Richard Disses “Dallas”—the TV Program, not the City

If John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus was the worst book I never read, Dallas was the worst television show I never saw. I studiously ignored all of its 357 episodes between April 2, 1978 and May 3, 1991, its Knots Landing spin-off, its three revivals and its various made-for-TV movies. I abhorred Dallas from the day I read of CBS’s plan to create a five-part miniseries. The network did not expect much, but the ratings were good and it was turned into a prime-time series. The men wore Stetsons, the women wore shoulder pads and lots of mascara, and they all wore big hair. To my consternation, Dallas was off and running with its gawdy and bawdy portrayal of the Ewing family, whose wealth derived from petroleum (Ewing Oil) and cattle (Southfork Ranch, located in fictional Braddock County although in reality it is in Parker County, some 25 miles north of Dallas).

Credit/blame for the show’s original premise goes to writer David Jacobs, who in 1978 knew just two things about Dallas: the assassination of JFK and the football-playing Cowboys. David Salzman, Leonard Katzman and Philip Capice were its main producers. The ensemble cast saw some changes over the years, but it mostly consisted of Larry Hagman as the greedy and unscrupulous oil tycoon J.R. Ewing; Jim Davis as the family patriarch Jock Ewing; Barbara Bel Geddes as his wife Miss Ellie—who sometimes had to show J.R. who was boss; Linda Gray as J.R.’s wife Sue Ellen (formerly Miss Texas!); Patrick Duffy as Bobby Ewing, the youngest son who always wanted to do the right thing; Victoria Principal as Bobby’s somewhat neurotic wife Pamela; and Charlene Tilton as Lucy, a sexy little spitfire who came from a different branch of the Ewing family.

I was previously aware of only Hagman, who played an Air Force captain and Barbara Eden’s love interest in I Dream of Jeannie (1965–1970) and Bel Geddes, an accomplished stage actress who played Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the mid-1950s. Some of her colleagues on Broadway and in Hollywood (she also appeared in numerous films) may have wondered why Bel Geddes was slumming in a cheesy TV soap opera like Dallas, but if so they were probably jealous. It was work, after all, and every actor and actress knows that’s the name of the game. Why turn up your nose at a regular gig and one that pays well?

Dallas fans know that every show was given a title. Here are a few from the 1986 season: “The Family Ewing,” “Rock Bottom,” “Those Eyes,” “Resurrection,” “Saving Grace,” “Mothers,” “The Wind of Change” “Close Encounters” and “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen.” Who else had parts or cameos? Leslie-Anne Down, George Kennedy, Donna Reed, Priscilla Presley, Susan Lucci, Joel Gray, Brad Pitt, Morgan Fairchild, Barbara Eden (back with Hagman) and Tina Louise are some of them.

The scorn I felt for Dallas probably derived from a certain sensitivity in that I was born and raised in the city. Furthermore, I could not relate to the characters and their phony-baloney shenanigans: Jock having cheated his one-time business partner; Lucy skipping school and jumping in bed with a ranch hand; that same ranch hand turning out to be Jock’s illegitimate son; the strained marriage of Sue Ellen and J.R. (as well as that of Pamela and Bobby); Sue Ellen’s fondness for the bottle; J.R.’s snooty attitude toward his sister-in-law Pamela; Bobby divorcing Pamela in favor of a hottie named April (although Pamela’s half-sister was crazy in love with him); April’s devious sister, Michelle; Jock’s death in an airplane crash returning to Texas from Venezuela; J.R.’s affair with Pamela, his earlier disapproval notwithstanding; Lucy being engaged thrice before turning 20; Miss Ellie’s having married Jock for money rather than love (her real sweetheart was a guy back in the 1930s named Willard “Digger” Barnes); Pamela being severely burned after driving her car into an oil tanker that exploded; and on and on.

And let’s not even talk about the ultimate cliffhanger of who shot J.R. at the end of the 1980 season. Virtually every character had a valid motive or two for plugging the manipulative oilman. (It was Kristin, Sue Ellen’s younger sister—played by Mary Crosby. Pregnant with J.R.’s child, she made a teary poolside confession as he sat there in a wheelchair.) At any rate, that was when Dallas changed from a hit network show to a nationwide and even global phenomenon. Such sweeping popularity simply could not happen today, not with the Internet, 600 channels and a bewildering array of other entertainment options. Life was simpler four decades ago.

In addition to all this idiocy, there were issues behind the scenes. Davis died in 1981, Duffy left after the 1985 season but was convinced to return, Hagman and Duffy drank on the set whereas other cast members were known to take 3,4-Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine—better known as ecstasy, Bel Geddes had health problems and was out for a couple of seasons, and an actor named Dack Rambo (playing Jack Ewing, a cousin of J.R. and Bobby) was fired because of a personality clash with Hagman. Toward the end, Hagman got involved in direction and production so he was ordering his fellow thespians around and changing plots as it suited his fancy. The Fort Worth-born ego-tripper was also paid better than the others.

The significance of Dallas and the reasons for its success have been discussed by media analysts and social historians. Other shows combined money, sex, intrigue, family and deception, so why did this one take off? I could not tell you to save my life, but TV Guide has ranked Dallas number 47 on its list of the all-time television shows.

Dallas’s ratings sagged in the last few seasons, and it was finally canceled. There have been periodic reunions, none bigger than the 30-year anniversary at the still-extant Southfork Ranch in 2008. Almost 25,000 people paid between $100 and $1,000 apiece to bask in the presence of Hagman, Duffy, Gray, Tilton and others.

Not for me, no thanks. I just wish CBS would have called it Houston or even Tulsa instead.