April 2, 1978—Premiering as a five-part miniseries, Dallas, starring Texas native (and Mary Martin son) Larry Hagman as America’s favorite villain, J.R. Ewing, began a 14-season, 357-episode run that made it the most successful primetime serial in television history.
It’s hard to believe now, all the hysteria in the summer following this show’s third season, when the question on everyone’s minds in America was not “Who’s going to win the Presidential election?” or even “Who’s going to win the World Series?” but rather “Who shot J.R.?”
The answer didn’t come until November 21, 1980, when it turned out to be (caution—spoiler alert, for anyone asleep for the last three decades!) Pam Ewing’s sister Kristen, played by Bing Crosby’s daughter Mary. (What would Der Bingle, only dead three years at that point, have thought of his little girl then?) That show was the most-watched program in TV history until the final episode of “M*A*S*H” eclipsed it three years later.
I did not inherit my mother’s avid interest in nighttime soaps, so the only Dallas episode I ever caught was the finale, in May 1991. Tell the truth, the only thing I can recall from it is that Hagman’s pal Joel Grey showed up.
I’m told that it was a kind of play on It’s a Wonderful Life as J.R. Ewing got to see what life would have been like if he’d never been born. (Though I don’t recall the part about the CBS exec being unable ever to send his kids to prep school and Harvard because Hagman and Co. weren’t making money for him hand over fist.)
Now, during its heyday, Dallas so permeated America’s consciousness that even if you seldom if ever watched it, like yours truly, you were still bound to have heard of characters like J.R. and Sue Ellen, Bobby and Pam, Jock and Miss Ellie, Cliff and God-knows who-all. Still, I was rather unsure of the fine points (ahem!) of the show before writing this post, so I had to bone up for this writing assignment.
“You Americans really love your baddies,” I recall Tim Pigott-Smith, who played the villainous policeman Ronald Merrick in the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, chuckling on one of those interminable PBS fundraisers nearly a quarter century ago. I think it’s significant that the man that CBS got to play J.R. had assayed the role of Major Tony Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie, because Hagman’s new character could concoct schemes with the same élan that Jeannie possessed in wiggling her nose and popping out of her lantern.
As I contemplated the show’s twists and turns through the years, my mind reeled. Like a true-blue baseball fan, I decided the best way to make sense of it all was with a scorecard (“score” being the operative word, given all the show’s canoodling, couplings, de-couplings and re-couplings).
Let’s start with some (not all) of the unusual cast changes. Now, I recall as a youth how Dick York was replaced by Dick Sargent as Samantha Stephens’s dense hubby Darren on Bewitched. (Young rebel that I was, I refused to go along with the change. It was Dick York’s outsize ears or nothing—I would accept no substitutes.) But for sheer number—and sheer brazenness in expecting the audience to accept it like a stock certificate for Ewing Oil—nothing could surpass the producers of Dallas in expecting an audience to swallow the same character played by someone entirely new, with no explanation for the radical face change. To wit:
* Gary Ewing, brother to J.R. and Bobby—played first by David Ackroyd, then by Ted Shackleford
* John Ross Ewing III, son of J.R. and Sue Ellen—played first by Tyler Banks, then by Omri Katz.
* Willard (Digger) Barnes, Pam's daddy, played first by David Wayne, then by Keenan Wynn.
And now, the topper:
* Eleanor (“Miss Ellie”) Ewing, matriarch of the filthy-rich Texas clan—played first by Barbara Bel Geddes, then Donna Reed, then Barbara Bel Geddes again.
You got all that? And I haven’t even mentioned yet how Bobby, after being off the show for a full year, suddenly reappeared in Pam’s shower, revealing that the entire 1984-85 season had all been a nightmare.
That turned out to be the proverbial bridge too far for the show’s viewers, who could swallow anything but the fact that everything they’d been watching recently was all a dream. This was a jump-the-shark moment if there ever was one, and the series never again retained the unquestioned loyalty of its fans, even though it held on for several more years as tightly as J.R. clutching onto his first nickel.
What lured viewers for as long as it even did? One of my uncles insisted the show had “good acting,” but it struck me that this was a bit akin to claiming that one “read” Playboy for all those Norman Mailer articles. The way I figure it, my uncle’s eye for feminine pulchritude was caught by Victoria Principal, who, whatever else you might say about her, has been more impressive for her dogged wringing of every minute she can get out of those 20-year-old Lifetime TV reruns than for any ability or willingness to tackle Medea anytime soon.
A more likely suspect is the cliffhanger element in each show. Showbiz pros as far back as Charles Dickens (and let’s face it, a novelist who could do readings that left audience members gasping over the murder of Nancy by Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist was nothing if not a “showbiz pro”) knew the power of the cliffhanger to bring people coming back for more, and Dallas promoted it shamelessly.
Without the cliffhanger element, Dallas would be all hat but no cattle. And speaking of hats…What was with J. R. Ewing’s 10-gallon white Stetson? You think it’s only a visual cue for the viewer to say, “Texan”? Think again. If viewers didn’t get the idea by the 10,000th time Larry Hagman drawled “Darlin’,” I don’t know when they ever would.
No, I say it was an artful way of camouflaging Larry Hagman’s toupee—which, come to think of it, is still a lot better put-together than the Dallas movie that Hollywood has been talking about forever, but which for now looks like it’s caught in Development Hell, somewhere southwest of Southfork.
It’s hard to believe now, all the hysteria in the summer following this show’s third season, when the question on everyone’s minds in America was not “Who’s going to win the Presidential election?” or even “Who’s going to win the World Series?” but rather “Who shot J.R.?”
The answer didn’t come until November 21, 1980, when it turned out to be (caution—spoiler alert, for anyone asleep for the last three decades!) Pam Ewing’s sister Kristen, played by Bing Crosby’s daughter Mary. (What would Der Bingle, only dead three years at that point, have thought of his little girl then?) That show was the most-watched program in TV history until the final episode of “M*A*S*H” eclipsed it three years later.
I did not inherit my mother’s avid interest in nighttime soaps, so the only Dallas episode I ever caught was the finale, in May 1991. Tell the truth, the only thing I can recall from it is that Hagman’s pal Joel Grey showed up.
I’m told that it was a kind of play on It’s a Wonderful Life as J.R. Ewing got to see what life would have been like if he’d never been born. (Though I don’t recall the part about the CBS exec being unable ever to send his kids to prep school and Harvard because Hagman and Co. weren’t making money for him hand over fist.)
Now, during its heyday, Dallas so permeated America’s consciousness that even if you seldom if ever watched it, like yours truly, you were still bound to have heard of characters like J.R. and Sue Ellen, Bobby and Pam, Jock and Miss Ellie, Cliff and God-knows who-all. Still, I was rather unsure of the fine points (ahem!) of the show before writing this post, so I had to bone up for this writing assignment.
“You Americans really love your baddies,” I recall Tim Pigott-Smith, who played the villainous policeman Ronald Merrick in the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries The Jewel in the Crown, chuckling on one of those interminable PBS fundraisers nearly a quarter century ago. I think it’s significant that the man that CBS got to play J.R. had assayed the role of Major Tony Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie, because Hagman’s new character could concoct schemes with the same élan that Jeannie possessed in wiggling her nose and popping out of her lantern.
As I contemplated the show’s twists and turns through the years, my mind reeled. Like a true-blue baseball fan, I decided the best way to make sense of it all was with a scorecard (“score” being the operative word, given all the show’s canoodling, couplings, de-couplings and re-couplings).
Let’s start with some (not all) of the unusual cast changes. Now, I recall as a youth how Dick York was replaced by Dick Sargent as Samantha Stephens’s dense hubby Darren on Bewitched. (Young rebel that I was, I refused to go along with the change. It was Dick York’s outsize ears or nothing—I would accept no substitutes.) But for sheer number—and sheer brazenness in expecting the audience to accept it like a stock certificate for Ewing Oil—nothing could surpass the producers of Dallas in expecting an audience to swallow the same character played by someone entirely new, with no explanation for the radical face change. To wit:
* Gary Ewing, brother to J.R. and Bobby—played first by David Ackroyd, then by Ted Shackleford
* John Ross Ewing III, son of J.R. and Sue Ellen—played first by Tyler Banks, then by Omri Katz.
* Willard (Digger) Barnes, Pam's daddy, played first by David Wayne, then by Keenan Wynn.
And now, the topper:
* Eleanor (“Miss Ellie”) Ewing, matriarch of the filthy-rich Texas clan—played first by Barbara Bel Geddes, then Donna Reed, then Barbara Bel Geddes again.
You got all that? And I haven’t even mentioned yet how Bobby, after being off the show for a full year, suddenly reappeared in Pam’s shower, revealing that the entire 1984-85 season had all been a nightmare.
That turned out to be the proverbial bridge too far for the show’s viewers, who could swallow anything but the fact that everything they’d been watching recently was all a dream. This was a jump-the-shark moment if there ever was one, and the series never again retained the unquestioned loyalty of its fans, even though it held on for several more years as tightly as J.R. clutching onto his first nickel.
What lured viewers for as long as it even did? One of my uncles insisted the show had “good acting,” but it struck me that this was a bit akin to claiming that one “read” Playboy for all those Norman Mailer articles. The way I figure it, my uncle’s eye for feminine pulchritude was caught by Victoria Principal, who, whatever else you might say about her, has been more impressive for her dogged wringing of every minute she can get out of those 20-year-old Lifetime TV reruns than for any ability or willingness to tackle Medea anytime soon.
A more likely suspect is the cliffhanger element in each show. Showbiz pros as far back as Charles Dickens (and let’s face it, a novelist who could do readings that left audience members gasping over the murder of Nancy by Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist was nothing if not a “showbiz pro”) knew the power of the cliffhanger to bring people coming back for more, and Dallas promoted it shamelessly.
Without the cliffhanger element, Dallas would be all hat but no cattle. And speaking of hats…What was with J. R. Ewing’s 10-gallon white Stetson? You think it’s only a visual cue for the viewer to say, “Texan”? Think again. If viewers didn’t get the idea by the 10,000th time Larry Hagman drawled “Darlin’,” I don’t know when they ever would.
No, I say it was an artful way of camouflaging Larry Hagman’s toupee—which, come to think of it, is still a lot better put-together than the Dallas movie that Hollywood has been talking about forever, but which for now looks like it’s caught in Development Hell, somewhere southwest of Southfork.
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