I
loved " Dallas". I was totally convinced that it was true to life about life in TX at the time, ROFLOL.
I was in a national Internet Dallas fan club online a few years ago. I've seen every episode in reruns to the point that I can quote entire blocks of dialogue. Have the seasons released on DVD, of course.
I don't know what the movie will turn out to be like, but I will be there!!!
I never thought Victoria Principal was that good a choice for Pam, so J. Lo would be a fine movie Pamela Barnes Ewing, IMO. Certainly NOT a good Sue Ellen, and I am surprised that Linda Grey isn't raising heck about that. Linda looks fantastic and should play her own self!!!
Principal,otoh,was known for her " relationships" with people in Hollywood from a very young age, not her acting abilities, and never did much of anything after " Dallas" except a few movies on Lifetime. Then she married a plastic surgeon, started up her really mediocre quality cosmetics empire and has turned her surgically altered nose up at everything " Dallas" since.
Oh, well, I am more interested in the men in the movie anyway, LOL. The TV show was all about the men. It was written by men for men. Larry Haggman has said that in many interviews down through the years.
About the original show, which is all I can comment upon until the movie is released:
The men-
I thought Cliff was so funny and goofy.. Now I know that Ken Kercheval was stoned through most of his run on the show.
Bobby was adorable and the one I would have hit the hayloft with. He's aged well and is cute on " Bold and Beautiful" in the promo I saw.
JR had quite a lot of power in the first few seasons, something I was taught to look for in a man, like Sue Ellen and her psychopathic sister did, LOL. Larry Haggman is a hoot. He also ran off a couple of Exec. Producers and directors which he didn't like, and the studio bought out Phillip Capice's contract because he and Haggman hated each other so.
Ray was a perpetually wounded soul and misunderstood cowboy with a good heart who screwed his underaged niece in the hayloft in the first season, ROFLOL. The writers wrote themselves into a corner with that SL.
Jock was OK, and apparently Arthur Davis was beloved by all the cast. I thought he pronounced business as "bidness" which was strange, and had a very weatherbeaten look.I never really understood the hero worship because he was NOT kind to the women in the family, and used his sons. I loved Howard Keel's patriarchal potrayal better as Clayton and thought he should have ended up with Sue Ellen, at least for a few good years.

He had a genteel gentlemanliness to him that I loved. I have wished that he was the original Jock.
The women:
I looked quite a lot like a younger, more innocent version of Sue Ellen, wore clothes and jewelry almost identical to hers, but never drink. I drove a MB 450SL convertible like Pam, but was nothing like her. I thought Lucy was a mindless little twit except in her lines where she fought with JR.
She was the " eye candy" character, IMO.
Miss Ellie was portrayed as a long-suffering saint on earth, putting up with so much scheming and crap under HER inherited house and property. I disliked the way she cried with her mouth open and her face up, like a baby bird drinking water. She should have had a stylish hairstyle and more clothes, befitting a wealthy Dallas matriarch. Those stupid loose cotton house dresses look like what people in nursing homes wear in the day room.
She also should have been strong enough to kick her grown up kids out of the house with their fortunes and a good college education.. they might have had a chance at a normal life that way.
The woman I liked the most on the show was not a Ewing, although she wanted to be one for a while: Mandy Winger. She started out young and gulliable and used by JR, but by the end of her apppearance, she left JR laying flat out in the dust. Deborah Shelton was gorgeous, and left acting to be a preacher's wife and a mother.
As everyone has pointed out at one time or another, the Southfork ranch was wierd in that there apparently weren't any guest rooms or multiple phone lines in the mansion. I remember JR and Sue Ellen's re-marriage with the guests stuck in a storm on the living room FLOOR all night. There were no phones except the one on the hall table downstairs, and the configuration of the swimming pool changed several times, LOL.
Early 80's iconic things we probably won't see in the movie: A drink before dinner in everyone's hands, maxi pad sized shoulder pads, huge " car phones", hookers used to sweeten big corporate deals, and offices with wet bars and " Sun God" carved ugly office doors. No JR sitting at a Commadore type 286 computer, LOL.
J.R. to Bobby: " You are the family pimp. Keep the bankers supplied with booze and broads."
The best part of the show was the annual BBQ and someone ending up in the pool.
So do I remember " Dallas" or what?
