A detail of the Farrah Fawcett poster, which became one of the best-selling images ever, and is regarded as one of the iconic pictures from the 1970s. (Bruce McBroom/Pro Arts Inc.)

For a few months in 1976-77, the Farrah Fawcett-Majors poster (above, and below) was pop culture's dominant visual image. Here was a windswept California beauty without a care in the world – unattainable, smiling that toothy smile, wordlessly teasing lustful young men in their bedrooms. With a staggering 12 million copies sold, the poster became the symbol of an increasingly permissive decade.

It even had a cameo on the big screen. As Tony Manero (John Travolta) gets prepped for a trip to disco heaven in Saturday Night Fever (1977), he gazes at the poster on his bedroom wall. Clearly, Farrah was meant to embody a WASP fantasy woman far removed from Tony's working-class Brooklyn surroundings.

The photo's ubiquity soon turned it into a punchline. In an opening monologue on a 1977 episode of Saturday Night Live, Steve Martin joked about his devotion to the famous image: "Boy oh boy, I am so mad at Farrah Fawcett-Majors. She is so conceited. She has never called me once. And after the hours I've spent holding up her poster with one hand!" By that point, Farrah had come to rival other "Me Decade" icons like the pet rock, Frampton Comes Alive! and the mood ring. She was everywhere.

(Bruce McBroom/Pro Arts Inc.)

It would never have happened without Pat Partridge, a student at Akron University, who suggested to his neighbour – poster distributor Ted Trikilis – that a photo of Fawcett-Majors, then a Wella Balsam shampoo model, could become a mega-seller. While Trikilis had never heard of her, Partridge informed him that several male classmates had cut out pictures of her in women's magazines and plastered them on their dorm walls.

Wisely, Trikilis heeded the kid's advice. It was April 1976 – a few months before Fawcett-Majors would jauntily jog into our living rooms as the "sporty" Jill Munroe on Charlie's Angels. The legendary shot emerged from a session with photographer Bruce McBroom behind Farrah's home in Bel Air, Calif. McBroom snapped her in a red one-piece bathing suit, sitting in front of a blanket. (An alternate photo of her seductively eating a cookie was ultimately rejected.)

So what was the allure? Why did this shot — of all the cheesecake shots in that shag-carpeted universe – transfix a generation of teenage boys? Her starring role on a runaway hit show created media synergy, to be sure. But it was the mix of Farrah's wholesomeness – that athletic, all-American look – combined with a scandalous hint of nipple that would prove irresistible. (Even Charlie's Angels, denounced as part of the "jiggle TV" trend, was never that risqué.) Those blond tresses were also groundbreaking, a tousled bedhead look that suggested a state of permanent post-coital bliss. A '70s urban folk legend claimed that starting with the letter "S" on her right shoulder, Farrah's wavy hair actually spelled out S-E-X – an example of either subliminal seduction or bizarre wishful thinking.

Looking at the poster almost 35 years later, it's tough to see what all the fuss was about; we're as far removed from her big pop moment as the Ford-Carter era was from Betty Grable's wartime heyday.

Farrah spent most of those intervening years trying – with varying degrees of success – to transcend her pin-up status. She ditched the "Majors" suffix after splitting with actor Lee Majors, best known for starring on The Six Million Dollar Man, another wretched '70s series with a wafer-thin plot. She glammed down for more serious roles, playing a victim of domestic abuse in The Burning Bed (1984) and rape in Extremities (1986).

Clearly, Fawcett possessed more acting talent than she was allowed to demonstrate during her one-season stint as an Angel. Over her career, she earned three Emmy nominations and worked for estimable directors like Robert Duvall and Robert Altman. But a wonky 1997 appearance on Letterman – in which she seemed completely unable to focus – erased most of the work she'd done to counter her ditzy reputation.

Fawcett's film and TV work survives, but that one-dimensional poster image is indelible: a study in West Coast erotic fantasy, a smile that promised pleasures as tantalizing as California itself.

Greig Dymond writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.