Farrah Fawcett star Lee Majors, were frequent tennis partners with producer Aaron Spelling. Spelling and his business partner eventually chose Fawcett to play Jill Munroe in their upcoming made-for-TV movie, "Charlie's Angels", a movie of the week which aired on March 21, 1976, on ABC. The movie starred Fawcett (then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors), Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith as private investigators for Townsend Associates, a detective agency run by a reclusive multimillionaire whom the women had never met. Voiced by John Forsythe, the Charles Townsend character presented cases and dispensed advice via a speakerphone to his core team of three female
Farrah Fawcett and reacting to fans in the audience. Though the Letterman appearance spawned speculation and several jokes at her expense, she returned to the show in 1999. Several years later in February 2009, Letterman ended an incoherent and largely unresponsive interview with Joaquin Phoenix by saying, "We owe an apology to Farrah Fawcett." Fawcett's elder sister, Diane Fawcett Walls, died of lung cancer just before her 63rd birthday, on October 16, 2001. The fifth episode of her 2005 "Chasing Farrah" series followed the actress home to Texas to visit with her father, James, and mother, Pauline. Pauline Fawcett died on March