by LARRY HAGMAN
Barbara decided to return the next season. Several weeks before she made the decision, I had lunch with her in New York and said that I wanted her back. I was unaware that talks were already going on. Obviously, her return made me happy, but I was quite upset at how the news reached Donna.
Donna found out she wasn’t being asked back from a French reporter as she got off a plane in Paris. I was stunned when I heard how she’d been informed. I had no idea. Her agent, the producers, Lorimar, CBS—no one had told her. That was cold, callous, unthinking, and unforgivable. Nothing we said could ever have made amends to Donna, who died of cancer two years later with her trust in the business shattered, and rightfully so. I wish we could’ve dumped the way that was handled into what we called the Black Hole of Calcutta.
The Black Hole of Calcutta was a passageway on the studio lot that ran from one street to another. It was lined with tiny portable dressing rooms on wheels that had been made in the 1930s. Despite all the hundreds of millions of dollars Dallas generated, we used them the entire time we shot the series. They were universally loathed by the cast. During the summer there was no air, and in the winter months the wind whistled through like the North Pole.
One year I got so fed up I asked the Lorimar honchos for my own motor home on the set, one of those luxury palaces on wheels outfitted with a bedroom, kitchen, phone, radio, TV, and various items that would make it a comfortable retreat. They said no, arguing if they gave one to me, they’d have to give one to all the principals at a cost they estimated at $5 million. They also said paying the Teamsters would be about another $1 million a year. Seeing their point, I made a point of my own.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Give me fifty thousand dollars a year and I won’t ask for an RV.”
Done deal. They thought they’d gotten away with a big savings, but the series lasted another ten years, making me half a million dollars for just keeping my mouth closed. I laughed about it every year.
But that didn’t solve another problem we had. The bathrooms. I don’t know about the women’s, but the men’s room was an absolute pit. For the first five years, we didn’t even have hot water. Then L.A. health officials forced that issue as well as a reconfiguration of the toilets to make room for a handicapped stall.
That made the stalls so narrow it was impossible to shut the door without banging your knees. A situation that called for comfort was untenable, so we used the handicapped stall. No one who needed it was ever there. Then one day I was sitting on the toilet when I was interrupted by a sharp bang on the door, followed by a contemptuous voice demanding to know, “Who’s in there?”
I replied that I was.
“Who are you?”
Not recognizing the questioner’s voice, I said it was none of his business.
“Well, what are you doing?”
I was doing what people do when they sit on the toilet, I explained.
“Don’t you know this is for handicapped people?” he asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m handicapped. I’m in a wheelchair, and I need to get in there right away.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said. “But I’m right in the middle of what I’m doing, so you’re going to have to wait.”
He didn’t care.
“I’m going to call security,” he said.
“Fine,” I said.
It wasn’t like I tried to take a long time, and when I finished, I opened the door and saw an incredibly frustrated, pissed-off guy in a wheelchair was parked directly outside. He was plainly handicapped. He was also incredibly angry. Somehow he had no idea who I was and told me that security was on their way.
I started to walk out.
“Hey, asshole,” he said, “what’s your name?”
“Patrick Duffy,” I replied. “And go fuck yourself.”
Chapter Twenty-five
On set and off, Patrick Duffy was the perfect companion for me. He was almost as good looking as me, almost as talented, almost as funny, and almost as smart. We were kindred spirits who liked to hunt, fish, and play practical jokes. Early in the show, David Wayne and I took him salmon fishing in Vancouver. On the plane we sat in first class telling fishing stories while being served drinks and hors d’oeuvres. By Patrick’s eighth vodka, I looked at David and said, “I didn’t know this guy was such a drinker.”
“Yeah, he’s really tossing ’em back,” David agreed.
Indeed, Patrick got drunker and drunker. Before landing, he made a pass at the flight attendant. At that point, I thought his joking had crossed the line from funny to obnoxious. Even after I said something to him, Patrick kept slugging back the drinks. David and I worried how we were going to get him through customs. Once the plane landed, though, Patrick changed. All of a sudden he was perfectly sober. Grinning, he confessed that he’d enlisted the flight attendant’s aid and had her fill his vodka bottles with water.
Patrick was also very spiritual. Introduced to Buddhism by his wife, Carlyn, he would rise at 4 A.M. to chant for an hour and chanted for another hour at night with Carlyn and their children. One day I asked what he chanted for. Patrick cocked his head to the side and smiled. “Money.”
“No shit?” I said.
“It’s working, ain’t it?”
At the end of the 1984 season, Patrick left the show. At thirty-seven, he wanted to see if he could make it even bigger in movies. He also had a sense of being underappreciated. After talking it over with his wife, he broke the news to me. I told him that he was making a mistake and gave him the same lecture Hayden Rorke had given me almost twenty years earlier when I wanted to leave I Dream of Jeannie. I said if you leave a show when it’s number one, people will think you’re nuts.
Patrick left anyway. In the finale of the 1984 season, Bobby saved his wife, Pamela, from being run down by her crazy half sister, but was struck himself. He died in the hospital a few hours later. Though the series was nudged out of first place in the overall ratings by Dynasty, we continued our roll.
But the next year was dismal for both the show and me. Not only did Patrick leave, Leonard Katzman resigned too, a result of his constant clashes with the other executive producer, who took over. Under his guidance, our happy family fell apart. The new guy in charge was the antithesis of Leonard. He wasn’t a creative person. All he created was anxiety. He berated line people, pinched pennies, and undermined eight years of success by trying to inject the show with glitz. It wasn’t Dallas.
One day I received an audiotape from Patrick that reminded me just how grim the situation had become. I popped it into my tape player. On it, Bobby was being buried, and Patrick was saying, “Larry, help! I’m six feet under. Let me out! Let me come back. Please! Let me come back. I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”
It was a joke. When Patrick left, he had no intention of ever coming back. He said he was making more money than he had on the show. I was on my own, and it forced me into a confrontation, something I hate. But I told Lorimar chief Lee Rich that he had to replace the producer. His reply was an impossibly frustrating look that said, “You’re an actor. What do you know about this stuff?”
I said he could take $1 million out of my salary and give it to him if he’d leave. Lee didn’t pay attention. So I said, okay, make it $2 million, just get rid of him. He still refused. I had one more meeting, and there I made my final proposal. The producer had to go or I wasn’t coming back the next season.
“You’re going to walk away from that kind of money?” he asked.
“If he stays there won’t be any money, because there won’t be any show,” I said.
Television executives aren’t stupid. At the end of the day, they make decisions based solely on numbers. They look at ratings and profits. When they studied Dallas’s slumping ratings and considered the fate of the series without Patrick and me, they saw the producer might be more costly than imagined, and soon he resigned for reasons he said were personal.
Katzman signed back on. Both of us knew that i
f Dallas was going to come back, we needed Patrick. We immediately started plotting to bring him back. First, I called Patrick and had a long talk, basically explaining that no matter the circumstances of his departure, we could write him back into the show. Forget being rational. We’d find a way. Money was no problem either. If he wanted a raise, which he did, we’d make sure he got it.
“How’d it go?” Katzman asked.
“I think he realizes it’s cold out there,” I said.
Before the season ended, Patrick worked out terms that brought him back. Then I had him out to the house for a celebratory afternoon. After a long, relaxing Jacuzzi, we went to our local watering hole for lunch, the Baja Cantina. On the way, Patrick reminded me, as Katzman regularly did too, that his return was top secret. Katzman hadn’t even worked out the story line introducing his return in the season’s finale. Fine, I understood. But when the waitress came to take our lunch order, she said, “Hi, Patrick. I hear you’re back on Dallas.” Our jaws hit the table. We were shocked.
“Where’d you hear that?” Patrick asked.
“On the radio as I came into work,” the girl chirped.
It shows you how tough it is to keep a secret in Hollywood.
* * *
A good attitude is vital to a healthy, happy life, and my attitude improved simply by watching the 1985 season’s cliffhanger when Pamela woke from a dream and saw her dead husband, Bobby, step from the shower and say, “Good morning.” Ratings rose. Viewers were confused, amazed, and thrilled. The buzz returned. And most important, my best friend was back on the show.
When the next season premiered, Patrick’s resurrection was explained by casting the entire previous year as a nightmare, which it had been for us. When the three of us reunited in Dallas to start shooting, the old zest returned as if on cue. As did the jokes and partying. While on location, Maj and I, Linda, Barbara, and Priscilla Presley stayed at Caroline Hunt’s luxurious Mansion on Turtle Creek Hotel, which is one of the three best hotels I’ve ever been in in my life (the other two are the Lanesborough in London, which Caroline’s company also manages, and the Oriental in Bangkok). The rooms are gorgeous, the service is unparalleled, and the food superb. My suite alone set the production company back $21,000 a month.
I kept my room stocked with champagne. I usually had a five-pound tin of caviar, which I acquired in bulk from a Russian film director friend in exchange for VCRs and videotapes of Dallas that he dispersed in the Soviet Union. If people in the Soviet Union enjoyed watching our show as much as Linda, Sheree Wilson, Priscilla, Barbara, and Maj and I enjoyed eating beluga, then the commies were in trouble.
We were still in Texas, though. That was its own reality. One day I was having lunch at the Mansion when I was spotted by an old lady. I felt like a deer caught in headlights the moment I saw the spark of recognition in her eyes. She struggled up from her chair, grabbed her walker, and started across the room. It must’ve taken her three minutes to inch across the dining room. “Here comes an old lady wanting my autograph,” I said to Maj.
As soon as she got next to me, she said, “Take this, you rascal,” and then hit me upside the head with her handbag and knocked me right out of my chair. I literally saw stars. Then she chuckled a tad remorsefully. “Oh my goodness, Mr. Hagman, I’m so sorry My husband is dead, and before he died, he gave me a thirty-eight revolver. I always carry it with me and I forgot it was in my handbag.”
“That’s all right, ma’am,” I said, rubbing the bump that had risen on the side of my head.
“I’m really sorry. But you are such a rascal.”
Speaking of pistols, Nancy Hammond, a wonderful woman we became friendly with in Dallas, owned the penthouse in the towers at the Mansion. She and her husband Jake were wealthier than some countries, but nothing thrilled Nancy like a good bargain. One day she told us about how she drove her Rolls-Royce to Costco to pick up some tires that were on sale. She bought the tires and ten cases of Dom Pérignon, arranged for them to be delivered to her apartment, and walked back to her car.
“And then you know what happened, Larry?” she said. “I got there and there were two men sitting in my car.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said. “I walked over and pulled out my pearl-handled revolver—the one Jake gave me—and I said, ‘You bastards, get out of my car or I’ll blow your heads off!’ They ran across the parking lot. Then I put the key in the ignition and do you know what? It wasn’t my car.”
Another time Maj and I were having lunch with Nancy at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C. She walked in and, after we kissed and hugged, asked if I wanted to see her new diamond ring. It was beautiful and enormous. But I couldn’t help notice something was wrong with one of her fingers. I asked what had happened.
“I was making some cheese dip in the Cuisinart and I stuck my finger in too far,” she explained. “It took the finger right off. Zip. Right like that. But Jake said, ‘Don’t worry about it, honey. I’ll buy you a knuckle-to-knuckle diamond and we’ll call it the ‘Cuisinart Diamond.’”
And he did. Boy did he.
Then she held her hand up to show me her prosthetic finger.
“I have to keep having to send it back because the older I get, the more wrinkled I get, and the damn finger doesn’t wrinkle at all.”
Then she removed her finger and handed it to me.
“Take a look, Larry.”
I couldn’t think of anything to do with her finger. But just then the waiter served my Bloody Mary, so I stirred it with Nancy’s finger.
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen anybody do,” she said, bursting out in laughter. “That’s why I love you.”
* * *
Only one dark cloud marred the 1985-86 season. The week before Thanksgiving, Patrick’s parents were shot to death at their bar in Boulder. Two nineteen-year-old guys, who’d been looking for money, were arrested later the same day, the murder weapon, a shotgun, still on them. Patrick’s belief in the continuum of life helped him handle the tragic news better than the rest of us on the set that day. He got to Montana aboard Lorimar chairman Merv Adelson’s private jet and buried his mom and dad in a Buddhist cemetery in Japan.
In 1987, I knew the series had begun a slow curve downward. Victoria left, with Pamela dying in a fiery car crash. She was at an age where the move made sense, and I knew better than to try talking her out of it. Dack Rambo, who spent two seasons playing J.R.’s cousin, was also written out of the show. Openly bisexual and outspoken about having AIDS, Dack accused me of getting rid of him because I was homophobic. Until then, I liked Dack, but his charge was so farfetched it wasn’t worth arguing in the press.
My philosophy about people on the show was made clear years earlier when we had problems with one of the actresses showing up chronically late. It screwed up everyone’s schedule, from hair to makeup, which created tension, delayed production, cost money, and so on. None of which did anyone any good. So I asked Leonard to change her call time to 4 A.M. from 6. She quickly got the point. In show business you can be a drunk, a drug addict, or psychologically screwed up, but you cannot be late. It’s the only thing you can’t be.
In 1988, the show’s tenth season, Priscilla continued the exodus when she left to take over the operation of Graceland. A few years earlier, she’d thought about leaving and asked me to lunch to get my input. After talking over all the angles, including how chilly it had gotten for Patrick, I said that whatever she decided was fine, but the bottom line was that, selfishly, I liked having her around. Priscilla stayed that time. When she finally did leave, it was for the right reasons and things turned out great for her.
Chapter Twenty-six
Midway through 1989, Linda announced she was leaving. Sue Ellen and J.R. had been divorced, and she felt her character wasn’t being developed in a way that challenged her after so many years. Katzman controlled the story lines, and he kept writing Sue Ellen as a beleaguered woman. He wasn’t going to change. She got si
ck and tired of it, and rightly so. Still, I don’t know how many dinner parties I had where I begged her not to go. I would’ve used every bit of my clout if she wanted to stay, but in the end I reluctantly understood.
At least Linda was with us when we shot several episodes on location in Europe. It was a Katzman extravaganza designed to inject new interest in the show. The professional terminology is “ratings stunt.” But in reality, viewers don’t care about locales no matter how exotic. It’s similar to why they never bothered to analyze why J.R., a guy worth a couple of hundred million, still shared a home with his parents. People want to turn on their sets and forget what happened at work that day.
But none of us argued against a European itinerary that included Salzburg, Vienna, and Moscow. Dallas epitomized American capitalism, and taking it to the center of communism only nine months before the Berlin Wall came down was a bold stroke that signaled the good guys had won.
We had a terrific time in Salzburg and Vienna, two magnificent cities, but Moscow left a lot to be desired. Maj and I had been to Moscow a few years earlier as part of a tour through Japan, China, and the Soviet Union. Like most Americans, I’d spent all my life fearful of the Soviet Union. But that fear vanished after we’d spent time there. Nothing worked, nothing could be fixed. I knew if they ever pushed the button to send up their missiles, they’d most likely blow themselves to kingdom come.
So when we went with Dallas, I told everyone to bring oranges, cheese, cookies, toilet paper, and anything else they might want or need because they sure as hell wouldn’t find it over there. If any of my cast mates had thoughts about checking into a comfortable hotel, they vanished when we were let off in front of a plain four-story building and told we’d have to carry our luggage up four flights to our rooms. Hearing that, I went straight to the concierge, who told me the elevators hadn’t worked for three years.
