stay out of small, foreign cars

 

Farrah Fawcett in the Ultra-Brite toothpaste commercial

"We thought the audience would like to escape," says Leonard Goldberg, discussing the origin of the Charlie's Angels concept.

When Goldberg and Aaron Spelling first pitched the idea of the TV series to network executives, in a meeting at the famous, iconic Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the programming "brass" said, "That's the worst idea we've ever heard, forget about it."

        The actor Robert Wagner had some development leverage in TV as part of an earlier tv-movie contract, so Leonard Goldberg took the Charlie's Angels idea to him.  Wagner said, "That's a terrible idea for a television series, but you guys know what you're doing, if you like it, go ahead."

When they're trying to put the original cast together, they discuss finding Farrah Fawcett.  She had launched her career appearing in TV commercials - they say that in the documentary, and then they show a commercial with Farrah in it, and I remember that commercial from when I was in grade school, or maybe junior high.

        Farrah appears in a sun-drenched, outdoor scenario, saying "Mother always told me:  sit up straight, eat all your vegetables, and stay out of small, foreign cars.  But Joey - Mother never told me about Ultra-Brite!"

(Ultra-Brite was a toothpaste.)

        And a song kicks in:  "My mother thought that all that whitening, would make me too exciten-ing, so Mother never told  me about - Ultra-Brite!"

"Charlie" in Charlie's Angels is the man who you never see - you only hear him on the speaker-phone, informing the young-lady detectives (or - "angels") of what their assignment is.  Originally, they hired the actor Gig Young for the part.

"The debonair, Oscar-winning actor had a smooth, sophisticated voice"...

        But he was drunk during the day, when he was supposed to work, so that didn't happen.  They ended up hiring John Forsythe for that.

(Gig Young was the second husband of Elizabeth Montgomery, by the way.  After him, she married William Asher, and they did Bewitched together....)

        Then, before the 90-minute pilot made it to on-air, the network president was whining about it.  But the network boss gave the producers "one more chance to save their series."

        Aaron Spelling:  "They kept saying, 'What makes it different?'"

Spelling and Goldberg ad-libbed a set-up:  something about, how the "Angels" graduated from the police academy, but a man named Charlie took them away from cop-work, and hired the Angels as private eyes instead.

Spelling:  "And they said, 'Oh, that's great!  That explains the whole thing!'  So they bought it, from that moment."

Elizabeth Montgomery and Gig Young

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