Born
in Weatherford, Texas, U.S.A.,
21 September 1931.
Son of actress and musical star
Mary Martin.
Larry
Hagman is best known--throughout
the world--for his role as J.R. Ewing, the unscrupulous
heir to a Texas oil fortune, on
the long-running Dallas, the
blockbuster nighttime soap opera
which still defines the genre. Less
well-known is the actor's
earlier work in a variety of media.
The son of musical star Mary
Martin, Hagman moved to England
as a member of the cast of his
mother's stage hit South Pacific
after a variety of early
theatrical experiences. He
remained in England for five
years, producing and directing
shows for U.S. servicemen,
before returning to the United
States and appearing in a series
of Broadway and off-Broadway
plays.
Hagman's first television
experience began with various
guest appearances on such shows as
Playhouse 90. He was then cast
in the daytime soap opera The
Edge of Night, in which he
appeared for several years. In
1965, he became a television
star playing Major Tony Nelson,
astronaut husband of a beautiful
blonde genie, in the comedy
series I Dream of Jeannie, which
ran from 1965-70. He
subsequently appeared in The
Good Life and Here We Go Again
and was a frequent guest star on
a variety of television
programs, until undertaking the
career-making role of the
crafty, silkily charming villain
J.R. Ewing in 1978.
Hagman's role as the ruthless
good old boy of Southfork would
be indelibly associated with
American cultural and economic
life in the early 1980s. Over
the course of 330 episodes,
Dallas featured an American
family beset by internal
problems, many originating in
the duplicitous schemes of its
central figure, J.R. Ewing, who
was a far cry from television's
previous patriarchs. Viewers who
tuned in could expect a weekly dose of
greed, family feuds, deceptions, bribery, blackmail, alcoholism,
adultery, and nervous breakdowns
in the program that became, for
a time, the second
longest-running
dramatic hour in prime time
history (after Gunsmoke). The
show's blended themes of sex, power and
money also sold well worldwide.
When J.R. was shot in March,
1980, the audience totaled 300
million in 57 countries.
Particularly noteworthy was the
way in which Dallas made use of
the cliffhanger ending. In its
"Who shot J.R.?"
season-end cliffhanger (the
first ever in prime time), fans
were left to speculate all
summer over the fate of the man
they loved to hate and ponder
the question of which one of his
many enemies might have pulled
the trigger.
The speculation
grew to become an international
cause celebre, with the first show of
the 1981 season generating
Nielsen ratings comparable to M*A*S*H's
season finale, and pointing to
the overlooked profitability of
high-stakes serial narratives in
prime
time. Hagman's J.R. was
influential in making greed and self-interest seem seductive,
and the characterization
inspired
countless other portrayals (both
male and female) on spin-off
shows such as Knots Landing, and
recent nighttime soap operas
such as Melrose Place.
More recently, Hagman has been
active in anti-smoking
campaigns, producing a videotape
entitled Larry Hagman's Stop
Smoking for Life, whose proceeds
went to the American Cancer
Society. In 1995, the actor was
diagnosed with a liver tumor and
later underwent a successful
liver transplant.
-Diane M. Negra
