Angela Channing
Angela Channing | |||||||||||||||||||
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FALCON CREST character | |||||||||||||||||||
Portrayed by | Jane Wyman (1981-1990) | ||||||||||||||||||
First appearance | "In His Father's House" (1981) | ||||||||||||||||||
Last appearance | "Home Again" (1990) | ||||||||||||||||||
Created by | Earl Hamner | ||||||||||||||||||
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Angela Channing (nee Gioberti; formerly Erickson, Stavros and Agretti) is a fictional character on the American primetime drama, Falcon Crest. The role was originated by Jane Wyman in 1981. Wyman appeared in 208 of the 227 episodes of the series, missing 19 episodes (mostly in the final season) due to health problems. Angela is the steely, domineering owner of the Falcon Crest wineries. Much of the show over the 9 seasons it aired focused on Angela's scheming (usually successfully) to advance the fortunes of her family company, and to keep sole control over it from competitors and other family members who gain percentages of the winery.
Season One
As Falcon Crest debuts, when her daughter, Emma is involved in Jason Gioberti's accidental death, Angela covers for her. When her nephew, Chase Giobert, receives Jason's share of Falcon Crest and moves from New York City to Tuscany Valley, Angela vows to be rid of them by first earning their friendship. When Chase's old friend, Paul, comes to Tuscany Valley, with a business scheme in order to pay off a gambling debt, Angela promises Paul the money if he can get Chase off the land. But her plan backfires when Paul dangers all of the Falcon Crest vineyards, with her own daughter, Julia, helping Chase in preserving the vineyard. Angela offers to buy Chase's pre-harvested grapes when he tries to collect money for his $50,000 tax bill and hiring men to work for him. After discovering that Carl Reed was in negotiations to buy Chase's grapes, Angela buys the mortgage on his property and strong arms him into backing down from the deal with Chase. Tired of her grandson Lance's irresponsible behavior, Angela becomes disenchanted with him as heir to Falcon Crest. Trying to prove his worth, Lance explodes Chase's pumphouse, which infuriates Angela, and she threatens to disinherits him. In order to spur Lance after his fight with Mario, Angela courts her great nephew, Cole Gioberti, to be her heir to Falcon Crest. By offering to help secure a university scholarship for Mario, Angela gets the charges against Lance dropped. When her son-in-law, Tony Cumson, returns to Tuscany Valley after 12 years and begins to take the attention of Julia away from Lance, Angela begins to interfere. Angela enlists the help of her ex-husband, Douglas Channing, to hire Maggie on as a reporter at his newspaper, The San Francisco Globe in San Francisco. When Emma's ex-lover, Turner Bates, who was on the scene when Jason died, returns, he blackmails Angela after learning the truth. In turn, Angela calls in the police, and Turner, after a car chase, is accidentally killed.
When Angela takes Cole to Rome, Italy to attend an important wine-tasting competition, she is surprised to find Douglas is there, and hopes to rekindle the memory of their honeymoon spent there years ago. Initially, romance flares between Angela and Douglas; however, Angela devastates Douglas when she refuses his proposal to remarry. Meanwhile, Angela leaves Lance in charge of Falcon Crest to test him with the family business, but Lance painfully discovers that he's not as shrewd as his grandmother. Angela begins to toy with Douglas's emotions, playing him against a renowned painter and making Douglas look like a fool. In order to obtain the lucrative Agretti Vineyards, Angela begins plans for Lance to marry the Agretti heiress, Melissa Agretti. After a bitter argument between Angela and Lance, he leaves and falls in love with a girl. When Lance decides to move to San Francisco, Angela attempts to stop them and when Lance succumbs, he leaves the love of his life. After Chase finds evidence that Angela may have been involved in crippling a girl forty years ago, he confronts Angela, who turns the tables on Chase, playing a small excerpt of a recording that leaves Chase believing that his father hated him. When Chase's mother, Jacqueline Perrault (portrayed by "special guest star" Lana Turner), returns to Tuscany Valley, she warns Chase of Angela's treacherous nature and tries to persuade him to leave Falcon Crest. Hatred begins to erupt between the two longtime rivals and Jacqueline informs Angela that Chase will survive and prosper in the valley.
After Ed McKay, a member of the County Board of Supervisors, is assassinated, Chase is encouraged to run for office. In order plot to rid Chase away from Falcon Crest, Angela campaigns against Chase for water rights in the valley and does everything in her power to see Chase defeated, but nonetheless, Chase wins the election. Later, when Emma is caught shoplifting in a jewelry store, Angela threatens the owner that she will destroy him if he decides to prosecute. Angela becomes angry when Lance begins working for his grandfather's newspaper in San Francisco and is determined that he will marry Melissa Agretti, planning to destroy her budding relationship with Cole. Later, when Angela finds out that Chase and Maggie persuaded Julia to take her sister to a psychiatric clinic, she tells Julia the truth about Emma killing Jason, which turns Julia against Chase and Maggie. Angela, in an attempt to foil Chase's inquiries about the circumstances about his father's death, has Philip mislead Chase into believing he might inherit Falcon Crest. Later, Angela attempts to force Lance to marry Melissa, who instead has become deeply involved with Cole. After pressuring Lance, he proposes to Melissa, who has her own cunning reasons for marrying Lance, aside from her father and Angela's scheme to merge Falcon Crest with Agretti Vineyards. While Angela attempts to impede Chase's coroner's inquest into his father's death, she is forced to testify on stand. Later, Angela learns of Melissa's pregnancy following a disastrous honeymoon and assumes Lance to the be the father, despite his denial.
After Douglas dies of a seizure, Angela tries to keep Emma sedated to prevent her from testifying, fearing that she could lose Falcon Crest, if Chase's attorney can prove that Jason died under suspicious circumstances. But Emma manages to escape the Gioberti Mansion and arrives to take the stand, confessing how she how she accidentally pushed Jason to his death while he fought with Turner Bates. The jury rules that Jason "died at the hands of another," thereby giving Chase control of Falcon Crest, but he magnanimously offers fifty percent of the vineyard to Angela. Though she detests the thought of sharing Falcon Crest with anyone, she has choice and accepts the offer.
As the season ends, another threat looms as Angela learns of Douglas's illegitimate son, Richard Channing, who has inherited fifty percent of The San Francisco Globe.
Season Two
Angela begins resisting Chase's claims to half ownership of Falcon Crest. Meanwhile, Angela begins looking for a way to block Richard Channing, as he prepares to take control of The San Francisco Globe as the new chairman of the board. After Gus's death in a gas explosion, Chase threatens Angela with an affidavit accusing her of complicity in Gus's death, and later he forces her to agree in sharing the operation of Falcon Crest with him. Later, Angela deals with Chase using his new role on the Tuscany Valley County Board of Supervisors on trying to break her grip on county water supplies. After Angela tells Richard that he looks nothing like his father Douglas, he vows to destroy her.
Carlo confronts Angela about Lance's abusiveness toward Melissa and vows that Angela will never get his land through Melissa's marriage to Lance. Chase wants to distribute Falcon Crest's wine in Canada, through another distributer other than Kleeger Distributions, which gets a big discount on their wine and is secretly owned by Angela. She charges Lance with keeping Chase from finding out. To counter Chase's efforts on the County of Supervisors to break her monopoly on the valley's water and distribute it to other growers, Angela claims her water is tainted. In turn, Chase orders another test of Falcon Crest's water supply that shows it not to be tainted. Angela threatens Nick Hogan not to vote with Chase against her at the county supervisor meeting. If Nick votes to redistribute Falcon Crest's water to other vineyards, Angela warns that she won't be buying the $17,000 worth of pipes she was going to buy from him. While Nick casts his decisive vote with Chase, Angela warns Chase that he will come to regret his moment of glory. Before Emma disappears, she secretly gives Chase the voting proxy to her twenty percent share of The Globe -- Angela hoped would give her control of the newspaper's board of directors.