\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\tThe Television Academy may have celebrated the 50^{th<\/sup> anniversary of \u201cCharlie\u2019s Angels\u201d at the Emmys on Monday night with an onstage reunion<\/a> of the show\u2019s stars Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd, but the TV organization wasn\u2019t as generous to the Aaron Spelling series when it originally aired in the 70s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cCharlie\u2019s Angels\u201d received only four Emmy nominations and no wins during its five-season run from 1976 to 1981. Jackson earned two acting nods, and David Doyle, who played Bosley, was nominated once. A sound editing nomination was picked up in 1977.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\t\u201cIt would have been nice to have gotten Emmys, but there was a snobbism about it,\u201d Smith told me Wednesday. \u201cThey didn\u2019t like all the glamour. They put us down. We were Barbie dolls. They didn’t see the weight or the depth of the devotion of the girls to each other. They thought it was fluff, and Aaron said, \u2018It’s eye candy.\u2019 But he also gave it narrative. He gave it mystery. He gave enough danger to keep you leaning forward. It had a little bit of everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tLittle did most anyone know back then that \u201cCharlie’s Angels\u201d would go on to have a multigenerational fan base for a half-century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tFarrah Fawcett played Jill Munroe with Smith as Kelly Garrett and Jackson as Sabrina Duncan. Ladd joined the series as Jill\u2019s sister, Kris Munroe, after Fawcett left the show following the first season due to contract disputes with Spelling. John Forsythe was the voice of Charlie, the Angels\u2019 boss who was never seen on screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tLadd says their off-screen camaraderie mimicked what TV audiences saw on the small screen. \u201cWe were women who were completely for each other. We weren’t like, \u2018I’m better than you,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cThere was no fighting. I thought that was just such a great way to bring women together and to give them strength.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tEarlier this year, Smith, Jackson and Ladd appeared at a 50-year celebration at PaleyFest<\/a> in Los Angeles. \u201cIt was emotional in the sense that so many years had gone by, and it reminds you of the passage of time, of course and that we don’t have Farrah, David Doyle and John Forsythe,\u201d Smith says. \u201cThose were important people and people I love, certainly. But it\u2019s still rewarding to think that when something has some magic, it’s lasting and it still brings joy to many generations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tLadd says of their Emmys reunion, \u201cThere was a lot of love in that room for us and I really appreciated that. I could feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tSmith, who is currently on a nationwide tour promoting her new memoir \u201cI Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie,\u201d says she enjoyed the two \u201cCharlie \u2018Angels\u201d movies in 2000 and 2003 that starred Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu. \u201cDrew kept to that winning concept. She took it a step further. She evolved it,\u201d Smith says. \u201cShe did it beautifully. It was more spectacular. It was diving off buildings, escaping explosions and still tongue in cheek.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tWhile Smith calls Elizabeth Banks a \u201cgreat and talented\u201d filmmaker, she\u2019s not surprised that her 2019 \u201cCharlie\u2019s Angels\u201d movie, toplined by Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska, failed to reach audiences. \u201cShe tried to really do a departure, and it didn’t work because what I find is if people love something, they don’t want it to change that much,\u201d Smith says. \u201cThey want the original idea. But this had several Bosleys. The girls didn’t get along. Our whole essence was, we were a sisterhood, a fellowship. We had each other. It was loyalty before romance. We used our sex appeal to help us, and yet it still had a strong feminist backbone. I think it changed women’s roles on television.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n}