Farrah Fawcett - a life lived in, on & for TV - dies at 62

FARRAH FAWCETT, whose one season on "Charlie's Angels" more than 30 years ago helped define her for millions, spent decades trying to prove that she was more than a hairstyle and an iconic swimsuit poster.

And over and over, from her first Emmy-nominated performance as a battered wife who fought back in "The Burning Bed" to documenting her own nearly three-year fight against the anal cancer that killed her, Fawcett, who died yesterday at St. John's Health Center, in Santa Monica, Calif., at age 62, turned to television to make her point.

Television, though, is like a kaleidoscope: There are multiple reflections and they change as the viewer twists the tube. Fawcett's interest in projecting her own image, not the tabloids' view of her living and dying, led her to record some of the most intimate and difficult moments of her illness in the documentary that NBC aired last month as "Farrah's Story." The show drew about nine million viewers.

But is it destined to be better remembered than, say, that 1997 appearance on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman," in which the actress appeared, to put it kindly, a bit scattered?

And, for all her apparent openness - we're talking about a woman who posed for Playboy at 50, and a year later, appeared nude in a Playboy video, "All of Me," while sculpting and painting - how much did any of us ever see of the "real" Farrah?

Fawcett, in a news conference a few years ago promoting "Chasing Farrah," her 2005 "reality" show for TV Land, may have been playing with reporters - or not - in a session of which I wrote at the time:

Asked who she'd like to see followed around with cameras, Fawcett, who claims not to have watched much "reality" TV, suggested it would probably be a director, and mentioned John Ford.

Ford, who died in 1973, was not available for comment.

As for reports that she and former partner Ryan O'Neal, who appears in the series, had married during the production, Fawcett seemed, well, vague.

Did they marry?

"Uh, I don't think so," she replied.

Looking back, I think: Well, good for her.

(Questions about her relationship with O'Neal, with whom she had a son, Redmond, now 24, were no doubt old hat to Fawcett, who recently was said by O'Neal to have agreed to finally marry her on-again, off-again companion, though she died before the marriage could take place. From 1973 to 1982, she was married to actor Lee Majors, from whom she was divorced.)