There are certain events in a person's life that occur which are never forgotten. These are the events that form the entire future of that person. These events can be either very good events or very bad events. In all cases, they are unforgettable.

And so it was with the famous Red Bathing Suit Poster of Farrah Fawcett! I am quite certain; I shall never forget it...

It was on Good Friday in April of 1976 that I first heard the name, Farrah Fawcett.

While planting fruit trees on my farm, I was assisted by a young college student attending Akron University. His name was Pat Partridge and he was my neighbor's son.

Pat exclaimed to me that if he were making posters, he would make one of Farrah Fawcett. I asked the obvious question, "Who's Farrah Fawcett?'

It seemed as if a short fuse had been ignited! Pat began to expound upon the many advertisements that featured Farrah. First it was the Wella Balsam Shampoo Commercial. Then it was the Noxzima Commercial and then there was the ever-famous Cougar commercial for Ford where Farrah is leading a Cougar through a showroom of men while advertising the automobile!

Pat stated that many of his fellow students were cutting photographs from magazines and pasting them on their dormitory walls! Pat said that if I were to produce a poster of Farrah, his dormitory would buy 1,000 posters themselves! I asked how many students were living in Pat's dormitory to which Pat replied, "About nine hundred!" Pat said that many students would probably buy two or more posters and send some home to their friends!

At the end of a very long and tiring day, I relaxed in front of my television set with my wife, Io, to discuss the events of the day.

Casually I asked Io, "Have you ever heard of a woman called Farrah Fawcett?"

Again another short fuse had been ignited!

Io picked up a few of her magazines that were resting on the coffee table in front of us and began thumbing the pages in search of the ads that were graced with Farrah's image.

Wella Balsam, Cougar and a few others illustrated the beautiful blonde bombshell in such a fashion as to depict a "girl next door" image. She appeared natural, attractive and had a million-dollar smile that was later to prove that very statement correct!

On Monday morning following the April Good Friday weekend, I approached my older brother, Mike, at the Pro Arts office and stated, "Mike, we're going to do a poster of Farrah Fawcett!"

Mike, as if cued by me, responded, "Farrah who?"

Those words were to follow me throughout that day. Each time I approached a man stating that Pro Arts was going to do a poster of Farrah Fawcett, I was given a standard reply, "Farrah Who?'

Each time after I had explained what Pat Partridge had discussed with me, the man would then place the name with the face and respond, "Very sexy, or very beautiful, or not a bad idea!"

Each time I approached women at the company with the Farrah Fawcett tout, the women would respond favorably and often add additional information concerning Farrah such as, "She's Lee Major's wife." or "She had a few parts on `Harry-O' with David Jensen."

It was quite clear in April of 1976 that both men and women were favorable for Farrah and not one person out of more than eighteen people that I had approached ever stated a negative reply to the idea! I contacted the William Morris Agency in Los Angeles to discuss the possibility of Farrah licensing Pro Arts for her image to be put on a poster. When Rick Hersh, Farrah's agent, first spoke to me, he asked, "What type of product is Farrah going to be selling on the poster?" I replied, "We want to sell Farrah on the Farrah poster."

Hersh was still unclear as to what the offer was about and continued to ask, "What is Farrah going to advertise?"

Since Farrah had received her primary exposure through advertisements and commercials, her agent assumed that Farrah's demand was related to product to be sold. Yet, I tried to convey the idea that people wanted photos of Farrah and only Farrah without product to be sold.

I stated to Mr. Hersh, "Think about Farrah selling Farrah."

Mr. Hersh said that it was an unusual request, but he would approach Farrah with the idea.

In closing, I stated, "Tell Farrah that Pro Arts is presently doing a poster of her husband, Lee Majors, as the "Six Million Dollar Man." Pro Arts would give Farrah an identical contract so there would be no disagreements as to the terms and conditions since Pro Arts wanted to treat her equally."

A few days after the telephone conversation with Mr. Hersh, I received a call confirming from him that a tentative "deal" had been agreed and that Farrah thought the idea of doing a poster was "cute." In early June of 1976, Farrah returned the signed copies of the Poster Agreement and a photographer suggested by Farrah was scheduled to "shoot" her at her Bel Air home in California.

Of the 25 photographs sent to me by Farrah, which were approved by Farrah from the photo-session, all of the photographs were acceptable!

Not one bad photograph appeared in the photos submitted. In fact, I felt it necessary to show the photographs to the employees of Pro Arts and try to obtain an opinion that would nail down the photograph to be used for her first poster.

Just as there were twenty-five photographs, there were twenty- five different opinions. All of the photos received votes and this had left me with making the ultimate decision. Which photo to choose?

Farrah had placed a "star" on her favorite photograph and since it was my decision, I selected that photograph to be her first poster.

That photograph appears on the cover of this book and has become the best all-time selling poster in the poster industry!

When asked "why" I had selected that particular photograph, I reply without hesitation, "Which person knows better those qualities of beauty better than the person that must sell those qualities to the public everyday?"

Farrah had liked the photograph and placed a "star" upon it. She recognizes those qualities in herself that has earned her an income from those qualities. And besides, it was pre-approved by Farrah and required no additional approval from her.

The poster was printed and produced prior to Charlie's Angels airing on national television.

In September of 1976, Farrah's poster had sold about 7,000 pieces. In October, another 15,000 posters had been sold. In November, another 30,000 had sold.

By Christmas, Farrah's poster was receiving national recognition and had sold about 500,000. The following year became known as the "Farrah Phenomenon." During the months of February and March of 1977, Farrah's poster sold nearly 3,000,000 copies and her design was on 3,000,000 T-shirts and graced about 30 or more products from pillowcases, coffee mugs, drinking glasses, puzzles to wall hangings and memo pads. Pro Arts had paid Farrah nearly $400,000.00 in royalties and Pro Arts had gone from a $2,000,000 company to a $6,000,000 company literally overnight!

Looking back at this period of time, I never realized the dynamic appeal of Farrah's poster. There were women that were more beautiful than Farrah. More women that had better television exposure than Farrah. There were even more women that had more years of experience in both television and magazine advertising exposure than Farrah.

Yet, Farrah was undoubtedly the best all time selling poster in the industry before, then and now! Even though Pro Arts had sold less than one million posters prior to January of 1977, most of these posters were sold on a "guaranteed exchange" program. If a retail store did not sell the posters once they were displayed in their stores, they had the right to return the posters and exchange them for other posters in our product line.

It was in January of l977 that John Argiry went to Atlanta on his trip back from Florida to purchase Roger Macon's remaining four shares of stock. John told Roger that Pro Art was doing well and that the company's sales were "up" because of the Farrah poster. In fact, John agreed to pay Roger $1,500.00 per share instead of the earlier agreed upon price of $1,000.oo per share that Roger and John had agreed upon in December of 1975.

From mid-December of l976 to the first week of January of l977, I was traveling through Europe with my wife and did not have any knowledge of how successful the Farrah poster was doing.

When I returned to Medina, Ohio, to my surprise, all hell had broken loose and the telephones were ringing off their stands!

Our representatives and distributors were ordering tens of thousands of the Red Bathing suit poster of Farrah.

I was preparing to go to the Chicago Transworld Exhibition the following week and knew from the present atmosphere at the office that the show was going to be the best show in ten years!

Prior to attending the Chicago Show and shortly upon my return from Europe, I was called by a company in Delaware that expressed a great interest in obtaining the T-shirt rights to the Farrah Fawcett poster.

In my negotiations with Farrah's Agent, I had obtained the exclusive rights to Farrah's T-shirt distribution as well as the poster rights. Yet, with the company barely able to fulfill the poster sales, Mike, John and I had agreed to sell the T-shirt rights to any company capable of producing good quality Iron -On Transfers and Top Quality T-shirts.

The Delaware Company was called FACTORS, ETC. and its owner was a man named Harry Geisler.

Other than the fact that he was prepared to fly the next day in a private plane with his attorney to make the deal prior to the Chicago Show, I knew very little about his company or his background.

Yet, his immediate interest in the deal and the ability to accept my deal points over the telephone prior to meeting with me in Medina made him the prime party in my search to obtain a good company for the T-Shirt rights.

Harry Geisler arrived at Freedom Field near Medina the very next day with his attorney.

Since he was anxious to close the deal and get the separations to print the Farrah design, I had drawn up a Deal Memorandum, which required Geisler to advance a $50,000.00 up front, payment. He also had to guarantee the sale of 3,000,000 transfers at a royalty of $0.10 per copy to Pro Arts, Inc. He not only signed the deal memorandum and gave me a check for $50,000.00, but also agreed to pay us monthly for everything shipped for that month.

All of the demands for auditing, cancellation, termination and expiration were included in the deal.

I had signed a deal that would put nearly $270,000.oo on the bottom line of Pro Arts after Farrah was paid nearly $30,000.oo in royalties for that deal.

Since Geisler was in the Iron - On Business, he would also police the territory and report on any infringers so that we could institute immediate suits to stop the bootleggers before any real damage could be created in our market.

As it turned out, my sale to Geisler would be a "bad deal" later when I realized that Geisler was a two faced bootlegger that was trying to become legitimate in associating with our company.

Pro Arts had earned a reputation of being "honest and up front" with all its licensors and we had established a very good relationship with MCA Corporation in our licenses with their characters. Prior to Farrah, I had licensed four properties from Steve Adler, Vice President of MCA Corporation. MCA owned Universal Pictures and their television properties were numerous.

My first licenses included The Six Million Dollar Man (Lee Majors), The Bionic Woman (Lindsay Wagner), Kojac (Telly Savalas), and Barretta (Robert Blake). While only the Six Million-Dollar Man successfully sold enough posters to meet the minimum guarantee, Pro Arts paid off the other guarantees without incident and proved to MCA that our word "was our bond."

In the past, most poster companies either "bootlegged" movie and television properties or never paid the guarantees if the property proved to be a "loser."

Pro Arts on the other hand illustrated good business judgment by honoring the guarantees and it stood to reason that if a poster company were willing to pay-off the losers, it would certainly be willing to pay-off on the winners!

Steve Adler and I had a good business relationship. I like to think that we had become friends, however he had tried our business relationship several times and had put me at odds with Mike and John. It was Universal Picture's license agreement that I had used as a guideline in drafting Farrah's Poster and Iron-On contracts.

In fact, I agreed to pay Farrah the same royalty that Pro Arts had agreed to pay on the Six Million-Dollar Man that starred her husband, Lee Majors. Little did I know at the time, but Lee Majors did not receive any of the royalties we paid Universal on the Six Million Dollar Man.

It was all MCA money and Majors was bitter about the Six Million Dollar Man merchandising since millions were paid to MCA on their lunch boxes, sneakers, t-shirts, puzzles and other related products.

Lindsay Wagner on the other hand had received thousands of dollars on the "spin-off" to the Six Million-Dollar Man. Her manager, Ron Samuals, had negotiated a better contract for Wagner than Majors' Manager had negotiated for Majors.

I can remember speaking with Lee Majors over the telephone prior to releasing Farrah's poster in September of 1976.

Lee had called long distance from Los Angeles to tell me how happy he was that we were doing Farrah's poster. Lee hoped that it would help Farrah's career. I remember saying, "Well Mr. Majors, you can rely upon us to try to do the best we possibly can." He responded, "You can call me Lee." Then Lee said, " Ted, I believe you will." And I quickly replied, "Lee, you can call me Mr. Trikilis."

We both laughed at this funny retort. Looking back, I enjoyed speaking with Mr. Majors and felt at ease with him.

Later, Rick Mihalik, my National Sales Manager, had the opportunity to visit Los Angeles.

Rick Hersh, William Morris Agent for Farrah, took Rick out to Lee Majors' Bel Aire home to meet Farrah personally.

Rick later related to me that Lee Majors appeared to be bitter and skeptical.

In fact, prior to any formal greeting, Lee responded to Rick upon the introduction, "Is Farrah getting all her royalties?"

This not only put Rick in an uneasy situation, but Rick had told me that he felt Lee was not too happy about all the attention Farrah was now receiving on the "hype" the poster was generating in Hollywood. Instead of Farrah now being called "Farrah Fawcett-Majors", Lee was being referred to as "Mr. Fawcett!" and this was not what he had anticipated in September of 1976 before the poster had been released.

It was about this time that Spencer Gifts was selling nearly 25,000 copies of Farrah per week. This had started about the first week of December. As they have about 440 stores today, even this seemed like a lot of posters.

But in l977, Spencer Gifts only had 220 stores and this 25,000 per week sales figure meant that the "average sale" per store was 120 posters per week OR 17 posters per day!

I was being interviewed for the first time in the history of our business by newspapers all over the United States.

After attending the Chicago Show for five days, I returned to a mad house at the company. Orders were being stacked up in Mike's office in piles that were two and three feet in height! Mike had small signs attached to different piles: "Rush", "Rush, Rush." and "Ship immediately."

It was comical, yet frustrating. We were being pushed by every major retail account in the country to deliver the Farrah poster.

Newspapers were constantly calling me for interviews.

All the newspapers wanted to know exactly how many posters had been sold.

While we were busy typing up the orders with every available secretary that we could muster, the invoicing was taking a second seat to typing of the orders.

Mike figured that the time it took to type an invoice was better spent typing up new orders.

By February, nearly every major chain in the country was selling our Farrah poster.

It was getting hotter instead of slowing down. I was appearing on the "Jim Nabors Show, The Regis Phileben Show, Bob Braun interviewed me over the radio and articles appeared with photographs in PLAYGIRL MAGAZINE as well as AMBASSADOR MAGAZINE.

I even appeared on the back cover of New York Post and every newspaper in the country had articles about the FARRAH POSTER. All local television stations visited our plant and interviewed Mike, John and me. Free Enterprise Magazine had my picture on the cover with the title, "The Man That Sold The Million Dollar Face." The article encompassed our history as well as the present hype of the Farrah Phenomenon.

In reflecting upon the past circumstances, I do not really feel that I was interested in the personal hype that I help create.

I was more interested in getting exposure for Pro Arts. It was like a crowning of Mike's, John's and my achievements.

I was doing it for all of our families and for everyone that had kept the faith with our company and with us as individuals.