Trade Declined:Larry Hagman Turns Down $160Million Offer Due To…..
Larry Hagman was a character, all right. For most Americans, that character was and always will be J.R. Ewing, the gleefully conniving, iconic Dallas salute to capitalism run amok — and family values gone awry — forever embodied by Hagman, who died Friday at 81. In lesser hands, J.R. could have easily been the stock villain of riverboat melodrama fame, as similar characters have been in so many other television shows since. Hagman lightened J.R. with a flash of pleased-with-himself humor, bordering on camp but never crossing the border — and then lit him from within with star power.
The result was a scene-stealer so popular that when Dallas shot him in a 1980 cliffhanger, millions of people around the world actually did spend the summer asking “Who shot JR?” And to cap it off, 41 million households returned to CBS in November to get the answer (Mary Crosby’s Kristin, in case you’ve forgotten) — the second largest crowd ever to watch a scripted TV episode.
It’s no wonder that when Dallas ended its 13-year run in 1991, J.R. lived on — associated forever in the popular imagination with Hagman. Nor is it any wonder that when TNT said it was reviving the series last year, the first question anyone asked is “Will Hagman’s J.R. return?” The answer, of course, was yes — and will continue to be yes for those episodes of the second season shot before the 81-year-old actor succumbed to cancer.
