Good Sports aired from January until July 1991 on CBS.
Gayle Roberts ( Farrah Fawcett), was totally unprepared for the shock of Bobby Tannen ( Ryan O'Neal), entering her life for the second time, twenty years after a weekend fling in college that she had never forgotten and he couldn't remember. Over the intervening years, she had gone from being a supermodel to carving out a career for herself as a talented , hardworking sports journalist. Bobby, a star football player in college and later with the Green Bay Packers had not been so fortunate. Relying on his football skills and good looks could only take him so far, especially since he wasn't to bright and had a temper that constantly got him into trouble. Bobby was desperate for a job when blustery, egocentric, R.J. Rappaport ( Ted Turner with a Texas drawl played by Lane Smith), the cable television magnet gave him an on-air tryout co-anchoring " Sports Central" on his cable network ASCN ( All Sports Cable Network). Rappaport liked having the ex-jock around and liked the sparks that flew between Bobby and Gayle on the air-caused by her resentment of Bobby's obvious lack of reportial skills and the fact that he had totally forgotten their college relationship. Bobby really wanted to make good and sought her help , eventually falling in love with her and proposing to her.
Others seen regularly in this spoof of tv sports programming were Jeff Mussberger and Missy Van Johnson ( Cleavant Derricks, Christine Dunford), ACSN's other featured reporters; Mac MacKenney( Brian Doyle-Murray), the harried producer who agreed with everything Rappaport said; Leash ( Paul Feig), the watchdog hired by Bobby's mother to try to keep him out of trouble; and Nick Calder ( William Katt), Gayle's boyfriend who went nuts after she dumped him and started to show real interest in Bobby. Additionally, a number of real sports personalities showed up, primarily as comic interview guests on ASCN's " Sports Chat." Among them were Kareem Abdul -Jabbar, Lyle Alzado, Jim Brown, Bruce Jenner, George Steinberger, George Foreman, and Pete Rose.
Besides it's big name stars, Good Sports offered lots of sly little spoofs of television and celebrity. In the opening each week an elegant Bobby swept glamorous Gayle away in a dance sequence worthy of Astaire and Rogers-then absentmindedly left her hanging from a chandelier; during the episode itself, characters would wander over to the nearby set of RJ's comedy network ) like Ted Turner, R.J. ran lots of cable networks)-the Rap-HA-port Network-where a standup comic would pitch one-lners at them from the stage as they tried to sort out their problems.
A Review from USA TODAY
TV PREVIEW/BY MATT ROUSH
Farrah and Ryan make a winning combination
Foxy Farrah Fawcett and roly-poly Ryan O'Neal-love means never having to say you're unemployed.
But would that all Hollywood amour could result in sizzling silliness on the scale of Good Sports, which is great fun.
This long-time couple bring substantual glammour to the lightweight lunacy of squabbling sports anchors at a delightfully cheesy cable station.
This is a star vehicle of the highest order, designed to showcase its talents in a way that makes everyone look like they're having a grand time.
As Gayle Roberts, a former supermodel ( Sports Illustrated covers) who takes her sportscasting career very seriously , Fawcett looks and sounds sensational. Her biggest problem will be to keep from becoming an unmitigated shrew.
Not easy when the scripts pit her so nastily against O'Neal's adorable " Downtown" Bobby Tannen, a fadded football pro reduced to pizza delivery hack as the series opens.
Those who recall his light touch in What's Up Doc? won't be surprised at how agreeable O'Neal's eagerness to please is-even as Gayle sabotages him on the air and fires withering glances at his bumbling.
Beyond the love-hate contrivances, Good Sports works as a spoof of fawning jock talk ( with hilariously stiff cameos by athletes like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and of cheapskate cable operations. Lane Smith gives smooth support as a Ted Turner-like cable impresario.
Some elements are depressingly flat-Brian Doyle Murray as an unctuous producer, Lois Smith as Bobby's clinging mother-but generally the writing is sharp and the leads are sharper.
The nifty opening credits, a hot black-tie tango of choreographed pratfalls, bills the stars as " Farrah Fawcett vs Ryan O'Neal." Not a chance.
They may bicker, but their affection and tandem joy are clear and contagious . They make a winning team.
A Review from Entertainment Weekly
TV Review
SPORTS" REPORT
FARRAH FAWCETT AND RYAN O'NEAL SQUARE OFF AS A PAIR OF TV SPORTS ANCHORS IN CBS' GOOD NEW COMEDY. ITS REAL-LIFE OVERTONES ONLY ENHANCE THEIR ON-SCREEN DUET.
By Ken Tucker
Good Sports (CBS, Thursday, 9:30-10 p.m.) is a small triumph of packaging. This sitcom pairs Farrah Fawcett with Ryan O'Neal, a couple favored by the tabloids in real life; their show features prime time's best theme song (soul great Al Green in his funkiest performance in a decade) and the best opening credits (O'Neal in a tux, Fawcett in a tight black cocktail dress, alternately tangoing and wrestling on an abandoned dance floor). The show itself? Pretty good, quite shrewd, and very intriguing. Fawcett is a sportscaster for a cable sports network; when her co-anchor dies, she's teamed with O'Neal, a former pro footballer fallen on hard times (his previous job was delivering pizza). Their lines are sharp, and each is perfect-Fawcett, self-absorbed and sleek; O'Neal, self-parodying and pudgy. Fawcett has spent so many years proving her credentials as a serious actress that it's fun to see her relax into comedy. Right now her character is rather stiff-necked-she disapproves a bit too strenuously of O'Neal's rowdy sense of humor and lack of professionalism. But this is less Fawcett's problem than the writers'-they have to find a way to allow her to loosen up, to use that toothy smile and sex-symbol image to convey both warmth and humor. O'Neal, on the other hand, has found himself a great character. As down- and-out Bobby Tannen, he's completely convincing; he carries his bulkiness with the surprising grace of an ex-athlete. Then, too, O'Neal is savvy enough to know that, to a certain extent, he's being used-when we watch Ryan O'Neal play a once-famous figure gone to seed, we can't help but think of the actor's own stalled movie career. O'Neal, to his credit, seems to relish making fun of his real-life dilemma. As Bobby, he whines, ''I really want this job!''; in a recent TV Guide interview, he claims he sold Fawcett on the notion of doing the show by pleading, ''I need this. I need this.'' If Good Sports is a hit, O'Neal may finally get the credit he deserves as a skilled light comedian, a side of his personality he'd previously displayed only in What's Up, Doc? (1972) and the underrated So Fine (1981). But Good Sports doesn't succeed on star power alone; there's also a solid cast of supporting characters. Lane Smith, extraordinary as Richard Nixon in The Final Days miniseries (1989), is terrific as a huffy, Ted Turner-ish cable channel owner; Brian Doyle-Murray is satisfyingly subtle as the show's obsequious producer. So what's bad about Good Sports? Just the premise: We're supposed to think that Fawcett and O'Neal hate each other on the surface and have the hots for each other just below it. But isn't this Will They Do It? question precisely what hobbled shows such as Moonlighting and Anything But Love? If the couple in question doesn't get together, the series is in danger of becoming a tiresome tease; if they do, the suspense dissipates. How the show will resolve this problem remains to be seen. In the meantime, here is a sitcom that creates a beguiling new genre: the goofily erotic. B+
A Review From Time Magazine
Big stars cannot redeem bad sitcoms. This season has already brought us Burt Reynolds sleepwalking through the overrated CBS comedy Evening Shade. Now Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal have set back their careers about 10 years (three for her; seven for him) by fronting another grueling CBS entry, Good Sports. Fawcett plays Gayle Roberts, a veteran anchor for an all-sports network run by a Ted Turner-like mogul. O'Neal is "Downtown" Bobby Tannen, an ex-football star fallen on hard times, who is brought in to be her on-air partner. Their bickering, Moonlighting-style relationship is signaled none too subtly in the opening cast credits: "Farrah Fawcett vs. Ryan O'Neal."
TV shows set in TV newsrooms represent a low ebb of creative imagination, but Good Sports may set a record for ineptitude. Creator Alan Zweibel (It's Garry Shandling's Show) flicks in a few satirical jabs at TV, but mostly he seems tuned to another channel. The characters are so woozily out of focus that after two episodes one still can't tell whether Bobby is supposed to be simply naive or mentally retarded. Or why Gayle, the TV pro, keeps having spats with him in front of a nationwide audience. Or why, when he rents an apartment directly opposite hers, she doesn't at least draw the shades. Or why . . . awww, never mind.
Here is Lane Smith's Obituary
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
By Myrna Oliver
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 15, 2005
Lane Smith, the actor who portrayed President Nixon in the 1989 docudrama "The Final Days" and apoplectic Daily Planet editor Perry White in the 1990s television series "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," has died. He was 69.
Smith died Monday at his Los Angeles home of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease, his family said.
A veteran stage actor with scores of character parts in film and television, Smith achieved instant fame when he took on the role of Nixon in the production based on the book "The Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Smith's performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
Although he had been acting for three decades when he was cast as Nixon, Smith told Newsday when the show aired that he considered the role "a tremendous career break."
"It's an actor's dream to play something like this," he said. "I consider this my masterwork."
The program itself generated controversy with Nixon supporters labeling it a "smear," and Nixon critics saying it was too sympathetic to the fallen leader. But Smith won critical praise for capturing the physical gestures, mannerisms and what he considered the Greek tragedy of the only U.S. president forced to resign in disgrace.
Newsweek called Smith's portrayal "a towering performance" and said: "This docudrama is a one-man show, and perhaps the most incandescent ever to ignite the tube."
And Newsday said Smith "is such a good Nixon that his despair and sorrow at his predicament become simply overwhelming."
"The Final Days" greatly enhanced Smith's reputation.
"Playing Nixon gave me tremendous recognition," Smith told United Press International a year after the docudrama aired. "I'd long been known in the business, but it pulled everything together. Finally people could put the name Lane Smith with my face."
In 1991, he landed regular roles in two short-lived television series, as cable television mogul R.J. Rappaport in "Good Sports" starring Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal, and as suitor for star Teri Garr's mother in "Good and Evil."
In short order, he also played a hockey coach in the highly popular "The Mighty Ducks," a politician in Eddie Murphy's "The Distinguished Gentleman" and a lawyer in "My Cousin Vinny," all released in 1992.
And then along came Superman.
Smith had been a regular on other series, including the title character's mentor in the 1986 medical drama "Kay O'Brien" and a corrupt industrialist aiding menacing aliens in the 1985 sci-fi series "V." But "Lois and Clark," which starred Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher and ran on ABC from 1993 to 1997, would be his most enduring employer.
In the updated take on the caped crusader from Krypton, White's favorite expression changed from "Great Caesar's ghost!" to "Great shades of Elvis!" and the editor spewed Elvis trivia.
Smith was born in Memphis, Tenn., on April 29, 1936, and grew up wanting to act.
He studied drama for two years at what is now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh before dropping out for a two-year Army hitch. He later moved to New York to study at the Actors Studio.
Smith made his off-Broadway debut in 1959 and acted in several plays on and off Broadway.
Notwithstanding the Nixon role, his real career break came in the late 1960s when he played Randle Patrick McMurphy for 650 off-Broadway performances of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
Better roles followed, and he went on to play characters as diverse as artist Modigliani, writer Jack Kerouac and dictator Adolf Hitler.
Smith earned a Drama Desk Award for his role in David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross" in 1984.
The actor made his motion picture debut in 1970 in Norman Mailer's "Maidstone," and in 1978, he moved to Los Angeles to concentrate on film and television work.
His first motion picture starring role came in 1988 when he played the warden in "Prison" with Viggo Mortensen.
Smith is survived by his wife of four years, Debbie, and his son from a previous marriage, Robertson.
Here is Farrah Fawcett's Obituary from The New York Times
Farrah Fawcett Dies of Cancer at 62
By SUSAN STEWART
Published: June 25, 2009
Farrah Fawcett, an actress and television star whose good looks and signature flowing hairstyle influenced a generation of women and bewitched a generation of men, beginning with a celebrated pinup poster, died Thursday morning in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 62 and lived in West Los Angeles.
Her death, at St. John’s Health Center, was caused by anal cancer, which she had been battling since 2006, said her spokesman, Paul Bloch.
To an extraordinary degree, Ms. Fawcett’s cancer battle was played out in public, generating enormous interest worldwide. Her face, often showing the ravages of cancer, became a tabloid fixture, and updates on her health became staples of television entertainment news.
In May, that battle was chronicled in a prime-time NBC documentary, “Farrah’s Story,” some of it shot with her own home video recorder. An estimated nine million people viewed it. Ms. Fawcett had initiated the project with a friend, the actress Alana Stewart, after she first learned of her cancer.
Ms. Fawcett’s doctors declared her cancer-free after they removed a tumor in 2007, but her cancer returned later that year. She had been receiving alternative treatment in Germany and was hospitalized in early April for a blood clot resulting from that treatment, according to her doctor, Lawrence Piro. He also said her cancer had spread to her liver.
Ms. Fawcett’s career was a patchwork of positives and negatives, fine dramatic performances on television and stage as well as missed opportunities.
She first became famous when a poster of her in a red bathing suit, leonine mane flying, sold more than twice as many copies as posters of Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable combined. No poster like it has achieved anywhere near its popularity since, and, arriving before the Internet era, in which the most widely disseminated images are now digital, it may have been the last of its kind.
Ms. Fawcett won praise for her serious acting later in her career, typically as a victimized woman. But she remained best known for the hit 1970s television show “Charlie’s Angels,” in which she played Jill Munroe, one of three beautiful women employed as private detectives by an unseen male boss who (in the voice of John Forsythe) issued directives and patronizing praise over a speaker phone. Her pinup fame had led the producers to cast her.
Ms. Fawcett and her fellow angels, played by Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson, brought evildoers to justice, often while posing in decoy roles that put them in skimpy outfits or provocative situations.
“Charlie’s Angels,” created and produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg for ABC, was a phenomenon, finishing the 1976-77 season as the No. 5 network show, the highest-rated television debut in history at that time.
Ms. Fawcett was its breakout star. Although she left the show after one season and returned only sporadically thereafter, the show’s influence — among other things, it inspired two much later feature films starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu — was so indelible that she was forever associated with it.
The series, whose popularity coincided with the burgeoning women’s movement, brought new attention to issues of female sexuality and the influence of television. Commentators debated whether the show’s athletic, scantily clad heroines were exemplars of female strength or merely a harem of pretty puppets doing the bidding of a patriarchal leader.
As the show’s most popular star, Ms. Fawcett became another sort of poster girl, for the “jiggle TV” of the ’70s, and a lightning rod for cultural commentators. Chadwick Roberts, writing in The Journal of Popular Culture in 2003, described her “unbound, loose and abundant hair” as marking “a new emphasis on femininity after the androgyny of the late ’60s and early ’70s.”
In 1978 Playboy magazine called Ms. Fawcett “the first mass visual symbol of post-neurotic fresh-air sexuality.” She herself put it more plainly: “When the show got to be No. 3, I figured it was our acting. When it got to be No. 1, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra.”
Ms. Fawcett acknowledged that her sex symbol status was a mixed blessing. It made her famous, but it often obscured the acting talent that brought her three Emmy nominations, most notably for “The Burning Bed,” a critically acclaimed movie about spousal abuse.
“I don’t think an actor ever wants to establish an image,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in 1986. “That certainly hurt me, and yet that is also what made me successful and eventually able to do more challenging roles. That’s life. Everything has positive and negative consequences.”
Ferrah Leni Fawcett was born in Corpus Christi, Tex., on Feb. 2, 1947. Her father, James, worked in the oil pipeline industry; her mother, Pauline, was a homemaker.
After dropping out of the University of Texas, Ms. Fawcett moved to Hollywood to pursue acting. She soon found work in commercials for Wella Balsam shampoo and Noxzema shaving cream, among other products. A Noxzema commercial in which she shaved the face of the football star Joe Namath was shown during the 1973 Super Bowl.
Ms. Fawcett also found acting work in television, landing guest roles on “I Dream of Jeannie,” “The Flying Nun” and other sitcoms. She appeared in four episodes of “The Six Million Dollar Man,” whose star, Lee Majors, she had married in 1973. When Ms. Fawcett was cast on “Charlie’s Angels,” she had a clause written into her contract that allowed her to leave the set every day in time to prepare dinner for Mr. Majors.
She was billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors until 1979. She and Mr. Majors divorced in 1982.
The poster that ignited Ms. Fawcett’s career was shot at the Bel Air home she shared with Mr. Majors. “She was just this sweet, innocent, beautiful young girl,” said Bruce McBroom, who took the photograph. Searching for a backdrop to Ms. Fawcett in her one-piece red swimsuit (which she chose instead of a bikini because of a childhood scar on her stomach), he grabbed an old Navajo blanket from the front seat of his 1937 pickup.
After leaving “Charlie’s Angels” to pursue a film career (she came back for guest appearances for two more seasons), Ms. Fawcett made three forgettable movies in quick succession, then salvaged her reputation by returning to television. In 1981 she starred in the mini-series “Murder in Texas,” as the wife of a doctor who is subsequently accused of murdering her; in 1984 she made “The Burning Bed.”
Both movies were shown on NBC, and both performances received strong reviews. In “The Burning Bed,” Ms. Fawcett was one of the first prime-time actresses to forgo cosmetics in favor of a convincing characterization.
In 1983 she played another victimized woman who fights back — a vengeance-seeking rape victim — in the Off Broadway production of “Extremities.” She took over for Karen Allen, who had replaced Susan Sarandon. Ms. Fawcett went on to star in the film version of the play in 1986.
Other roles followed in film and television — she won praise again in the searing 1989 television movie “Small Sacrifices” — but throughout, Ms. Fawcett tended to attract more attention for her looks and personal life than for her professional accomplishments. Her long relationship with the actor Ryan O’Neal, with whom she had a son, kept her on the gossip pages long after her television work had become sporadic. In recent months she and Mr. O’Neal had been living together. Interviewed by Barbara Walters this month on the ABC program “20/20,” Mr. O’Neal said that he had asked Ms. Fawcett to marry her and she had said yes.
In 1997 Ms. Fawcett negated much of the respect she had earned as an actress when, during an appearance on “Late Show With David Letterman,” she promoted a bizarre body-painting Playboy video and appeared ditsy to the point of incoherence.
But later that year she appeared in the acclaimed independent film “The Apostle” as Robert Duvall’s long-suffering wife, and her critical star rose again — only to be dimmed by publicity about a court case involving a former companion, the director James Orr. Mr. Orr was convicted of assaulting Ms. Fawcett and sentenced to three years’ probation.
In addition to Mr. O’Neal, Ms. Fawcett is survived by her father, James, and her son, Redmond James Fawcett O’Neal.
Though her career was volatile, Ms. Fawcett’s fame never diminished after “Charlie’s Angels.” She tried to capitalize on her celebrity with the 2005 reality series “Chasing Farrah,” but it was a critical and ratings flop. Writing in Medialife magazine, Ed Robertson described the series and its star as “a living example of a talented actress whose career has been turned into a parody by poor decisions.”
Ms. Fawcett herself described her career succinctly. “I became famous,” she said in her 1986 Times interview, “almost before I had a craft.”
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