength.
On the morning of June 25, 2009, Fawcett (62) passed away in the hospitals intensive care unit, only three hours before the world faced another shocking exit with that of Michael Jackson.
Ironically Fawcett served as a patron and spokesperson for the American Cancer Society for many years, as a result of loosing her older sister Diane to lung cancer in 1998.
A heartbroken O’Neil and son Redmond both broke down in tears at the private funeral service of Farrah Fawcett as they listened to the final letter she penned to them. In the letter she addresses the ups and downs in their relationship ending with “When I figure out what it is all about, I will tell you”
The service was held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles following her Catholic beliefs.
He son Redmond who was serving time in jail for drug related charges , was granted 3 hours release to say goodbye to his mother.
RIP Farrah Fawcett (1947 – 2009)
