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“Once
upon a time, there were three little girls who went to the police academy...” They were assigned such
hazardous duties as writing traffic tickets and playing crossing guard.
When enterprising tycoon Charlie Townsend realized their talents were
being utterly wasted, he hired them as private detectives.
The only catch: because Charlie insisted on never being seen, the
“Angels,” as he called them, never knew what their benefactor/employer
looked like.
Charlie’s
Angels,
as originally conceived,
was a pretty radical idea.
At a time when TV was saturated with male detectives,
The
Alley Cats (the proposed title of the show) took most of the cop-show
clichés and turned them inside-out.
The
heroes were three women who were as tough and clever as they were beautiful. They did all the legwork and nailed the bad guys themselves,
without needing a traditional leading man to “save them” at the end.
In fact, the only male on the team, Bosley, was basically their
secretary. Although he sometimes
helped out in the field,
he mostly stayed behind and took care of the
paperwork. Actually, as we see in
the pilot, the Angels originally had a second male assistant (Woodville), but
that character was eliminated by the time
Angels
went to series.
Kate
Jackson was the first Angel to be cast, Farrah Fawcett the last.
But the middle Angel, Jaclyn Smith, was nearly replaced.
A network executive felt she was “too nervous” after watching her
in a sequence with a young actor named Tommy Lee Jones.
Aaron Spelling looked at the dailies and discovered Smith had a good
reason
for being nervous. “She
was supposed to be,” he said.
“[In that scene] her cover had been broken while talking to
[Jones].” Spelling told ABC he
was keeping Smith, regardless of whether they bought the pilot.
But, of course, the network did.
In
fact, the pilot scored a whopping 49 share, making it the third-highest-rated
TV-movie of the entire 1975-1976 season.
Other Charlie's Angels links
The Charlie's Angels Casebook
Charlie's Angels:
The Movie
Charlie's Angels:
Full Throttle
The
Angelic Angel Archives
The
Encyclopedia of Television: Charlie's Angels
The
ScreenGems Network Charlie's Angels Page
Jack
Condon's Charlie's Angels Collection
Did
Charlie's Angels Ever
Jump
the Shark?
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Charlie's Angels on VHS
featuring liner notes
by Ed Robertson
Charlie's Angels:
The Collectors Edition
Charlie's Angels:
"Hellride" and
"Angels in Chains"
Charlie's Angels:
"Target: Angels"
and "Angel Trap"
Charlie's Angels:
"Night of the Strangler"
and "To Kill and Angel"
Charlie's Angels:
"The Mexican Connection"
and "The Vegas Connection"
Charlie's Angels:
"Dirty Business"
and "The Blue Angels"
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