The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Editorials

June 26, 2009

Two ’70s icons depart earth on same day

The Back Porch

By Nerissa Young

Thursday was a bad day for the 1970s, the decade of long hair, bell bottoms, wedge heels, peasant blouses, disco music and all the other fashions that are back in style.

In that single day, the world lost Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, two stars who shot into orbit while mere mortals played with Crazy 8 balls, donned jumpsuits and rode bikes with banana seats.

The Cold War was very real, but it didn’t seem that ominous while chatting on the CB radio with good buddies about the nearest smokeys and wondering whether “Uncle Charlie” was listening. It was a nation of convoys and reliving the Wild West with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

Computers were heard of, but nobody around had them. Telephones came attached to walls, and the biggest development of the day was the invention of the private line — no more waiting for that special ring that entitled the owner of the ring to pick up, and no more listening in on the neighbors’ phone calls.

The nation had “Charlie’s Angels” on the TV and The Jackson 5 with lead singer and baby brother Michael in front on the radio.

People who watched “Charlie’s Angels” didn’t care so much about plot. They enjoyed the big hair and small clothes of Jill Munroe, Farrah’s character who quickly became the star of the ensemble cast.

Because she was so closely identified with the show the rest of her life, it’s odd to remember she spent only one season as a full-time cast member.

And then there was that pinup poster — the best-selling poster of all time that showed a scantily clad Farrah flashing those pearly whites in a grin that suggested she was up to something. And every teenage boy who taped it to his locker or thumbtacked it to his wall wanted to know just exactly what lay behind that lazy smile.

Perhaps more than the poster was her marriage to the $6 million hunk of man Lee Majors. They were the ultimate power couple of the 1970s with looks and hit shows.

Michael Jackson was a darling of the music scene. Who couldn’t fall in love with the chubby-cheeked teenager and his talented brothers? They had come from hardscrabble Gary, Ind., into stardom. It was a prototypical Hollywood rags to riches plot, a Waltons meets the Brady Bunch.

Theirs was soft, feel-good pop that was safe to sing along to.

The lyrics were mushy without being racy. The Jackson 5 were as wholesome and mainstream as the Osmond Brothers. They probably did more to integrate the music scene than Brown v. Board of Education did to integrate public schools.

In the decade following, Michael achieved superstardom.

For all Farrah’s beauty and what would later become recognized as bona fide talent in work such as “The Burning Bed,” she fell victim to cancer, a sickness that takes rich and poor, famous and obscure alike.

And for all of Jackson’s heart for music, he was cut down by a heart attack just like many men his age.

It seems ironic that both these icons met death on the same day.

Their careers were in sunset while so many other aspects of the 1970s are in revival.

If their lives defined that era, that decade, so their deaths ended it.

— Young is a Register-Herald columnist. E-mail: ynerissa@verizon.net.

© 2009 by Nerissa Young

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