FARRAH FAWCETT

Austin celebrates Texas native Farrah Fawcett as she fights cancer

By Michael Barnes
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, June 14, 2009

They congregated around the memorabilia. Then leafed through a lovingly tended photograph album. Later, they brushed manicured fingertips over "Charlie's Angels" Barbie dolls and reproductions from a 1966 newspaper story about "UT's 10 Most Beautiful."

Floating from age 20 through age 70, the fastidiously appointed women — mostly women — who gathered at the Barton Creek house of Nina and Frank Seely were honoring their idol: Farrah Fawcett.

"Who doesn't love a Farrah fest?" announced host Nina Seely. "We're here to send Farrah our heartfelt wishes."

Fawcett had been on Austin's mind lately. The star who had inspired fashions and aspirations — and graced America with a definitive hairstyle — has endured several years of public struggle with anal cancer, culminating in a controversial two-hour documentary, "Farrah's Story," which first aired May 15 on NBC.

The cancer battle hit particularly close to home in Texas, where Fawcett was born, grew up and attended the University of Texas. During her years as a model on shampoo commercials, as a pinup queen selling 9 million posters, as an actress with a serious but somewhat limited post-"Angels" career, her Texas family and friends had stuck with Fawcett, hailing her frequent visits, including a frail, girlish acceptance for a 2003 Texas Film Hall of Fame induction in Austin.

They rushed to make her welcome when Fawcett returned to Austin in the 1990s to date college sweetheart Greg Lott. They rooted for her through tabloid tribulations with one-time boyfriend actor Ryan O'Neal and son Redmond O'Neal, currently undergoing intensive drug treatment in a California facility. They sent condolences during her episodic bouts with cancer, excruciatingly displayed in the much-watched documentary.

Making the adulation social, Nina Seely, manager of the Ralph Lauren store at the Domain, Mary Pat Mueller, owner of Door Number 3 advertising agency, and Gail Chovan, an Austin fashion designer undergoing her own struggle with cancer, decided to do something for Fawcett's Austin friends and admirers. They organized a party, including several cancer survivors, to toast Fawcett's life and raise money for cancer causes.

Seely's connection to Fawcett was tenuous but concrete in her mind: They shared the same nanny. Mueller attended the same schools as Fawcett in Corpus Christi, albeit years later. Chovan, recently profiled in the American-Statesman, linked her co-hosts to cancer charities, such as Locks of Love, which provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical conditions.

"We raised awareness; we raised money," Seely said after the event. "And we shared stories that meant so much to so many in attendance."

'A wonderful person'

One unexpected guest made an instant sensation at the Austin gathering. Karen Spellings has known Fawcett since the third grade, attended high school with the future star and later roomed with the University of Texas art student.

These days, Spellings' dark hair is cropped short, no hint of wings. Where Fawcett's eyes are soft, vulnerable, hers are sharp, knowing. Her deep, easy laugh hints of a life spent embracing what fate sent in her direction.

Spellings even remarks on the irony that while she smoked and drank — and Fawcett abstained — she hasn't personally encountered her best friend's cancer challenges.

Spellings, nee Cox, has lived in Austin for 42 years, ever since she transferred from Texas Christian University to the University of Texas. There, she joined forces with her childhood chum, Fawcett, living in the Granada Apartments where the LBJ Library and Museum now rises.

Unlike the other Austinites who feel a distant, empathic connection with the Hollywood star, Spellings' ties are firm, long-lasting. They met in third grade at St. Patrick School on South Alameda Street in Corpus Christi, and then both transferred to public school in eighth grade.

"She once put her hand over the phone, laughing, and said, 'It's that little rich girl' to her mother," Spellings recalls. "Now she has so, so much more than I do."

Later, the twosome attended W.B. Ray High School in central Corpus Christi, graduating in 1965.

"She was extremely bright," Spellings said, choking back tears. "Lots of fun. A wonderful person. Still is."

Spellings and Fawcett teamed up again at UT in 1967, where her friend was already famously popular. "The pledges would line up around the block to date her," Spellings said of the Tri Delt sorority member.

While she enjoyed the male attention, Fawcett's first love was art. She studied sculpture with Charles Umlauf, who later gave his name to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum.

Fawcett, named one of "UT's 10 Most Beautiful," was discovered when her picture appeared in a newspaper. She was drawn into a modeling and acting career in Hollywood.

"I'll go, if you go with me," Spellings recalls Fawcett saying. Spellings stayed the summer in California. Fawcett stayed a lifetime, including an "art shack" behind her Malibu, Calif., residence.

They stayed in touch. Fawcett acted as godmother to Spellings' son, Robert Spellings Jr., also known as "Dude," attending his christening and wedding. (Robert's father is the lawyer and political power by the same name, later married to former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.) Fawcett even brought along Ryan O'Neal when she helped Spellings' father reopen his Old Reno nightclub in Reno, Nev.

Of her long relationship with Fawcett, Spellings concluded: "It's a lot of years."

'The UT goddess'

Fawcett's many connections to Austin began when she studied sculpture and life drawing at UT and served as a frequent model for faculty and students.

"Whenever the old male UT art faculty — all deceased now — would talk about her and her time in their studios, they would all get the same half-smiling, far-away golden glow about them as though they were looking at her across the room," says art collector Carl McQueary. "(Artist) Donald Weismann said she was, and this is a direct quote, 'the UT goddess.' Even the other art students who were in school at the same time universally said there is something about Farrah."

Fawcett was a particularly eager prot?g? of her primary mentor, Charles Umlauf.

"For years, when Umlauf went to Italy for his annual trips to oversee the casting of his bronze sculptures, Fawcett would send over the plaster models of her own sculptures so that Umlauf could oversee their bronze casting as well," said Nelie Plourde, director of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum on Robert E. Lee Road. "In 1985, when Umlauf was honored by the Houston Art Guild as Texas Artist of the Year, Fawcett came down to Houston to present him with this award."

When philanthropist Robert Crenshaw gathered a group of admirers to raise money for a museum in the sculptor's name, Fawcett contributed $10,000.

Her own work was not inconsequential and appeared in a 2002 two-person exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which also opened at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Umlauf also sculpted head studies of his student, who later assembled a collection of his work.

"No one ever recognizes the one Umlauf did from life, but they all do recognize the two he did from photos of her during her 'Charlie's Angels' period – with her iconic hair," Plourde said.

Fawcett visited Umlauf in Austin just before he died in 1994, while she was working on a film in Texas. Umlauf and his wife, Angie, walked through the garden with the actress.

"Quite quickly the entire conversation became all about the original clay or plaster sculpture, what tool had Umlauf used, why did he go with that patina, what about those ears, etc., etc.," Plourde remembered. "After about 45 minutes of this Angie and I retreated to the terrace and left them to their teacher/student conversation."

Although some people believe Fawcett was a model for many of his sculptures, Plourde is quick to dismiss.

"Fawcett had that same deep groove between her nose and upper lip that Angie Umlauf had, and that Umlauf used for the majority of his female sculptures," she said. "Maybe that's what makes her seem the model for all of them."

'Kind, smart and funny'

During the past weeks, as Fawcett's personal story and distressed image have saturated the celebrity media, Austinites have shared their memories and feelings via Facebook, Twitter and e-mails. Most have defended her sweet, giving character, although some have deplored the nature and execution of the TV documentary, "Farrah's Story."

Some personal memories stretched back decades.

"One thing I do remember was an initiation in which she participated where several classmates and I were made to crawl down a gravel road on our hands and knees and then into an empty cow pen where we had molasses poured into our hair and eggs cracked onto our heads. Ugh!" said Nancy Fly, one of her inter-sorority group sisters. "I remember that all the boys wanted to date her, and as a younger person struggling with my own self-image, I was always thrilled whenever she would smile at me, say 'hello,' or even acknowledge that I existed as she passed me in the hallway. She seemed larger than life even back then."

Writer Karen Odom Spezia was a cub reporter for Turner Broadcasting when she first interviewed Fawcett in 1989. "She was incredibly kind, smart and funny — no hint of star attitude," Spezia said. "In fact, as we spoke, she multitasked by preparing dinner for her family including homemade potato salad — with no private chef or nanny in sight. I interviewed hundreds of celebrities during my stint at Turner, and Farrah was one of the most genuine and delightful."

John Harms of tvinfo.net once attended a birthday party at the home of Jeff Blank and artist Shanny Lott, Greg's sister. "I sweated all day trying to figure out what the hell I could give her," Harms said. "That day I was driving back from Brownwood and coming through San Saba, the 'Pecan Capital of the World.' I stopped and bought her a gift bag of shelled pecans. When I gave it to her that evening she exclaimed, 'Pecans! I just love Texas pecans!' Then she gave me a big old full-body hug and a kiss on the lips. Wow, you'd have thought I'd given her a bag of diamonds!"

Others cherished more recent encounters.

"I shared a flight with her in 2003 from Austin to Los Angeles after she accepted the Texas Film Hall of Fame honor," said Gerard P. Lebeda, deputy director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "I was struck by the fact at how lovely — not to mention beautiful — she was when her escorts kept offering to carry her bags. She would thank them with a great big smile and say that that would not be necessary and that she was fine. She moved through the airport like a radiant glow of intense light that you couldn't help but be drawn to."

"Farrah's Story," ultimately produced by Ryan O'Neal and Fawcett friend Alana Stewart (Rod Stewart's ex-wife) and showing Fawcett vomiting, crying and making much-debated medical decisions, inspired a short-lived backlash against the glowing star.

"It was like watching a train wreck," said Vada Dillawn of BlabberMouth PR. "Unfortunately, it did not reflect well on Farrah. Too self-absorbed."

Others simply wanted to remember her the way she was.

"I decided, early on, that I didn't care to watch her die," said retired software developer Linda Ball. "I didn't watch the show."

Perhaps because of the documentary, several of her close Austin friends declined to comment for this story.

Yet Gray Hawn, a professional photographer and close Fawcett friend, thinks the documentary helped others fighting cancer.

"I think it was amazing she shared her journey with the world, trying to show others that they have choices when faced with something like this," Hawn said. "It's just sad for me right now. Some of the media stories have not been kind or accurate and I would never want to do anything to hurt Farrah, as I have so much respect and admiration for her. ... I'm praying for a miracle. ... I am not ready to say good-bye to her."