Dallas: Discussion Thread

[Broderick]

I hope you can find it.  

In the novel, Lucy is a spoiled young slut with absolutely no shame.  Miss Ellie doesn't necessarily "approve" of any of Lucy's behavior at all, but she tolerates it, because Lucy is the daughter of Sweet Baby Gary who can do no wrong.  Jock also tolerates it, because he loves having a "little lady" around the house. 

I wish the quick marriage/quick divorce between Gary and Vera Rodriguez could've been worked into the show as backstory, because again, the racial aspects were present, and there was always the possibility that Gary might have a little half-Mexican son or daughter running around, possibly even right there on the ranch. 

With Jock grooming JR to be his successor at Ewing Oil, and with Miss Ellie coddling Sweet Baby Gary, young Bobby pretty much grows up neglected, and he's always clowning and joking and cutting-up because nobody pays him all that much attention.  He ends up in Vietnam briefly, comes back with some post-traumatic stress, and develops a temper that frequently sends him into rages.  One of his coaches wonders if he's "queer bait" because he's such a peculiar boy, but the question of his sexuality is put to rest of course when he runs into Pam Barnes in New Orleans.         

[Franko]

I need to re-read my copy; there may have been a hint about J.R. possibly being Digger's son.

Wow, I completely forgot about Vera. And that Maureen loved getting it on with J.R. (which clearly doesn't jibe with how Joan van Ark played Valene).

[SoapDope]

David Jacobs said he wanted Bobby to be a playboy/jetsetter type. He was more interested in traveling, sailing yachts etc than working. Pamela was supposed to reel him in and make him more stable and settle down much to his chagrin. CBS insisted that Bobby be more good guy and down to earth and David Jacobs said " Bobby became bland and boring"......Jacobs also said that Pamela Barnes Ewing should have been the most fascinating character he ever created, but as much as he loved Victoria Principal......the character never became what he had envisioned. 

Jacobs also said he saw Lucy in the vein of someone like Stefanie Kramer, but CBS or Leonard Katzman thought she should be a nifty little blonde. He said Charlene was adorable, but couldn't act.....LOL 

[te.]

When Dallas first started I believe Larry Hagman talked about how everyone was really rotten in that family and that's certainly the outline that the novel seemingly follows - of course, being 1970s network television they probably couldn't go as far with that concept, but I actually imagine that they're closer to Jacob's original vision for the show.

[Broderick]

Yep, @Franko, young Miss Ellie was lying up in bed with Willard Barnes, and he was (mis)quoting poetry to her, "Ah, woman, how the heaping of thy belly is like a serpent's tooth, or something like that ..." Then Digger went off & got drunk, and young Miss Ellie realized she HAD to pay-off her daddy's mortgage on Southfork before the bank foreclosed on the ranch.   (There was a drought, and the cattle were dying right and left.)   

She knew young Digger's sober partner, Jock Ewing, would have the cash to pay off the loan, so she invited him over, made love with him, and Jock said, "Hell, that was mighty nice, Miss Ellie," and before his refractory period was over she said, "You ain't seen anything yet, Jock Ewing," and she straddled him and rode him again.  He spontaneously proposed, and soon she was "bustin' with child".  

Miss Ellie never questioned that the baby (JR) was Jock's -- "he's just a little Jock made over", but the reader of course had to wonder.  

[Vee]

I am very tempted to hunt this book down.

[Broderick]

If you like the Western genre OR the Southern Gothic genre, it's a fascinating hybrid of the two (which is a rare combination).  And for anyone who's interested in the initial development of Dallas & Knots Landing, I'd sure recommend it.    

If you know your Southern literature, you'll see right away that the entire project -- the miniseries and the novel -- is an homage to the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1950s play Cat On a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams.  It's basically a retelling of the story, moved from the 1950s to the late 1970s. 

In the play, the "senior" characters are Big Daddy [Burl Ives] and Big Mama [Mildred Dunnock].  Big Daddy is a coarse, uneducated, quick thinking, nouveau-riche millionaire with a huge plantation and big cars; Big Mama is his more gentle, practical wife, who is the ultimate "boss" of the family.  Obviously, this is Jock and Miss Ellie. 

The antagonists in the play are Gooper [Pat Hingle] and Mae [Madeleine Sherwood], the oldest son and the daughter-in-law of Big Daddy.  Gooper is clever, underhanded, and greedy.  (JR Ewing).  Mae is his attractive, dimwitted, poised trophy wife whose goal is to give Big Daddy his first grandchild.  (Sue Ellen, of course.) 

The heroes of the play are Brick [Ben Gazzara] and Maggie [Barbara Bel Geddes].  Brick is the youngest son, who is more of a dilettante playboy than a hard worker, coasting through life on his good looks and charm (Bobby Ewing).  Maggie is Brick's wrong-side-of-the-tracks young wife, who is aggressive, cool, willing to take chances to get her way, and isn't afraid to go head-to-head with Gooper/JR (Pamela Barnes). 

The peripheral characters in the play are the "no-neck monsters" -- Brick & Maggie's nieces and nephews who are rowdy, spoiled, and think they own the place (Lucy Ewing). 

David Jacobs simply moved the entire concept from the cotton plantation of Tennessee Williams's play to the oil fields of the 1956 movie Giant, where Jett Rink [James Dean] has an oil derrick in the midst of Jordan Benedict's [Rock Hudson] ranch, and this of course is the basis of the Barnes/Ewing feud.  

In the Williams play, the big question is whether Brick[Gazzara] is truly heterosexual and will be able to father a child with Maggie [Bel Geddes] before Big Daddy [Ives] dies.  This is also handled in the miniseries -- without Bobby's homosexuality, of course -- with Pamela losing the desired baby at the end of the miniseries. 

Tennessee Williams obviously could've pulled the rug out from under the entire project if he'd wanted to, but he likely just appreciated the attention his work was getting in an entirely new setting.  The Dallas producers even hired his Maggie the Cat from Broadway [Barbara Bel Geddes] to play the matriarch of the family and named Pam Barnes's aunt "Maggie".  lol.        

[Khan]

I agree.  If only David Jacobs had been allowed to retain his original vision for the show.

 

If Tennessee Williams had done that to every original work that was influenced by his even a little bit, nothing in this country would have been written or produced after 1960, lol.

[Broderick]

Oh, I agree.  I'm sure he grinned to himself when he saw it.  I remember when the miniseries premiered, I was too young to be watching such adult-themed material.  But my mother, who was a literature major in college and who happened to have the TV on that night, said, "Come here a minute.  I want you to look at this show.  Tell me who you think these people are, from a literary standpoint."  I couldn't believe it.    

[Vee]

Yeah, I'm familiar with the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof roots. And yes, if Williams ever pulled rank most of the modern pop culture canon would be gone lol.

[SoapDope]

I agee. Jacobs did say that some of what Katzman did with the show turned out better than what he wrote or envisioned. He said he was alway more suited to write middle class and that's why Knots was more his baby and let Katzman and Capice run things. They would all have meeting every so often. Jacobs always firmly told them " No matter where the show leads, it all goes back to those 8 characters I created". 

Katzman eventually got shed of Capice. Capice wanted to give the women of the show equal storyline, but Katzman wanted it to be a mans show and they fought constantly. Hagman and Duffy made it their playground. I have seen countless takes/bloopers where they will be in a intense scenes with another actor and Duffy or Hagman will screw it all up to "Make a funny". I have a great sense of humor, but when you work those long hours and have to do constant re-takes because of co-stars antics, I bet that got old quick. 

I feel Duffy screwed things up for good by leaving the show by insisting Bobby be killed off. Then Hagman got pissed he didn't have his old playmate and started in by insisting he be brought back. Katzman also used this to his advantage to get "carte blanche" and run the show without any outside interference. With Katzman, Duffy and Hagman back in place, the women went back to playing second fiddle. When Katzman told Jacobs his choice to make it all a dream, Jacobs told him it was stupid and it will insult the audince. Katzman scoffed " Well we are doing it" Jacobs refused to undo Bobby's death on Knots. It killed the crossovers. 

[Vee]

My understanding is that Dallas was always to Jacobs what OLTL was to Agnes Nixon: A gateway to getting their pet projects (Knots Landing/AMC) onscreen. From what I've inferred from his interviews, Dallas' success enabled him to make Knots, which he'd had in a drawer for some time, happen. KL was his first love.

Part of the reason I will be watching the Dream Season intently along with KL Season 7 is to see how two very different teams work on two very different shows. I can't believe they so squandered not just Principal but Susan Howard, who was really the only credible strong female lead on the show IMO after the miniseries, at least in the material I've seen. (Barbara Bel Geddes is great, but Miss Ellie too often retreats to shaking her head and sighing 'oh, J.R.' - their feuds do not last.) Priscilla Pointer was formidable but dies almost immediately after being the latest in an endless line of characters to decide to Get J.R.

Edited May 18, 2023 by Vee

[Broderick]

And it showed!  Knots Landing had some missteps obviously, but it consistently stayed true to its suburban Scenes From a Marriage cul-de-sac origins that Jacobs had initially planned for it.  

Dallas, on the other hand, was all over the place at times.

I expect Dallas was a tremendous pleasure to write, produce, and direct in its infancy and right on up through that episode which was *supposed* to end the 1979-1980 season (Digger's death), before CBS asked for the additional episodes that led to "House Divided".  From that point on, the show seemed to be a struggle and a headache, with big egos, big salaries, pressure to remain on top, pressure to catch every new cultural aspect of the decade, etc.  

That seemed to be about the time Jacobs said, "Y'all can have this.  I'll go work in suburbia."  

I'd have done the same thing.  

[Vee]

I've talked at length about this in my various long-winded posts throughout this thread, but it is frustrating how often the air gets let out of any new story balloon that could take the plot somewhere new. The most this show has had me consistently engaged on Amazon is in the period surrounding Jock's death when J.R. begins to collapse psychologically, and then during the key events in the battle between the brothers for Ewing Oil as per Jock's will. I think the second story arc is when he gets in deep with some gas stations, some oil he can't offload and a variety of other things. In both separate instances, J.R. is set up to be uniquely brought low and taken to a place he hasn't been before. And in both instances he bounces back very quickly. I'm not sure more than an episode or two passes between J.R. losing the long war with Bobby and J.R. immediately getting back to his old tricks. It is just an endless Mobius loop.

I'm not going to say Larry Hagman was not excellent in the role because he was, consistently, and is immensely entertaining in scene after scene even when the overall plot is not. He obviously shouldn't have gone anywhere. And Patrick Duffy also always seems committed thus far at least. We know how well-loved they were BTS, how Hagman allegedly saved Linda Gray and Bel Geddes' jobs at least (or so he claimed; I think Gray has quietly suggested this may not have happened the way he thought despite her enduring love for him). But you couldn't run a show today the way the various men in power did back then, and the show is often very boring and formulaic to me because of a lot of the choices made. (As I've said before, I even think the sets generally look cheap and chintzy compared to the absolutely stunning production value and location work on KL.)

Edited May 18, 2023 by Vee

[Khan]

I agree.  KL was willing to evolve; DALLAS wasn't.  And even when DALLAS was forced to evolve, like when Patrick Duffy left, egos forced the show back into its' old, tired ways.

Instead of doing a revival or continuation series, WB should have done a reboot, one that was more complex and more in keeping with David Jacobs' original conception.  Larry Hagman was iconic as J.R. Ewing, but so was Joan Collins as Alexis, and that didn't stop the Shapiros from recasting her (three times!) on the DYNASTY reboot.