Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,641

This is the grave of Farrah Fawcett.

Born in 1947 in Corpus Christi, Texas, Ferrah Fawcett (not a typo, that’s the original spelling of her name) grew up in a working class family. Her father worked in the oil industry so prominent in that town, her mother stayed home and raised the kids. The family was Catholic and so it was Catholic schools for her. It did not take long though for Fawcett’s striking looks to be the narrative of her life. She went to the University of Texas and graduated in four years with a major in microbiology before deciding she wanted to major in art instead. Her freshman year, she was named one of the 10 most attractive co-eds on campus (can you imagine such a contest in the student newspaper in 2024?) and some Hollywood agent saw it and gave her call. He said she some come to Hollywood. She refused. She had college to finish. But in 1968, she decided to give it a shot and her parents agreed that she had done the work in college and why not try the entertainment industry.

Fawcett did pretty well; with those looks at that time, she had a huge leg up in getting commercial work, especially in cosmetics. She started getting guest TV appearances too. She appeared in a bunch of episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man and by that time, she had married Lee Majors, who starred in the show. They became a TV power couple for the next few years and they became friends with Aaron Spelling. That legendary producer was looking for a blonde to star in his next vehicle and Fawcett seemed perfect for the role. This was Charlie’s Angels and it made Fawcett a huge star. It’s a pretty dumb show and Fawcett only stuck around for the first season (though for contractural reasons, she agreed to guest star in some episodes), but it was a huge hit. Her face was everywhere. Her marriage to Majors fell apart too, possibly because they were both shooting all the time and never had any time together. By 1979, she was seeing Ryan O’Neal, though the divorce with Majors didn’t happen until 1982.

Fawcett wanted to be a real actress, not some blonde on TV in the part only for her looks. She did get cast in plenty of films, but they were mostly terrible and not because of her. Somebody Killed Her Husband, with Jeff Bridges, is by all accounts a complete atrocity. She did have success with Cannonball Run, supporting Burt Reynolds. It’s fun, I grant you. She also started working in theater, when she took over the role of the rape victim who kills her attacker in Extremities. Even though she was replacing the excellent Susan Sarandon in the production, Fawcett got very good reviews for her work.

Fawcett became known for doing roles around domestic violence. She appeared in a TV movie version of Extremities and then also played what is perhaps her most famous role in one of the most famous TV movies of all time, The Burning Bed, which included a hotline number for those experiencing domestic violence. She received an Emmy nomination for that one. For Extremities, she received a Golden Globe nomination.

It would in fact be in TV movies where Fawcett would really create a stable career. She was good at this and played a wide variety of roles in them, often garnering nominations for major awards, if not bringing them home. That included playing Barbara Hutton in Poor Little Rich Girl and Beate Klarsfeld in Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story. She was also nominated for an Emmy for portraying Diane Downs in Small Sacrifices.

Now this is a good one for me to discuss. I haven’t seen the film. But in 1983, Diane Downs shot her children in my town of Springfield, Oregon when I was a kid and then blamed it on a stranger who had called for her to pull over on the side of the road. In fact, she shot her kids (she only managed to kill one of the three, but the other two were permanently paralyzed) and then shot herself in the arm to make it look like it was someone else. This led to a huge manhunt. I very much remembering my parents being concerned something like that could happen to them and I remember some family visiting at the time and them saying someone had tried something like that too on them. It led to a huge amount of fear in that classic 80s panics like what led to the convictions of the West Memphis Three for supposedly being Satanists killing kids even though it was the kid’s stepfather. Of course it didn’t take for the cops to realize Downs was a psychopath with problems throughout her life. What a time the 80s were.

Despite some TV appearances in the 90s where Fawcett looked like she was either drunk or completely losing her mind, she was cast by Robert Duvall for the role of his wife in The Apostle, which is really an underrated film. Robert Altman then cast her in Dr. T & the Women, which is a bad movie but is notable I guess for Fawcett finally breaking her rule about being nude in films. Altman plus being in your 50s I suppose was a combo where she could feel comfortable with it.

Fawcett dabbled in painting and sculpture as well and some of it has been displayed in exhibits, though one wonders if this is more her name making that happen. I suppose it is, but good for her anyway. She also wanted to expand to Broadway and was cast as the lead in a play, but the producer cancelled it and another play the day of its opening, evidently for reasons that had nothing to do with Fawcett. She did some guest spots on TV shows from time to time as well.

In 2006, Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer. The cancer was beaten back but returned the next year and spread quickly. She died in 2009, at the age of 62. The day she died was also the day that Michael Jackson died, so she was reduced to a footnote. She deserved more.

Farrah Fawcett is buried in Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California.

If you would like this series to visit people associated with Fawcett’s varied career, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Evidently, Ryan O’Neal has since been buried with Fawcett, as he died in December 20223 and I visited here in October 2023, so I will have to revisit the grave to handle that post. Aaron Spelling is in Culver City, California and Ben Roberts, who was the co-creator of Charlie’s Angels, is in Los Angeles. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.