a closeup of Shelley
from a promo pic for Charlie's Angels, 1979
Shelley joined the cast of Charlie's Angels in 1979, taking over the slot left empty by Kate Jackson. She was already world-famous by then... as THE Charlie Girl, Revlon's IT girl and the glamorous version of the newly liberated woman of the 1970s. Shelley was the perfect choice for the role of Charlie's classy, independent and intellectual Angel Tiffany Welles. She was a bright young woman with a high I.Q. from upscale Greenwich, Connecticut; she had a history degree from Smith (a classy East Coast college); and, because of her Charlie endorsements, she was already one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Shelley became a bona fide Hollywood Superstar when she was cast and everyone wanted to know everything about this newly-minted Angel.
a writeup about Shelley
joining Charlie's Angels, 1979
"I couldn't believe it. What was I doing in the evening news," Shelley exclaimed at the time. "Yesterday, I was a schnook, and today I can't get across the street," she added. When she arrived in St. Thomas at the Caribbean, where her first Charlie's Angels episode was going to be shot, she was greeted by the paparazzi. "When I got off the plane, there were maybe eight million paparazzi. I looked around for Sophia Loren. It was for me. I couldn't believe it," she said astonished by the amount of attention her Angel casting was getting. "I had press people crawling in my windows," she told E! in 2002. Shelley had jumped from the Supermodel territory to rock star space overnight.
Shelley in a promo pic
for Charlie's Angels, 1979
