‘Dallas’ Memories : Cast Recalls Favorite Episodes of Long-Running Series, Which Ends Friday

J.R. Ewing, who for 13 years on “Dallas” never met a man he couldn’t double-cross or a woman he couldn’t bed, has finally met his match: the powers-that-be at CBS, who have decided to send the Texas soap opera to its final roundup.

The 356th and final show, airing Friday at 9 p.m., is a two-hour send-off that, in “It’s a Wonderful Life” fashion, depicts how the “Dallas” world would have been without J.R. Ewing.

Among viewers, of course, “Dallas” is best known for its 1980 cliffhanger, “Who Shot J.R.?” But which of the scores of storylines do the actors and producers recall most fondly? In phone interviews, several past and present cast members--though not J.R.’s alter ego, Larry Hagman, who was incommunicado on vacation in Europe--and longtime executive producer Leonard Katzman offered their own favorite memories of the show, which debuted April 2, 1978.

It was Katzman who conceived the idea of a season-ending cliffhanger, based on his youthful experience as an assistant director on movie serials. Along with the shooting of J.R., his favorite remains the return of the supposedly dead Bobby in the shower, at the end of the 1985-86 season, and the subsequent declaration that that entire season had merely been a dream of Pam’s.

“Regardless of the critical reaction, I will go to my grave believing that was the only way to bring Bobby back,” he maintained. “It served a variety of purposes: It got people talking about the show over the summer, ended the competition between us and ‘Miami Vice’ in the first show of the new season, and allowed us to get rid of storylines we were not happy with.”

For his part, the man who took that shower, Patrick Duffy, said that while he loved that plot, it was the earlier seasons that he most enjoyed.

“I think the storylines that were started and developed in the first seven years were the meatiest and most valid,” he said. “When they focused on the family--Ray Krebbs becoming a (Ewing) brother (1980-81), losing Daddy in South America (1981-82). As we started to lose cast members and bring in new people, the show got watered down. It was the family that people were interested in--not that we were involved in international intrigue, but that we couldn’t keep a family together.”

Duffy’s erstwhile screen sister-in-law, Linda Gray, was a series regular for 11 years and returned for Friday’s final episode.

“I loved the season I played an alcoholic (1985-86), because as an actress I got to blow it out,” she recalled. “I was only 20 minutes in makeup and hair. I’d asked for it, because as an actress, I’d been bored. They said, ‘OK, but we’re going to take you way down.’

“So I went way down and then back up. It wasn’t quick and it wasn’t easy, and I think I tapped into a part of the audience who really had to go to the bottom before they could do something about it. I got a lot of cheerleader letters from people who said what they’d gone through and survived.”

It was Sue Ellen’s younger sister, Kristin Shepard, who proved to be the mystery character who shot J.R. “I’ll be a trivia question forever!” laughed Mary Crosby, who as Kristin ended up dead in the Ewing pool at the beginning of the 1981-82 season but nevertheless returned for the series finale.

Naturally, Crosby enjoyed being the focus of worldwide attention when the identity of J.R.’s assailant was revealed. That episode garnered what at the time was the biggest audience in TV history (since topped by the “MASH” finale).

“Please God, 10 years from now don’t let me be remembered only for being the woman who shot J.R.--but I was proud to be on ‘Dallas’ and thrilled because they gave my character a big range,” she said. “I was able to do a lot of horrible things, like driving my sister back to the bottle. I got to be nastier and nastier, which was fun for me.”

On television, it’s also fun being the recipient of such nasty behavior, according to Charlene Tilton. She played Lucy Ewing, the family’s rebellious granddaughter, for the show’s first seven years, took a nearly two-year hiatus and came back for another two years.

“I was raped, had an abortion and was addicted to drugs and alcohol--those were the good old days!” she said. On the more positive side, she recalled Lucy’s first wedding in 1981 to medical student Mitch Cooper (played by Leigh McCloskey), which at the time was the second-highest rated “Dallas” episode, after the “Who Shot J.R.?” revelation.

Then there were Tilton’s scenes in the first few episodes, cavorting secretly in the Southfork hayloft with ranch foreman Ray Krebbs--who, in later years, would turn out to be her uncle, though neither knew it at the time. “I was only 17, but I looked 12, and he was so much older!” Tilton remembers. “That hadn’t been done on network TV before.”

Steve Kanaly, who played Ray and came back for the last episode after almost two years away, has memories of a more recent romance.

“Susan Howard (who played Krebbs’ wife, Donna) and I developed an idea which was fun. Fans would say, ‘How come Ray and Donna don’t have kids?’ So she became pregnant, but lost the baby and went through the drama of a long recovery. Then someone got Donna around kids with disabilities. First there was one with Down’s syndrome. Then we were introduced to a school in this area for kids with a variety of problems. One boy emerged who was profoundly deaf. After awhile, Ray and Donna adopted him. Susan and I felt very strongly about this story, but it came during the season which was a dream, so it ended then.

“My last year on the show (1988-89) was the best,” he added. “I had a romance with Jenna Wade (Priscilla Presley) and a fun storyline a la ‘Fatal Attraction,’ with (actress) Michelle Scarabelli. It was very scary to play--she came after me with a knife.”

The one actor other than Hagman who was with the show for its entire run is Ken Kercheval, who played J.R.’s would-be nemesis, Cliff Barnes. His favorite plot? “My affair with Sue Ellen,” he replied immediately (they got together in the 1978-79 and 1981-82 seasons).

Beyond that, there was the scene during the 1980-1981 season where “I discovered my mother (Rebecca Wentworth, played by Priscilla Pointer), whom I hadn’t seen since I was a child. She came to my apartment and there was a great deal of tension, trying to act nice, to see if it could work out. There was a dish of candy there, the kind I’d liked when I was little. I asked where she had been all these years, and she said ‘Houston,’ which was only 250 miles away.

“I was furious. She got up to leave, saying it wasn’t going to work. I said (in a childlike protest), ‘But you haven’t had any gumdrops’ or whatever it was. We met at the door and both dissolved into tears. It was a hell of a scene. I’ll bet you 5 years later people were still telling me about it. I was stunned by the number of people who were touched by that scene.”

Even as the series winds up, Katzman does not rule out the possibility of a reunion show in two years or so. Friday night’s episode does not neatly tie up this season’s plotlines.

“What has J.R.’s life amounted to? Is the ‘Dallas’ world and its people better or worse off because of him?” Katzman asked. “Faithful to our creed, the people in the audience will have to make up their own minds.”