PETALING JAYA: The entertainment world suffered a double blow when it was reported early Friday morning (Malaysian time) that both pop giant Michael Jackson and 1970s TV star Farrah Fawcett had died in Los Angeles.
Jackson, the sensationally gifted child star who rose to become the “King of Pop” and the biggest celebrity in the world only to fall from his throne in a freakish series of scandals, died Thursday at the age of He was 50.
Michael Jackson is seen in file pictures from top left, 1971, 1977, 1979, and bottom left, 1983, 1987, and 1990. Jackson has died in Los Angeles at age 50 on Thursday, June 25, 2009.
Jackson died at UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles. Ed Winter, the assistant chief coroner for Los Angeles County, confirmed his office had been notified of the death and would handle the investigation.
The circumstances of his death were not immediately clear. Jackson was not breathing when Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded to a call at his Los Angeles home about 12:30pm local time (1930 GMT), Capt. Steve Ruda told the Los Angeles Times.
The paramedics tried to resuscitate him and took him to UCLA Medical Centre, Ruda told the newspaper.
Jackson’s death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music’s premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.
Police are seen outside UCLA Medical Center, where Michael Jackson was taken in Los Angeles Thursday, June 25, 2009. Michael Jackson died Thursday at age 50.
His 1982 album Thriller -- which included the blockbuster hits Beat It, Billie Jean and the title track -- remains the biggest-selling album of all time, with more than 50 million copies.
The public first knew him in the late 1960s, when as a boy he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the music group he formed with his four older brothers. Among their No 1 hits were I Want You Back, ABC, and I’ll Be There.
He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched voice punctuated with squeals and titters.
His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks second only to his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.
Mike Trikilis, founder of Pro Arts in Medina, the company that produced the iconic Farrah Fawcett poster, holds an original poster in his apartment on Thursday, June 25, 2009 in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. (AP Photo/Akron Beacon Journal, Mike Cardew)
“For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don’t have the words,” said Quincy Jones, who produced Thriller.
“He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him.”
By some measures, he ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time.
In fact, he united two of music’s biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie, and Jackson’s death immediately evoked that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.
As years went by, he became an increasingly freakish figure -- a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grownup life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, often wore a germ mask while travelling and kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions.
“It seemed to me that his internal essence was at war with the norms of the world. It’s as if he was trying to defy gravity,” said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist who represented Jackson in the early 1990s.
He called Jackson a “disciple of PT Barnum” and said the star appeared fragile at the time but was “much more cunning and shrewd about the industry than anyone knew.”
Jackson caused a furore in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.
In 2005, he was cleared of charges he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him.
The case followed years of rumours about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he had acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.
Despite his acquittal, the case took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.
Jackson was preparing for what was to be his greatest comeback: He was scheduled for an unprecedented 50 shows at a London arena, with the first set for July 13.
He was in rehearsals in Los Angeles for the concert, an extravaganza that was to capture the classic Jackson magic: Showstopping dance moves, elaborate staging and throbbing dance beats.
Singer Dionne Warwick said: “Michael was a friend and undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest entertainers that I fortunately had the pleasure of working with. ... We have lost an icon in our industry.”
Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital as word of his death spread. The emergency entrance at the UCLA Medical Centre, which is near Jackson’s rented home, was roped off with police tape.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Jackson has just died,” a woman boarding a Manhattan bus called out, shortly after the news was announced. Immediately many riders reached for their cellphones.
In New York’s Times Square, a low groan went up in the crowd when a screen flashed that Jackson had died, and people began relaying the news to friends by cellphone.
“No joke. King of Pop is no more. Wow,” Michael Harris, 36, of New York City, read from a text message a friend sent to his telephone. “It’s like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died.”
Charlie’s sexiest Angel
Meanwhile Fawcett, the Charlie’s Angels star whose feathered blond hair and dazzling smile made her one of the biggest sex symbols of the 1970s, died Thursday after battling cancer. She was 62.
The pop culture icon, who in the 1980s set aside the fantasy girl image to tackle serious roles, died shortly before 9:30am in a Santa Monica hospital, spokesman Paul Bloch said.
Ryan O’Neal, the longtime companion who had reunited with Fawcett as she fought cancer, was at her side, along with close friend Alana Stewart, Bloch said.
“After a long and brave battle with cancer, our beloved Farrah has passed away,” O’Neal said. “Although this is an extremely difficult time for her family and friends, we take comfort in the beautiful times that we shared with Farrah over the years and the knowledge that her life brought joy to so many people around the world.”
Other Charlie’s Angels stars paid tribute to her.
“Farrah had courage, she had strength, and she had faith. And now she has peace as she rests with the real angels,” Jaclyn Smith said.
Said Cheryl Ladd: “She was incredibly brave, and God will be welcoming her with open arms.”
Fawcett burst on the scene in 1976 as one-third of the crime-fighting trio in TV’s Charlie’s Angels. A poster of her in a clingy swimsuit sold in the millions.
Her full, layered hairstyle became all the rage, with girls and women across America adopting the look.
She left the show after one season but had a flop on the big screen with Somebody Killed Her Husband. She turned to more serious roles in the 1980s and 1990s, winning praise playing an abused wife in The Burning Bed.
She had been diagnosed with cancer in 2006. As she underwent treatment, she enlisted the help of O’Neal, who was the father of her now 24-year-old son, Redmond.
This month, O’Neal said he asked Fawcett to marry him and she agreed, but they were unable to wed before she died.
Her struggle with painful treatments and dispiriting setbacks was recorded in a television documentary Farrah’s Story. Fawcett sought cures in Germany as well as the United States, battling the disease with iron determination even as her body weakened.
“Her big message to people is don’t give up, no matter what they say to you, keep fighting,” her friend Stewart said. NBC estimated the May 15, 2009, broadcast drew nearly nine million viewers.
In the documentary, Fawcett was seen shaving off most of her trademark locks before chemotherapy could claim them. Toward the end, she’s seen huddled in bed, barely responding to a visit from her son.
Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Smith made up the original Angels, the sexy, police-trained trio of martial arts experts who took their assignments from a rich, mysterious boss named Charlie (John Forsythe, who was never seen on camera but whose distinctive voice was heard on speaker phone.)
The programme made its debut in September 1976, the height of what some critics derisively referred to as television’s “jiggle show” era, and it gave each of the actresses ample opportunity to show off their figures as they disguised themselves in bathing suits and as hookers and strippers to solve crimes.
Backed by a clever publicity campaign, Fawcett -- then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors because of her marriage to The Six Million Dollar Man star Lee Majors -- quickly became the most popular Angel of all.
“She was an angel on Earth and now an angel forever,” Majors said Thursday.
Her face helped sell T-shirts, lunch boxes, shampoo, wigs and even a novelty plumbing device called Farrah’s faucet. Her flowing blond hair, pearly white smile and trim, shapely body made her a favourite with male viewers in particular.
A poster of her in a dampened red swimsuit sold millions of copies and became a ubiquitous wall decoration in teenagers’ rooms.
Thus the public and the show’s producer, Spelling-Goldberg, were shocked when she announced after the series’ first season that she was leaving television’s No 5-rated series to star in feature films. (Ladd became the new “Angel” on the series.)
But the movies turned out to be a platform where Fawcett was never able to duplicate her TV success. Her first star vehicle, the comedy-mystery Somebody Killed Her Husband, flopped and Hollywood cynics cracked that it should have been titled
Somebody Killed Her Career.
The actress had also been in line to star in Foul Play for Columbia Pictures. But the studio opted for Goldie Hawn instead.
“Spelling-Goldberg warned all the studios that that they would be sued for damages if they employed me,” Fawcett told The Associated Press in 1979. “The studios wouldn’t touch me.”
She finally reached an agreement to appear in three episodes of Charlie’s Angels a season, an experience she called “painful.”
She returned to making movies, including the futuristic thriller Logan’s Run, the comedy-thriller Sunburn and the strange sci-fi tale Saturn 3, but none clicked with the public.
Fawcett fared better with television movies such as Murder in Texas, Poor Little Rich Girl and especially as an abused wife in 1984’s The Burning Bed. The last earned her an Emmy nomination and the long-denied admission from critics that she really could act.
As further proof of her acting credentials, Fawcett appeared off-Broadway in Extremities as a woman who is raped in her own home. She repeated the role in the 1986 film version.
Not content to continue playing victims, she switched type. She played a murderous mother in the 1989 true-crime story Small Sacrifices and a tough lawyer on the trail of a thief in 1992’s Criminal Behavior.
She also starred in biographies of Nazi-hunter Beate Klarsfeld and photographer Margaret Bourke-White.
“I felt that I was doing a disservice to ourselves by portraying only women as victims,” she commented in a 1992 interview.
In 1995, at age 50, Fawcett posed partly nude for Playboy magazine. The following year, she starred in a Playboy video, All of Me,” in which she was equally unclothed while she sculpted and painted.
She told an interviewer she considered the experience “a renaissance,” adding, “I no longer feel ... restrictions emotionally, artistically, creatively or in my everyday life. I don’t feel those borders anymore.”
Fawcett’s most unfortunate career moment may have been a 1997 appearance on David Letterman’s show, when her disjointed, rambling answers led many to speculate that she was on drugs. She denied that, blaming her strange behaviour on questionable advice from her mother to be playful and have a good time.
In September 2006, Fawcett, who at 59 still maintained a strict regimen of tennis and paddleball, began to feel strangely exhausted. She underwent two weeks of tests and was told the devastating news: She had anal cancer.
O’Neal, with whom she had a 17-year relationship, again became her constant companion, escorting her to the hospital for chemotherapy.
“She’s so strong,” the actor told a reporter. “I love her. I love her all over again.”
She struggled to maintain her privacy, but a UCLA Medical Centre employee pleaded guilty in late 2008 to violating federal medical privacy law for commercial purposes for selling records of Fawcett and other celebrities to the National Enquirer.
“It’s much easier to go through something and deal with it without being under a microscope,” she told the Los Angeles Times in an interview in which she also revealed that she helped set up a sting that led to the hospital worker’s arrest.
Her decision to tell her own story through the NBC documentary was meant as an inspiration to others, friends said. The segments showing her cancer treatment, including a trip to Germany for procedures there, were originally shot for a personal, family record, they said.
And although weak, she continued to show flashes of grit and good humour in the documentary.
“I do not want to die of this disease. So I say to God, ‘It is seriously time for a miracle’,” she said at one point.
Born Feb 2, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Texas, she was named Mary Farrah Leni Fawcett by her mother, who said she added the Farrah because it sounded good with Fawcett. She was less than a month old when she underwent surgery to remove a digestive tract tumor with which she was born.
After attending Roman Catholic grade school and WB Ray High School, Fawcett enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. Fellow students voted her one of the 10 most beautiful people on the campus and her photos were eventually spotted by movie publicist David Mirisch, who suggested she pursue a film career. After overcoming her parents’ objections, she agreed.
Soon she was appearing in such TV shows as That Girl, The Flying Nun, I Dream of Jeannie and The Partridge Family.
Majors became both her boyfriend and her adviser on career matters, and they married in 1973. She dropped his last name from hers after they divorced in 1982.
By then she had already begun her long relationship with O’Neal. Both Redmond and Ryan O’Neal have grappled with drug and legal problems in recent years. -- AP
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