Shelley with Meredith Baxter Birney
and Annette O'Toole in a promo pic
for the play Vanities, 1981
Immediately after leaving Charlie's Angels, Shelley was cast in the Jack Heifner three-character play Vanities. The play followed three girl friends from Texas - their friendship and demise thereof. The three-part play followed the girls as high school cheerleaders in 1963, then as college roommates in 1968, then finally as young adults in 1974. Meredith Baxter Birney and Annette O'Toole played the two other characters. The play was a record-breaking hit. It was taped and aired as part of the HBO series Standing Room Only in 1981.
Shelley in Home Box Office mag, March 1981
note: It also featured her fellow Charlie's Angel
Farrah Fawcett in the 1980 movie Saturn 3
"I guess I did get spunky," Shelley said in a 1983 interview, "I decided I was going to run my own life. I started doing theater for the first time in my life although I'd never been on stage before." Shelley received glowing reviews for her performance which surprised and impressed many of her critics and detractors as well as Charlie's Angels producer Ed Lakso (who thought she couldn't act and that casting her in Angels was a mistake). "One year after the show, I saw Shelley in the stage play Vanities, and she did a wonderful job," Lakso admitted.
