[Bret L]

Farrah Fawcett-Taggart

Brian Doherty | June 26, 2009, 12:47pm


"Ayn Rand adored beautiful actresses, pretty unreservedly--her essay on Marilyn Monroe's death is quite emotionally affecting, and explains a great deal in terms the non-philosophically inclined can understand about the sources of the volatile Russian-born novelist's loves and hates.

Rand extended that love to the beauty icon of her, Rand's, fading
years, Farrah Fawcett, who died yesterday. At the Daily Beast, Amy
Wallace has the scoop on the relationship between the philosophical
libertarian novelist and the sunny starlet.

The excerpts below are from emails Fawcett sent to Wallace about her
relationship with Rand, in the months before Fawcett's death, and show
Fawcett definitely understood Rand's literary theory:

Ayn contacted me with a personal letter (and a copy of Atlas
Shrugged) through my agents. Even though we had never met (and never
did), she seemed to think we must have a lot in common since we were
both born on the same day: February 2nd....

When we finally spoke on the phone (actually she did most of the
speaking and I did most of the listening), she said she never missed
an episode of the show. I remember being surprised and flattered by
that. I mean, here was this literary genius praising Angels.....

Ayn said that while Angels was uniquely American, it was also the
exception to American television in that it was the only show to
capture true “romanticism”—it intentionally depicted the world not as
it was, but as it should be. Aaron Spelling was probably the only
other person to see Angels that way....

She kept saying that someday somebody would offer me a script (and
a role) that would give me the chance to “triumph as an actress.” Ayn
wanted that script to be Atlas Shrugged and that role to be her
heroine, Dagny Taggart....

I remember liking the [Fountainhead] movie because it was unique
in that the characters seemed to be the embodiments of ideas as
opposed to real flesh and blood people with interests and lives. Now
that I think about it, I think that’s why Ayn was drawn to Charlie’s
Angels. Because the characters that Kate, Jaclyn and I played weren’t
really characters (the audience never saw us outside of work) as much
as personifications of the idea that three sexy women could do all the
things that Kojak and Columbo did.....

But I also responded to The Fountainhead because, as an artist (a
painter and sculptress) myself, I related to the architect’s
resistance to make his work like everyone else’s—which was, of course,
what Ayn’s own art was all about. And that resistance to conformity is
probably one of the reasons that she was so determined to see me play
Dagny: At the time I would have been the completely unexpected
choice.....

Later, when I read Atlas Shrugged, I was reminded of my first and
only conversation with Ayn and how some of the characters in her novel
(s) take an immediate liking to each other, almost as if they had
always known each other—at least in spirit. And this was the feeling I
got from Ayn herself, from the way she spoke to me. I’ll always think
of “Dagny Taggart” as the best role I was supposed to play but never
did…"

http://reason.com/blog/show/134397.html