Farrah Fawcett, 1947 - 2009.

By David Hudson on 06/25/2009

"Farrah Fawcett, an actress and television star whose good looks and signature flowing hairstyle influenced a generation of women and, beginning with a celebrated pinup poster, bewitched a generation of men, died Thursday morning in Santa Monica, Calif," writes Susan Stewart in the New York Times. "She was 62.... Ms Fawcett won praise for her serious acting later in her career, typically as a victimized woman and notably in the television movie 'The Burning Bed.' But she remained best known for the hit 1970s television show 'Charlie's Angels,' in which she played Jill Munroe, one of three beautiful female private detectives employed by an unseen male boss who (in the voice of John Forsythe) issued directives and patronizing praise over a speaker phone."

Joe Leydon has "much fonder memories of her sporadic appearances as the elusive object of David Janssen's bemused desire in 'Harry O' (1974 - 76), a cult-fave TV series (and, trust me, I'm a proud member of that cult) that is long overdue for an authorized DVD reissue."

"Boy, did the 1970s ever need Farrah Fawcett," writes Richard Corliss for Time. "Watergate and the Nixon resignation, soaring crime rates and gas prices - bad news everywhere - had the nation in need of a tonic, or a diversion, which is almost as therapeutic. Who could have guessed it would come in the trim form of a Texas blond with a no-quit smile?"

"My generation viewed Fawcett as the sad and flighty space cadet past her prime making frequent appearances on David Letterman," writes Ed Champion. "The older woman who bared all in Playboy just as the term MILF was gaining popular usage. Robert Duvall's troubled wife in 'The Apostle.' Even Robert Altman exploited her as Richard Gere's mentally afflicted wife in 'Dr T and the Women.' You couldn't really make fun of Fawcett, because doing so would mean perceiving her through this troubling misogynistic prism. But if you empathized, would you fall into the same trap?"

"'If you were to list 10 images that are evocative of American pop culture, Farrah Fawcett would be one of them,' Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University," tells Valerie J Nelson in the Los Angeles Times. "'That poster became one of the defining images of the 1970s... In an odd way, even with all that Lycra and bralessness, ["Charlie's Angels"] was a feminist statement,' Thompson said. 'This was an hourlong drama with women as action heroes. They were working in areas of power that generally we didn't see women in much.'

"[M]y original poster still hangs in a corner of my dad's garage to this day, and I hope it stays there a while longer, if only as a reminder to me of pop culture's staying power in the face of life's most insistent realities," writes Dennis Cozzalio.

"It was a long, hard climb from poster joke to respected actress, but Farrah Fawcett made it," writes Edward Copeland.

Online viewing tips. Karina Longworth (SpoutBlog) and ST VanAirsdale (Movieline) gather a few clips.

[Photo: "The Burning Bed," Anchor Bay Entertainment, 1984]

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