They're Puttin' On the Glitz

By Richard Zoglin

Bitches, saints or role models, TV's glamour queens ride high

Alexis, daahr-ling. Of course we know that you and Dynasty are simply the last word in TV glamour. But have you noticed the crowd you have attracted lately? That nasty Morgan Fairchild on Paper Dolls makes and breaks the careers of models half her age with the flick of a fingernail and looks smashing while doing it. The women of Dallas have taken a page from your book and hired their own designer to come up with dazzling new outfits to wear around Southfork. Even TV detectives, for heaven's sake, are starting to look like fashion spreads in Vogue. Jennifer O'Neill trots off to swank locations around the world posing as a fashion photographer in Cover Up. Lynda Carter and Loni Anderson play a former debutante and a working-class woman who team up on Partners in Crime, but from the outfits, who can tell which is which?

Glamour is the rage this fall, and prime time is overflowing with ornately dressed, immaculately coiffed leading ladies who glide through fabulous worlds of wealth, power, romance and high-style intrigue. Some of them, such as Fairchild and Dina Merrill in Hot Pursuit, are campy bitches modeled after Joan Collins' conniving Alexis Carrington Colby. Others, like Dynasty's Linda Evans and Dallas' Priscilla Presley, are equally fanciful angels of goodness and nobility. Still others, like this season's spate of high-living private eyes, are just girls who want to have fun. But all of them embody a new ethic of elegance, opulence and artifice unlike anything TV has yet seen.

To be sure, a few down-to-earth, relatively realistic females have gained a foothold in prime time, on such shows as Cagney & Lacey and Kate & Allie. Moreover, several of the season's glitziest newcomers--like ABC's Glitter, which was taken off the air after just three episodes--have been struggling in the ratings. But Collins and her sisters in silk and satin are clearly setting the dominant style of high-gloss femininity, and their ranks are growing. Gina Lollobrigida has joined the cast of Falcon Crest, and Ali MacGraw will appear on Dynasty later this season. Yvette Mimieux will star in a midseason show on NBC called Berrenger's, about a posh New York City department store similar to Bloomingdale's. And Angie Dickinson and Candice Bergen head the cast of Hollywood Wives, an upcoming ABC mini-series based on Jackie Collins' spicy bestseller.

TV's obsession with glamour seems a throwback to the glittery fantasy worlds that Hollywood created in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, then largely abandoned for social relevance and downbeat realism in the '60s and '70s. "I think the public has been starved for glamour for a long time," says Joan Collins, 51, who was a well-traveled but undistinguished movie actress before achieving superstardom on Dynasty (and posing in the nude for Playboy last year). "I grew up watching beautiful actresses like Ava Gardner, Hedy Lamarr and Elizabeth Taylor. Getting away from one's mundane existence into a fantasy world of beautiful clothes, jewels and Rolls-Royces is very appealing."

For conspicuous consumption, Dynasty--co-produced by TV's maestro of glamour, Aaron Spelling--is the undisputed champion. Dom Perignon champagne and Petrossian caviar are routine props on the set, and the show's wardrobes, designed by Emmy Winner Nolan Miller, cost $18,000 an episode. Twelve to 15 new outfits are created for each hour, and none are worn twice. The popular series has even spawned a line of Dynasty clothing and home furnishings, and Collins has lent her name to a line of medium-priced jewelry.

Not to be outdone, archrival Lorimar--the producer of Dallas, Falcon Crest and Knots Landing--has hired Bill Travilla (once Marilyn Monroe's designer) to gussy up its shows. The company also plans to merchandise a line of women's clothes and beauty products tied in with Dallas. Paper Dolls has hired Designer Marc Bouwer, whose creations are sold in tony department stores like Saks, to drape Fairchild and her young models (Terry Farrell, Nicolette Sheridan) in lush attire. Each episode of Cover Up spotlights the fashions of a name designer (including Perry Ellis and Christian Dior) in exchange for a plug.

The boom in television glamour is probably a reflection of the times, though just what sort of reflection is a matter of debate. "We have a wealthy President, and the Reagans have style," contends Douglas Cramer, co-executive producer with Spelling of Love Boat and Hotel. "People are relating to the way the rich live. When capitalism is working, everyone likes to think it is within their reach." Leonard Goldberg, executive producer of Paper Dolls, sees a different picture. "In these difficult days, when the biggest fear the audience has is of somebody pressing a button and blowing the world away, I think people want a little fantasy," Goldberg says. "They want to escape. They want to look at beautiful women, especially when the rest of the world isn't so beautiful to look at."

TV's beautiful women, however, are serving a quite different function from their predecessors in movies and TV. Unlike most of the movie queens of Hollywood's golden age, or such TV stars of recent vintage as Jaclyn Smith and Suzanne Somers, the current bevy of beauties are not sex symbols so much as role models for their own sex. Many of them are approaching, or have proudly arrived at, middle age, and their fans are mostly admiring women, not ogling men. Dynasty's audience is 58% female, Hotel's 61%. Nearly half the women viewers of both shows are over 50.

The message fits snugly into the self-help '80s: if we can look this good at 40 or 50, there is hope for you too. It is no accident that several of TV's most popular glamour girls have written bestselling books on beauty or fitness. Among them: Victoria Principal's The Body Principal (and her just published sequel, The Beauty Principal), Linda Evans' Beauty & Exercise Book, The Joan Collins Beauty Book and Morgan Fairchild's Super Looks.

The layers of makeup, elaborate hairdos and drop-dead gowns seem a far cry from the ideal of "natural" beauty that arose in the 1960s and '70s. Yet the actresses so lavishly accoutred insist that their roles are not a step backward for the feminist movement. "Natural is wonderful, but natural can also get a little boring," says Fairchild, 34. "I think the women's liberation movement finally has come full circle. Women have come to be confident enough in themselves that they don't feel they have to be stripped of everything to be taken seriously, that they can start having a little of the fun of being a woman again."

Indeed, beneath all this ornamentation lie a number of strong, independent female characters, who represent a big advance over the homebound, second-banana roles to which TV once relegated women. Alexis Colby is head of an oil empire. Fairchild's character runs a top modeling agency. Even the fun-loving private eyes are doing work formerly reserved for men. "Lynda Carter and I play two working women," says Anderson. "We rent a house, and a man is our servant. Women want to see women being both strong and glamorous at the same time. To be glamorous doesn't mean that you are frivolous."

Of course, these "strong" women are often hard to take seriously, given the baroque fantasy worlds they inhabit. Moreover, the strongest among them embody one of the culture's most retrograde stereotypes: the conniving bitch. Such roles are an "outlet for women and their fantasies of power," suggests Tania Modleski, professor of film and literature at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. "But these fantasies are also negated at the same time, because it's not right for good women to lust for power. So they are put in the person of a villainess." Most feminists, however, seem to regard these characters benignly. "The dragon-lady character has always been a stereotype," points out Susan Brownmiller, author of Against Our Will and Femininity. "But shows like Dallas at least give women the illusion that there is a way into power for them."

The most avid supporters of these roles are, not surprisingly, the women who portray them. "It's fun," says Merrill, whose wealthy character on Hot Pursuit has her husband murdered and frames an innocent woman for the crime. "You get all the aggressions out of your system." Diahann Carroll, who joined Dynasty at the end of last season as the haughty Dominique Deveraux, announced proudly that she would be playing "TV's first black bitch." On the other hand, Collins insists that there is more to Alexis than malevolence: "Women look to her struggles, her strong sense of identity, her feeling that she will never give up. She is a strong believer in herself, and I think that's what a lot of women identify with."

In the end, these actresses may be making a bigger impact off-screen than on. Linda Evans, 41, the striking beauty who plays Krystle Carrington on Dynasty, in particular has become a sort of matron saint for the over-40 crowd. Says she: "I'm thrilled to be able to say to women, 'I'm 41, and I love it. Come along down the road. It's not horrible.' " Adds Dallas' Linda Gray, 44: "I feel grateful that Joan and Linda and I are role models for women in America. We are saying 'Don't give up. You can get that sense of self whether you stay at home and be a housewife or go out in the work force. You have to honor the uniqueness within yourself and have the guts to persevere.' " Guts, perseverance and a few thousand dollars' worth of designer clothes, and the sky is the limit.

--By Richard Zoglin.

Reported by Dense Worrell/Los Angeles

With reporting by Dense Worrell