Happy Birthday, Cheryl Ladd

Across four seasons of Charlie’s Angels, Cheryl Ladd played the plucky and smoking hot Kris Munroe. Kris was smart, intrepid, and often went undercover in skimpy outfits, including but not limited to bikinis. Cheryl’s first episode at the start of season two, when she replaced fan favorite Farrah Fawcett, is as hot a debut as primetime television has seen, before or since, with Kris infiltrating a bad guy’s boat in an iconic, teeny-tiny striped bikini. Dripping wet and ready for action, she’s positively mesmerizing.

In this moment, Cheryl did the near-impossible while replacing the superstar Farrah and etched her scorching hot mark on our brains so we’d certainly never forget her. She proved to be an Angel with staying power, lasting until the very end of the series.

From the boat scene on, the show did its best to slip Cheryl into a tiny two-piece as often as possible. Eventually, she rebelled slightly, feeling the objectification was becoming a little overdone. This article quoted Cheryl saying, “I got the tiniest one I could find that was shocking, and the director said, ‘Surely you can’t wear that.’ I said, ‘Aaron [Spelling] wants me in a bikini. This is the one I’m wearing. I’ll take all responsibility for it.’” While the network’s standards department was indeed shocked, the episode did air, “although they used some clever editing and close-ups to avoid too much skin showing. Spelling waved the white flag, telling the ‘little rebel,’ ‘I got the message and it won’t happen again.’”

By then though, the “little rebel” had more than earned the title of “Bikini Angel.” Obviously, she was so much more than that, playing such an integral part of the show’s success for four seasons. Kris was plucky and funny, with a wry wit and a can-do spirit. Against tough odds, replacing a star from a hit show, Cheryl Ladd made Kris a fan favorite and is beloved to this day by many a Charlie’s Angels fanatic, including this humble blogger.

Today marks her 73rd trip around the sun, so happy birthday to the legendary Cheryl Ladd! In keeping with the nautical theme from her Angels debut episode, and proving she didn’t always wear bikinis, here’s a photoshoot of Cheryl wearing a sailor’s hat and still looking sexier than anyone has a right to look.