Dallas Character Jock's Death

Swellin

Swellin

Telly Talk Active Member
I'm currently re-watching Season 5. Did anyone find the way they handled Jock's South America and death just a little silly. With letters and phone calls trying to keep him alive. Do you think that as a cliffhanger for Season 4 they saw on the news that the plane Jock and Ellie were in on their honeymoon crashed. Then in Season 5 opening we learn Jock died but Miss Ellie survived.
 
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Jabari Lamar

Telly Talk Fan
Everyone's a Monday Morning Quarterback (or I guess in this case I should say a Monday Morning Screenwriter). As is the case with most of these types of frequent critiques, be it how they handled replacing Barbara Bel Geddes, Bobby's death and return, the exit of Pam, even Conundrum, it's relatively easy to look back with years (nay, decades) of hindsight and say "they should have just done ____ instead and that would have been better." I'm sure the death was somewhat unexpected, they needed to keep the show going with as minimal rewrites to existing scripts as possible, until they were able to figure out the best way to address Jim Davis' death on the show. Keeping Jock alive but off-screen for awhile was probably the best way to do that at the time. And, in my opinion, when they did address it, I think they handled it perfectly, both with the disappearance and the sons going to search for him, until they confirmed his death and then lead to the reading of his Will and the contest for control of Ewing Oil.
 
darkshadows38

darkshadows38

Telly Talk Star
yes i do find it a rather silly that they waited until they wrote it that way. while it's quite sad of course that he passed away at all i don't think they should have waited. why not just be honest with the audience and when he's weak during his least season just write in the cancer subplot? or not not have him go through treatment on the show just have him i dunno maybe have a heart attack if not cancer? it's better than waiting until the end of the season
 
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DallasFanForever

Telly Talk Supreme
Swellin said:
I'm currently re-watching Season 5. Did anyone find the way they handled Jock's South America and death just a little silly. With letters and phone calls trying to keep him alive. Do you think that as a cliffhanger for Season 4 they saw on the news that the plane Jock and Ellie were in on their honeymoon crashed. Then in Season 5 opening we learn Jock died but Miss Ellie survived.
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I wasn’t a fan of the way they kept him alive with the letters and phone calls either. It felt kind of weird to me to watch this knowing that he had already died.

I’m assuming that since he died so close to the end of the previous season they probably weren’t sure how they were going to handle it yet, and rightfully so. Losing one of the main characters of a hit show so early on had to be difficult to work around.
 
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Chris2

Telly Talk Dream Maker
They did suspect Jim Davis’ death was coming. However, the scripts were done far in advance, and the producers were keeping Jock in the scripts so that they could send them to Davis in the hospital and assure him that he was still part of the show. I think that’s lovely.

When Davis passed away in the spring of 1981, it was easiest to remove Jock from the already-written scripts by saying that he was away, and then deal with his death later in the season in the newer scripts. I also think it was a bit awkward and it would have been better to have Jock pass away from a heart attack. But they wanted to leave the door open in case they wanted to do a recast later on. Too bad they didn’t take the same care with Bobby’s death.
 
darkshadows38

darkshadows38

Telly Talk Star
i'm glad he able to finally find fame so late in his life though he was good in the role but that Bette Davis film was it June Bride (1948) that film was not only awful but he was simply dreadful in it too.
 
tommie

tommie

Telly Talk Hero
Via The Void said:
Jim passed away whilst Lorimar was still filming season four.
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4x23 aired on May 1st, 1981 and Jim passed away less than a week before than (April 26th, 1981), so I doubt they were still filming season four when he passed away. Obviously they knew he was in bad condition when they filmed the last two episodes though.
 
Barbara Fan

Barbara Fan

Admin
Jim Davis died during a break in the filming and S3 original had ended for the season

Larry Hagman was in Scotland on a holiday at the time Jim Davis died, there was lots of JR in the local press and he was staying in a hotel less than 15 miles from where lived. I was at school and plagued my dad to take me to the hotel (bit out in the sticks and not on a bus/train route) and he wouldnt!
I was so miffed! :(

Over the weekend it was announced that Jim Davis had surgery for an ulcer - then a few days later it was announced he had died.

I thought the way they wrote him out was perfect and they didnt rush it - and The Search was a fitting tribute to hime
 
stevew

stevew

Telly Talk Star
Jabari Lamar said:
Everyone's a Monday Morning Quarterback (or I guess in this case I should say a Monday Morning Screenwriter). As is the case with most of these types of frequent critiques, be it how they handled replacing Barbara Bel Geddes, Bobby's death and return, the exit of Pam, even Conundrum, it's relatively easy to look back with years (nay, decades) of hindsight and say "they should have just done ____ instead and that would have been better." I'm sure the death was somewhat unexpected, they needed to keep the show going with as minimal rewrites to existing scripts as possible, until they were able to figure out the best way to address Jim Davis' death on the show. Keeping Jock alive but off-screen for awhile was probably the best way to do that at the time. And, in my opinion, when they did address it, I think they handled it perfectly, both with the disappearance and the sons going to search for him, until they confirmed his death and then lead to the reading of his Will and the contest for control of Ewing Oil.
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I agree to a point - but BBG replacement and the dream season were well deserved criticisms. Those two I am stunned a whole lot of people on staff didn't say WTF are you crazy. Just let Clayton and Miss Ellie go on a trip somewhere. Replacing here is STUPID. Then with Bobby, I can't imagine people didn't laugh and then go, "oh you're serious." Pam was different, thinking, would she come back? It was a mess by then anyway. But I agree with your point, that in hindsight we can pick apart anything and I also agree I liked the way they handled Jock's death. I just wish more had come of it over the years, maybe something to do with Venezuela and the government and Russia's involvement - lots there they could have mined.
 
stevew

stevew

Telly Talk Star
Barbara Fan said:
Jim Davis died during a break in the filming and S3 original had ended for the season

Larry Hagman was in Scotland on a holiday at the time Jim Davis died, there was lots of JR in the local press and he was staying in a hotel less than 15 miles from where lived. I was at school and plagued my dad to take me to the hotel (bit out in the sticks and not on a bus/train route) and he wouldnt!
I was so miffed! :(

Over the weekend it was announced that Jim Davis had surgery for an ulcer - then a few days later it was announced he had died.

I thought the way they wrote him out was perfect and they didnt rush it - and The Search was a fitting tribute to hime
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I felt the same way. Yes we knew he was gone while watching it, so yes there was no mystery of him dying at some point (I never thought for one second they'd replace him but I was a kid). Still the difficulty letting go, the search, the will, the competition - in someway it kept Jock alive a good long time. It was one of my objections to JR's death - it was so quick. Yes they didn't have as much time but they could have worked out a better plan, maybe John Ross getting years of letters written to teach him. As JR set the moment of his death he certainly could have prepared better. And his master piece, including putting Ryland behind bars and it not sticking, all seemed a part of just moving on from JR way to quickly. I appreciated how original Dallas handled Jock's death even if there was something of a oddity to holding on for big at first.
 
Billy Wall

Billy Wall

Telly Talk Dream Maker
stevew said:
I agree to a point - but BBG replacement and the dream season were well deserved criticisms. Those two I am stunned a whole lot of people on staff didn't say WTF are you crazy. Just let Clayton and Miss Ellie go on a trip somewhere. Replacing here is STUPID
Click to expand...

The only issue with that is, is that fair to Howard Keel?
 
Miss Texas 1967

Miss Texas 1967

Telly Talk Addict
I actually liked it, it felt to me like they took their time deciding what to do with the character and spinning unfortunate real life circumstances into good storytelling. The fight for Ewing Oil was a great plot within the show and I think came at the right time. Earlier and you'd have just come off the back of Bobby playing president and us seeing what that did to his character. I liked too that although Clayton and Jock never met, Clayton was around early enough that he wasn't introduced as merely a replacement for the patriarch character.
 
Toni

Toni

Maximum Member
Upon Ms. Curran´s book, the flashback of Kristin´s death was filmed once the previous season´s filming was over. As you all know, Mary, Linda and Victoria did the "Dead Woman Pool Splash", so to say. Then, in "spring of 1981", they started shooting the rest of that scene (Cliff and JR with the police at Southfork) and, probably, other interiors. There were a few exterior scenes obviously filmed in Texas in that episode, so considering all the dates we have, strictly, Mr. Davis passed away a few days after they returned to Texas after the hiatus. Funnily enough, that season featured a lot of exterior Texan scenes, more frequent than in previous seasons. And let´s not forget the Southern Cross...

I´d say they didn´t actually know how to handle it so they used the South America trip and the letters. Maybe (I´m speculating here) Mrs. Davis didn´t like their first ideas (whatever they might have been) and it took them longer to find the right way: the helicopter crash and the tribute to Jim Davis. Some people have also mentioned that a couple of actors refused to take Jock´s role (but I find the recasting route unlikely).
 
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Chris2

Telly Talk Dream Maker
They couldn’t kill him off at the beginning of the season. Davis hadn’t passed away when the scripts for the first part of the season were being written. That’s why they went with the trip to South America. They weren’t going to rip up everything they already had planned; TV shows are shot on too tight a schedule to allow for that. They knew that Davis wasn’t coming back and that they would have to write out the character at midseason.
 
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