Tuesday, April 26, 2022

A Casting Coup

Shelley with Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd
on the cover of SuperMag vol. 4 no. 7, 1980

Shelley was already a Supermodel in 1979 and was known worldwide as THE Charlie Girl from the many commercials and print ads she appeared in for Charlie by Revlon. She was already familiar with fame by that time as she was recognized by fans when she went out. But by mid-1979, when she joined the cast of phenomenal hit TV series Charlie's Angels, she was immediately thrust into unfamiliar space, rock star space. "I was totally unprepared for the press "bonanza" that followed," she said in 2000. "I had press people crawling in my widow," she told E! in 2002. When her debut episode "Love Boat Angels" finally aired in September of that year, it topped the Nielsen ratings. Shelley's casting was a coup. Her Charlie Girl image brought even more publicity for the show and it renewed interest in the series. Us Weekly, on their September 18, 1979 issue, predicted that Shelley was going to be a big hit as the new Charlie's Angel. The magazine picked the show, now on its fourth season, as one of "the hits on the tube" that fall. Shelley was off to a good start in Hollywood.

Shelley on SuperMag with Kate Jackson,
Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd
on a writeup about Charlie's Angels, 1980