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Farrah's Brainy Side
Did Ayn have any favorite episodes of the show?
I have to admit that I don’t think Ayn was a big fan of the stories themselves because she kept saying that someday somebody would offer me a script (and a role) that would give me the chance to “triumph as an actress.” Ayn wanted that script to be Atlas Shrugged and that role to be her heroine, Dagny Taggart. But because of the challenges in adapting and producing the novel for television, several years went by and the script and role that Ayn hoped I would someday be offered turned out to be The Burning Bed and the role of Francine Hughes instead. And so, in an unexpected way, Ayn’s hope or expectation for me did come true. Looking back, she seemed to see something in me that I had not yet seen in myself.
Had you read Atlas Shrugged or any of her other famous books? What was your familiarity with the Rand world view?
At the time that Ayn contacted me about Atlas Shrugged, my only real familiarity with her work was the movie version of her previous novel, The Fountainhead, with Gary Cooper. I remember liking the movie because it was unique in that the characters seemed to be the embodiments of ideas as opposed to real flesh and blood people with interests and lives. Now that I think about it, I think that’s why Ayn was drawn to Charlie’s Angels. Because the characters that Kate, Jaclyn and I played weren’t really characters (the audience never saw us outside of work) as much as personifications of the idea that three sexy women could do all the things that Kojak and Columbo did. Our characters existed only to serve the idea of the show (even “Charlie” was just a faceless voice on a speaker phone).
But I also responded to The Fountainhead because, as an artist (a painter and sculptress) myself, I related to the architect’s resistance to make his work like everyone else’s—which was, of course, what Ayn’s own art was all about. And that resistance to conformity is probably one of the reasons that she was so determined to see me play Dagny: At the time I would have been the completely unexpected choice.
It sounds as if you and Rand got along pretty well.
Later, when I read Atlas Shrugged, I was reminded of my first and only conversation with Ayn and how some of the characters in her novel(s) take an immediate liking to each other, almost as if they had always known each other—at least in spirit. And this was the feeling I got from Ayn herself, from the way she spoke to me. I’ll always think of “Dagny Taggart” as the best role I was supposed to play but never did…
Plus: Check out The Daily Beast’s full coverage on Farrah Fawcett.
Amy Wallace is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Elle, Men’s Journal, the New York Times Magazine, The Nation and Conde Nast Portfolio. Previously, she spent 14 years at the Los Angeles Times, first as a reporter and later as a Deputy Business Editor over entertainment and technology coverage. She also spent four years as a senior writer at Los Angeles Magazine, where she recently returned as a part-time editor-at-large.
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Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
Yes, and it's a well known fact Farrah and Alan Greenspan shared a whole lot more than their mutual interest in Objectivism! George Patton
The "triumph of concept and casting" - now if only this form of The Romanticism of what 'could be and should be' would play out in real life as it's supposed to be.
Thanks Miss Amy Wallace; for the enlightening tribute to both these real-life legendary figures. We'll have to set a place for you in Galt's Gulch.
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Ayn Rand could see things and their philosophical meaning that no one else could, no doubt. Just read Atlas Shrugged, written 52 years ago, and compare it to what is going on in America now. What forsight she had.
You just saw her view just now? I read her novels 20 yeas ago and never thought that that kind of world could be! It cold be said that our great "industrialists" are "Shrugging", but, many are folding to the "collectivist rule". What we need, as a soveraign nation is, an "INDEVIDUAL", not a scocialist as in Barack Hussain "O'Bamby"!
what a nice thing you've done here. clearly, fawcett was bright and intuitive, quite a tight and clean writer. one hopes that more will come out about fawcett other than the angels-related stuff.
Please! Another red-herring! Just because Ayn Rand had a crush on Farrah Fawcett like half the world at the time, Farrah is suddenly brainy? I don't get the connection?????????? please explain yourself...this is ridiculous and you have wasted our time and interest...
Thank you, Ms Wallace, for telling me of an aspect of FF that I barely knew of. I had read some of Ms Rand's books & I wondered why many people were impressed with Ms Rand. Her books were good ads for a libertarian point of view; but as novels a dud. Ms Rand's sex scenes left me as cold as a tryst with a prostitute. My dearly departed drunken mother, in her later years, had insisted that I was born as a dirty old man. Ms Rand introduced me to my inner Puritan. Other women made me recall & revel in my inner dirty old man.
Back to Ms Fawcett, the lady's roles in a TV series didn't pass my eyes. I had no impression of her during the start of her career; I didn't watch TV then. I saw a couple of her movies. She &/or her directors showed me her acting ability. The scandals related to her marriage to & her divorce from Mr Majors got my attention. Engineering students took to calling themselves Farrah Fawcet Majors. Since I can't spell, I'll write ferrous faucett majors. I saw that Ms Fawcett had brains & that she made good use of her brains. That woman can't ever be accused of failing to use her god given gifts to her advantage.
I got turned on by Ms Fawcett as a cancer survivor. Ca can bring out a person's more endearing traits, at times. If you live with or or a friend to a Ca survivor, you learn that; it made me into a more tolerable person. Ms Fawcett was a brave Ca survivor. I admire her for that. Michael Jackson's death took the spot light from Ms Fawcett but Ms Wallace & others will write of the admirable Ms Fawcett as time goes on. That will show Ms Fawcett as a plucky actress & 1 hell of a woman in the best sense of the term. Going into the traits of what makes a woman into 1 hell of a woman is difficult. If you are 1 hell of a woman or have loved a woman who is 1 hell of a woman, you can't fully write of it in a way to explain it to those who aren't 1 hell of a woman or who haven't learned to love & cherish being part of her life. I expect that I'll be proven wrong on that by witty writers.
Thanks, Ms Wallace. You're a keeper.
Saw this reference on a Fox News crawl and had to see for myself. Thanks for the info. What a shame that they have both passed. They would have made the most unusual combination and would have been a dream come true to see Ayn's Atlas Shrugged characters in the flesh. I have read Fountainhead four times and Atlas three. Now I must do it again!!
I watched a TV special in which Fawcett flew to the socialist hell hole of Germany to undergo cancer treatment that she couldn't get here. But according to Rand, the German doctors are so overtaxed that saving lives isn't worth it, while the capitalist American doctors should have bent over backwards to save her. Why did Fawcett go and prove Rand is full of sh*t if they were such friends?
Where do you see "capitalist American doctors"? They are all partial slaves of the state, soon to be total slaves--just like the rest of us, if present trends continue. Want to be treated by a doctor who resents being a slave? Want to be treated by one who doesn't? (Last two sentences stolen from Ayn Rand.)
Thank you.
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