40 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Dallas Juicier Than A J.R. Scheme

Yup, David Jacobs was a total TV writing novice before he came up with the scripts for Dallas. According to a 2018 retrospective by Texas Monthly – appropriate! – Jacobs had mainly moved to Los Angeles to be closer to his daughter. Then, after proving his talent with rewrites, he was suddenly asked if he wanted to pitch anything to production company Lorimar. It was really that easy.

It’s impossible to think of anyone but Hagman playing the iconic role of J.R. But he wasn’t even the first actor approached! Jacobs told Texas Monthly that the part was originally offered to Robert Foxworth. And when Foxworth turned it down – apparently because he didn’t want to play someone so unsympathetic – casting director Barbara Miller suggested Hagman instead.

Director Michael Preece told Texas Monthly that every time the crew were bored, they’d “set up things in the background that nobody would see unless they were a real student of background action.” He added, “At a party scene, we would have a young 17- or 18-year-old guy – usually some friend or relative of one of the cast or crew – making out with a 75-year-old woman.” Yikes!

If you knew how old the actors in Dallas were, some of the characters’ relationships seemed pretty weird... For starters, Hagman was a whole 18 years older than his on-screen younger brother Patrick Duffy. Linda Gray also had two decades on Mary Crosby. And worst of all, Barbara Bel Geddes was only nine years the senior of Hagman – who, let’s not forget, was playing her son!

J.R. being shot was such a momentous television event it’s still talked about today. But Texas Monthly notes that it was filmed in absolute secrecy. Apparently, none of the actors knew who had done the dirty deed! Footage was even taken of the crew members holding guns, just to muddy the waters even further. Spoiler alert: it ended up being Mary Crosby’s Kristin who pulled the trigger.

Victoria Principal has always been open about her problems with Dallas. She told Texas Monthly in 2018, “More and more of the emphasis was on men, and the women became more and more secondary. It was very frustrating to me as an actress, as a person, as a woman. I don’t know why anyone was surprised that I left.”

Yep, there have been some real J.R. Ewings around. In 2000 Larry Hagman told Channel 4, “I modeled J.R after a guy I worked for in Weatherford, Texas, when I was a kid.” And he added that the work was “soul destroying.” In fact, he hated it so much he decided to quit entirely and become an actor.

David Jacobs’ first idea for a show title was “Houston.” The place was, after all, known for its oil companies in a way that Dallas wasn’t. But according to Screen Rant, one of the executives for Lorimar – Michael Filerman – decided the title should be “Dallas” because it simply sounded better. In other words, Houston… he had a problem.

When speaking to Texas Monthly, Victoria Principal detailed an elaborate prank Patrick Duffy played on her. She said that while filming a love scene, “something enormous and very hard pressed up against my pelvis. I screamed. I had no prior point of reference to anything this big or this hard. It turns out Patrick had talked the prop man into hiding, at the end of the bed, a plastic mannequin’s leg.” Yikes!

Larry Hagman has passed away now, but his daughter Kristina happily talks about him in interviews. In 2016 she told the website Dallas Decoder that Hagman had “a special technique” of line memorization where he’d read a whole script and make clicking noises at his parts. He also “spent hours and hours – every single day, no matter what state he was in – recording his lines, going over his lines, playing with them.”

After Patrick Duffy left the show, his castmates ribbed him about it. The actor told Texas Monthly that Hagman happened to walk in on him when he was being made up as a goat for a version of Alice in Wonderland – a far cry from Dallas. And so to show his amusement, Hagman left a real goat in Duffy’s dressing room.

When Dallas became mega-popular, every fan wanted a piece of Southfork. Joe Duncan II – who lived on the ranch used for filming – told the magazine, “I once was 20 feet away from a guy who jumped the fence and went out into the pasture to pick up a piece of horse manure to take home as a souvenir. People would take whatever they could get their hands on.”

Steve Kanaly chatted to the website Dallas Decoder in 2013, and he remembered an interesting detail about casting. The star said, “I know Kenny Kercheval wanted to play Ray. I think he was happy to be Cliff Barnes in the end.” And, Kanaly added, “He would have been good. He’s a wonderful actor.”

Producer Leonard Katzman commanded such authority on the set that even Larry Hagman deferred to him. Patrick Duffy remembered to Texas Monthly, “[Katzman] was the only person who scared Haggy. Larry [Hagman] was cock of the walk, but when [Katzman] walked on the set, [Hagman] would say, ‘Good morning, Mr. Katzman.’ It was [Hagman’s] military school training.”

Victoria Principal told Texas Monthly for its retrospective, “I once came to a producer to point out a continuity error that left a giant hole in a story. And he reached out, petted me, and said, ‘Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.’ And I turned and said, ‘If you ever do that again, you will lose your arm.’” Really though, you can’t blame her much for that.

When Patrick Duffy wanted to return to Dallas after his exit, no one was sure how to resurrect Bobby. It was Duffy’s wife Carlyn Rosser who suggested that maybe the whole previous season could be revealed as a dream. That idea – for better or worse – was the one used. And fans still talk about it today.

Steve Kanaly remembered to Dallas Decoder in 2013 that “this one guy, who was a Teamster captain and a cowboy” approached him during the first week of filming. This man told him, “Well, Mr. Kanaly, you’re doing a real good job with this Ray Krebbs, but I’ve got to tell you: around here, see, nobody wears them damn Levi’s… You’ve got to wear boot-cut Wranglers. That’s what the real cowboys wear.” Apparently, Kanaly had never even considered that!

Principal had an up-and-down relationship with Dallas to say the least. And after her character was killed in a car crash, Principal decided she was done no matter what. Aside from anything else, Screen Rant notes that the writers didn’t want to ruin Pam’s tragic ending by suddenly showing up again. Yet the writers were apparently adamant, so they just cast Margaret Michaels as a new Pam.

As soon as Jacobs got the gig that would become Dallas, he had to come up with some character names. He told Texas Weekly for its retrospective that the name Ewing came from a billboard – one advertising “Ewing Buick.” After that, he said, “I went home and wrote a 12-page backstory set on a Texas ranch – a saga about the Ewings and the Barneses.”

Believe it or not, the writers of Dallas didn’t think much of Sue Ellen to begin with. She doesn’t even get a name in the pilot episode! But Linda Gray was amazing in the role – even when the actress wasn’t speaking she made Sue Ellen’s feelings towards J.R. clear with her glares. As a result, the producers eventually decided she deserved more.

Was Dallas so influential that it actually affected world politics? Well, Larry Hagman certainly thinks so. According to him, Dallas made American wealth look so cool it led citizens of the Eastern Bloc to question their leaders. Is he right? Let’s just say that it would be an intriguing project for a historian to look into!

Patrick Duffy left the show in 1985 – even though his castmates would’ve preferred him to stay. Kanaly remembered to Texas Monthly, “I cried when [Duffy] left. He died in the story, but those were real tears. He wanted to go out and be in the movies. I told him, ‘It’s not what you think out there.’” And indeed he was soon back… via a shower.

At the time of filming the show, Dallas the city was still very much associated with the JFK killing. Patrick Duffy told Texas Monthly, “When we were looking for locations to film in Dallas, it was almost a joke how many doors got slammed in our face. It was, ‘Hollywood? You’re going to bring up the assassination.’ I think the city and the people were a little bit wary.”

Margaret Michaels – the second Pam – told the Dallas Decoder website in 2014 just how she won the role. The actress said, “I have a very dear friend who was a stuntwoman and happened to be the driver who ran over Bobby in the episode where he supposedly died. She and I were visiting the set of one of Patrick Duffy’s TV movies, and when my friend introduced me to him, he asked if I was an actress. The next thing I knew, I was reading for Leonard Katzman.”

If you wanted to be an extra on Dallas, it helped if you looked good in headwear. Bob Miller – the men’s costumer for the show – told Texas Monthly, “We had a whole stock of cowboy hats to give to the background actors, just to make sure Larry [Hagman] didn’t look odd. He didn’t want to be the only person walking around in a hat.”

Fans have noted over the years how curious it is that Hagman never won an Emmy for playing J.R. His daughter Kristina thinks she knows why, though. She told the website Dallas Decoder in 2016, “Dad had this idea that these awards shows make a lot of money and the actors don’t get paid for it, and he frequently complained about that. And maybe that’s why the Emmys never gave him an award.”

“Who shot J.R.?” was such a massive cliffhanger that even some of the world’s most powerful people demanded to know whodunit. According to producer David Paulsen, ex-president Gerald Ford called up Leonard Katzman asking who the shooter was, but the latter refused to tell him. The Queen Mother also asked the same question of Larry Hagman at a Royal Variety Performance, and likewise she got no answer!

Linda Gray told Texas Monthly that she badly wanted to direct an episode – like Hagman and Duffy had done. Alas, the actress claimed, “[Katzman] said he’d rather fire me than have me direct. His reasoning was that ‘if [Gray] gets to direct, then the other women will want to direct, too.’” Patrick Duffy also claimed that he found Katzman “quite misogynistic.”

There was exciting news for Dallas fans in 2012: the show was being rebooted! And Victoria Principal was asked to reprise her role as Pam. But – perhaps unsurprisingly considering her experiences with the original show – she turned it down. And as it happened, the reboot was canceled after three seasons anyway.

Kristina Hagman was in a few episodes of Dallas, but she barely remembers them now. The talent told Dallas Decoder in 2016, “You know, frankly, the reason I’m not an actress is when I was doing that stuff, I was so nervous, I had stage fright. You know how everything goes blank?” She added, “I don’t remember too much except that dad was there saying, ‘Breathe. Relax.’”

Fans of Dallas can visit the real Southfork Ranch if the fancy takes them, because it’s a museum devoted to the show these days. And it contains a space where people can pay respects to the dead characters – a small graveyard contains memorials for J.R., Jock and Miss Ellie. Hopefully, there’s no actual bodies in there.

Mary Crosby remembered to Texas Monthly one great interaction she had with Hagman. The actress was terrified of having to do a bikini scene, but on the second take, “I go back in the pool, and I look up, and [Hagman] has his eyes crossed. He’s drooling out of the side of his mouth, and he’s put a banana down his pants. I realized everything was going to be okay. [Hagman] just took the best care of everybody.”

In the early days of Dallas, Steve Kanaly’s Ray and Charlene Tilton’s Charlene were carrying on an affair. Unfortunately, in later years the plot took a twist: Ray was the illegitimate son of Jock Ewing and thus the uncle of Charlene. Oh no! Despite the drama inherent in all that, the writers decided to quietly forget the affair ever happened.

Secrecy surrounding the J.R. shooting plot was so intense that Crosby had to learn the ending from Hagman himself. The actress remembered to Texas Monthly, “[Hagman] knew that I’d shot J. R. way before I did, and at one point, he pulled me aside and said, ‘Darling, you know, you might want to get a publicist and be ready for insanity.’”

Not only would characters on the show get drunk, so too would the actors when the cameras were off! Screen Rant claims that Patrick Duffy and Larry Hagman especially liked to drink, and they would have several rounds of alcohol per day. Though the former allegedly never considered it an addiction and was able to slow the boozing down whenever he wanted to.

Dallas was really popular in Romania. And one fan in particular – Ilie Alexandru – found himself with the resources to create his own version of Southfork in his home country. He built one up in the city of Slobozia that was even bigger than the original. But in a Dallas-worthy twist, Alexandru later went to prison for cheating on his finances. And the complex is not there anymore.

Apparently, the hype around the shooting of J.R. may have never have happened if Hagman hadn’t been angling for a raise. The actor himself told TV Guide magazine in 1980, “The shooting of J.R. was a double-edged sword; it gave my producers and the CBS bosses a perfect way to get rid of me in case my demands got out of hand.” Luckily, the producers caved to them and J.R. returned.

To this day, Victoria Principal has mixed feelings about Dallas. Interviewed for the Texas Monthly retrospective of the show, she said, “For years after I left Dallas, I suffered from a kind of survivor’s guilt. I felt like I had helped perpetuate this idea that more is better, that wealth is the end-all, and that Dallas was the home of the ‘Greed is good’ mind-set.”

He may be considered one of television’s greatest baddies, but according to Hagman, J.R. was a reasonably decent person at least. In 2000 a Channel 4 interviewer questioned him about J.R. being so beloved, and he answered, “He took care of his family. I wouldn’t call him bad, he was just an oil man.”

Bobby’s shock return had to be kept quiet, so the producers invented an elaborate excuse to hide what was really going on, according to Texas Monthly. When filming the now-infamous shower scene, all the crew members were told Patrick Duffy was shooting a shampoo commercial. Even Victoria Principal didn’t know Bobby was back until she saw the scene on TV!