Charlie's Angels - A Brief History

Reflecting the reality of criticism against CHARLIE’S ANGELS, Jill, Kelly, Kris, Sabrina, Tiffany, and Julie faced sexism many times from their clients, suspects, and peers. The idea of three female detectives was an entirely new concept for television at the time. Up until the creation of CHARLIE'S ANGELS there were very few female detectives of note. In the 1960's there was blonde bombshell, 'Honey West' (portrayed by Anne Francis) and Angie Dickinson had made her mark as Pepper on 'Police Woman' a few years earlier, but CHARLIE'S ANGELS was the first series to every carry an all-female cast with a male sidekick. In the blur of all the hair, teeth, revealing costumes, sexual innuendoes, and glamour, everyone missed the point! For the first time ever, women were shown as being more than just pretty decorations on television. These women had great personalities, were incredibly witty and intelligent, physically fit and strong, and of course, extremely beautiful. "We could never figure what the griping was about", said Aaron Spelling. "Was it because we were the first show with three beautiful girls? I don't know too many men on TV that are unattractive. Was it because they were in bathing suits? When my kids go to the beach, they see more in one day than anybody saw in the series. Those string bikinis, wow! And in the whole five years of the show none of the characters ever had an affair. CHARLIE'S ANGELS was Puritan, absolutely Puritan".

Immediately following its television premiere, feminists deemed CHARLIE'S ANGELS as "network porn". In the Time magazine cover story featuring the new roles of women on TV, a feminist journalist named Judith Coburn ripped the show to shreds. She claimed, "CHARLIE'S ANGELS is one of the most misogynist shows the networks have produced recently. Supposedly about 'strong' women, it perpetuates the myth most damaging to women's struggle to gain professional equality, that women always use sex to get when they want, even on the job"! This criticism, as well as many others on the show, was based on only a handful of episodes. In the beginning, CHARLIE'S ANGELS did use high levels of sexuality to gain viewers. It was a gimmick and it worked. Because the actresses sometimes donned skimpy attire, much less than has been noted (see "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini"), the show was highly condemned for being more of a peep show than a prime time series.

It has been claimed that the Townsend Agency was run like a whorehouse! Judith Coburn believed that Charlie was a "pimp" and the Angels were his "hookers". "Charlie dispatches his streetwise girls to use their sexual wiles on the world while he reaps the profits". This is an incredibly off-the-wall view of the show. Each Angel, with the exception of Julie Rogers, has received extensive police training and is highly skilled and competent to deal with extreme situations. They are all paid for their work and have been treated to many bonuses from their employer, such as vacations ("Pom Pom Angels"), and shopping expenditures ("Counterfeit Angels"). To equate the Angels with prostitutes is absurd. Although they sometimes turned on their feminine charm to seek clues and trap bad guys, they never once had sex with a suspect to get the job done. In the episode "Fallen Angel", Charlie enlists the help of his ex-Angel Jill to get into jewel thief Damian Roth's social circle. It can be assumed after she does so that her and Roth are involved sexually, but let it be noted that Jill did fall for him and his debonair ways. She had never slept around to entrap a criminal before and since she wasn't technically employed by Townsend Associates anymore, she really had no reason to use her sexuality to bait him into Charlie's web. Contrary to Aaron Spelling's aforementioned quote, the Angels did have affairs - this being one of the most extreme. But to call that "prostitution" is ridiculous.

It is easy to believe that Charlie Townsend is a down and dirty chauvinist pig, but who else would hire women and pay them top dollar to do what was considered a "man's job"? At a glance, Charlie appears to be a stereotypical sexist bachelor due to the bevy of bikini clad women bouncing around his mansion or tanning on his yacht, but after closer inspection, he turns out to be somewhat of a feminist hero. While appreciating the female form in all its glory, Charlie applauded a female's intellect and self confidence. Many women would come into the picture as ex-lovers of Charlie, but none of them would speak badly of him. Charlie had a great deal of respect for women. If he didn't he never would have hired an all female team and wouldn't have lent out his services for free (see "Charity Angels") to help desperate women.

The Angels used their beauty and sexuality at their own command and not Charlie's. Only once did he ever require one of the Angels to put her body on the market. While deciding on which Angel will have to pose as a Feline centerfold, Kelly is reminded by Charlie that "when you took this job you knew there would be a lot of undercover work". Unfortunately, every Angel with the exception of Julie Rogers, would have to pose as a prostitute. This fact does give some merit to Coburn's statement that the Angels used "sex to get what they want". The situations in which the Angels did go undercover as prostitutes can be analyzed in a number of ways, depending on what case the Angels were working on. In "Little Angels of the Night", Kelly, Sabrina, and Kris move into an apartment complex that houses call girls, to protect them from a crazed murderer. Only Kris has to meet up with one "john" and when she does he only wants her to wear a bikini and talk to him. "Consenting Adults" and "The Vegas Connection" find Jill and Kelly posing as call-girls to entrap a thief and a blackmailer. In both episodes, their virtue is saved by Bosley, posing as a feisty trick. "Angels on the Streets" would be the only episode in which the Angels would have to actually dress up in "hooker" fatigues and strut their stuff in a seedy neighborhood. Before doing so though, they tell the local pimp, Freddie, that they call the shots and that they won't put up with his abusive and demeaning behavior. If CHARLIE'S ANGELS was still being commented on as a sexist show by the time this episode aired, that little tidbit of information would probably have been ignored. All the public would have heard was that Kelly and Tiffany posed as prostitutes. It should also be noted that the Angels worked on this case for free to help an abused girl with split personalities. Charlie certainly didn't request that they do so. In "Catch a Falling Angels", Kris would even go so far as to pose as an up-and-coming porno star to save, yet, another lost soul. This too was another case in which they wouldn't be paid. On more than one occasion, Charlie told the Angels they could pull out if they wanted to. This says a lot about both Charlie and the Angels. The Angels were very dedicated to their profession and once they started something, they planned on finishing it.

As strong women, the Angels used their minds as well as their looks to get the job done. They always outsmarted the criminals they were after and every once in awhile would use their police training to physical beat up the crooks. For such a gracious Angel, Kelly seemed to take great joy in beating the butchy Grinelda up in the showers after the football team's big bully started picking on Kris ("Angels in the Backfield"). Kris may not have been the petite flower viewers thought her to be, though, for who can forget the most unrealistic scene ever shown on CHARLIE'S ANGELS? In "Winning is for Losers", Kris wrestles two alligators in the water and is apparently so frightening to the beasts that they swim away from her! Although this scene is hilarious in retrospect, it once again supports the theory that even something a man can't do, an Angel can do it and do it better! For a woman to be put in a physically challenging situation like the aforementioned and come out victorious should be looked at as more of a positive triumph that as something totally silly. The Angels were prone on occasion to be subjected to the physical strengths of a man, but in these situations they would use their intellect to escape. It also never hurt to have another Angel or two backing them up!

In 1995, fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi spoke to Farrah Fawcett for INTERVIEW magazine. He stated, "...It also seems to me that back then those characters helped break some of the stereotypes about what a beautiful woman could be, a woman who was not afraid to act in a so-called masculine way about things. A beauty who was somehow lethal". Unfortunately, many people don't realize this about CHARLIE'S ANGELS. All the criticisms against sexuality on the show were based on only a few episodes from the first season. The so-called "sex" on CHARLIE'S ANGELS almost faded to nothing by the fifth year, but critics and viewers weren't tuned in, thus they would always still base their opinions on, once again, only a few episodes from the first season.

"Female critics thought we were exploiting women", wrote Aaron Spelling in an essay he penned for a special television issue of PEOPLE magazine in 1989. "...You can't really have it both ways -scream that there's not enough women in TV, and when you put them on say, ' Well, what we really want to do is show them as brain surgeons or running for President'." Due to the success of CHARLIE'S ANGELS, females now found themselves in entirely new positions on television. On the low point of the spectrum, some shows were created only to just showcase beautiful and scantily clad women (Roller Girls, Sugar Time, and Flying High), and on the other, women found themselves in more serious situations, most notably ‘Cagney and Lacy’, the hugely popular crime drama of the 1980s. Because of its gritty portrayal of crime and the fact that the characters were always fully clothed (they were inner-city cops, not undercover detectives living by the west coast), the show was much more realistic than CHARLIE'S ANGELS. ‘Cagney and Lacy’ received great reviews and praise from critics, all of it well deserved. The point in case is that CHARLIE'S ANGELS had broken down the first barrier of allowing women to be portrayed as more than an ornament on a man's arm on television. In the next era, that of ‘Cagney and Lacy’, women were now able to be shown as being intelligent and emotional without having to use their sexuality. ‘Cagney and Lacy’ could not have reached this point if CHARLIE'S ANGELS hadn't come first.

An analogy of this can be seen in the women in rock movement. Female rock stars have been around since the birth of rock and roll, but it wasn't until the mid-1980s that they began to be taken seriously. The same pattern for CHARLIE'S ANGELS followed by ‘Cagney and Lacy’ exists in rock and roll too. Not long after CHARLIE'S ANGELS debuted, a New York band called Blondie emerged. Its lead singer, Deborah Harry, presented the female rock star in an entirely new light. Possessing both a dynamic presence and a wide range of talent, she also had incredible physical beauty. Like CHARLIE'S ANGELS before her, she too was highly criticized for mixing sexuality with a tough-girl image. Borrowing the torch in 1983, Madonna showed up on the scene and used her sexuality to establish herself (once again, just as CHARLIE'S ANGELS had done in the first season), even going so far as to call herself a "boy toy". By 1995, Madonna had shunned her critics, changed her image, torn down the walls of sexism as best she could and is now one of the most respected forces in the music scene. Because of conditioned attitudes towards the genders, it has always been harder for women to break through in a "man's world". Society doesn't allow for women to just take over without starting at point A - using their sexuality to establish themselves (CHARLIE'S ANGELS and Deborah Harry), to get to point B being taken seriously (Cagney & Lacy and Madonna, Melissa Ethridge etc.,). Thanks to CHARLIE'S ANGELS women have found themselves in new roles on television and are not just set trimmings any more.

It can't be denied that CHARLIE'S ANGELS was full of hair, teeth, revealing costumes, sexual innuendoes, and glamour, but the Angels as role models and feminist heroines has always been ignored and overlooked. There were other shows that portrayed women as strong characters, such as ‘The Bionic Woman’ starring Lindsay Wagner, and ‘Wonder Woman’ starring Lynda Carter, but one must not forget that even with all their beauty and brains, these two had the assistance of "super powers". The bottom line should be that CHARLIE'S ANGELS was put on the air to entertain us and the need to dissect it should be unnecessary. Unfortunately, television history books to this day still criticize it and berate it for what they thought it was. In reality it was a new door opened to the American public to showcase women as smart, strong and independent human beings who deserve to be treated as equals and not frilly decorations in some man's kitchen or in his bed.

Strangely, but as should be expected in a sexist world, the actresses who appeared on CHARLIE'S ANGELS received more respect and acclaim for playing victims rather than that of the heroic Angels. Farrah shocked the world as a battered house wife in ‘The Burning Bed. Cheryl gained fame outside of CHARLIE'S ANGELS as a rape victim in ‘A Death in California’. One of Shelly Hack's most notable performances was as a terrorized house wife in ‘The Stepfather’. When Jaclyn Smith played a tormented lawyer in ‘Rage of Angels’, she too gained even more critical esteem. If the actresses who played the Angels hadn't been so devastatingly gorgeous, the show would no doubt have been taken more seriously. But because of that fact, CHARLIE'S ANGELS will never be appreciated for helping lay down new paths for women on television and maybe even in society. It also makes a sad commentary for angry feminists who only concentrate on the Angels' sexuality rather than their intellects and strengths.