Larry Hagman, who created one of American television's most supreme villains in the conniving, amoral oilman J.R. Ewing of "Dallas," died on Friday, the Dallas Morning News reported. He was 81.
Hagman died at a Dallas hospital of complications from his battle with throat cancer, the newspaper said, quoting a statement from his family. He had suffered from liver cancer and cirrhosis of the liver in the 1990s after decades of drinking.
Some of you remember the Dallas series, I was one of the faith full watchers of the program.
About 15 years ago, I was fortunate to visit the Southfork ranch. Our radio communications industry had their annual convention in Dallas. We were a General Electric manufacturers representative and as such were chauffeured to the ranch for an evening of dinner and entertainment.
Those were the days when large corporations thought nothing of blowing thousands of dollars for entertainment of their troops.
None of the cast were there of course, but I did get the opportunity to meet Larry Hagman a few years later.
My Rotary Club had their annual fundraiser and I had written Mr. Hagman to request some Dallas memorabilia for which we could auction at our event. Thinking that I would get a cool response from his PR firm, I was surprised when he himself answered the letter and invited me to his ranch in Ojai California to pick out several items.
Arriving at his ranch which was about a half hour outside of Santa Barbara he was gracious and very generous by providing me with several items which we later auctioned off at our event to raise money for local projects.
Besides Dallas he was well known for playing Major Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie TV series also.
JR was kind of a wheeler dealer and I always thought it was kind of crafty the way he ran Ewing Oil....
He'll be missed.
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