(7 of 8)
Angels fans are curious about whether the three beauties can coexist on one sound stage. The answer is obvious: they get along well because their futures depend on it. There is some restrained competition. After Jackie began bringing Albert, her poodle, to work each day, Kate appeared with her Husky, Catcher, and before long Farrah was toting a Pekingese called Pansie. When a script called for a dog, the atmosphere on the set became so tense that the part was finally written out.
In general, good manners come easy when each actress counts her money. Kate gets $10,000 a show, the other two, $5,000. With Kate's Rookies residuals and the big commercial fees that Farrah and Jackie still collect, the Angels' robes are lined with something like $500,000 annually.
But there is a toll. Says Kate: "I've stopped smoking and drinking and staying out late. My love life ain't what it used to be. I've just got to discipline myself or the work would just kill me."
Actually, it would kill almost anyone. Like most series performers, the Angels must put in a twelve-hour day on the job. But because their beauty is so important to the show, they have to rouse themselves around 5 a.m. to give the hairdressers and makeup artists time to work their magic. They also stay late to try on and approve the next day's costumes. Even so, they are cosseted and primped all day long so that in every shot their looks err on the side of the fantastic rather than the realistic. "We treat them as if they were American Jewish princesses," says one crewman, "and they aren't even Jewish."
All this leaves little scope for drama. Scenes are staged with all the complexity of the fourth-grade class play, and everyone is expected to say her lines correctly first time out if possible. Says one director: "I've printed scenes that made my stomach turn. But extra minutes eat into profits, and unless you have an obvious flub, you keep grinding."
It shows. But no one really cares. As a producer told an editor when refusing permission for overtime retakes, "Aw, what the hell, it's only television." The main thing is that on some primitive level the show is working. Fans mob the girls when they go into the streets for location work. The mail runs to 18,000 pieces a week—even more after something as raunchy as the prison show. The fact is that, for the moment anyway, ABC has stumbled onto something big. Charlie's Angels might be called family-style porn, a mild erotic fantasy that appeals about equally to men and women. The show has been launched at a moment when there is franker discussion of sexual needs and wishes and when women, in particular, are beginning to reveal their sexual fantasies. Though hardly a credible treatment of these, Charlie's Angels seems to speak to and for them.
Nobody could have calculated all that. Producer Goldberg admits that he was already deep into production before anyone had "a real handle on the characters. We were in the process of searching for answers when the big ratings hit. Now we are all afraid to tamper with success." He adds, a little wistfully: "Maybe it's best to leave it all amorphous."