Me. Even though I’ve likely seen every episode of I Dream of Jeannie and never saw a single episode of Dallas, I think most people will think of JR before they think of Nelson.
I was born in 1955, and I still voted for JR.
Does anybody remember a show from the '70s called The Good Life (not to be confused with the British sitcom of the same name, known as Good Neighbors in the US)? Hagman and Donna Mills played a married couple who tired of the rat race and went to work as domestic servants for rich dude David Wayne. In addition to making lots of money, they got to enjoy all the amenities of living in a mansion with a swimming pool and other luxuries.
Of course, all three wound up in Dallas a few years later.
I can remedy that:
It was Sue Ellen’s slutty sister Kristen Shepherd, whom JR was banging on the side. She escaped facing charges by telling JR she was carrying his child. IIRC, said child (a boy named Christopher) was eventually adopted by Bobby and Pamela Ewing, JR’s brother and sister-in-law. The producers milked that for at least two more seasons.
My cultural literacy is failing me. I thought it turned out to be a dream.
FWIW, I have never seen an episode of Dallas. It premiered the same month I started High School and I don’t remember anybody talking about the show at school.
Like others, I’ve seen I Dream of Jeannie but never Dallas, but “Who shot J.R.?” was such a huge, inescapable cultural phenomenon that that was the first thing that leapt to my mind. But I think I thought of both almost simultaneously.
The OP’s question is a bit like asking,
What role is Harrison Ford best known for?
- Han Solo
- Indiana Jones
0
voters
or
What role is Sylvester Stallone best known for?
- Rocky
- Rambo
0
voters
In each case, there are two roles that overshadow all their others, but it’s hard to select one of the two.
Hey, summer of love! Good year.
I watched a ton of IDOJ (and Gilligan’s Island, Get Smart, etc.) when I was home sick, mostly because it was either that or soap operas. Still, Dallas was a cultural phenomenon in a way that IDOJ was definitely not.
I think those are much closer calls.
The dream came at the end of the disastrous 1985–86 season, after they had killed off the character of Bobby Ewing, at the actor’s own request. The show had taken a nose dive in the ratings and tried to make up for it by using Dynasty-style plots, but they finally realized he had to be brought back.
Hagman spent a long weekend with Patrick Duffy and managed to convince him to return, and the only way to explain his resurrection was to turn the previous year into a dream of Pamela’s. She awoke to find him in the shower, and we all had to wait until September to find out what the hell was going on.
I’ve never seen any of his stuff and I know he was JR from Dallas.
As I recall, it took a few months to catch on. It was one show where you absolutely had to understand each character and the complex relationship between them all.
I doubt a high schooler would have found much to attract him (or her). They were probably more geared to watching Mork and Mindy and Angie, which were at the top of the ratings at the time.
I agree
The army officer in Superman
And in The Eagle has Landed.
Got his brains blown out in that one, he did!
Or the Army officer in The Eagle Has Landed
ETA: Missed it by that much.
Watched IDoJ a lot in my youth, never watched Dallas. However, I think he’s best known for his work on Dallas, so that’s how I voted.
I was thinking that. I know him from I Dream of Jeannie because I never watched Dallas (and only watched Jeannie in syndication). But Dallas is newer and was just a juggernaut. But given my age and that Dallas is quite old now, I did wonder if it has flipped. Though I expect for the younger set, he’s not known for anything - I don’t recall that the revival made much splash, and the young set didn’t see the same old shows (or even so narrow a range that everyone was watching) as when I was a kid.
No love for Checkered Flag or Crash?
Yes, me. And I was a red-blooded heterosexual teenager who was delighted to see Barbara Eden each week. But it was Hagman as JR who was on the cover of every magazine from Mad to TV Guide to Time, and it was the “Who Shot JR” episode that got a TV rating of 53.3 and a 76% share of audience.
Just because IDOJ still hangs around in reruns on old people’s TV networks doesn’t make Tony Nelson a more memorable figure any more than it made Roger Healy more memorable than Howard Borden. Jeanie was the star, period.
Same, but when I tried to think of the Jeannie character’s name (from the thread’s subject line), came up with a big blank. J.R. it is.
Yep.
And count me in as somebody even from the tender age of 8 when it first was released who realized the whole point of the show was ogling Barbara Eden as much as the mid-60s censors would permit.
I never saw an episode of Dallas but it was pretty obvious the point wasn’t pretty women. So not a show I cared to watch.
Jeanie’s name is … Jeanie. She has no other.