Trivia / Dallas

• Actor-Inspired Element: When Steve Kanaly was talking about leaving the show due to his character's lack of development, it was Larry Hagman who came up with the idea to make Ray Krebs the illegitimate son of Jock Ewing in order to get Kanaly to stay.
• Actor-Shared Background: Much like Larry Hagman's other famous role, J.R. had been in the air force at one point, albeit drafted into service during Vietnam^note Anthony Nelson, as with Hagman, served in Korea. Photos of Hagman's time in the service are seen in the TNT series as old archive photos of J.R. when he's browsing the internet about his own past. Hagman is also from Dallas, though he used a fake accent throughout the series.
• California Doubling; Sort of. While most or some of the interiors are filmed at Culver City, California, some scenes (especially exteriors) are actually filmed at Parker, Texas and occasionally the actual Dallas itself. It's worth mentioning that 1) Larry Hagman actually died in Dallas and 2) the actual Southfork Ranch itself is located at Parker, TX which is about 36 minutes (26 miles) away from Dallas.
• Career Resurrection: Larry Hagman's career kinda stalled after I Dream of Jeannie ended. After playing J.R. in this show, he became much bigger than he was before.
• The Character Died with Him:
  • Jim Davis passed away after succumbing to multiple myeloma during production of the fourth season. The production crew had his character, Jock Ewing, go offscreen for a year (in story, on a trip to an oil reserve in South America) while they figured out how to write out his character. He eventually perished in an offscreen helicopter crash. Supposedly, the producers' original plan was to do like a lot of soap operas and simply recast the character, saying there was an accident and he needed plastic surgery. They quickly changed their minds, though, feeling it was disrespectful to Davis' memory.
  • Barbara Bel Geddes' character, Miss Ellie, does not appear in the rebooted series, as the actress had passed away in 2005. She is stated to have died of a heart attack sometime between the end of the original series and the pilot of the rebooted series.
  • J.R. in season two of the rebooted series, in the wake of Larry Hagman's death.
• Creator Backlash: Victoria Principal refused to have anything to do with the series, which became especially visible during the revival of the series. According to Patrick Duffy, this is because of the fact that she doesn't want the show to interfere with her current occupation running a cosmetic company. Everyone involved has been fairly upfront that Victoria was never really friends with the rest of the cast and wasn't really part of the inner circle of Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray and Ken Kercheval. The creator of the revival has said fairly explicitly that she doesn't even really want Victoria back and the rest of the cast don't seem to worked up about it either.
• The Danza: Harris' mother Judith Ryland is played by Judith Light, while her granddaughter Emma is played by Emma Bell.
• Dawson Casting: J.R. Ewing was supposed to be several years younger than Larry Hagman's actual age, and was established as having served in the military during the Vietnam War. Hagman was a Korean War veteran. JR was born sometime between 1936 and 1939 depending on which canon you go by.
  • Same with Cliff Barnes. Initially he was roughly about the same age as Gary or Ray but as Ken Kercheval aged it was obvious he was closer to Larry Hagman in age.
• Defictionalization:
  • Audrey Landers released a compilation of all the songs she sang (as Afton Cooper) on the original series as a standalone album, Dallas Feels Like Home, in 2013.
  • As part of the promotion for the third season, "Ewing Energies" opened a real gas station in NYC, for $1.98 a gallon.
• Directed by Cast Member: Larry Hagman did 32 episodes, Patrick Duffy did 29 episodes, Linda Gray did 5 episodes, Steve Kanaly did 3 episodes, and Ken Kercheval did 2 episodes.
• Development Hell: The proposed movie adaptation with John Travolta as J.R. Ewing never made it past development.
• Dueling Works: With Dynasty (1981). Although both had fair runs and held the #1 position in several seasons, Dallas lasted longer and thus wins the round.
• Foiler Footage: Several different resolutions to the "Who Shot J.R." cliffhanger were filmed, including one where he shot himself.
• Follow the Leader:
  • Dynasty (1981) clearly was made to capitalize on this show, as it was also a Soap Opera about an oil-rich family, with Alexis clearly aspiring to be a female J.R.
  • Falcon Crest also borrowed the Dallas formula, but changed the valuable liquid from oil to wine, and tossed an Evil Matriarch into the mix while still making her, like with Miss Ellie's case, be played by a Golden Age-era film actress (in Falcon Crest's case, Jane Wyman).
• Genre Popularizer: For the Prime Time Soap.
• Money, Dear Boy:
  • When Lesley-Anne Down was asked why she signed on to play Stephanie Rogers, she answered "Because they paid me a quarter of a million dollars for seven days' work over ten weeks. What do you think I am, darling? Stupid?!"
  • Also partly why Larry Hagman took the job, as he was out of work at the time and the only other script he had been sent was for a project that he didn't believe was worth taking (considering that other script did, in fact, go nowhere, he was right).
• The Other Darrin:
  • Barbara Bel Geddes was replaced as Miss Ellie by Donna Reed, who was herself replaced by the returning Bel Geddes.
  • As a series regular, Jenna Wade was played by Priscilla Presley from 1983 to 1988, but she was actually the third actress to be cast as Jenna. The character first appeared in an one off episode in 1978 (played by Morgan Fairchild) and appeared in two 1980 episodes (played by Francine Tacker.)
  • Digger Barnes was first played by David Wayne, then Keenan Wynn.
  • Kristen Shepard was originally portrayed by Colleen Camp before the more well-known Mary Crosby took the role over.
  • David Ackroyd (and not Ted Shackelford) was the original Gary Ewing.
  • Margaret Michaels played Pam for one late-season episode. Fan outrage nixed any further appearances as Pam, but this episode did lead to a You Look Familiar a couple of seasons later (see below).
• Playing Against Type: Larry Hagman had been pigeonholed by playing the good-hearted Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie, so people were shocked to see him play someone so devious like JR.
• Production Posse: A lot of the Dallas team first worked together on the much-different Logan's Run, which ended shortly before Dallas began, including producer Leonard Katzman, writer D. C. Fontana, directors Robert Day, Irving J. Moore and Michael Preece, composer Jerrold Immel and actors such as Donald Moffat, Randy Powell, Morgan Woodward, Jared Martin, Sherril Lynn Katzman, Mel Ferrer, Liam Sullivan and E. J. André.
• Reality Subtext:
  • The death of Jim Davis (Jock Ewing). It was dealt with by putting Jock on various tasks for over a year before instituting a Bus Crash.
  • Larry Hagman died from throat cancer during production of the revival's second season. The production crew worked around this by "jury-rigging" scenes to feature J.R. speaking to other characters (cobbled together from spare footage and voiceovers). While they had originally planned to keep J.R. around for years even in the event of Hagman's death (as an offscreen figure doing other tasks separate from the main cast), his sudden death forced the crew to rework several shots Hagman filmed as a final conversation with John Ross in "Furious and Fast".
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: In the mid 1980s, Linda Gray was briefly fired from this show after asking for a pay raise, and requesting that she be given a chance to direct episodes like Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy. However, Hagman threatened to leave the show because he didn't feel they could have J.R. without Sue Ellen.
• Star-Making Role: For Patrick Duffy.
• Underage Casting: Barbara Bel Geddes (Miss Ellie) was just nine years older than her onscreen son Larry Hagman (J.R.).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Robert Foxworth was the first choice for J.R. but turned the role down when the producers told him they had no intention of trying to make the character more sympathetic. Foxworth ended up as the male lead on another primetime soap, Falcon Crest.
  • Linda Evans was the first choice for Pamela Ewing.
  • Victoria Principal was considered to return as Pam for the series finale in 1991, but turned it down because she was convinced that CBS wouldn't cancel it. (The episode was written to serve as both a season finale and a series finale should the show end up getting renewed for season 15.)
  • The second season of the sequel series was to end with the family finally coming together to beat back the attempts by Cliff Barnes to destroy the company and be on the same page. They would have walked into the boardroom only to find a grinning J.R. at the table, revealing that during the season, he'd been pulling off moves to make himself sole owner of Ewing Energies. Sadly, the death of Larry Hagman early into filming the season meant this had to be completely dropped.
  • A crossover story with rival series Dynasty (1981) has been planned at one point though the details were never worked out.
  • Wes Parmalee was intended to be Jock Ewing, having had reconstructive surgery due to the place crash damaging his face(effectively countering early rejection of doing similar after Jim Davis passed away). A writer's strike forced a new team to come in & changed this.
• You Look Familiar:
  • A very unusual case: a recurring character named Ben Stivers appeared in the Dream Season. Obviously after Pam woke up he didn't appear anymore, but an identical character named Wes Parmalee did and was played by the same actor, Steve Forrest (see also Aborted Arc above).
  • Another unusual case: After Margaret Michaels played Pam in one episode, the actress returned a couple of seasons later playing a real estate named Jeannie O'Brien. Bobby and Cliff are both taken aback at her resemblance to Pam.
  • Tracy Scoggins played a call girl named Dianne in the seventh-season episode "My Brother's Keeper", and then returned to play Anita Smithfield in J.R. Returns and War of the Ewings.
  • Mitch Pileggi (who plays Ann's ex-husband, Harris Ryland), in addition to being an extra in a very early episode in the 80's, had a three-episode role in the original series as a mental patient who bullied J.R. when he was in a mental institution.
  • Brenda Strong (Ann) had a role in a tenth-season episode of the original series as one of Cliff's one night stands.
  • Glenn Morshower (who plays Lou, a lawyer who helps the Ewings throughout the first season) played a small role as a campaign aide in the original series' first-season episode "Black Market Baby".
  • Barry Corbin, who played Sheriff Washburn in the original series, appears as J.R.'s lawyer during the will-reading scene in "Ewings Unite!".
  • Barbara Stock, who portrayed Cliff's love interest Liz Adams in the final season, originally played an unrelated character Heather Wilson in two episodes in season 5.
  • In the revival, Sam Anderson plays a recast of Dr. David Gordon (who was established as Pam's doctor/pretend fiancee in the last episode featuring her in the original series), while in the original series he played a detective during Season 8 who helped Bobby prove Jenna innocent of murder.

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