TV Alert: Dallas Reunion Special Nov. 7th!

[Miss Mary]

Read only if you were/are a devoted Dallas fan (in my case diehard, rabid Dallas fan!!!). Oh, I'll be in Ewing Heaven this Sunday......

TV Alert:

Dallas Reunion: Return to Southfork
Sunday, November 7, 2004
9 p.m. (EST)

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From the CBS website:

http://www.cbs.com/specials/dallas/

Join original cast members Larry Hagman, Victoria Principal, Linda Gray, Patrick Duffy, Charlene Tilton, Ken Kercheval, Steve Kanaly and Mary Crosby at Southfork Ranch to celebrate "Dallas," television's second longest-running primetime entertainment series, on Sunday, November 7 at 9 pm ET/PT.

More than 25 years ago, the cast took up residence at the famous Southfork Ranch just outside Dallas, Texas. When they meet there again, they'll tour the grounds, discuss the series' most infamous storylines and reminisce about their time together on the show. Larry Hagman will also share his own home movies that were shot when "Dallas" was actually being filmed.

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And now to whet your appetite even more, here are a few interviews from TV Guide's website:

TV Guide

http://www.tvguide.com/news/insider/041105b.asp

Bottoms Up, Linda Gray!
by Ileane Rudolph with Ben Katner

Whatever you do, don't turn this TV Guide Online interview with Linda Gray into a drinking game. If you took a swig every time the actress, best known as Dallas's liquor-lovin' Sue Ellen Ewing, revealed something shocking about the long-running prime-time soap, you'd be halfway to pickled before your three-martini lunch even arrived. And by the time you caught the 62-year-old knockout ruminating with her cast mates on Sunday's all-star get-together, Dallas Reunion: The Return to Southfork (9 pm/ET on CBS)? Please! You'd be passed out cold. Just look at the alcohol equivalent of the tidbits she shared with us:

Champagne — the good stuff, too! Newhart innkeeper Mary Frann was originally supposed to play Sue Ellen. "She had the part," Gray confirms. "Victoria Principal was a brunet and so was I, and Mary was a blond, and [the producers] wanted that [visual] contrast. But the casting director [who had only recently tapped me to play a transsexual on All That Glitters] kept bugging them until they finally said, 'OK, we'll read her.'" One dazzling audition later, and she had stolen Frann's "husband," Larry Hagman!

Tequila shots — and lots of 'em! Early on, Gray's leading man set the tone for J.R. and Sue Ellen's volatile marriage by undermining his "spouse's" confidence. In fact, after a scene in which Sue Ellen was flouncing around in a teddy, Hagman told Gray that her performance had been terrible. He denies it, of course. "Oh, bulls---!" counters Gray. "I'm sorry. He said it to me loud and clear, and made me feel terrible, and it started one of our first fights on the way back [to the motel where everyone was staying]. I swear to you — he devastated me. Then, years later, he said, 'Oh, I didn't mean that.' I could have killed him!"

Pitcher of Cosmopolitans. More so than many a series lead, Gray felt Keri Russell's pain the season that Felicity got shorn. "It was so hot on the set," Gray recalls, "that I'd always wear my hair [pulled back] or something; if I didn't, the wind would whip it [in my face]. I just hated it, so one day I was at the hairdresser's and said, 'Go for it! Cut it!' and afterward, I won all the fashion awards [for having such a sharp cut]. Everybody loved it." Well, almost everybody. "Oh, my god! My producer hated it!" she laughs.

Six-pack of Schlitz. After a while, long-suffering Sue Ellen's portrayer told her bosses, "'I'm tired of playing a doormat! I have to assert myself!' They patted me on the head — not literally — and said, 'But you're doing so well.' I thought, 'Oh, look out! I'm on the warpath now.' It was a struggle, though, because it was a man's show." At contract-renegotiation time during Season 8, Gray demanded the same opportunity that her male peers had gotten — the chance to direct. "And they fired me," she admits. "When I finally told Larry, he went with me into the office and said, 'If she doesn't come back, I don't come back. I can't be playing J.R. without Sue Ellen.' He was very loyal and, honestly, a very smart businessman. He knew that truly, it was a huge relationship to the show." We'll drink to that!

For more dishy Dallas reminiscence, read today's Insider interview with Larry Hagman, who played Sue Ellen's sinful husband, J.R.!

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TV Guide

http://www.tvguide.com/news/insider/

Larry Hagman's Dallas Confessions
by Ileane Rudolph with Ben Katner

What can we possibly say about Larry Hagman that hasn't already been said a thousand times? The 73-year-old Texas native isn't just an actor; thanks to Dallas and his wonderfully wicked portrayal of good ol' bad boy J.R. Ewing, he's an icon. Not only that, but his life and career have been documented and dissected as thoroughly as any president's. So we refuse to trot out the same tired superlatives to describe his achievements (or the same winking acknowledgments of his mischief-making and glass-raising). Instead, as we look forward to Sunday's Dallas Reunion: The Return to Southfork (9 pm/ET on CBS), we're just going to let him speak for himself. Herewith, highlights of his interview with TV Guide Online:

TV Guide Online: Rumor has it you're pulling out your old home-away-from home movies for this special. Catch any hanky-panky on tape?
Larry Hagman: Of course, but I'd sell that for a much higher price! (Chuckles) No, I didn't [shoot] that kind of stuff. I'm so square, for gosh sakes.

TVGO: Your wife, Maj, read the pilot script before you. What was her reaction?
Hagman: She yelled from the other room, "Larry, you're going to love this. There's not one redeemingly good person in the whole show!" I said, "Oh, come on." Then I read about 10 pages and said, "OK, you're right. That's it." I called my agent and said, "Take it."

TVGO: When did you realize what a great villain J.R. was?
Hagman: When I got rid of my secretary, Tina Louise. That's when I knew. She fell off a building.

TVGO: Were you shocked over the "Who shot J.R.?" hoopla?
Hagman: That sure kicked it off to No. 1. When I saw the reaction, that's what caused me to hold out for more money. [The producers] could have killed me off and got a new character, but I knew they wouldn't — it was too big. So I didn't show up for 10 days after J.R. got shot. They told me Bob Culp was going to replace me.

TVGO: Obviously, that never happened. Why did you come back?
Hagman: Money. But Patrick [Duffy] coming back [as J.R.'s brother Bobby] was really important to me. The year that he left was also the year that [longtime executive producer] Leonard Katzman was gone. It was a disaster. It was the worst year of my professional life. They were trying to make us into a glitzy Dynasty. Dallas was a lot more raw than that.

TVGO: Too bad everybody hated the scene in which Bobby stepped out of the shower, erasing the season before.
Hagman: I didn't hate it. It was corny, but it got Patrick back on the show. We lost a lot of fans, but we stayed on the air for four years after that. And those were my big earning years. I was making $6 or $7 million, which was big in those days.

TVGO: You were the show's big star; you should've been making big money!
Hagman: I was second banana to start with. It was all Patrick and Victoria [Principal]. Then, after about six or seven shows, it trickled down to me being the bad guy. Bad guys have more fun.

TVGO: And certainly more sex. How many mistresses did J.R. have?
Hagman: Thirty or 40, or more than that.

TVGO: Did you have a favorite?
Hagman: Yeah, I did. Holly Harwood, played by that beautiful Texas girl Lois Chiles. She was so sexy.

TVGO: Did you ever ask your mother — Broadway's beloved Peter Pan, Mary Martin — to do Dallas?
Hagman: Yes, I did, but she said, "No, that's your show. You do your show." Somebody wrote that I was lobbying for her to come on and play my mother when Barbara Bel Geddes left. But I never did that. You know how they make up stuff.

TVGO: Oh, them! How did you feel about Donna Reed replacing Barbara as Miss Ellie?
Hagman: She was wonderful. I got a lot of flack from people saying I didn't like her, but that's untrue. And the way she found out she was fired was awful. She got off a plane in France, and a reporter ran up to her and asked her for a comment about her firing. That's show business, baby.

TVGO: Your old colleagues all seem to adore you. This shocks me, considering the fact that you waved a fan in their faces whenever they lit a cigarette!
Hagman: I also made them open the studio door every hour for 10 minutes, which stopped shooting. When they said, "We can't afford it," I said, "Well, just stop the smoking!" And they finally did.

TVGO: It's interesting that you hated smoking so much, yet you sure loved the bubbly.
Hagman: I drank a lot of champagne. I save myself around $60,000 a year now that I gave it up.

TVGO: C'mon!
Hagman: Well, you drink five bottles of champagne at 30 bucks a bottle every day... I had help, of course.

TVGO: Gracious! And your drinking never interfered with your work?
Hagman: It didn't seem to. I never got really loaded. I just got that click that Tennessee Williams talks about in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I never missed my lines, and I was always on time.

TVGO: Are you working these days? Do you want to?
Hagman: I'm not retired. I'm simply out of work. I've done some voice-overs, [including] a documentary called Fat City, about Houston, the fattest city in the United States.

TVGO: But would you like a nice, meaty role to sink your teeth into?
Hagman: Oh, yeah. I'd like to play God.

TVGO: I think Ellen DeGeneres beat you to the punch there. (The talk-show host is headlining an Oh, God remake.)
Hagman: Well, she'll be great for it. She's a funny girl.

TVGO: You must hear all the same rumors that I do about a Dallas feature. If they finally manage to do it, who could possibly fill your Stetson?
Hagman: I don't see anybody who could play my part except Bruce Willis. He'd make a great J.R.

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TV Guide

http://www.tvguide.com/search/ed...leId=96317

Thursday, November 4, 2004

Victoria's Dallas Secrets Revealed!
by Ileane Rudolph with Ben Katner

It's been nearly two decades since Victoria Principal left Dallas behind, but dang if the 54-year-old stunner doesn't still sound like the only actress who could've possibly played the indomitable Pamela Ewing. Now the kind of businesswoman who'd turn even J.R. dollar-green with envy — her Principal Secret line of skin-care products is worth a pretty penny — she has resisted the temptation to revisit her old stomping ground via TV-movies, holding out instead for what she considers a proper reminiscence, this weekend's Dallas Reunion: Return to Southfork (Sunday at 9 pm/ET on CBS). Before shooting the breeze with her former castmates at the get-together, she took a moment to dish the dirt with TV Guide Online.

TV Guide Online: Is it true that you got your Dallas audition under false pretenses?
Victoria Principal: I sent myself in for it! I had left acting to be an agent and was on my way to law school, but when a friend dropped off a Dallas script, I read it. When I finished, I knew my life had changed — that part was mine. So I called the [casting] person and said, 'I'm sending someone in.' She said, 'Who?' I said, 'Just put down my name. It will be a surprise.' And it certainly was a surprise — I showed up with me!

TVGO: Patrick Duffy has said that he knew at once you were Pam.
Principal: I had so thought about her and her lifestyle that the outfit I wore to the audition is what they asked me to wear in the first episode. They just couldn't get it out of their heads that I walked in looking exactly like her.

TVGO: Your insight obviously paid off. Dallas didn't just become a hit, it became a cultural bellwether!
Principal: We broke a lot of taboos, because we discussed in a very factual way whether someone was an alcoholic or had cancer or was gay or was adulterous. We showed a couple having good sex who were married. Hello! Who ever saw two married people on TV have good sex — with each other?! These were very provocative issues, but they were never done in a trashy way.

TVGO: You must have been ticked then that the show was so often dismissed by critics as well-cooked mental junk food.
Principal: God, I was always so offended by those descriptions. I really felt that it was very much like the old serials of the '30s. It was a serial, not a soap. It was done on film and we took seven or eight days to do an episode... with a quality crew. I'm not for one minute putting down soaps; it simply wasn't one.

TVGO: Nonetheless, Dallas certainly possessed elements of classic soap. Weren't Bobby and Pam the Texan equivalent of Romeo and Juliet?
Principal: We ended up being that. Originally, Bobby was supposed to be killed off in the first five episodes. Pam was going to become the protagonist and Larry Hagman the antagonist. They had no idea that Patrick and I would have so much chemistry [or that] Larry would create another level of acting with his role. So the decision was made by the network to keep Pam and Bobby as a couple, and I'm so glad they did.

TVGO: No regrets, then, that Pam always had to toe the line morally?
Principal: As Larry blossomed and J.R. became more and more evil, there had to be good on the show or it would have been unwatchable. Patrick's character became very good, and so did mine, which made it less interesting to me. I thought Pam was so complicated in the beginning. Then, by Year 6, she had become pretty one-dimensional for me. But the network was consumed with her being all good.

TVGO: Many people say when you left, so did the heart of the show. Would you agree that's when Dallas began its decline?
Principal: It's very hard to keep a show fresh after more than five years. You can blame it on me, though — I'm very flattered. Actually, the decline of Pam's role precipitated my leaving. But I also felt that there was a decline in the show overall. They offered me the most amount of money ever offered a series actress to stay, but my experience in life outweighed the money.

TVGO: How much moolah are we talking about here?
Principal: I'm not allowed to say!

TVGO: When Bobby emerged from the shower, washing away an entire season as a dream, did you think, "Aw, crap! We just jumped the shark!"?
Principal: I was very happy to see Patrick. But I must say [that in his absence] I had a really nice experience with John Beck, who played [Pam's other back-from-the-dead love interest] Mark Graison.

TVGO: Were you really happy to see Patrick? I've heard he's a terrible prankster!
Principal: Patrick and Larry were like two brothers... an older and younger brother. And the younger brother wants to keep up with the older one. So the pranks they played were amazing. I have a very strong sense of smell, so Patrick used to put a clove of garlic under his tongue just before our love scenes to see if I could get through it.

TVGO: Eww!
Principal: So I'm supposed to look like I'm kissing the love of my life and I'm completely turned on, and meanwhile, I'm wondering if I can do it without gagging! Whenever Patrick was bored, he found some way to torture me!

TVGO: Speaking of torture, why haven't we seen you act in so long? Your last series, Titans, came and went in the blink of an eye.
Principal: I act when something appeals to me [so much] that I can't imagine anyone else doing it. It's really a wonderful luxury to have. So many friends in the industry in their 50s... it's not fair, but they're offered so few roles. But in fact, [now is] when we hit our stride.

TVGO: Ah, if only you were in Europe!
Principal: In Europe, a woman in her 50s is a babe! I pursue a European way of life; that's how I regard myself. My husband [Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Harry Glassman] and I are celebrating 22 years. He's handsome, smart and funny, and I have two wonderful stepchildren and two beautiful granddaughters. I live under the radar, and I'm happy to be that way.

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[streetsoldier]

But WHO SHOT J.R.?

I have never received an answer to that burning question.

[Miss Mary]

Bill - now where have YOU been living? In a cave for the past 24 years?

Funny, funny....should have known you or j would respond with THAT question.....

Mary

[Skywatch_NC]

Mary,

I watched it and it WAS GREAT!!!!

Was fun seeing the home movies, out-take bloopers, etc., too!!

Eric

[Miss Mary]

Eric - saw most of the last hour. It was great! I'm going to watch the rest today. What a treat for fans!!! The past reunion movies have continued the storyline. But by then, most of the core cast had left Dallas. So these movies left a lot to be desired. And left you feeling sad, missing the old glory days of Dallas. Judging from what I saw last night, it was just what fans want - most of the original cast, all together again, reminiscing and showing clips. Would have loved to see Barbara Bel Geddes again but I'm sure she's not in great health now (think that was why she didn't attend?). It was a nice tribute to fans to include them at Southfork. Which by the way is a major fan draw now! When I toured it in 1984, a family was trying to live in the mansion. All the blinds were drawn. The grounds were open for touring, 9 to 5. So this family either holed up inside or left home. Can you imagine trying to live there? There was a coverd table with memorabilia on sale. Which looked very temporary, similar to a festival booth. I'm happy to see it's now a museum, devoted entirely to the show Dallas.

Mary

[TexasStooge]

My mom got that on tape last night. It was cool!