DALLAS: Confessions of a Forty Years After the Fact Fanatic

First season title. It's a Lorimar Production, but this sure ain't the Waltons!

When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow . . . 

Forty years ago tonight--on Sunday, April 2, 1978 at 10pm Eastern--audiences first met Miss Ellie, Jock and their ambitious boys J.R. and Bobby in the premiere episode of DALLAS, "Digger's Daughter." The title of course refers to Pamela Ewing nee Barnes, Bobby's brand-new bride who was also the daughter of Jock's arch-nemesis Digger and brother to professional Ewing-hater Cliff. The stage was set for epic drama, and this series delivered it over 14 seasons and a whopping 357 episodes.

Perhaps you're like me: In the spring of 1978 I was wholly ignorant of all things Ewing. I was an eleven-year-old fifth grader and when not poring through Marvel Comics my primetime television fare skewed towards HAPPY DAYS, LAVERNE & SHIRLEY, THE HARDY BOYS, CHIPS, and THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN. Even had I been interested, a 10 o'clock program on a school night was never an option, and my family was five years away from owning a VCR.

Thirty-nine years later this 50-year-old television fan learns that DYNASTY is free on Amazon Prime. I had never seen an episode, though remember my mother and grandmother were fans and it seemed in the '80s that if  it wasn't Elizabeth Taylor it was Joan Collins and Linda Evans gracing the covers of my mother's STAR magazine (bought for the crossword puzzle, of course). So on a whim I watched the three-hour premiere with the pithy title "Oil." And I was hooked.

DYNASTY proved to be the "gateway drug" to DALLAS, because at some point I realized that in my heart I had committed myself to embracing in their entirety all the eighties' primetime soaps: THE COLBY'S, FALCON CREST, KNOTS LANDING (and if I can locate it, even the short-lived EMERALD POINT N.A.S. starring Dennis Weaver). That epiphany sparked me to "take it from the top" and take up watching the fountainhead from which all these other shows sprang: DALLAS.

Strange Bedfellows: Major Tony Nelson and Ginger Grant

He's more handsome than Bob Denver, but he still can't hold a coconut-powered radio to Russell Johnson!

Now what would have perhaps interested my eleven-year-old self would be seeing two stars from a couple of my favorite afterschool reruns appearing together: Larry Hagman and Tina Louise. Though on second thought, it would have undoubtedly been distressing to see these beloved characters engaged in the sordid stuff of primetime soaps. Watching Hagman and Louise now (and I only the other day enjoyed the riveting "Red File" two-parter from the second season) I grew increasingly impressed by the dramatic talents of these erstwhile sitcom stars, which only deepened my appreciation for their work on I DREAM OF JEANNIE and GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. I sure got a kick out of seeing them working together.

O Brave New World, That Has Such People In 't!

Longtime television fans know the joy of discovering a new hitherto-unseen series that promises reunions with actors from others series who are like old friends. DALLAS has delightfully surprised me with its guest casts, which in less than two seasons has boasted in recurring roles David Wayne (father to ELLERY QUEEN), Barbara Babcock (STAR TREK) and Fred Beir (TWILIGHT ZONE), plus memorable one-shot appearances by familiar faces Ed Nelson, Brian Dennehy, Gene Evans, Morgan Fairchild, Talia Balsam (Alex's estranged daughter on TAXI), Melinda O. Fee (David McCallum's wife on THE INVISIBLE MAN), and Richard Kelton (Ficus on QUARK). My personal favorite guest star was Greg Evigan, on the cusp of fame with B.J. AND THE BEAR, playing the unhinged abductor of Lucy Ewing in "Runaway." And I'm confident many more such casting surprises await me in the seasons still looming before me. I bought the big white box o' DALLAS DVDs, and am settling in for the long haul.

The look when your agent says you gotta trade in that hottie for a chimpanzee.

Two score years ago tonight DALLAS began its auspicious 1978-91 run and became a genuine pop culture phenomenon. The journey of 357 episodes begins by watching the first one, and I'm only 23 shows into the sojourn. I hope to have the series completed--along with watching contemporaneously the other primetime soaps it spawned--before DALLAS celebrates its golden anniversary in 2028.

*    *    *

PS: For those already on the journey or who have joined our happy throng, marching as to Southfork, I highly recommend the website THE DALLAS DECODER, which has been a trusted traveling companion and a wealth of information for this wide-eyed neophyte. (And also the source for the swiped borrowed screencaps accompanying this post.)

"You Don't Have Steinbeck to Kick Around Anymore" (Unless You're the NY Times Book Review).

Today, Sunday, December 20, 2015, marks the 47th anniversary of the death of John Steinbeck (1902-68). And almost a half-century after his death Steinbeck's work is still read and respected by a broad audience. Recalling fondly my own past readings, and eagerly anticipating future re-readings of Steinbeck's work, imagine my dismay at opening this morning's New York Times Book Review and finding its erstwhile editor Sam Tanenhaus throwing Steinbeck under the wayward bus.

Tanenhaus' target is Steinbeck's 1936 novel In Dubious Battle, which fictionalized real-life cotton strikes in the San Joaquin Valley. According to Tanenhaus, Steinbeck "first conceived [of the novel] as an almost documentary record, though he didn't visit the strike camps (instead relying on interviews). In the end he buffed and prettified the material, making it a fable of salt-of-the-earth whites, forerunners of the Okies in The Grapes of Wrath, when in fact 75 percent to 95 percent of the work force was Mexican."

Has our obsession with race poisoned even our ability to read, enjoy, and appreciate classic literature? Should Steinbeck's work be weighed in Tanenhaus' scales and be found wanting? Since In Dubious Battle is a work of fiction, shouldn't the author have the privilege of casting his narrative with anyone he pleases, regardless of color and gender? Should the exclusion of any demographic be looked upon conspiratorially, as an act of overt exclusion that belies racism or prejudice?

Tanenhaus finds a comrade in political correctness in Kathryn Olmsted, whose book Right Out of California sparked Tanenhaus' take-down of In Dubious Battle. Reviewing Olmsted's book, Tanenhaus says Olmsted, "is doubtless correct that Steinbeck's 'decision to erase brown-skinned people and women of all colors from the story was political.'"

Upending both Tanenhaus' and Olmsted's implications that Steinbeck harbored anti-Mexican prejudices, one need only look at his previous novel, Tortilla Flat, published in 1935, which was a celebration of the Mexican paisanos of Monterey, California.

John Steinbeck's work speaks for itself, at least to those who invest the time in reading his books. Doing so will dispel the cloud of criticism left by the likes of Tanenhaus and Olmsted, and prove to be both enlightening and enjoyable.