Shelley with Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd
in a rare outtake from a promo pic set
for Charlie's Angels, 1979
Shelley became Charlie's Angel no.5 in 1979. Shelley along with Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd were the newest Angel team. By then, she was already a Supermodel (one of the highest-paid Ford models in the world) and was known as THE Revlon Charlie Girl. Capitalizing on Shelley's glamorous Supermodel image, Angels executive producer Aaron Spelling proclaimed, "We’re bringing back the glamour," after Shelley's casting was finalized. The clothing budget per episode was raised to $20,000, with each Angel going through eight outfits. Charlie's new trio was molded into a glamorous-looking team.
an artwork of Shelley on the cover of a 1979 TV Times magazine
Shelley was aware of the show's immense popularity. She was also aware of the kind of show it was. "Of course it's fluff," she said, "but high-grade fluff. You don't compare Agatha Christie to Tolstoy." She knew Charlie's Angels was the best there was in its category. She also knew the women who were cast as leads in the show lived in a fishbowl. She knew she had to ready herself for the publicity that came with the job, positive or negative. In 1979, upon joining the show, she told one reporter, "I had done a lot of press before (as The Charlie Girl). There was so much to do then, so you just deal with it." Later that year, she said, "I was surprised by the amount of attention." In 2000, she admitted, "I was totally unprepared for the press "bonanza" that followed." In 2002, she told E!, "I had press people crawling in my windows." As an Angel, she had entered a totally different space, the rock star space.
a writeup about Shelley from 1979
(it seems the writer didn't like Shelley)
