Larry Hagman, 81, an eccentric Good Time Charlie who played the most popular
villain in television history, died Friday in Dallas of complications from
cancer.
Mr. Hagman, the son of stage star Mary Martin, appeared in many movies --
none of them remarkable -- and a raft of stage shows. He starred in five
series on television, where his first success came in I Dream of Jeannie. He
played Capt. Tony Nelson, astronaut and master to a scantily clad genie
(Barbara Eden).
But it was on Dallas, as J.R. Ewing, the smiling, conniving Texas oilman
who had a tomcat's libido and lower morals than a snake, that Mr. Hagman
gained true fame.
The actor returned as J.R. in a new edition of Dallas this year. "Larry
was back in his beloved hometown of Dallas, reenacting the iconic role he
loved the most. Larry's family and closest friends had joined him in Dallas
for the Thanksgiving holiday," the family said in a statement that was
provided to the Warner Bros., producer of the show.
Linda Gray, his on-screen wife and later ex-wife in the original series
and the sequel, was among those with Hagman in his final moments in a Dallas
hospital, said her publicist, Jeffrey Lane.
"He brought joy to everyone he knew. He was creative, generous, funny,
loving and talented, and I will miss him enormously. He was an original and
lived life to the fullest," the actress said.
Viewers trusted J.R. to deliver dirty dealings. He would stop at nothing
to grab a few million bucks from his good-hearted brother, Bobby (Patrick
Duffy); humiliate his boozy and frequently mean-spirited wife, Sue Ellen
(Gray); or seduce any number of sweet young things.
One of them shot J.R. in May 1980, at the end of Dallas' second full
season. "Who Shot J. R.?" became an international phenomenon. English betting
parlors took wagers; the Turkish parliament recessed on the night the
assassin's identity -- Kristin Shepard -- was to be revealed.
That episode was shown Nov. 21, 1980, in the United States, and it was
the highest-rated television show to that time. Dallas, which aired Friday
nights on CBS for almost all its run, was the No. 1- or No. 2-rated show for
five seasons, 1980-85.
When the series finally closed on May 3, 1991, after 356 episodes, it was
the third-longest-running drama in TV history, after Gunsmoke (20 seasons) and
Bonanza (14).
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said Saturday that Hagman's role as J.R.
helped the city gain "worldwide recognition."
"Larry is a North Texas jewel that was larger than life and he will be
missed by many in Dallas and around the world," Rawlings said.
As an actor, Mr. Hagman was only part J.R. "He has a beautiful sense of
the silly," Mr. Hagman's friend Claudio Guzman, who was also the producer of
Jeannie, said in the late 1960s, "the sort of thing that only Jack Lemmon does
well."
Mr. Hagman grew up in the shadow of his mother, who became one of the
most popular stage performers in American history, but who was nothing more
than a 16-year-old Texas cutie pie when Mr. Hagman was born on Sept. 21, 1931.
He learned the ways of a rough-and-tumble Texas oilman at his father's
side. Mr. Hagman spent his first five years in Weatherford, Texas, 60 miles
from Dallas. His father, Ben Hagman, was a lawyer for wildcatters all over
Texas, and in his teens, the younger Hagman had ambitions to practice law.
But he was infrequently home in Texas. After Mary Martin's career gained
momentum, he was raised primarily by her mother in Los Angeles.
He started scraping around in the theater in 1949, and that began 15
years of hand-to-mouth work as a performer that included stints at St. John
Terrell's Music Circus in Lambertville, N.J., in the early 1950s.
He got a small part in South Pacific -- his mother was the star -- in
London in 1951 and followed that with four years in the Air Force, where he
put on shows for the boys in Europe and North Africa. His stage career
concluded in New York in 1964, when he appeared in four Broadway plays.
He married Maj (pronounced "My") Axelsson, a Swedish seamstress and
costume designer, in 1954. The couple had two children, Heidi, 54, and
Preston, 50.
Mr. Hagman was a hard bargainer who eventually earned more than $150,000
per episode for playing J.R. He was rarely seen without a glass of champagne
in his hand but was also rarely seen to be drunk. He was said to have
renounced drinking in 1993, on a doctor's advice, but never admitted that he
was an alcoholic.
