You're looking at Farrah in Poor Little Rich Girl and thinking, "Why, she's acting!" And with her furs and jewels and fine clothes and pulled-back hair, this woman is a . . . well, a lady.
A decade after Charlie's Angels, Fawcett has put the giggles and obligatory bathing-suit scenes and big hair and even bigger teeth behind her. Those starlet days are over. She's Miss Fawcett now.
You see, Fawcett is perhaps the leading exponent of the Post-Bimbo Syndrome.
The Post-Bimbo Syndrome, or PBS for short, is in full flower. Everyone wants to be taken seriously. Consider Cher and Raquel Welch, Kim Basinger and Jessica Lange. It's just no fun to be fun anymore.
PBS occurs when a model-actress or a singer-actress or a model-singer- perennial-talk-show-guest-actress turns serious, drops all the hyphenated baggage and is finally considered as simply an actress.
Or an actor. Sexual equality has given men the right to be called bimbos. Harry Hamlin, late of Clash of the Titans and one-time consort of perennial bimbo Ursula Andress, is experiencing PBS on L.A. Law. John Ritter, once star of the ultimate bimbo sit-com Three's Company, has found PBS redemption through dying in Unnatural Causes and rebirth on Hooperman. And Christopher Reeve, sometime Superman, contracted PBS by appearing on the New York stage in Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July and on screen in The Bostonians. You can't be a bimbo and have anything to do with Henry James.
How else does one achieve Post-Bimbo status?
* Appear Off-Broadway. (This worked for Fawcett in Extremities.)
* Make a movie with Woody Allen. (Mariel Hemingway, Barbara Hershey and especially Mia Farrow. Who now remembers her from Peyton Place?)
* Star in a disease-of-the-week movie and deteriorate slowly on-screen. (John Ritter in Unnatural Causes, Raquel Welch in Right to Die and Mark Harmon on St. Elsewhere.)
* Wear little or no makeup and take a role in which you are required to have unkempt hair and look worse than you actually do in real life. (Welch in Right to Die, Cher in Silkwood, Lange in Country, Fawcett in The Burning Bed, Basinger in Fool for Love, Hershey in Tin Men and Sally Field in everything - Sybil, Norma Rae, Places in the Heart - she has done since The Flying Nun.)
* Wear less or no makeup and have unkempt hair when doing interviews with the media. (True of most of the above.)
