Freeze Turkey! 50 Years Later, the Wild True Story Behind ‘Charlie’s Angels‘

Once upon a time, there were three little girls who came to Hollywood — two from Texas, the other from Alabama — to become famous. And they were each, at first, assigned very captivating roles, including a nonspeaking ghost in a vampire soap opera and a pitchwoman in shaving cream and shampoo commercials. But then along came a producer who took them away from all of that, and they went to work for him.

His name was Aaron.

From its debut on Sept. 22, 1976, Charlie’s Angels was a phenomenon, drawing at its peak as many as 40 million viewers an episode — a massive crowd even back then, even for an Aaron Spelling show. The general opinion was that men tuned in for the bikinis and short shorts — especially when breakout star Farrah Fawcett was wearing them — while women watched for the other clothes. A few might have even turned it on just to follow the Angels’ wacky undercover assignments. Like the time they infiltrated a Roller Derby. Or the time they infiltrated a pro football cheerleading squad. Or a beauty pageant. Or a woman’s prison.

Critics hated it. “When the publicity started, there was all of this criticism leveled about the show, that it was ‘jiggle TV,’ ” recalls Spelling’s widow, Candy. “Aaron didn’t take it personally, he really didn’t. He said, ‘Oh, good — more publicity.’ “

“You have to remember that ABC was like the Fox of its time,” adds David Bianculli, a veteran television critic and a co-host of NPR’s Fresh Air. “It was the youngest, smallest network. And the idea was: How do you get an audience as fast as possible? You do it by appealing to young people with attention-getting programming.”

While maybe not what anyone would call a feminist show, Charlie’s Angels did come along right when women were first being liberated on network TV. In 1974, Angie Dickinson took the title role in NBC’s Police Woman; Lynda Carter debuted in Wonder Woman in 1975, followed by Lindsay Wagner in The Bionic Woman, a spinoff of ABC’s popular The Six Million Dollar Man, in January 1976.

Charlie’s Angels would transcend them all — and still, 50 years later, stands as an odd yet enduring pop cultural force that continues to bounce and jiggle back onto screens. Drew Barrymore launched two blockbuster movies based on the show in the early aughts, while Elizabeth Banks attempted a somewhat less successful relaunch in 2019. Just this past February, Sony announced it had hired The Proposal scribe Peter Chiarelli to pen a new Angels script.

Half a century since its premiere, young women — and a fair number of gay men — are still doing the iconic “Angels pose” on their social media feeds, while the show remains the subject of a million memes and TikToks. Its plotlines still get endlessly dissected by feminist scholars, critics and influencers who continue to mine its fluffy 109 episodes for the deeper meaning behind such dialogue as “Freeze, turkey!”

“This wasn’t Shakespeare,” admits Jaclyn Smith, who, of course, played Kelly Garrett, one of the original Angels. “It was make-believe. And you know what? The audience needed illusion. They loved illusion. We need escapes. And Charlie’s Angels was an escape.”

Spelling was already riding a wave of success during the early 1970s, having launched a series of well-rated television films and an ABC police procedural titled The Rookies. Over the course of the next two decades, into the 1980s, he’d dominate the airwaves like no other producer, with such signature frothy fare as Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, The Love Boat and, most notably, the blockbuster primetime soap Dynasty.

With The Rookies ending in early 1976, Spelling and his producing partner Leonard Goldberg were on the hunt for a starring vehicle for Kate Jackson, who had arrived on The Rookies after a small but notable part on the early ’70s horror drama Dark Shadows. They landed on a concept titled The Alley Cats, about three gorgeous dominatrix- telegraphing detectives named Alison, Lee and Catherine (as in Al-Lee-Cat). When Spelling pitched the idea to ABC’s then-vp primetime, Barry Diller, he told Spelling, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

But when freewheeling Fred Silverman took over the network a year later, the concept got a green light, with some minor adjustments. The reconceived idea now revolved around three comely policewomen who ditch their dead-end jobs to go work as private eyes for a boss they never see. “I thought it was a terrific idea,” says Robert Wagner, now 96, who ended up partnering on the show as part of the deal Spelling and Goldberg struck with ABC. “I thought the character of Townsend hiring these three ladies — it all had great possibility.”

The Alley Cats became Charlie’s Angels. Husky-voiced Jackson would play Sabrina Duncan, the trio’s wiry leader and ersatz brain; Fawcett was cast as Jill Munroe, the quintessential California beach girl, sporty and evincing a million-watt smile. Rounding out the crew was Smith as smoldering ingenue Kelly Garrett (Smith originally was cast as Sabrina, until Jackson decided the role was better for her).

For the never-seen Charlie, the producers hired Oscar winner Gig Young, who lost the part when he showed up to his taping drunk; John Forsythe stepped in to voice the wolfish detective agency owner. Rounding out the cast: David Ogden Stiers as the agency’s stuffy attorney, Scott Woodville, and then, later, David Doyle as the doughy, frog-voiced comic relief, assistant John Bosley.

Test audiences hated the pilot, a shambolic, overly convoluted mess about a missing heiress. ABC, convinced the show was going nowhere, dispatched it as a throwaway TV movie in March 1976. Except the telefilm proved to be a smash: 30 million people tuned in, a whopping 49 percent of viewers. The network brass was shocked, but Jackson wasn’t.

“I had never heard of anything like it before. And it seemed like it might work,” she says today. “Obviously, when you start a show like that, you have no idea whether it’s going to hit or not. But I always thought it was going to be successful.”

The freshman show finished its initial 1976-77 season ranked fifth in the Nielsens, a breath behind CBS’ powerhouse M*A*S*H. The Angels landed on the cover of Time, and Fawcett landed in a red bathing suit on one of the most ubiquitous posters of all time. It sold 7 million copies and helped launch a whole industry of ancillary Charlie’s Angels products — dolls, trading cards, lunch boxes, hair care sets — that raked in tens of millions of dollars.

But then, disaster. Just before production on season two was scheduled to begin, Fawcett announced she was quitting the show.

To this day, there isn’t complete clarity on why she decided to leave. But there is no shortage of theories. Mike Pringel, who served as Fawcett’s assistant and publicist and has written two books on Angels history, says she wanted more money, “what she was worth,” as he puts it. (Fawcett and Smith earned just $5,000 an episode that first season, while Jackson made $10,000). It’s also likely that at that point Fawcett had bigger screen ambitions (although her first film after leaving Angels was Somebody Killed Her Husband with Jeff Bridges, which was such a bomb that Hollywood nicknamed it “Somebody Killed Her Career”).

Jackson, though, blames Spelling, whose onerous work schedule kept his Angels locked in a gilded cage. “He didn’t want us to leave the lot. We waited all day because he didn’t want us to meet a producer and be offered something and think we were movie stars. We sat in our trailers, hours and hours,” she says. “It didn’t have to be that way.”

Smith had spied trouble brewing — she remembers Fawcett kept casually telling her that she had never actually signed her contract — but was still taken by surprise. “When we had the [first-season] wrap party, we were all like a team and having fun and talking,” she says. “She never brought it up that she was really going to carry through. I guess I thought at the last minute she was going to change her mind.”

Jackson says that while there was blame “on both sides” for the split — Fawcett’s failing marriage to Lee Majors undoubtedly played a role, as did Spelling’s sometimes staggering greed — “For Aaron to want a piece of that poster …” Jackson says with disbelief, citing Spelling’s desire for a cut of Fawcett’s bathing suit image profits. “Not want it, but demand it. She wasn’t going to say yes.”

Spelling responded to Fawcett’s resignation by taking her to court in a breach of contract case that was splashed all over the tabloids; it was eventually settled when Fawcett reluctantly agreed to return for six guest appearances spread out over seasons three and four.

But well before all of that, Spelling knew he’d need to find an actress who could replace Fawcett in season two. He homed in on spunky Cheryl Ladd, whose most notable credit to that point had been voicing one of the band members on the kiddie cartoon Josie and the Pussycats.

Ladd didn’t want the job at first. But Spelling made his pitch and Ladd ultimately signed on to play Kris Munroe, bubbly kid sister of the flown-the-coop Jill. “Trying to replace Farrah? I don’t know who’s going to be brave enough to try that,” she says, recalling how she was a wreck on the first day of shooting. “I said to myself, ‘Oh man, I hope this works.’ “

Even without Fawcett, ratings stayed high in season two, possibly because Spelling kept reducing Ladd’s wardrobe to a series of diminishing bikinis. “He really, really liked my bod,” she says, laughing. “What can I say? I mean, it’s not a terrible thing. But at the same time, I said, ‘OK, Aaron, fine. I’m fine with a bikini. But only if we’re on a beach or on a boat. You have to give me that much.’”

The other Angels, though, were growing increasingly restless, and not just about the outfits. Jackson was particularly vocal in her criticism of the show’s shallow scripts, which featured plotlines about them going undercover as French maids, showgirls, lifeguards and, perhaps most infamously, prison inmates. Also, Jackson couldn’t hide her deep disappointment at Fawcett’s departure, which Ladd says she took out on her.

“She wasn’t warm to me,” Ladd says. “I was hoping things would get better. But I was not her favorite. She wanted Farrah. And I think she was really pissed off that Farrah left. So she had some issues there with all that change. I just kind of did my work and was pleasant.”

“Oh, boy,” Smith says when I ask about the rift between Jackson and Ladd. “It was not a relationship. It was never the camaraderie of the first three. And I love Cheryl. I think she did a great job. But it was very intimidating. Those were very difficult shoes to fill.”

Jackson, for her part, sounds like she might finally be ready to bury the hatchet. “The first year was just fun,” she says. “We all got along so well. And Farrah and I had the same sense of humor. And I was just disappointed that we weren’t all going to be together another year or two or three. But it worked out fine.”

As it turned out, Fawcett wasn’t the only one with big-screen dreams. Jackson was thinking about making the jump to features as well. And she had a pretty spectacular offer, from Dustin Hoffman no less.

Hoffman wanted to cast Jackson in a theatrical film about a searing divorce titled Kramer vs. Kramer, and he made assurances that she could film her part around her Angels commitment. Indeed, Kramer producers revised the film’s production schedule “either four or five times” to accommodate her Angels commitment, Jackson remembers. But each time, Spelling found a reason it wouldn’t work. “Until finally Dustin called and said, ‘He’s not going to let you do it,’ ” says Jackson.

A relatively unknown actress by the name of Meryl Streep ended up getting the Kramer vs. Kramer role — and won her first Oscar for it. Jackson, not surprisingly, was devastated. “I said to myself, ‘I’ll finish the season. But that’s it. I’m leaving after this.’ I pretty much let Aaron know. He said, ‘You can’t quit. You’re fired.’ “

By that time, Spelling may have had his own reasons for letting Jackson go. By the end of the 1978-79 season, Charlie’s Angels had dropped out of the top 10, tumbling from fourth to 12th. He may have seen Jackson’s departure as a chance to revive interest in the series, an opportunity to refresh the franchise. And he could think of no better way to do that than with a big, splashy hunt for a new Angel. Indeed, he would undertake the biggest actress search since Scarlett O’Hara.

Not everyone was enthusiastic. “When Kate left, it was never the same for me,” says Smith. “I adored Aaron, and I wanted to uphold my contract. But all the changing Angels … the show wasn’t as fresh. They kept thinking a new Angel would bring it. They should have concentrated more on the scripts.”

Amazingly, though, Spelling’s Angel hunt actually worked, at least for a time. Some 5,000 actresses were considered amid months of hysterical media prognosticating on who would wear the invisible halo next. “Aaron loved the attention,” says Candy Spelling.

Among those 5,000 wannabe Angels were some then-unknown actresses with such names as Michelle Pfeiffer, Barbara Bach, Melanie Griffith, Kathie Lee Gifford and Connie Sellecca. But the one who landed the role of Tiffany Welles was a perfume model by the name of Shelley Hack.

Lithe, confident and oozing breezy elegance, Hack was best known as the face of Revlon’s Charlie perfume in a series of ads in which she whirled her way through various cityscapes while being serenaded by jazz pianist Bobby Short.

The show’s designer, Nolan Miller, lobbied hard for Hack, whose casting offered him a chance to ditch Jackson’s turtleneck-and-jeans sensibility for high fashion. The style in season four remains the most dazzling of the series. The problem was that the clothes proved far more interesting than the plots.

That’s because Spelling’s star search — and his desire to wring it for publicity for as long as he could — meant the show’s writers had no idea who they’d be writing dialogue for as they prepared the new season. As a result, for the first 10 episodes, Hack barely spoke a word. Her Tiffany was largely a vacant, immaculately tailored mannequin serving as Townsend agency décor.

Another issue: Smith and Ladd, both going through divorces, wanted more time off. Apparently having finally learned his lesson, Spelling accommodated them. But that meant the narrative approach of the show had to focus more on one Angel per episode, with the other two sidelined as window dressing. It was the complete antithesis of the show’s premise. “Aaron’s concept was three girls on the screen at all times. That was the power of our show,” Smith says. “The sisterhood dwindled.”

Carrying the expectations of a ratings rebound on her slender shoulders, Hack found herself isolated — and an easy target for haters who blamed the series’ continued ratings slide on her. Recalls Candy Spelling, “I’m the one that kept saying to Aaron, ‘Shelley Hack isn’t going to work.’ She wasn’t really an actress. She was a model. And the audience didn’t like her.”

Adds Ladd: “She didn’t get enough to say. And I think it was a lot for her to just jump in there. It just all started crumbling around us, and I could feel it. I felt bad for her.”

Hack rallied in the latter half of the season, with the writers finally rounding her into more of a three-dimensional character. But she was abruptly dumped toward the end of the season, anyway, with three episodes still left to film. She was not happy about it and wasn’t shy about saying so in public. “I feel like I’ve been sunbathing on Three Mile Island,” she told People after the sacking was announced.

“I met her and we talked about it,” Jackson recalls. “She said it felt personal. There’d be some event and the three of them were invited, but they sat her behind a big concrete post or something. She’s really smart and funny. There was no reason to treat her that badly.”

Another Angel casting call was launched. This one would be quicker — only 2,000 considered. The winner this time was Tanya Roberts, a former Clairol and Ultra Brite model whom Spelling once again squeezed into ever-more-microscopic bikinis.

Roberts proved to be a hurricane in heels. “She was a pistol,” Ladd says. “She had a foul mouth and would just say the most outrageous crap.” But she wasn’t Farrah. Or Kate. Or even Cheryl.

By 1981, the show’s novelty had also largely worn off and the culture had mostly moved on. “When you think about its structure, the Angels were still responsible to this unseen pimp-like boss who would send them off on an assignment that would require at least one of them to be a prostitute or a porn star or a showgirl,” Fresh Air‘s TV critic Bianculli recontextualizes the series. “It was at least equally exploitation as it was power.”

Whatever it was, by the end of season five, the show fell to 59th in the ratings — out of 65.

ABC canceled it, sending the Angels to network TV heaven (also known as syndicated reruns).

“It had lost the magic,” Smith says wistfully. “But the magic at first was pretty amazing and pretty special.”

And, it turns out, pretty durable, too. Spelling is gone — he died in 2006 — and so, of course, is Fawcett, who died three years later, as well as Roberts, who died in 2021. Weirdly, though, the show they and all the other Angels made together a half century ago — that came to define not only their careers but the entire era — somehow keeps finding its way back to our screens in one incarnation or another.

Apparently, as so many polyester-clad bad guys discovered on ABC all those decades ago, Angels can’t be killed.

This story appeared in the Sept. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.