From
Texas, I believe. Houston? The actress Farrah Forke was named after her - the elder Farrah was a neighbor, possibly a babysitter, IIRC. Yes, I am sometimes horrified at the breadth and depth of utterly useless
trivia that fails to heed my brain's eviction notices. In
Hollywood, her first roles were as minor
cheesecake, e.g., as a member of Major Healey's harem of adoring gurls on
I Dream of Jeannie. I believe there was also a
commercial for Ultra-Brite toothpaste (
time to draw up another eviction notice?).
Eventually, there came the Big Break: she was one of the original Charlie's Angels, by far the most popular, with the quintessential lithe/blonde/blue American pin-up features, and the toothpaste smile. Farrah became a killer app of showbiz merchandising, a phenomenon unseen since the days of The Beatles - the suits had tapped into the male equivalent of screaming teenage girls. There was even a Farrah doll, and widespread sightings of young women wearing Farrah hairdos, which, oddly, didn't make them as "beautiful" as Farrah. She married Lee Majors, TV's Six Million Dollar Man - they were a power couple of showbiz. It didn't last very long.
Attempts were made to parlay success into film stardom - Farrah left Charlie's Angels, and was replaced by... who remembers now? And who remembers the classics that Farrah did? Sunburn? That was the one with Charles Grodin, right?
In later years, she resurfaced, first in "woman in jeopardy" TV movies (from the Standard Television Template Library), and, there was her work for Playboy, as elder-stateswoman cheesecake emeritus. There was also a brief romance with Ryan O'Neal, which I believe ended in tabloidery. There is no such thing as bad publicity, especially when you're a 45-year-old former icon.
Most recently, there was apparently some incident on Letterman, something, I hear, of the "What was she on?" variety. I didn't see it, but I would chalk it up to someone committing the sin of behaving like an actual human being in the artificial habitat of a talk show. And, besides, there's no such thing as bad publicity.
I am truly horrified at the breadth and depth of utterly useless...
Editors note:
Farrah Fawcett died on June 25, 2009, in the intensive care unit of Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California after battling recurring bouts with anal cancer. She was 62 years old.