Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009)

Cancer strikes again and an old friend remembers

© By Peter Barry Chowka

(July 1, 2009) Farrah Fawcett was one of the most recognizable and lauded American actresses of the past three decades. She had great success and won numerous awards for her work in television series and TV movies, in theatrical films, and on the stage.

Fawcett died of cancer at age 62 on June 25, 2009, but the news of her death was overshadowed by the unexpected passing later the same day of international pop music superstar Michael Jackson.

Fawcett’s death was not unexpected. Her three-year long struggle with cancer was widely reported (often sensationally and inaccurately) in the media and especially in the supermarket tabloids.

Farrah’s Story

Farrah Fawcett sick from chemotherapy Still frame from Farrah's Story (2009)

On May 15, 2009, Farrah’s Story, a two-hour long documentary about Fawcett’s attempt to survive cancer, aired in prime time on NBC. The program, using mostly footage shot by Farrah’s friends using camcorders, was unusually compelling, credible, and provocative, especially for network television. It was most likely so good because it was produced independently, with simplicity, and without hokey music or hyped up production values. It was reality television at its absolute, and all too rare, best.

The program worked on so many levels that it’s difficult to know where one could begin to describe it or to review it. The best thing, in my opinion, is for people to simply watch it. The program is widely available online, including at http://www.hulu.com/watch/73354/farrahs-story

More than any production I’ve seen in years, probably since PBS aired the wrenching three hour-long black and white cinéma vérité cancer documentary Joan Robinson: One Woman’s Story in 1980, Farrah’s Story documented,  in the most realistic and unvarnished way imaginable, the daunting challenges facing a person with cancer who opts for conventional treatments. In the case of Fawcett, a wealthy celebrity who could afford myriad state-of-the-art medical options and private jets to transport her to treatment centers abroad, her elevated place in life wound up making little if any difference in the outcome of her treatment or, apparently, in the terrible suffering that she endured. The program and Fawcett’s determination to survive – and to share her experiences – are simply unforgettable.

An old friend remembers and reflects

I happened to mention the Fawcett documentary to a friend of mine, Cheri Tips, when we were sharing information several days after Fawcett’s death. To my surprise, Tips said that she had known Fawcett back in the 1950s and ‘60s when, as children of the same age, they were growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Tips is no stranger to issues relating to health, and particularly natural health. She is the Executive Director of the National Health Federation, the nation’s oldest non-profit consumer-education health freedom organization.

I asked Tips for some of her recollections of Fawcett, and she provided an unusual and poignant portrait of knowing the actress before she achieved fame in Hollywood starting in the mid-1970s.

Peter Barry Chowka: Cheri, you said that Fawcett – in her life and career and in her final brave struggle against cancer – was a good representative of her native Texas.

Cheri Tips: Farrah may have gone to Hollywood but she was a true Texas girl all the way to the end.

Texas was founded by renegades, prisoners, and others who were run out of, or who escaped from, Tennessee and its surrounding states and as a result it was a tough environment, so tough that toughness runs in the blood of many residents down here, or it did at one time, anyway.

In my opinion, there are two kinds of Texas women. The first kind believes that she must have a man in order to feel complete and to have an identity. She settles for the type of Texas male who is sadly all too typical, who thinks little of women, tries to control their lives, etc.

Farrah's high school senior yearbook photo (1965)

The other type of woman, which Farrah was, comes from the background of a mother telling her child that she could do anything she sets her mind to – “challenge yourself, and if you fail, try harder.” When I knew her, Farrah was always into sports which we did a lot of together. It was very much unlike today, where there is no longer any PE in schools, and when parents tell their children that even if they lose, they are “winners.” In contrast, Farrah and I grew up with sports, with a challenge to win, to be better, to persevere. We did persevere and if we lost, we lost – if we fell, we were told to get back up. That makes for a strong, determined personality, one that strives for challenges and with the goal to achieve them. 

Farrah’s father, if I remember correctly, was initially a rough-neck in the oil fields. That’s tough work and he was a hard worker and a nice man. Both of us were brought up with the message that whatever we wanted to achieve as individuals, we could, and we really didn't care what others thought of our decisions – we knew who we were and we felt competent in our decisions. Like me, Farrah seems to have maintained that strength, determination, and individuality throughout her life. This is typical of the second type of Texas woman.

Chowka: You knew her when you were both in grade school?

Tips: The earliest I remember being with Farrah was in the 4th grade, flying kites in a vacant field across from her modest house. She was liked by everyone and was not pretentious.

I didn't really keep up with Farrah after we both went off to college, attending different schools. Charlie's Angels [Fawcett’s breakthrough network television series that began in 1976] wasn't my type of show and I just happened to see her on Letterman awhile back and I felt sad because I thought Hollywood had ruined her. But I was wrong. When I watched her cancer documentary [Farrah’s Story], it was very much the Farrah who I had known. She was her own person – the determination was still there, the “Texas Woman” strength was there. I noticed in the documentary that she had continuously been declining marriage. I understood that, as she did not need marriage to define who she was; only she would define herself. When Ryan [O’Neal, Fawcett’s longtime companion] asked her for her hand again at the end, she humored him and said “pre-nup.” She was no dummy. 

Chowka: What else did you think of the documentary?

Tips: I did notice in the documentary that she was drinking cokes and other sodas, which saddened me because cancer loves sugar and it was something that she didn't need to consume at that time.

Chowka: She was also taking lots of nutritional supplements. Hopefully, they helped to alleviate or palliate some of the side effects that were being caused by the intensive chemotherapy she was being treated with.

Tips: You know, when I heard the rumor [apparently untrue, as it turns out] that she had gone to Germany for alternative treatments, we who knew her sure hoped that she had found a viable option. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

A personal note

This author has been reporting on conventional and natural alternative therapies for cancer since the mid-1970s. In 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, as he signed bipartisan legislation creating the “War on Cancer, declared that cancer would be cured by 1976. It wasn’t, of course, and three and a half decades later politicians are still promising that a cure for cancer is within sight if only more federal money can be allocated to research and treatment.

Undeterred, the medical Establishment continues to hype the treatments that it does have available. Farrah Fawcett, a highly regarded celebrity with considerable resources and influence, was apparently able to tap into the most advanced conventional treatments. The question of what impact they had on her survival and her quality of life remains open, and will probably never be known.

Meanwhile, as reported in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on June 30, 2009, an article published online by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) on June 29, 2009 found, according to the WSJ, “that treating a lung-cancer patient with Erbitus, a drug that costs $80,000 for an 18-week regimen, prolongs survival by only 1.2 months.” According to the JNCI article’s authors, “The spiraling cost of cancer care, in particular the cost of cancer therapeutics that achieve only marginal benefits, is under increasing scrutiny. Although health-care professionals avoid putting a value on a life, our limited resources require that society address what counts as a benefit, the extent to which cost should factor in deliberations, and who should be involved in these decisions.”

With the apparent imminent onset of universal health care and the systematic rationing of medical care that will surely accompany it, decisions on what therapies to use may soon be taken out of the hands of cancer patients and clinicians altogether – and render the Farrah Fawcett cancer documentary an arcane window into a long gone past.

 

Peter Barry Chowka is a writer and investigative journalist who writes about politics, health care, and the media.

 

Farrah Fawcett (1976) Reportedly the best selling pin up poster of all time