We did 356 'Dallas' episodes between 1978 and 1991. The most memorable moment for me happened in 1980 when I got shot at the end of the third series. The rest is a blur.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As a child, I watched 'Dallas' and that was my vision for my life for as long as I could remember.
Before we shot the pilot, I knew what 'Dallas' was, but I actually was too young to remember the details of the show. I didn't have my hands on the DVDs, so I YouTubed everything I could of J.R.
When I was a kid growing up in the States in the late '70s and early '80s, as soon as 'Dallas' came on on a Friday night on CBS at 9 P.M., we stopped everything from that moment on as a family.
The last episode of Dallas was in '1991.' Unfortunately, it was a terrible episode to end the show on: it was a sort of 'It's a Wonderful Life' with Larry as the Jimmy Stewart character. In that episode, I was an ineffectual-schlep kind of brother, who got divorced three or four times and was a Las Vegas reject.
When I was on 'Dallas,' I was known to audiences of the '80s. And then when my sons, who are in their 30s now, were going to college, 'Dallas' was the cult thing to watch because it was being done on the soap channels, so a whole new generation saw it. And then I have the young fans that knew me from 'Step By Step' in the '90s.
I still run into people in the business who skip over any other credits I have and say, 'I loved 'Hey, Dude!' This was back in '88, '89, '90. It was a goofy show about kids working at a dude ranch in Arizona. We did 65 episodes; I wrote 13 of them. We didn't know what we were doing, but it was writers' boot camp. It was great.
It was in 1969, and I thought, wow, you know, I really didn't want to do a TV series. You know, I had my own act, and I was performing in Vegas and doing all of these exciting things.
I didn't really watch 'Dallas' growing up, as I was a bit young and into other things, like sports.
I really wasn't on the Dallas set much. I did three or four episodes so I didn't see too much.
'Vegas' was something very close to me. I had such a blast doing that. I'm still a little upset that we never really got to shoot that final episode. So many people were invested in it. I'll always be sad about that.