Later that same year, The Times’s renowned food critic Craig Claiborne included some of our recipes in his new book Craig Claiborne’s Favorites along with an article about spending a day with Jonine and me. On that day he brought the great French chef Jacques Pépin; they joked that they were there to make sure the teenagers were really cooking without any adult help. We were very nervous, but both men were amazingly charming and complimentary. They followed us as we walked across the sand to serve lunch for our neighbor Burgess Meredith and his guests and Mr. Claiborne dubbed us “the barefoot contessas of Malibu.” I remember standing at the buffet table, helping to serve people and explaining what was in the food. At the time, most catering was standard American fare or strictly French food à la Julia Child, but our menus included food from all over Europe. The items we served that day included a cheese appetizer using a Swiss raclette machine that melted the cheese with dramatic presentation; this was followed by French lemon chicken, Greek spanakopita, a vegetarian dish that Jonine and I made up, and a Swedish princess torte for dessert. Burgess entertained frequently, and his parties attracted guests from all over the country and well beyond the entertainment world. I was just cutting into a new platter of food when I looked up to greet the next guest. I found myself looking at a man’s belt buckle instead of his face. The man was Wilt Chamberlain, the great seven-foot-one basketball player.
By cooking, I made enough money to pay for the first semester of eleventh grade. When Dad saw what I was able to do and how much I cared about staying in Oakwood, his attitude about paying for the school changed. He came up with the money to pay my tuition for the rest of high school even though he was telling everyone that he was broke.
From a teenager’s perspective, it appeared that we were living this wonderful carefree life on the beach, but the way Dad kept speaking about our financial situation made all of us feel a great deal of instability.
Mom reacted by trying to make everything she could with her own hands, from designing and building Jacuzzis for our neighbors, like producer Jerry Hillman, to making our clothes and doing house repairs herself. Other than renting the house out every summer, there never seemed to be a plan or budget.
According to Dad, we only had enough cash to live month to month, and it made me anxious. By my junior year in high school, the constant worry about money changed the carefree beach lifestyle. Mom and Dad were yelling at each other. Mom got fed up with all the people coming over uninvited. She put up a hand-painted sign on the gate outside our house that read, “If you have not been invited, don’t even think of ringing the bell.” Preston was withdrawn, and when I went off to college, I was barely able to make enough to stay in school. Dad became so desperate to change the family dynamic that at one point he borrowed $20,000 and then blew half of it on a family skiing trip because he figured we had to go somewhere to lift our spirits.
Dad really did believe that if he were in a happier state of mind with all his loved ones around him that things would get better. He was right, because it was on that trip that he and Mom looked at two scripts for TV pilots in which he had been offered roles; one of those scripts was Dallas.
* * *
The role of J. R. Ewing was perfect for Dad; it took him back to his roots, to his teenage years in Weatherford, Texas, with his father, Ben, who was bigger than life in a Texas macho kind of way. To the degree that Dad identified as any one thing, it was as a Texan. He knew the vernacular, the swagger; he knew how to be one of the good old boys.
Dad repeatedly said that his inspiration for the character of J. R. Ewing was a Texan named Jess Hall. The Halls were the richest family in Weatherford, and Dad’s father had been Jess’s lawyer. While Ben wanted to teach young Larry what it meant to work hard, he asked Jess Hall to give him a job making oil-drilling equipment. The working conditions were terrible; Dad found himself laboring in a tin shack where the temperature soared well above one hundred degrees; the kid working next to him was Jess Hall’s own grandson, also named Larry. Clearly, Jess was not giving any soft breaks to family members. This is the same Larry Hall who later became Dad’s trusted LSD guru and the man to whom Dad had mistakenly entrusted the care of his children in the early days of Jeannie.
I remember going to Big Jess’s house once when I was a kid; he had very kind eyes and seemed like a real family man. It was Christmastime, and the big, dark, old house was imposing and a bit scary. The enormous Christmas tree loomed over the somber Victorian sitting room that was filled with heavy, dark wooden furniture. This brief encounter was the only time I can remember meeting Jess Hall Sr., so I did some research on him to better understand the impression this man had made on my father.
The three Hall brothers had moved to Weatherford, Texas, in 1941 to manufacture and sell the equipment that Jess had invented for improving oil drilling. In time, Mr. Hall held twenty-one American patents. The most popular piece of equipment he sold cost $1.75 to make; he sold it for $28.60. Back in 1947, right around the time my dad worked for the company, they sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of this equipment to oil-drilling outfits in Venezuela. Eleven years later, Jess Hall Sr. was taken to court for tax evasion on the profits he gained in that foreign transaction. I read the court documents about the case, and there had been foreign companies set up to deal with payments in Venezuela and Puerto Rico, companies owned by various third parties as well as one of Hall’s sons. In the end, through a long and winding path of companies changing hands, Jess Hall Sr. did not end up paying any back taxes. He must have been a very wise and cunning businessman, just the perfect role model on which to build the character of J. R.
With Dallas, Dad saw a second chance to mold a TV show into something truly memorable as he had with I Dream of Jeannie, but this time, he was determined to be careful not to alienate anyone.
In the first scripts for Dallas, J. R. was not a major character. His prominence in the Ewings’ story would come later, after he’d developed a character that was so cunningly, forcefully, and physically charismatic that television viewers around the world became captivated by him. Maybe Dad sensed J. R.’s potential, because after reading the Dallas script, he told Mom, “Mine’s not the main part, but I think I can go someplace with it.”
* * *
On the first day of shooting, he showed up on the Dallas set with a big smile on his face and Western saddlebags thrown over his shoulder filled with champagne. He charmed everyone. He was diplomatic and delightful to work with. This said, Dad was still rewriting dialogue right on the set like he had on Jeannie. But he did not lose his temper insisting on better scripts. Instead, he was constantly joking around with his fellow actors, using humor and a great deal of style and class to persuade people to change the direction of the show. He subtly moved it from a Romeo and Juliet–style drama about the marriage of young lovers from rival families, Bobby Ewing and Pamela Barnes, to a story about siblings in a rivalry for family power and money.
Once again, Dad was lucky: he had the best and most willing actors and companions to work with. Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy delighted in his practical jokes and were eager to take any suggestions he could offer that would give Dallas that Texas personality that only a true Texan could. Soon, the producers saw the public wanted more J. R. Everyone wanted to be him or be with him; he was the man they loved to hate.
J. R. didn’t come out of the ether. The intensity everyone saw on-screen came from deep inside him. Dad would stare into the camera with this intense gaze, and his eyes would be twinkling with malice while he grinned his special grin that made him look as if he’d just eaten something wonderful and was savoring the taste of it in his mouth. Dad rarely got mad at me, but when he did, he would become very quiet and stare at me with that same look that had mesmerized viewers of the TV show. I got the full power of that gaze when it was riveted on me face-to-face; it could feel cold and hard and scary. Fans around the world saw these flashes of intensity as Dad looked straight into the camera and revealed his true an
d powerful personality. That personality had been forged by the burning need to surpass his mother and to finally prove to his strong, industrious wife that he could “bring home the bacon.” Which he certainly did!
* * *
Money changed him. Instead of talking all the time about how broke he was, he reminded everyone about how rich he was. He bought Mom anything she wanted: a Rolls-Royce, every piece of jewelry she laid her eyes on. He sent Mom and me to Milan to sit in front-row seats at fashion shows and pick out designer clothes. Mom did not have to fix the plumbing herself anymore; in fact, they tore the whole house down so she could rebuild it without having to scrimp and save, and when she ran out of room in Malibu, he bought her forty acres in Ojai so she could continue building her dream house.
He was generous with my brother and me too, buying us our own homes and taking us on trips to Europe and flying our family around in private jets. He still espoused the mantra he had developed when the chips were down—DON’T WORRY! BE HAPPY! FEEL GOOD!—and he did everything he could to make us happy.
You would think that after having his greatest dreams come true he would have been able to relax; instead, he became super hyper. He would turn on the TV and the stereo and have both of them blasting while he was talking on the phone. It became more and more difficult to have a conversation with him. When he was not working on Dallas, he and Mom were always jetting off somewhere. I marveled at their energy and restlessness. The money was pouring in with sponsorships and talking gigs on top of his work on the show. Yet no matter how wealthy he got, his attitude about money was still colored by that period of tough love that Mary and Richard had imposed on him when he was a young actor, and they had kept him on a shoestring budget in the hope that Dad would not spend what little he had on booze. So even after he was making loads of money, it became clear that the memory of the frugality he’d experienced throughout his early days as a hungry young actor had left him feeling that he would never have enough and he would always be afraid of losing what he had.
He hired business managers to handle his contracts and financial affairs but seldom trusted them. It was his nature to socialize with people who worked for him, and he became close friends with some of them, but no matter how loyal they were, Dad was frightened of being take advantage of, and if he felt a shadow of doubt about someone’s loyalty, he would cut that person out of his life forever. A very choice remained. Old habits die hard and even after his success in Dallas, he still could be seen stuffing dinner rolls in his pockets whenever he went to a party.
* * *
We knew J. R. had really caught on with the public because suddenly, wherever we went, there were big crowds. When we ate in restaurants, fans pressed against the windows to get a glimpse of him. Italy was one of those countries where J. R. was especially popular. I had spent some time in Italy during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, and when we arrived there, I wanted to show my family the Florence I had discovered while traveling on my own. But as we walked through the streets, mobs of schoolchildren would march after us gleefully chanting, “J. R.! J. R.! J. R.!”
I was frustrated that our intimate family time was being violated, but Dad loved it; he smiled and patted the kids on their heads and handed out his fake hundred-dollar bills imprinted with the words “The United States of Texas” and “In Hagman We Trust.”
Sometimes all this attention felt dangerous. Mom, Preston, and I would huddle around him to protect him, and he let us know that was our role. Whenever we headed out in public, he would say, “Get ready, family, for shark-feeding syndrome.”
We would watch as Dad stepped out of the hotel onto the sidewalk, and moments later, we stepped in between him and the crowds because he was surrounded by people trying to touch him; it really was like Dad was fresh meat being thrown into a pool of frenzied sharks.
Though his fears about impending poverty did not change, his wardrobe did. Gone were the Engineer Bill striped overalls and tie-dyed shirts. Instead, he took to another sartorial extreme. Sometimes, he would dress as J. R., which meant elegant cowboy businessman attire, and that included Brooks Brothers suits, pointed boots, Stetson hats, a giant gleaming engraved belt buckle, and, to add his own quirky touch, custom hand-tooled leather saddlebags slung over his shoulder. Or sometimes he would get really crazy and wear a chicken suit or an outfit he developed over time that he called his pimp suit and consisted of a deep purple polyester suit and shockingly bright-yellow shirt worn with a tie decorated with a design of multicolored condoms.
He had always been class conscious; now he was more so. He spoke of certain people as being “below the salt,” a term from the Middle Ages when saltcellars were placed in the center of the aristocracy’s dining tables and the lowest-ranked people sat below that point. Mom and Dad were both fascinated by the British aristocracy. When they lived in London, they had both been in their twenties, and the country had made a huge impression on them. England was where they became adults. In addition to being where they fell in love, it was where they made some of their dearest lifelong friends. Before Mom met Dad, she had slept outside Buckingham Palace so she could see Princess Elizabeth on the way to her coronation to be queen.
My parents loved all the trappings and rituals of upper-class British society; they were overjoyed when Dad’s dear friend and business partner Philip Mengel got them an invitation to the royal enclosure at the Ascot races. Mom wore a spectacular hat and an elegant pastel-colored suit, and Dad wore a proper morning suit and the requisite top hat. But there was a business aspect to their attendance and finery: Dad was up for a new Dallas contract, and Philip was handling the negotiations. The timing was perfect: the “Who shot J. R.?” episode had recently aired, and the TV-watching world was waiting to get the news about whether or not J. R. was dead and which one of his many enemies had shot him.
Dad and Philip used this worldwide attention to their advantage. There were no cell phones then, and Dad was never quick to answer calls from the TV executives. Instead, he was making news, looking fabulous at the Royal Ascot races, which were being covered by the international press. Thanks to Philip Mengel’s brilliant maneuvering, Larry Hagman became the best-paid actor on television.
I am sure Dad would say that one of the great high points of the Dallas years was when he and Ganny were invited to do a Royal Variety Performance in London honoring the Queen Mother’s eightieth birthday. We were all so excited, and I felt very lucky to be with them; I was Ganny’s roommate. She never went anywhere alone and had never been without Richard or someone hired to handle all the practical aspects of her life. She did not know how to call a cab or tip the room service waiter, so on this trip, because Richard had died several years before, I was appointed to take care of her. This was the first time I was given this sort of responsibility, and I took my job very seriously. I went everywhere with them and watched all the rehearsals.
In the show, Henry Mancini and his orchestra would play as Dad sang a song written especially for the show about his dastardly character J. R. Though the music had a faintly Western aspect, the structure of the song was vaguely similar to the song from Peter Pan about Captain Hook, who was the meanest and most despicable character imaginable. It went like this:
Who’s the swiniest swine in world?
(Captain Hook! Captain Hook!)
Who’s the dirtiest dog in this wonderful world?
(Captain Hook! Captain Hook!)
Dad’s lyrics were based on them: “Who’s a scoundrel? Who’s a cheat? I am! I’m J. R.!”
At the rehearsal, he was singing by himself onstage, and then he started mumbling; he could not come up with the next line of the song, and he was having a hard time remembering the next terrible adjective to describe J. R. He was lost. Seeing his anxiety, Ganny came onstage before her cue to rescue him. She was dressed in one of her costumes from South Pacific: an absurdly gigantic, oversized sailor outfit. She was the perfect counter to the devilish J. R.; she was funny, na
ughty, and cute. As they practiced together, Dad became stiffer and stiffer. His nervousness just got worse; he had not sung onstage for a very long time, and though it was one of those songs that was more talking than singing, it was clear that he simply couldn’t remember his lines. Ganny on the other hand was right in her element, relaxed and confident and completely at ease. They continued to work on the song as the rest of the cast watched from the audience. Ganny kept getting laughs as she attempted to get Dad to loosen up. She rubbed his shoulders and grabbed onto his hips to wiggle them around. Dad knew that no matter how ridiculous he might look, one of the best ways to capture the audience was to make them laugh, so in rehearsal, they worked out some playful business together about each one of them trying to one-up the other. It was funny, but it was also very close to the truth. I could tell Dad was on edge all day, so I ran his lines with him in his dressing room while Ganny had her hair done. Despite my youth, and given my role of caregiver for Ganny, I was like a mother figure to them both. I got him warm tea for the sore throat he had suddenly come down with, and I carried Ganny’s purse for her.
During the show, when the curtain went up, J. R./Dad proudly walked onstage, and when he raised his Stetson while greeting the crowd, his fake J. R. dollars came streaming out as the audience broke up laughing. He hit his mark, but as the orchestra played the intro to his song, he went blank. He turned to Mr. Mancini and asked him to start from the beginning again. He did, but Dad was paralyzed, turning beet red and finally apologizing to the audience, saying, “I knew something like this would happen to me up here tonight. My daughter is in the audience.”
The Eternal Party Page 18