How to handle BBG's departure

[the-lost-son]

The thread about a possible recast for Jock, made me curious how you would have handled BBG's departure after season 6 (DVD 7).

For some input here are some extracts out of Barbara Curran's book:
- Bel Geddes, who had missed the first eleven episodes of season 6 (DVD 7) as a result of her heart surgery, cited personal reasons for her departure.
- The press presumed those reasons had to do with her health and the strain of filming.
- David Paulsen claims the reasons were financial.
- Larry Hagman was shocked by Bel Geddes' exit and confirmed that she felt overworked and underpaid.
- In his biography he wrote that Barbara was following the advice of a business manager, one of those guys who helped her out of a job.
- Phil Capice di not want to leave JR an orphan. Barbara's leaving was a different situation than Jim Davis' death. We couldn't simply eliminate Miss Ellie - she was the only authoritive figure left at Southfork - it would have changed the whole chemistry of the show. Without Mama around JR would have started running wild. We had no good solution to the problem of BBG leaving, we just felt recasting was the lesser of two evils.
- According to Mary Martin (Hagman's mother) she was asked but turned the offer to replace BBG down.
- On June 4, just after the announcement of BBG's departure, Donna Reed signed a 1 year contract.
- In October 1984 Reed's contract was extended through 1987. BBG's departure seemed final to the producers.
- In November Lorimar announced that they would release Tilton at season's end. Shortly after Duffy announced his departure.
- On April 11, 1985 (4 episodes prior Swan Song) BBG's return was announced by Lorimar.
- It's unclear if Capice or BBG initiated negotiations for her return. (Arthur Bernard Lewis and Howard Keel made remarks that BBG saw Donna Reed in her role and wanted to come back.) Hagman had lunch in New York with Bel Geddes unaware that she was already negotiating her return.
- There is consent by various reports (Hagman, Howard, Keel, Reed's family) that Reed was treated shabbily by Lorimar, got news about her release through the press, sued Lorimar, got her money, was termially ill in late1985, died on January 12, 1986 after having phoned with Howard Keel two days prior who was in hospital as well but unaware of her condition.

Sorry for the lenghty post. But how would you have handled BBG's departure which seemed final to the producers. Obviously they realized soon that such an iconic character can hardly be recasted (which probably had an influence in their decision to kill off Bobby instead of recasting him).

One more thing:
I'm sure we can all agree that the only actress to really portray Miss Ellie is Barbara Bel Geddes. According to Jared Martin "The cast had become attached to BBG, who quite frankly, had become the mother of the cast offstage as well as on."
So nobody (neither Mary Martin nor anybody else) could have replaced BBG in that role. In my eyes it was a battle which couldn't have been won by anyone.

So the question to you: how would you have handled BBG's deaprture (knowing that BBG wouldn't come back, therefor Reed's contract extension)?
Would you have written her out despite the effects on the chemistry on the show? Would you have killed her off or send on an extended vacation like they did later?
Would you have recasted her? I can't really see a good solution except a recast. I do not like recasts for major characters, but this time it was probably necessary. Donna Reed did her best and I doubt that anyone else would have fared better.

(Spoiler: to wait for a year for BBG is no option. )

 

[Spooky Owl!]

(Spoiler: to wait for a year for BBG is no option. )

Sorry, but...

I'd put her in a Texas hospital for a while. Bring in Donna Reed if you must -- maybe as Jenna's dithery aunt named "Caroline" who arrives at Southfork in anticipation of her niece marrying Bobby; she flirts with Clayton (which JR encourages) then sticks around for the trial after Naldo dies. If Miss Ellie comes back after they work out the contact details with BBG, then there can either be a geriatric triangle between Ellie/Clayton/Caroline, or Jenna's aunt can just leave.


"What a handsome man -- I wonder who he is...?"

 

[CryptCreeper72]

I would have written her out with an extended illness. The first few episodes I would have had the family comment that Ellie was not feeling well enough to come down for meals and so forth, then I would have put her in the hospital. We could have had the rest of the cast comment about going to visit her and struggle with the emotional impact of her sickness.

 

[the-lost-son]

I would have written her out with an extended illness. The first few episodes I would have had the family comment that Ellie was not feeling well enough to come down for meals and so forth, then I would have put her in the hospital. We could have had the rest of the cast comment about going to visit her and struggle with the emotional impact of her sickness.

Sorry, but...

I'd put her in a Texas hospital for a while. Bring in Donna Reed if you must -- maybe as Jenna's dithery aunt named "Caroline" who arrives at Southfork in anticipation of her niece marrying Bobby; she flirts with Clayton (which JR encourages) then sticks around for the trial after Naldo dies. If Miss Ellie comes back after they work out the contact details with BBG, then there can either be a geriatric triangle between Ellie/Clayton/Caroline, or Jenna's aunt can just leave.

Are you not worried about the chemistry of the show with Miss Ellie gone?
I think there is some truth in Capice's statement:
We couldn't simply eliminate Miss Ellie - she was the only authoritive figure left at Southfork - it would have changed the whole chemistry of the show. Without Mama around JR would have started running wild. We had no good solution to the problem of BBG leaving, we just felt recasting was the lesser of two evils.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

 

[CryptCreeper72]

Are you not worried about the chemistry of the show with Miss Ellie gone?
I think there is some truth in Capice's statement:
We couldn't simply eliminate Miss Ellie - she was the only authoritive figure left at Southfork - it would have changed the whole chemistry of the show. Without Mama around JR would have started running wild. We had no good solution to the problem of BBG leaving, we just felt recasting was the lesser of two evils.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

I don't think the chemistry would have been immediately affected. In my scenario, Mama isn't gone, just sick. JR would still have to deal with her presence, just off camera.

Honestly I would more concerned about destroying the show's chemistry with a bad recast - which is what happened.

 

[Spooky Owl!]

Are you not worried about the chemistry of the show with Miss Ellie gone?

No, because of this:

Honestly I would more concerned about destroying the show's chemistry with a bad recast - which is what happened.

Exactly.

Why sink the ship or fill it with pirates just to get rid of the rats when there aren't any? (Lousy metaphor but that's all I got).

 

[Chris2]

Ellie and Clayton go off on a round-the-world honeymoon. Enter Donna Reed as Aunt Elsie, who comes to stay with the Ewings for a while.

 

[DallasFanForever]

We couldn't simply eliminate Miss Ellie - she was the only authoritive figure left at Southfork - it would have changed the whole chemistry of the show. Without Mama around JR would have started running wild. We had no good solution to the problem of BBG leaving, we just felt recasting was the lesser of two evils.

I do have to question their thinking here. J.R. running wild as opposed to what? Was he not running wild regardless? I don’t see how Miss Ellie ever kept him in line personally, but if this was how they felt then obviously they were painted into a corner and had no choice but to recast. But recasting Miss Ellie would’ve never worked no matter who it was. She was too beloved a character and so was the actress herself. Donna Reed was an academy award winning actress and even that couldn’t work.

As for what I would do, I probably would’ve written Miss Ellie out on an extended leave and not done a recast in this instance. Maybe Donna Reed plays a relative for a season until they can come to terms with BBG. But this thing sounds like it was always destined to be a complete mess no matter what they did.

 

[Guzzler’s Frightening Hair]

Ellie and Clayton go off on a round-the-world honeymoon. Enter Donna Reed as Aunt Elsie, who comes to stay with the Ewings for a while.

add an enigmatic vagabond cowboy named Steven Wayne as the new ranch foreman, played by Steve Forrest. As the season progresses it’s revealed via a mysterious belt buckle that he’s Dusty’s biological father. He becomes Elsie’s love interest but secretly carries on an affair with Jessie Farlow at her sanitarium where they plot dastardly revenge against Clayton and the Ewings.

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

add an enigmatic vagabond cowboy named Steven Wayne as the new ranch foreman, played by Steve Forrest. As the season progresses it’s revealed via a mysterious belt buckle that he’s Dusty’s biological father. He becomes Elsie’s love interest but secretly carries on an affair with Jessie Farlow at her sanitarium where they plot dastardly revenge against Clayton and the Ewings.

I suppose this scenario is also in The under-utilisation of the Dynamic Andy Bradley.

No doubt filed under Roles for Steve Forrest where he isn't revealed as Jock Ewing!

 

[Guzzler’s Frightening Hair]

I suppose this scenario is also in The under-utilisation of the Dynamic Andy Bradley.

No doubt filed under Roles for Steve Forrest where he isn't revealed as Jock Ewing!

note that I didn’t state definitively whether or not he would also be revealed to be Jock Ewing.

Imagine the ensuing season opener, at Bobby’s funeral:

Steven Wayne and Jessie show up suddenly and unexpectedly (in this scenario it hasn’t been revealed yet that he’s Dusty’s father).

“What are you doing here, Wayne? I thought I told you to stay off Southfork!” JR snarls. The foreman had been kicked off the ranch at the end of the previous season for attempting to steal a box of horseshoes.

"Jessie!", Clayton stage-whispers, "Not now!"

“A man has a right to attend his son’s funeral, doesn’t he? That’s right, I’m Jock Ewing! And I’ve come here to see Bobby laid to rest. And to see my fifth son.”

*crowd gasps as camera slowly pans to show Dusty, inexplicably attending the funeral with his ex-wife from the rodeo*

“Dusty… welcome to the family, boy!”

*Clayton and Miss Ellie and Aunt Elsie faint simultaneously*

Just then, the coffin lid flies open and Andy Bradley pops up. “Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he sneers dynamically. “That’s right, I’m not Bobby, and if you want to see him again you’ll do what I say!”

It turns out that Jordan Lee had accidentally gotten a Betamax copy of The Wheeler Dealer from a few seasons prior and, shocked and betrayed, the Cartel decided to kidnap a comatose Bobby from Dallas Memorial Hospital as retribution for JR’s shenanigans. They’d teamed up with Katherine, who wasn’t actually dead, to quickly bribe the doctors and nurses to rig the machines to make it look like Bobby had died.

Jeb Ames and Willie Joe Garr, who had secretly rejoined the Cartel, were somehow involved as well.

And if that weren’t enough…

(oh no, the men in the white coats are here to take me back to Fletcher Sanitarium - gotta go!)

 

[Crimson]

I don’t see how Miss Ellie ever kept him in line personally

I'd say Ellie's importance wasn't keeping anyone in line -- which, with rare exception, she couldn't do -- but keeping the Ewings together. With all of the in-fighting and chaos, any rational person would have moved away, gotten an unlisted number and never saw their family again. Even the pretense of staking claim over Ewing Oil / Southfork only went so far. And that's where the parental figures of Ellie & Jock were so vital: they kept the family together. With Jock gone, it was Ellie's combination of mothering and emotional blackmail that semi-plausibly kept everyone under one roof.

Recasting of major characters never really works, but the best case scenario for a recast would have been an actress of reasonably the same 'type' as BBG and use her in a neutral-impact placeholder capacity. Letting Donna Reed play Ellie in the exact opposite manner than BBG had established was a shockingly bad decision; the first really major misstep that DALLAS had taken to that point.

Sending Ellie away would have been problematic; I never bought that Ellie would leave Texas let alone her beloved Southfork.

I'd put her in a Texas hospital for a while.

And so this is probably the only workable solution. It both explains her absence, and justifies the family staying together: to be near the convalescing (but off screen) Miss Ellie.

 

[Mustard]

Just agree to Barbara's demands. If that's done, she plays Miss Ellie in Season 8 DVD although would appear less often for a while. But didn't they do that with Donna Reed anyway? I heard that they were cutting back on Reed's scenes pretty early on in her tenure.

It's obvious what did happen. Lorimar thought that they'd already been generous enough in allowing Barbara to miss the first 11 episodes of Season 7 DVD, so weren't particularly impressed by Barbara's agent wanting a temporarily reduced schedule alongside a pay rise for his client. Then Lorimar starts thinking of a replacement, and came up with Donna Reed.

I do have to question their thinking here. J.R. running wild as opposed to what? Was he not running wild regardless? I don’t see how Miss Ellie ever kept him in line personally

Remember Season 5 DVD when Cliff had J.R. on the point of utter financial ruin? Who bailed J.R. out? Miss Ellie, almost single handedly. Miss Ellie read the riot act to Cliff, Vaughn Leland, Wade Luce, Andy Bradley, agreed a deal with Clayton for all the crude at the original market price before the oil was stockpiled. J.R.'s financial problems then vanished. His mother saved his ass. Towards the season's end, it's J.R. tormenting Cliff with a fake geological report that bone dry land had oceans of oil, and Cliff attempting suicide. J.R. was in deep, deep trouble if Miss Ellie hadn't bailed him out. I don't see J.R. getting out of it. J.R. bit off far more than he could chew when he started stockpiling all the Farlows' crude in an attempt to force them to evict Sue Ellen and John Ross off of the Southern Cross, only to see the market price of crude fall and fall over the following period.

 

[DallasFanForever]

Remember Season 5 DVD when Cliff had J.R. on the point of utter financial ruin? Who bailed J.R. out? Miss Ellie, almost single handedly. Miss Ellie read the riot act to Cliff, Vaughn Leland, Wade Luce, Andy Bradley, agreed a deal with Clayton for all the crude at the original market price before the oil was stockpiled. J.R.'s financial problems then vanished

All valid points, and I agree with all of it. I’m just looking at it from the standpoint that his running wild all the time was the reason she had to save him. She helped him, yes, and even bailed him out more than once, but I never saw her as keeping him in line though. He was right back to doing the same things the next episode regardless.

 

[A Nightmare on Jimmy Todd Street]

Just agree to Barbara's demands. If that's done, she plays Miss Ellie in Season 8 DVD although would appear less often for a while. But didn't they do that with Donna Reed anyway? I heard that they were cutting back on Reed's scenes pretty early on in her tenure.

It's obvious what did happen. Lorimar thought that they'd already been generous enough in allowing Barbara to miss the first 11 episodes of Season 7 DVD, so weren't particularly impressed by Barbara's agent wanting a temporarily reduced schedule alongside a pay rise for his client. Then Lorimar starts thinking of a replacement, and came up with Donna Reed.


Remember Season 5 DVD when Cliff had J.R. on the point of utter financial ruin? Who bailed J.R. out? Miss Ellie, almost single handedly. Miss Ellie read the riot act to Cliff, Vaughn Leland, Wade Luce, Andy Bradley, agreed a deal with Clayton for all the crude at the original market price before the oil was stockpiled. J.R.'s financial problems then vanished. His mother saved his ass. Towards the season's end, it's J.R. tormenting Cliff with a fake geological report that bone dry land had oceans of oil, and Cliff attempting suicide. J.R. was in deep, deep trouble if Miss Ellie hadn't bailed him out. I don't see J.R. getting out of it. J.R. bit off far more than he could chew when he started stockpiling all the Farlows' crude in an attempt to force them to evict Sue Ellen and John Ross off of the Southern Cross, only to see the market price of crude fall and fall over the following period.

Miss Ellie also showed up at John Ross' custody hearing. When JR saw her slip into the back of the court he told his lawyer to 86 his plan to dredge up any sordid details to malign Sue Ellen.

 

[Monzo]

I think everything was done right. In season 14, Miss Ellie was able to travel because she was much more relaxed with her family. Until the end of season 7 she tried to keep everything under control (in a good way), so it wouldn't have worked if she suddenly wanted to explore the world in season 8.

I wasn't aware that Charlene Tilton was fired before Patrick Duffy quit. Were there any thoughts of keeping Lucy after that? Her love comeback with Mitch was a story that span just a few episodes, writers could have just deleted the plot, Lucy would have had nothing to do for the rest of the season after her love affair with Eddie was done and got a new story in season 9.

 

[ClassyCo]

The easiest explanation would've been to write Miss Ellie (and possibly Clayton) out for a little while. The two were newlyweds, and the writers could've sent them on an extended vacation, and maybe the other characters could've spoken with them over the phone --- unseen, of course. This would've allowed for enough time to pass for the producers to iron any issues with Barbara Bel Geddes, and it would've also given Howard Keel a little time off to rest or seek out any other possible work, albeit temporarily.

I don't know how well it would've worked (recast or not) for Clayton to come back without Miss Ellie. I feel like the audience wouldn't have accepted that well, and for me, it would've felt a little odd. I suppose writing Miss Ellie into a hospital would've sufficed, and in that case, you could've used Clayton only occasionally because he would've been gone sometimes to make sure his new bride was doing well at the hospital. Other characters could've also taken trips to visit Miss Ellie, but the character herself just wouldn't've been seen on camera.

In either situation, I wouldn't have recast Miss Ellie with Donna Reed. Like others have said, if they had to bring Reed on board, then she could've played another character. I don't precisely know who I would've cast Reed as, but I like the idea of her stirring up some trouble with Clayton and Miss Ellie. A love triangle between older characters would've been a nice little change of pace. Once Bel Geddes came back, in this case, Reed could've lingered for a while, and tried to woo Clayton away from Miss Ellie. Of course, Clayton wouldn't bite, and eventually Reed could've flew back to whichever TV land city she came from and, of course, never been referenced again.

 

[Piggyrella Sanderson]

I would have sat in front of BBG, and I´d have asked her: "How would YOU like to say goodbye to Miss Ellie?" I know she didn´t complain in the latter years, but maybe she did have some ideas of her own. At least, a chance to win another Emmy. What if the cancer returned? What about a mini-arc in "Knots Landing", or bring Gary for it? Some kind of pre-will storyline à la battle for Ewing Oil, before she decides who to leave what? The producers and writers used to rehash a lot of stories so I don´t know why these things couldn´t be done.

Or maybe a lesbian twin sister?​

 

[Luke_Krebbs_Ewing]

I would have sat in front of BBG, and I´d have asked her: "How would YOU like to say goodbye to Miss Ellie?" I know she didn´t complain in the latter years, but maybe she did have some ideas of her own. At least, a chance to win another Emmy. What if the cancer returned? What about a mini-arc in "Knots Landing", or bring Gary for it? Some kind of pre-will storyline à la battle for Ewing Oil, before she decides who to leave what? The producers and writers used to rehash a lot of stories so I don´t know why these things couldn´t be done.

View attachment 40039View attachment 40040

Or maybe a lesbian twin sister?​

A lesbian twin sister but Bette Davis was probably dead by this point unless they got Joan Crawford instead who was probably dead as well.

 

[DallasFanForever]

A lesbian twin sister but Bette Davis was probably dead by this point unless they got Joan Crawford instead who was probably dead as well.

Yes, both were dead by this point so casting them would’ve been difficult