For a TV show that only ran for five years, Charlie\u2019s Angels packs a punch like a bikini-wearing big-hair-flicking private investigator. \u201cWe never thought we\u2019d be talking about it 50 years later,\u201d says Jaclyn Smith, the only original Angel to make it to the end of the show\u2019s run. Smith, 80, has now written a memoir, I Once Knew a Guy Called Charlie \u2013 she is not, you gather, the type of actor to want to distance herself from her defining project.<\/p>\n
As I read her book, and speak to her over Zoom, she comes across as sensible, hardworking and optimistic. Also lucky: loving and supportive parents, agents who seem to appear from nowhere and offer her work, an early hit show, a gift for making friends and getting over heartbreak. Even when she was diagnosed with breast cancer more than 20 years ago, terrifying as it was, it was caught early and successfully treated. Her positive outlook seems to extend to the excesses of US TV in the 1970s and 80s (drug use on set only gets a brief mention); her three ex-husbands get off fairly lightly; and any difficulties \u2013 her OCD, the men who stalked her at the height of her fame \u2013 are not dwelled on.<\/p>\n
The original Angels \u2026 (from left) Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett in 1976. Photograph: THA\/Alamy<\/p>\n
Smith wanted to be a dancer. By the late 50s, she was attending a dance school in Houston, where she grew up, which was run by Patsy Swayze (mother of Patrick, who would go on to be a successful actor, but was then around seven and, Smith says, \u201can absolute doll\u201d). She describes an idyllic childhood \u2013 happily married parents and a Methodist minister grandfather who was a steady and reassuring presence. Her dad was a dentist and \u201cgave me my work ethic\u201d; her mother was a \u201cgoddess of love \u2013 she just made you feel No 1\u201d. Smith recalls: \u201cWhatever I am happened in that secure family they provided for me \u2013 morals, ethics, values.\u201d Downtime was spent at the family farm in Texas: \u201cTwo hundred acres with the San Marcos river running through it. It was life at its best.\u201d<\/p>\n
But her childhood was also when her compulsive behaviour started. \u201cIt became sort of a form of prayer for me \u2013 it\u2019s probably the way my brain works \u2013 but that all came about protecting loved ones,\u201d she says. She would pray obsessively, thinking it would keep her grandfather safe; later, she would do the same when her two children were born, and she says it still flares up in times of stress.<\/p>\n
\u2018I didn\u2019t walk on the wild side ever.\u2019 Photograph: Randee St Nicholas<\/p>\n
After leaving school, Smith convinced her parents to allow her to go to New York to train as a dancer. Her father insisted she live at the women-only Barbizon hotel<\/a>, one-time home to Sylvia Plath, Grace Kelly and Joan Didion among many other notable women. \u201cThere were such strict rules there,\u201d she says. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t wear slacks in the lobby. I was in hose and a dress and a pair of heels. And boys could not go above the mezzanine.\u201d<\/p>\n It must have been exciting to have been a young dancer in New York in the late 60s? \u201cVery competitive,\u201d says Smith. But also a lot more accessible than it is now. \u201cThere were open calls for Broadway shows, whereas today you have to have a social media following, an agent, a manager, everything. When I started, you\u2019d read about auditions, and it would be a mass cast call, and maybe you\u2019d make it, maybe you wouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Offers for roles in shows started coming in, and Smith \u2013 beautiful, classy \u2013 was also in demand for lucrative advertising work. While her peers were protesting, taking drugs or embracing early 70s counterculture, Smith married the actor Roger Davis \u2013 famous, she writes, for his role in Dark Shadows, the \u201cdaytime vampire-themed soap opera\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI just didn\u2019t get into it,\u201d she says of New York\u2019s bohemian scene. \u201cDid I go to a discotheque and dance? Yeah, I loved it, but no, I didn\u2019t walk on the wild side ever. I was a hard worker.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps also a little square. When she turned up to audition for Hair, she wore a blue leotard, with pink tights and hair in a neat bun. Smith laughs at her naive Texas primness when trying to convince producers she could be in a taboo-breaking hippie musical: \u201cI looked like I had come from another planet.\u201d<\/p>\n Sexual harassment was usual. \u201cI experienced it. I think every actress does,\u201d says Smith. \u201cYou can walk away. You can say, \u2018Hey, I don\u2019t need that movie. I don\u2019t want it if this is what it requires.\u2019\u201d Were there ever expectations that certain things were expected? \u201cYeah, there was some of that, but you can say no. I think I was never, ever desperate about a career. Maybe that\u2019s because where I came from with my parents, and I knew I could make my own way.\u201d She says she would have been offered a bigger part in one early film if she\u2019d done a nude scene (she refused), and was dropped from another after she got married. Because she was expected to be single, or available? \u201cI guess. But I wanted to be cast not because I was single, but because I was right for the part.\u201d<\/p>\n Her first marriage didn\u2019t last; neither did her second to another actor, Dennis Cole. But her career zipped along \u2013 small parts in successful series such as the police drama McCloud, and TV movies. She got her first regular job opposite Robert Wagner in the crimefighting caper Switch. It was Wagner who recommended her to producers Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg, who were putting together a new show featuring three female detectives.<\/p>\n Smith with her fourth husband, Brad Allen, at a Farrah Fawcett Foundation benefit gala in October 2022. Photograph: Rick Kern\/Getty Images for Farrah Fawcett Foundation<\/p>\n Smith was the last to be cast in Charlie\u2019s Angels, as calm and empathetic Kelly Garrett, and was offered the lowest fee \u2013 $3,000 an episode, compared with her original co-stars Farrah Fawcett ($5,000) and Kate Jackson ($10,000). Jackson was a more established star, but Smith demanded to be paid at least the same as Fawcett, whom she reasoned had done a similar level of work to her. \u201cMy agent said, \u2018Are you sure? We have a good feeling about this series.\u2019 I stood my ground, and I got it.\u201d She would have walked away, she says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t about money. It was the fact that we\u2019d done the same thing, and I thought that was only fair.\u201d (By the fifth season, Smith was earning $100,000 an episode.)<\/p>\n The show was an instant hit when it was first broadcast in 1976. \u201cI was excited because I knew it was different \u2013 three women instead of three men, chasing danger instead of being rescued from danger.\u201d It was often ridiculous \u2013 the three private investigators, working for a mysterious Charlie who only appeared via speakerphone, would go undercover to catch criminals as, Smith writes, \u201cstewardesses, beauty pageant contestants, singers, magicians\u2019 assistants, Ice Capades skaters, football players, jewel thieves, Keystone Cops, toy makers, tennis champions and exotic dancers\u201d. In one episode, Kris Munroe (played by Cheryl Ladd, replacing Fawcett, who left after the first season), wrestles an alligator.<\/p>\n On the cover of Time magazine in 1976. Photograph: Patti McConville\/Alamy<\/p>\n People questioned why they had to do all of this looking like supermodels, or criticised the show for objectifying women. \u201cI thought it was silly,\u201d Smith says. \u201cWe were not controlled by Charlie. We were working hard, courageous, we went about our job. Usually women on TV then were nurses, mothers, wives. We went into a territory that only men occupied. We got that bad guy and took him down. Also, it was fun and it was escapism. Pretty clothes, pretty locations, fast cars, thin girls taking down a 200lb man \u2026 come on. It was just having fun.\u201d<\/p>\n Did she ever think they shouldn\u2019t be in bikinis so often? Smith laughs. \u201cI think we did say to Aaron, \u2018We don\u2019t want to be in a bikini unless we\u2019re near water.\u2019\u201d But it looks so innocent, she says, \u201ccompared to today. Our characters were loyal, chaste, involved in the friendship part of it \u2026 we never really had love affairs. It was always the sisterhood.\u201d<\/p>\n The original three Angels got on instantly, says Smith, even though inevitably the media tried to create rumours of rivalries and conflict. \u201cDefinitely no jealousies,\u201d says Smith. \u201cWe loved one another. It was a fellowship, a sisterhood, a team.\u201d They became lifelong friends (Jackson is godmother to Smith\u2019s daughter). \u201cWe held each other up during breast cancer, during different things.\u201d Although Fawcett only did one season, Smith says, \u201cI adored Farrah. What you saw was what you got. She was beautiful, had fun, liked to laugh and had great humour.\u201d Fawcett died in 2009, but \u201cwe were close until the end of her life\u201d.<\/p>\n Having two co-stars go through the strain of becoming famous overnight helped them all, she says. The show had to employ bodyguards for the three Angels, and Smith was a victim of stalking. \u201cI had many restraining orders after Charlie\u2019s,\u201d she says, describing one man who climbed over a security fence during a shoot and claimed to be her husband. He later turned up at her house. \u201cWhen you\u2019re in someone\u2019s living room every week, I guess they feel they know you.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith in the 1981 film Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Photograph: Walt Disney Television Photo Archives\/ABC<\/p>\n By the fifth and final season, Smith, the only original lead, wasn\u2019t finding it as fun. It was the 1980s and the Angels had to be even more glamorous. Drugs, especially cocaine, were also on set, she writes, \u201cwith some people using it constantly\u201d. It took her time to realise, she says. \u201cI was innocent to drugs, but then you tune in to it because people slow down and can\u2019t perform.\u201d Was it common for big TV shows to have drug use? \u201cI think it was,\u201d she says, but she doesn\u2019t approve of it. \u201cIt just takes out your spark.\u201d She stayed distant from it all. \u201cI just went about my business, then went to my trailer, and as long as we got our show, everything was fine.\u201d<\/p>\n Charlie\u2019s Angels ended in 1981. Smith would later have cameos in the 2000 film reboot, starring Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore, and the 2019 follow-up film<\/a>. After the show ended, she believes she was typecast as glamorous, but frivolous.<\/p>\n \u2018When you\u2019re in every someone\u2019s living room every week, they feel they know you.\u2019 Photograph: THA\/Alamy<\/p>\n By 1981 she was in her mid-30s and had to fight to play the first lady in the TV biopic Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. \u201cThey didn\u2019t want a Charlie\u2019s Angel playing Jackie Kennedy,\u201d she says. She is of the generation of actresses who struggled to find decent roles past 40, but by then Smith had two young children \u2013 with the cinematographer Tony Richmond, her third husband.<\/p>\n As well as parenting, she had a lucrative fashion line and interiors brand, one of the earliest celebrity branding successes. Life, she says, has \u201cbeen a pretty smooth ride. Yeah, there\u2019s been things along the way, mainly marriages.\u201d Smith has been with Brad Allen, a heart surgeon, since 1991. She spent decades trying to recreate her parents\u2019 happy marriage. \u201cFinally got it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Her memoir is already out in the US and, doing signings, Smith has loved meeting women who grew up with Charlie\u2019s Angels. \u201cDid the show give women a chance to break out of their mould, to be brave, to be independent? I like to think that.\u201d
I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie by Jaclyn Smith (Simon & Schuster, \u00a320). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a TV show that only ran for five years, Charlie\u2019s Angels packs a punch like a bikini-wearing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":922629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-922628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}