This week we are finishing up our “Supportive Women” blog series. If you watched a lot of television in the sixties and seventies, you will remember today’s blog star very well: Morgan Fairchild.

Morgan Fairchild was born Patsy Ann McClenny in 1950 in Dallas, Texas. In grade school, she was too shy to read her book report in class, so her mother, an English teacher, signed her up for drama lessons. At age ten, she began performing in dinner theater and stock productions in Dallas which led to several local commercials.

In 1967 she married Jack Calmes; they would divorce in 1973.

In 1967, a young Morgan was hired as a double for Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde. At age 20 she was cast in her first movie where we could see her face, A Bullet for a Pretty Boy. She would receive roles for another 35 big-screen features during her career.

However, most of her work was on the small screen. Her first role was Jennifer Pace on Search for Tomorrow. She stayed with that show for four years but she would come back to soap operas on and off throughout her acting time and could be seen on The Bold and The Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and most recently as Sydney Chase in The City in 1996. Most of her roles were the stereotype of an elegant and wealthy woman who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants.

In between work on soap operas, Morgan showed up on many of the most popular shows as a guest star or regular cast member. In 1976 she was on Kojak. After her time on Search for Tomorrow, during the 1970s she appeared on other dramas including Police Woman, Barnaby Jones, and Dallas and on sitcoms like The Bob Newhart Show, Happy Days, and Mork and Mindy.

During the 1980s she did make a few guest appearances on The Love Boat, Simon and Simon, Magnum PI, and Hotel. Morgan received an Emmy nomination for her appearance on Murphy Brown in 1989. However, it was during this decade that Fairchild was a regular cast member on three different shows: Flamingo Road, Paper Dolls, and Falcon Crest (attorney Jordan Roberts), all night-time soap operas.

Flamingo Road was based on a novel written in 1949. It features the small town of Truro, Florida. The wealthy citizens live on Flamingo Road in their mansions, while the lower classes do what they have to do to make that street their address. Morgan played a woman with one of the longest names on television: Constance Weldon Semple Carlyle. After two years, the show was done.

Paper Dolls was about the modeling world. Fairchild played Racine, an agent, and the show is about the jobs that her models take on including a perfume company that uses her models exclusively. The series only lasted for thirteen episodes.

Morgan played Jordan Roberts, an attorney, on Falcon Crest. This long-running drama from 1981-90 featured the Gioberti family who operates the Falcon Crest Winery in California.

In the nineties, she appeared on a variety of shows including Roseanne, Empty Nest, Murder She Wrote, Diagnosis Murder, Cybill, and Home Improvement.

Her career continued during the 2000s where you could see her on Dharma and Greg and Hot in Cleveland, as well as five appearances on Friends as Chandler Bing’s mother Nora. She also had another series, Fashion House, in 2006 as Sophia Blakely. The concept of the show was another fashion-themed one where a ruthless executive played by Bo Derek defends her company against a hostile takeover.

With so many movie channels, we forget today that for a few decades we could not watch movies on television. The networks came up with a solution: made-for-tv movies, and Morgan was a queen of the genre with thirty movies and six miniseries.

Morgan has continued to stay busy. She has two finished productions listed on imdb that have not been released yet.

Fairchild has used her platform as a celebrity to advocate for AIDS research, the pro-choice movement, and many environmental issues. She collects movie memorabilia, especially Marilyn Monroe items, and antique clothing. She seems to have had a long-lasting career. It would have been fun to see her star in a sitcom instead of just playing ruthless women who just care about fame and money.