CHAPTER 11

SUPER SUZANNE SOMERS AND THREE’S COMPANY

I wanted a backup to Farrah, not a replacement—another actress I could cultivate, nurture and develop into a different high-octane star. I had dozens of offers for Farrah, but she couldn’t work another project until Charlie’s Angels went into hiatus at the end of its production season. We were offered two choice big-screen movies, Coma at MGM and Foul Play at Paramount; I had persuaded Colin Higgins to write the latter for her. But if I had a backup, I could capitalize on some other offers.

I locked my eyes on Lynda Carter, a PR client who met the criteria I felt necessary for success. She had talent, her self-presentation was superb and furthermore she possessed a quality that appealed to me. But most important, she had a platform from which I could launch her into the celestial heavens of superstardom: she was Wonder Woman on television.

Lynda was almost perfect management material. She had one minor flaw—a tendency to get extremely nervous when small talk was required. I once took her to a party at the home of Jon Epstein, who produced the Columbo series. My beeper went off. It was an important call and I excused myself to go to a telephone. To leave Lynda among admirers hardly seemed rude. I didn’t give it a second thought, although as I was leaving she gave me a pointed glance, as if to say, “Please hurry back!”

I was gone four minutes, no more, but time enough for Lynda to grow frantic. More than frantic, she was an absolute wreck. The people she was talking with or, more accurately, listening to, seemed as harmless as garden flowers. Nevertheless I extracted her from the circle and once we were alone she told me her problem. Small talk frightened her; she couldn’t do it—it drove her nuts.

It wasn’t Lynda’s inability to make small talk that kept me from making her a superstar. Rather, it was the nemesis I’d met before, one that would confound virtually every management client I would have in the future. This time it was in the person of Ron Samuels, the son of Maury, who’d owned the Jerry Lewis Restaurant back in the days when Leslie Parrish and I were together. Ron and I were friends, and when he called me wanting to know if I would introduce him to Lynda Carter, I didn’t give it a second thought. Ron had become a successful commercial agent and I didn’t question his intentions. Had I known he and Lynda were going to fall in love, I might have refrained. They not only fell in love and got married, but Ron, rather than me, became her manager until the gilt of love melted and they got divorced some years later. My educated guess is that just like most Hollywood marriages that fail, theirs was lacking something fresh, someone or something new. There is always the lure of the tempting Hollywood social life. They likely just weren’t having any fun anymore.

I was never one of those Hollywood socialites who accepted an invitation to the “opening of an envelope,” but I did maintain a full social life. Farrah and Lee often joined my date and me, usually for dinner, and in their absence another client replaced them. After I moved into the Elvis Presley mansion in Bel Air, I had parties every other weekend. I received hundreds of invitations but attended only those I deemed important.

When Kurt Frings invited me to a party honoring Elizabeth Taylor, I accepted immediately. Kurt was agent for some of Hollywood’s most glamorous women—Elizabeth, Carroll Baker, Tuesday Weld, Angie Dickinson and Audrey Hepburn, to name a few. He was a native of Germany, an ex-boxer and a youthful man even in his sixties.

The occasion was a lobster luncheon. Thirty-nine people were present—everyone except Elizabeth. She arrived two hours late, then struck up a standing conversation with Eddie Dmytryk, who had directed her in Raintree County. The rest of us were seated, and most were getting antsy. I was not. I watched Elizabeth. She was shy—uncomfortable at being guest of honor. She was using Dmytryk as her crutch. By the time she sat down the lobsters had become shrimp.

Kurt loved to throw parties, and it was an honor to be invited. When I first met him, his guest list was always star-studded. Time took its toll, however, and Kurt suffered a debilitating stroke. His stable of actresses left him, and his birthday parties became the extent of his social life. He was in a wheelchair; he could hardly speak. I remember his first party following his stroke. His girlfriend put it together. Every star in town was present to pay respects to the famous old agent. A year later, I received another invitation. This time there were six stars, and the next year the only guest I knew was me.

I felt badly for Kurt, but I understood the fleeting nature of Hollywood loyalty. Since he could no longer help anyone, he was being quickly forgotten. Before I left the party, I was in one of his bathrooms. A lipstick lay on the counter. I picked it up and wrote in huge letters on the mirror: “Kurt, I love you, and I’ll always be your friend. Jay Bernstein.”

Next year I received another invitation. A handful of people were there, and again I was the only guest I knew. When I went to the bathroom, I was taken aback. My note of the year before was still on the mirror. The mirror had been cleaned around it, but the letters remained in bold red. It was a nice compliment to me, but a sad reminder of the evanescence of fame.

The evanescence of fame is usually accompanied by its many warnings. Which reminds me of a famous actress named Suzanne Somers. I did not discover Suzanne Somers; she discovered me. She was a publicity client of Jay Bernstein Public Relations, assigned to account executive Stu Erlich. The first day she walked into my office, I didn’t realize she was already a client. She asked me to manage her career, which was something of a joke. She was thirty-one, barren of style, terribly naïve, with a resumé that was almost blank. She had recently made a picture called Ants in which she played a corpse. She had mouthed three words in American Graffiti. What she had, though, were guts and a sense of humor. When I turned her down, she laughed it off with a ditzy giggle. A couple of weeks later she was back in my office. “I want you to manage my career,” she repeated, as if we’d never discussed it before.

I was usually brutally honest, but I liked Suzanne and abstained from telling her that she didn’t have a career for me to manage. It wouldn’t have made a difference. Suzanne was one of those ambitious wannabes who took the word no as a temporary barrier. We were similar. It was the fence syndrome—if you can’t go around it, over it or under it, then blow it up. Suzanne was a dynamite expert chock-full of dreams and ambition.

She bugged me a half-dozen times over a period of several weeks. She managed to get on the Tonight Show, independent of an agent, and read a poem she had written. She had chutzpah. Then she showed up at my office with a real proposition. She was excited and full of confidence, intent on her goal, which was to demolish the fence that stood between us.

“I want to be as big as Farrah,” she said. For the first time she was speaking from strength, although it was exaggerated. She had just been cast as the third lead in a new series, Three’s Company, a midseason sitcom replacement calling for six episodes. “I’ll be making $2,200 per episode,” she said. “I’ll give you every dime of it if you’ll manage me.”

I saw Suzanne as a contemporary Judy Holliday, an analogy I couldn’t use because most people didn’t remember Holliday. By now, Farrah had established her own identity as Farrah, so I told the press Suzanne was the next Marilyn Monroe, which she wasn’t. I used the comparison to get attention. It was strictly a publicity gesture, a gimmick to get her some recognition before she blossomed into the sexy comedic genius she is.

Together, we screened all of Marilyn’s movies. Suzanne picked up Marilyn’s movements, the swing of her hips and the way she cooed and blew kisses. She and her soon-to-be-husband, Alan Hamel, tried to dominate my nightlife, which to a degree they did, but I felt it was important for her to get all the exposure she could. As we left restaurants, I would whisper to Suzanne, “Do Marilyn,” and she would, perfectly, for the paparazzi and legmen.

It worked; the press picked up on it and Suzanne received gobs of print coverage other actresses would die for. The cocoon phase lasted six months; then we dropped the Marilyn shtick. To me she was always a takeoff of Judy Holliday; to America she was Suzanne Somers.

An old showbiz adage is “Timing is everything.” With Suzanne it was. I sensed that people, and therefore the press, were getting tired of seeing and reading Farrah, Farrah, Farrah. I never remotely felt Farrah had run her course, but after seventy-five magazine covers in hardly a year’s time we had begun to saturate the market.

Farrah didn’t laugh much; she was the cool blonde. Suzanne was a comic relief. She laughed all the time. There was another factor. Suzanne was as unique as Farrah, except she didn’t come from another planet. She had a touch of “everywoman” in her—people could identify with her down-to-earth attitude and appearance; it was easier for women to look like her than like Farrah, whose beauty was too remote for the average woman to strive for. Of course, when I first met her, Suzanne didn’t look like Suzanne. The Suzanne that people came to know and love, we created.

I don’t remember how subtle I was (Suzanne says I was never subtle about anything), but in my effort to make Suzanne over, to make her as beautiful as she could be, I tried to duplicate some of Farrah’s look. I got Suzanne to use the same makeup, the same hairdresser. I tried to distance her from San Bruno, California, where she had grown up. San Bruno was her bane, her failure, a place where she couldn’t make it as the weather girl on local television. She was my first student in Princess Training.

And Suzanne had that certain “it,” which needed to be exploited. My initial plan, which worked, was to get her on every magazine cover I didn’t want Farrah on. I knew the big ones, like People and TV Guide and Newsweek, would follow in time, but the important thing at the outset was to splash her photograph on the myriad lesser but still prominent periodicals. Magazine saturation was paramount because television entertainment news followed their lead. Robin Leach said when Farrah was on the cover of a supermarket throwaway, sales jumped a million copies. By the end of the first year, Suzanne had graced the covers of fifty magazines.

Once Farrah had catapulted into icon status, my telephone never stopped ringing. One persistent caller was Carollyne McNichol, a former actress turned stage mother. Her message was always the same: “My daughter is going to be a star, but she needs you.”

I didn’t call her back. She never came to my office, but she telephoned constantly, three, four times a day. “My daughter—”

Finally I answered. “Who’s your daughter?”

“Kristy McNichol. She’s starring in ABC’s Family.”

“Send me her resumé.”

I’d never heard of Kristy McNichol, but Family was a successful series, an unlikely Aaron Spelling project. Unlikely because it didn’t fit his normal model. It was not camp fantasy, but a serious drama about American values. Kristy had fifth billing, four big marks shy of being the star. She was fourteen years old. When Carollyne called back, I told her, “I don’t represent kids.”

“She’s more than a kid,” said Carollyne. “She’s going to be a big star. If you’ll manage her, it will speed her success.”

I gave in, thinking that the only way to get rid of this woman was to represent her daughter.

Kristy was an archetype of thousands of young actors past, present and future. She had a look and a quality and a modicum of talent. Most important, she had a vehicle, Family. Without proper management and guidance, she probably would have remained undiscovered when her series ran its course. What she needed was someone who could put a spotlight on her. Aside from a few commercials and bit parts, Family was it; she’d never been in a movie for television, much less for the big screen. I went to ABC and screened three episodes of Family. Kristy had something. It was always inexplicable, like pornography. I couldn’t define it, but I knew it when I saw it. Kristy had potential, but before I finalized the deal with her mom I wanted to meet her.

She was a kid, but she was enthusiastic and confident. Carollyne did most of the talking for her, but that was okay. Kristy never would have become an actress had it not been for her mother. When I left the meeting my horizon had broadened. I saw in Kristy a star, but not as a backup to Farrah or Suzanne. Kristy, because of her age, had to stand on her own. We had to capitalize on her role in Family before the series ran its course. I saw her as a new Margaret O’Brien.

By now my dance card was full. I was working two-and-a-half shifts a day, on Farrah, Suzanne and Kristy, in that order, followed by another half-dozen clients, and dreaming nightmares about them when I slept, which was not often. I lost weight, but I never lost focus. At last, however, I needed help to get me through the day. I went to a doctor.

“You’ve got to slow down, Jay.”

“I can’t.”

He gave me a prescription for some uppers. They worked, adding two or three hours more to my workday. A month later I was back in the doctor’s office.

“You’ve got to slow down, Jay. You’ve got to get more sleep.”

He gave me a prescription for Valium, to counter the uppers when I went to bed. It was the Judy Garland cure. I didn’t have a studio doctor like she’d had at MGM, but it was the same thing. I had a Hollywood doctor who understood the pressure of the industry.

I had never taken recreational drugs, although they were always there. Even after I experienced smoking pot with sportscasters Curt Gowdy and Don Meredith (one funny and very smoky weekend spent on an epic fishing adventure), I used it only occasionally to soothe my nerves. Most people in Hollywood used drugs to gain confidence and overcome inhibitions; I had confidence aplenty and inhibitions were generally absent from my psyche. What I needed was sound sleep, if only a few hours a night.

Valium became my friend and nemesis simultaneously—this was before medical science realized it was addictive. I went from five milligrams a night to ten; then I jumped to twenty. By the time All That Jazz came out a couple of years later, I was up to forty milligrams. One morning I looked in the mirror and said, “Jay, you’ve become Bob Fosse’s clone!”

Trying to keep pace was next to impossible. But I couldn’t slow down no matter what drug I was on. And Lee Majors was driving me crazy. He wanted to produce and star in movies under his and Farrah’s banner, a newly incorporated company called Fawcett-Majors Productions. Since becoming Colonel Steve Austin, Lee had done eight movies of the week, six of which were Austin spin-offs of The Six Million Dollar Man. His only TV movie with an adult theme was Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy Incident, based on the Soviet shoot-down of America’s most sophisticated spy plane during the Eisenhower years. But none of the movies helped elevate Lee’s career.

Then I came across a teleplay about ski-injury rehabilitation, which I thought fit Lee’s capabilities as an actor. He read it, liked it and gave me the green light to package it for Fawcett-Majors Productions at Universal, where Lee could get it financed.

The story was about a double-amputee Vietnam War veteran living in self-pity, until a friend jolts him back to life by teaching him to ski. It was called Just a Little Inconvenience, which was the attitude the veteran assumed about his physical challenge at the film’s conclusion.

I had once represented James Stacy. After he co-starred with Susan Hayward in Fitzgerald and Pride, Jim was riding his motorcycle with his girlfriend when a drunk driver struck them. The girlfriend was killed and Jim lost his left arm and left leg. He continued to act, although roles were sparse due to his handicap. I cast him as the double-amputee in Just a Little Inconvenience. Barbara Hershey was cast as the love interest.

The movie was filmed in Canada’s Banff National Park. I stayed in Los Angeles. Principal photography had hardly begun when I received a panicked call from Lee. His story was almost too wild for my imagination. Jim Stacy had tried to rape Barbara Hershey. Apparently intoxicated, he had knocked the door to her suite out of its frame and attacked her.

Incensed and frightened, Barbara wanted to quit the show and go home; Stacy was still out of control, and Lee was concerned about adverse publicity hurting the movie as well as his career. “What can I do?” he wanted to know. “When Universal finds out what happened, the shit is gonna hit the fan!”

“Get your people together and tell them not to call the studio,” I told him. “Then confront Stacy, put him flat on his back like a turtle, pin your foot to his throat and tell him he can fuck up his own career all he wants to, but he’s not going to fuck up your career!”

Evidently Lee followed my advice. He called me back and said, “Okay, I’ve got Stacy straightened out, but just in case he wants to try something else, I’m putting two security guards with him at all times.”

The production continued without further problems. After all was said, done and in the can, Just a Little Inconvenience was a good movie, and when it was televised in the fall of 1977, it was well received by the critics. Since I had found the property, packaged the movie, sold it to the network and done sundry other things to make it happen, I thought I should be credited as executive producer. But Lee refused to put my name in the credits, which initiated the first small breach in our relationship.

Charlie’s Angels sparked what became known as TV’s “jiggle” revolution. The focus shifted to Farrah because she made a sexy poster and didn’t wear a bra. It wasn’t planned; it was just Farrah. She didn’t like bras. Kate Jackson was not pleased; had she gone braless no one would have noticed. It was a quirk of nature. I didn’t have to exploit Farrah’s braless look; the media did it for me—they couldn’t help it. Farrah was a phenomenon. Kate blamed it on me. Tough. Farrah was my client and Kate was not. Her hostility toward me would simmer and finally boil over in the years to come. By the end of the first season, People featured Farrah as one of its Personalities of the Year and Scholastic magazine ranked her number one personal hero of high school students. (President Carter was number sixteen.)

Success, however, was not without its internal problems. Lee in particular was grumbling behind the scenes. While Farrah’s career had taken off like a rocket, Lee’s was becoming a spent bullet. The Six Million Dollar Man was on its last legs, and Lee resented that his wife was suddenly bigger than he was. When the final episode of Charlie’s Angels aired May 22, 1977, everyone seemed to sigh with relief. Hiatus, that period of time between seasons, was welcomed by all. Lee and Farrah were going abroad. The Shah of Iran, whose son was a big fan of The Six Million Dollar Man, had extended a personal invitation.

Before they left, we attended the People’s Choice Awards at the Ambassador Hotel. Farrah had been chosen Best Female Newcomer and Charlie’s Angels was selected as Favorite Television Drama. My date and I sat with Lee and Farrah and Aaron and Candy Spelling. At some point Aaron began table-hopping and Farrah went to the ladies’ room. Candy was talking about all the fun things Aaron had in mind for the next season of Charlie’s Angels. Lee interrupted her: “There’s not going to be a next season, at least not for Farrah. She’s not going back to the series.” With that, he stood up and excused himself from the table.

“Candy, don’t pay any attention to Lee,” I said. “He’s had too much to drink. He had eight beers. I counted them.”

The next morning I went to Lee’s office at Universal Studios. His mood had not changed. “The Fawcett-Majors family makes $55,000 a week, Jay, and $50,000 of it comes from me,” he said. “When I get up in the morning, my wife is gone; when I come home at night, she’s still on the set. That’s not my idea of a marriage, and it’s going to change.”

Trying to dissuade him would have been a waste of time, but I needed a logical reason for Farrah’s quitting the show. What was I going to tell the press? Lee had the answer.

Farrah had been working on a handshake agreement, which was common in Hollywood. Spelling-Goldberg was selling tons of commercial products based on the Charlie’s Angels characters: mugs, dolls, T-shirts, lunch pails and a host of other items. They were paying the actresses 2.5 percent, a standard fee. Farrah had wanted a bigger cut, based upon her poster deal, from which she received 10 percent. That was our angle—Farrah did not have a signed contract with Spelling-Goldberg. Most important, it was legitimate. Farrah had approached Aaron many times, requesting a renegotiation, but he had always ignored her.

Lee had thought things out carefully. “When I hired you, Jay, it was with the understanding that the star is never the villain,” he said. “The manager takes the blame, and that’s what I want you to do now. I want you to take the heat. That’s what I’m paying you for.”

I left his office in a fog. Lee was pulling the plug on Farrah and Charlie’s Angels, and Good Soldier Jay was going to be blamed for it. It was a stupid move on Lee’s part, but he was hell-bent. He wanted Farrah home, not on a studio set nine months out of the year. What he didn’t realize was how stubbornly the Farrah Fawcett myth had taken hold, not only with the public but also with Farrah. After tasting celebrity, it would not be easy for her to give it up. It was human nature.

At the moment, I had to figure out a way to reduce the impact Lee’s decision would make on the industry. This wouldn’t be easy. You didn’t just walk off a major television show. Charlie’s Angels would no doubt continue without Farrah, but Spelling and Goldberg would not sit back and let an actor walk away from a series with impunity. They had to protect their turf, and I knew they would.

I called Aaron. He offered to renegotiate her salary.

“That’s not the problem, Aaron. Farrah doesn’t want to be in Charlie’s Angels anymore. She’s quitting.”

“She can’t quit,” he responded. “She has an agreement with us.”

“That’s the problem. It’s not in writing.”

“Bullshit. A handshake agreement is valid.”

“Aaron, you know that Lee and Farrah are not satisfied with the commission you’re paying for merchandising products using her name and image. They don’t agree with you, never did. There’s no contract there.”

“We have a verbal agreement.”

“Farrah doesn’t think so. Lee doesn’t think so. And their lawyer doesn’t think so.”

A pause, and then Aaron said, “You know the park across from the Beverly Hills Hotel? Meet me there in thirty minutes.”

We hung up. I went into my James Bond mode and had Jack, my chauffeur, drive me to the park. Aaron was waiting. His limousine was at the curb and he was sitting on a bench, his chauffeur standing alongside him like a bodyguard. Aaron and I shook hands.

“You won’t mind if Roger frisks you for a wire, will you?”

I laughed. “Are you serious?”

He was. I let Roger frisk me, and then, like an undercover cop in a Spelling-Goldberg TV production, I turned to Jack and said, “Frisk Aaron, will you, Jack?”

Aaron raised his arms; Jack ran his hands up and down his body. Acknowledging to each other that we were free of wires, Aaron and I sat down. Jack and Roger went back to their respective limousines and stood at attention.

“Have you thought about this seriously?” Aaron asked rhetorically. “If Farrah walks, you’re going to lose your place at the table. You and Farrah will never work in this town again.”

“She’s walking, Aaron. There’s nothing either of us can do about it.”

“If it’s money, we can negotiate.”

“It’s not money.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

“She doesn’t want to be an Angel anymore.”

The conversation was over. Aaron stood. “Actors don’t break contracts with Spelling-Goldberg with impunity, Jay.”

“Farrah doesn’t have a contract to break.”

We left. I felt empty. It was a shame, because I sensed that Aaron had been willing to give Farrah the moon and all its cheese. How far he would go with his threats, I didn’t know. But I knew Aaron, and he would not lie dormant. Not only was Farrah’s career at risk, but mine, too. Aaron and I were playing hardball again.

The first episode of the second season of Charlie’s Angels was scheduled to go into production June 1. Everyone was on pins and needles, except Farrah. Spelling and Goldberg thought she would show up after all. Maybe I did too. Farrah had always seemed remote from business, as opposed to work, as if it were something that flew over her head. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” I asked.

She answered sharply. “I don’t have a contract with them, Jay. I never had a contract with them. Every time I told them what I wanted, they ignored me. No contract, no Farrah.”

This was a side of her I’d never seen. She was more in tune with the business end of show business than I had realized. She didn’t show up. What many people thought was a bluff turned out to be real.

“It’s not about money anymore, Jay,” she said. “If it was about money, I’d let you make a deal with them. It’s about time now. Get me a movie role that only takes eight weeks.”

It was really about Lee. Farrah wasn’t unhappy with the show; she was unhappy because Lee was unhappy. She didn’t want to argue with him anymore.

Production halted on Charlie’s Angels. Spelling-Goldberg filed a $7 million breach-of-contract suit against Farrah. Through their lawyers we were further notified that Spelling-Goldberg would seek a court injunction to prevent Farrah from taking other acting jobs until the suit was resolved.

“Jay,” said Lee, “we’re leaving this in your and our attorney’s hands,” and he and Farrah took off for Iran.

Suddenly I was alone, really alone. I was persona non grata at Twentieth Century-Fox and ABC; no one would return my calls. The word was out that anyone, producer or studio executive, who appeared to be cooperating with Farrah might become entangled in a legal suit for abetting her leaving Charlie’s Angels. Aaron was using the tried-and-true means of the Hollywood blacklist, a tool that had served to destroy many careers in the past. Hardball. I exercised my throwing arm. I was one lone man against a powerful production entity and the number one network in the nation. I began to plot ways to outwit them.

Quitting the show didn’t remotely dampen my ability to keep Farrah’s name and image in the news; rather, it enhanced it. The June issue of New Times magazine ran a cover headline that read: “Absolutely Nothing in This Issue about Farrah Fawcett-Majors.”

Within days of Farrah and Lee leaving, however, I felt the jaws of the pincer pressing harder. When ABC threatened to pull all its productions from the Paramount lot, the studio was suddenly no longer interested in Farrah starring in Foul Play. Goldie Hawn was cast. MGM rejected her for Coma, replacing Farrah with Geneviève Bujold. Hollywood had seven major studios, but not one was willing to talk with me about casting Farrah in a movie, even though she was the hottest item in America. I began to look for independent financiers.

Farrah and Lee had been abroad ten days when I received a telephone call from a friend who wrote for the Star—Robin Leach, later of television fame. When Robin called, it usually meant trouble. “Jay, you should know this,” he said confidentially. “The New York Post is coming out with a cover story next week that identifies Farrah as having been arrested and convicted of shoplifting.”

I thought I knew everything about Farrah, but this was something new. As the alleged facts unfolded, it wasn’t a pretty story. A few years before, Farrah had been accused of stealing a dress from an upscale boutique in Century City. She had gone to court and been found guilty, although her penalty was essentially a reprimand. Two days after her court appearance, she had been caught stealing another dress at the same store. This time the judge gave her a choice of sentence: jail or psychiatric treatment.

Farrah and Lee were unreachable. I tried to get through to them at the Shah’s palace in Tehran, to no avail. I had to act. I had no knowledge of what had really happened, but I knew Farrah was not a thief. So I did what I had done on other occasions: I made up a story. The important element of damage control, which all good politicians realize, is to counter bad publicity with a plausible rebuttal.

Here was my refutation: Farrah was a young model starting her career. She managed to obtain a photo shoot but didn’t have an appropriate dress to wear. She went to a store in Century City, bought a dress on sale and took it home, only to find that it was ripped. When she took it back, the store clerk would not let her exchange it because it was a sale item. Farrah argued, but the clerk was adamant: “No exchanges or refunds for sale items.” Angry and desperate to make the photo shoot, Farrah went to a rack, took a new dress without a rip in it and left the store. As a result, she was arrested, charged and found guilty in criminal court.

This was during the time of massive protests and confrontations with authorities across the country, particularly at Berkeley, where Jane Fonda was making headlines in her fight against the “establishment.” Farrah, incensed over being convicted for something she did not think she was guilty of doing, went back to the store after her trial and took another dress in plain view of the clerk in a defiant demonstration of her outrage. As a consequence, she was arrested again.

When she appeared before the same judge, she challenged the authority of the store—after all, she had paid for the original dress, only to find it ripped—but the judge didn’t buy her youthful if misguided defense. “You’re not Jane Fonda,” he told her, “and if you were, you’d get the same sentence.”

I gave my version of Farrah’s story to the Associated Press. By the time the Post came out Monday, it was an old story with a plausible explanation. It was one of the few times a tabloid cover featuring Farrah’s photograph did not increase sales. People looked at it and said, “I already know that story,” and passed.

I never did ask Farrah the true story, which was probably more plausible than the one I had invented. After her second court appearance, incidentally, she chose psychiatric treatment.