b'Farrah in the 1973 satirical comedyOver and over again in her life, the gift of beauty that God gave Farrah was recog-The Great American Beauty Contest nized universally by men and women, boys and girls of all agesas a toddler in a shopping cart at HEB in Corpus Christi, to across the world in the eyes of a very measurable percentage of all living humans in the 1970s.LADY LONGHORN GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. At UT, Farrah was the girl every sorority rushed, the Tri-Delts winning out, and she was very soon recognized as one of the 10 most beautiful girls on campusnotoriety that made its way to Holly-wood, where bona fide talent agent, David Mirisch, called Farrah out of the blue in her sophomore year to invite her to Los Angeles to pursue a career in show business. Mirisch represented some of the biggest sex symbols of the rambunctious 1960s in-cluding Barbara Eden, Raquel Welsch, and Barbara Hershey. The good girl that she was, Farrah told him to call her dad at home and convince him first.James didnt bite, and Farrah continued at UT in pursuit of her art degree. She had come under the tutelage of famed sculptor Charles Umlauf, who taught at UT for 40 years and was a stalwart of Austins arts community. For her entire life, fame as a model and actress aside, Farrah always first considered herself an artist. After taking periodic calls from Mirisch for two years, Jim Fawcett at last gave his blessing to his beloved, youngest daughters Hollywood adventure, and in the summer of 1968 after Farrahs junior year at UT, the family loaded up a U-Haul and headed west. The idea was to see how it goes with the option to finish col-lege always the backup plan.David Mirisch arranged a room for Farrah at the famed Hollywood Studio Club, a chaperoned dormitory operated by the Los Angeles YWCA for young women pursu-ing their dreams in Hollywood. Founded in 1916, the club located halfway between Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards played host to aspiring stars Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Tate, Donna Reed, and Rita Moreno over its six decades in operation. In short order, Mirisch delivered on his promise of paid acting work for Farrahher first appearances were on The Flying Nun and The Dating Game, where bachelors broke out into a Maury!-style fistfight at the end of the show over who would get a chance to go on a blind date with the beautiful, sweet girl from Texas.Over a period of two years, after making the tortured decision to relocate to Cali-Wedding photo with Leefornia before her senior year at UT, Mirisch delivered far less to Farrah than she had Majors on July 28, 1973 hoped, and at a usurious agent fee of 25%, the work she landed was just not enough. From mid-1968, when she arrived in Hollywood, through 1969, Mirisch delivered bit Farrah with (left to right) Cheryl Ladd, Davidroles on a handful of sitcoms, a small speaking role in an obscure, French comedic Doyle, Jaclyn Smith and Shelley Hack in onefilm called Love is a Funny Thing, and most notably in the once-highly-anticipated of her return appearances on Charlies Angels film based on the 1968 Gore Vidal novel, Myra Breckinridge. In it, Farrah filmed a love scene with Raquel Welch, who was playing a former man who had a sex change operation in order to portray his own widow. The film was deemed one of the worst movies ever produced and made news mainly for loud, on-set quarrels between Welch and Mae West, who came out of retirement to do the film.In a 1982 Texas Monthly interview, David Mirisch said, Listen, without me Far-rah Fawcett would be a housewife in Texas. What this business is, is luck. He continued, [Farrah]s no better or worse than anyone else. She just happened to be at the right place at the right time to get on a good product like Charlies Angels and take it from there.Interestingly, after Farrah fired Mirisch in September 1969, her luck improved dra-matically, and she landed roles and appearances that would put her on Hollywoods A-List in short order. From 1970 up until her biggest year in show business, 1976, Farrah appeared on 17 different television series, including Days of Our Lives, The Partridge Family, Marcus Welby, M.D., McCleod, SWAT, and most notably, The Six Million Dollar Man, which starred Lee Majors. One of the biggest upcoming stars of the early-70s, Majors was a central player in the ABC television networks oncoming dominance in the primetime ratings.36THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE TheCoastalBend.com'