1984-85: A season of decline

[Jock's Ghost]

You say you would've added Jason Ewing to the show.

Would you have cast Steve Forrest in that role or used another actor instead?

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Yep... made more sense than resurrecting Jock, although I would have been ok with that...

Also Clayton needed the boot... he's a smug interloper as JR said.

Me too. It would've been a vast improvement of the character. Some of those plotlines would've went over better like Jenna in jail. Presley just isn't convincing. Never should've been cast.


Couldn't stand him ...like nails on a chalkboard.

Bobby should've knocked him out cold when he went to see Pam at the hotel and Mark shows up with flowers.



It was serviceable but they simply took it too far. She was boiling bunnies there towards the end.

You're right...not enough feuding between her, Pam, and Cliff over Wentworth. Katherine was in the right on this...she was far more deserving than the other two.

It was like they mocked Katherine... didnt take her resentment seriously.

 

[kenneth]

Another problem was prime time soaps at this time having far too many episodes per season resulting in dragging storylines.

 

[Jock Ewing Fan]

Also Clayton needed the boot... he's a smug interloper as JR said.

JR was right especially when Miss Ellie gave Clayton half of SF. If Miss Ellie predeceased Clayton, the Ewing sons would have no claim to the property. It was a property that Jock saved for the Southworths, and developed into a profitable ranch. It was extremely disrespectful to Jock, and Bobby should have supported JR's objections.

 

[Crimson]

Nobody disputes the quality of Donna Reed’s work.

I do! Donna Reed was a lovely actress with a great career, but she was both miscast and did a poor job as Ellie. An actor's job is to interpret a character from page to screen and she did it incorrectly.

I said what I said.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I do! Donna Reed was a lovely actress with a great career, but she was both miscast and did a poor job as Ellie. An actor's job is to interpret a character from page to screen and she did it incorrectly.

I said what I said.

Donna Reed was, let's face it, a more superficial actress. Just look at her "Oscar winning" role in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (Sinatra's Academy Award-winning performance isn't that great either). It's nothing to write home about. It's just a Golden Age actress playing a refined hooker lady, and what's wrong with that?

But can you imagine Reed smashing plates in the Southfork kitchen on her knees? (Not that I'm really all that fond of the scene).

Sure, Reed had (as Paulsen pointed out) more of the "look" of a Texas oil baron's wife, right down to the bouffant and highfalutin' wardrobe. But she wasn't Miss Ellie.

As has been said before, Donna Reed could never be as warm -- or as cold -- as Barbara Bel Geddes.

 

[Crimson]

Donna Reed was, let's face it, a more superficial actress.

Right. Donna was a lovely film & television star, but a very conventional actress. Even setting aside the very big concerns that she was both miscast and misconceived the character, her actual performance was not good. Her acting on DALLAS was hollow.

I think people around here lean towards being too decorous when discussing Reed's performance on DALLAS, presumably residual sympathy over her firing. Her circumstances on DALLAS were unfortunate; she appears to have been treated poorly by the producers and possibly the cast. That's irrelevant when looking at her work. The ghost of Donna Reed isn't going to be offended by critiquing a performance she gave four decades ago.

 

[LMLDallas78]

Did Donna Reed just waltz on to set and declare, this is how I'm playing Miss Ellie? Did Donna have that much authority and clout that the show makers just said, yes play it your way, crack on!
Donna was not solely responsible for not playing Miss Ellie like Miss Ellie. What guidance was she given?

I was always under the impression that to take on another actors role for the same character would require some homework and knowing your subject. In this case not just an oil barons wife but Miss Eleanor Southworth Ewing who we all knew and most of us loved. Was Ms Reed ever told, well that's not really Miss Ellie you're portraying? Were they just grateful they had someone on board willing to take on such an impossible task?

Did Donna herself demand to dress SO differently? Did she even try to mirror any mannerisms or wasn't that deemed necessary?
Would it have made a difference?

It's all been said before how badly Donna Reed was treated. A fine actress she may have been but Miss Ellie she was not and never could be, no one could probably.

I hope the ghost of Donna Reed won't be offended even after all these years, that would give me no pleasure but also doesn't stop me from feeling able to critisise in a constructive way.

Yes her portrayal of Miss Ellie was poor but the fact that portrayal was screened was beyond the depths of poor.

 

[Seaviewer]

I still like my "Jenna's aunt" scenario: flirting with Clayton and appearing while Miss Ellie is recuperating at the Takapa Smoker's Mental Ward off-camera; once Bobby's dead, and BBG's contract issues are fixed, Reed exits stage left...

That would only work if it was known that BBG would be returning. Now, you might say they should have planned for that and I wouldn't disagree but that's not how it was at the time.

 

[Mustard]

As has been said before, Donna Reed could never be as warm -- or as cold -- as Barbara Bel Geddes.

It's hard to imagine Donna Reed doing the bit where Miss Ellie was fuming with Susan Howard's character Donna over the Jock Ewing/Jonas Culver thing in her book. It was a chilling coldness towards a person that she was usually so nice to. Miss Ellie hadn't accepted Jock's death in her mind at the time, not really. She seemed to be "getting over it" by pretending that Jock was still away down in South America or something, and when reality did hit her, then came that kitchen scene where she broke down.

 

[Mustard]

Did Donna Reed just waltz on to set and declare, this is how I'm playing Miss Ellie? Did Donna have that much authority and clout that the show makers just said, yes play it your way, crack on! Donna was not solely responsible for not playing Miss Ellie like Miss Ellie. What guidance was she given?

I assume that Donna would play it her way, and the brass would let her get on with it. You can't really tell a new actor taking on an established role to imitate his or her predecessor.

I was always under the impression that to take on another actors role for the same character would require some homework and knowing your subject. In this case not just an oil barons wife but Miss Eleanor Southworth Ewing who we all knew and most of us loved. Was Ms Reed ever told, well that's not really Miss Ellie you're portraying? Were they just grateful they had someone on board willing to take on such an impossible task?

Perhaps they didn't know the subtleties of Miss Ellie's character to the dynamics of making Dallas a huge success. There are some people on these forums, for example, who think Miss Ellie is a pretty minor character who the viewers didn't really care about, or who share the view of Barbara's Miss Ellie as what Donna Reed had at the time, i.e. she doesn't look or seem like an oil baron's wife from Texas, while Donna Reed's Miss Ellie actually looks the part. They are missing the point, and basically killed the Ewing vs. Southworth conflict and dynamic in the show.

Did Donna herself demand to dress SO differently? Did she even try to mirror any mannerisms or wasn't that deemed necessary?
Would it have made a difference?

I think Donna did remark that she wanted to look the part a lot more, i.e. of an oil baron's wife. I think it made Miss Ellie much more one dimensional and certainly with a lot less emotion, in a way that goes beyond acting.

It's all been said before how badly Donna Reed was treated. A fine actress she may have been but Miss Ellie she was not and never could be, no one could probably.

I hope the ghost of Donna Reed won't be offended even after all these years, that would give me no pleasure but also doesn't stop me from feeling able to critisise in a constructive way.

Yes her portrayal of Miss Ellie was poor but the fact that portrayal was screened was beyond the depths of poor.

The whole thing was a mess at the time. Reed sued Lorimar after getting sacked, even trying to close down the production of scenes involving the Miss Ellie character (which failed), and she and got an out-of-court settlement, but tragically passed away a few months later.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I hate to be snooty-snobby, and there are very fine film actors who've done nothing else, but it was obvious Bel Geddes had done tons of stage work over the decades and could "go deeper" in realizing a character. I don't know if Donna Reed ever did Broadway or off-Broadway or the school play, but I seriously doubt she could have played Miss Ellie any differently.

Reed was a strictly "can-I-get-you-more-coffee-dear?" kind of performer. Such that they started writing to her -- when did they ever ask Bel Geddes to say "dear" ?? If she had, it would have sounded sarcastic or even threatening.

 

[Crimson]

Reed was a strictly "can-I-get-you-more-coffee-dear?" kind of performer.

The most succinct description was the TV critic in the mid-80s who said Reed played Miss Ellie like a "PTA chairwoman". Even if I were receptive to Ellie being played like an Oil Baron's wife, rather than rancher's daughter, what about Reed's performance is particularly indicative of an Oil Baron's wife? Big hair? She's basically just Donna Stone moved to Texas.

Re-casting Miss Ellie was a terrible idea, but if it had to be done there were actresses of the era at least associated with melodramas or Westerns who could have brought the appropriate vibe. Oil baron's wife or rancher's daughter, Ellie certainly wasn't the suburban wife-next-door.

 

[Mustard]

I hate to be snooty-snobby, and there are very fine film actors who've done nothing else, but it was obvious Bel Geddes had done tons of stage work over the decades and could "go deeper" in realizing a character. I don't know if Donna Reed ever did Broadway or off-Broadway or the school play, but I seriously doubt she could have played Miss Ellie any differently.

Reed was a strictly "can-I-get-you-more-coffee-dear?" kind of performer. Such that they started writing to her -- when did they ever ask Bel Geddes to say "dear" ?? If she had, it would have sounded sarcastic or even threatening.

Pam said "Dear" sarcastically at the end of a sentence to Sue Ellen at one point in one of the early episodes, clearly mocking Sue Ellen's barely concealed hint of snobbery towards Pam.

 

[Mustard]

The most succinct description was the TV critic in the mid-80s who said Reed played Miss Ellie like a "PTA chairwoman". Even if I were receptive to Ellie being played like an Oil Baron's wife, rather than rancher's daughter, what about Reed's performance is particularly indicative of an Oil Baron's wife? Big hair? She's basically just Donna Stone moved to Texas.

The look and clothes, deferring to Clayton on more occasions and having ranching purely as a distant past heritage.

Barbara's Miss Ellie dressed down a lot more, argued her corner most times and sometimes was determined to get her own way, and a rancher's daughter was her first and most important identity even as she took a lot of the Ewing qualities too.

I thought Donna as Miss Ellie was okay, but she was never going to be better than okay, and I think the main reason was how Donna interpreted the character of Miss Ellie and the more limitations as a result. Barbara's Miss Ellie took bits of different philosophies, like once being Digger's girlfriend, married Jock for business reasons to save Southfork and then worked on their marriage, taking bits of the Ewing outlook but always remaining true to the Southworth traditions of the land, and this results in harder and deeper emotions across the spectrum. Pam has similar in being a Barnes, who as a teenager hated the Ewings more than Cliff, and she later married a Ewing. In their younger years, while Cliff worked hard to become a lawyer and dreamed of holding the Ewings to account, Pam was engaging in vandalism of Ewing property and getting away with it. This flipped later so that Pam became a Ewing and saw the Barnes-Ewing feud as childish and silly, while Cliff became increasingly bitter as he kept being bested by J.R. Ewing. These dynamics all made Dallas tick as a show for years and years.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

It's all such a shame. At one point, I would never have thought DALLAS would have deteriorated as egregiously as it did. It was so right-headed for a time (thanks, probably, to Paulsen and maybe a couple of others). The drawn-out death it experienced over the last-half of its run was quite a shock.

In early 1984, I even made, by hand, a miniature Southfork that sits on the top shelf of my study even to this day, forty years later. (I wish I could find some old photos, but they're buried away someplace, and I'm not sure where).

O how the mighty fell.

So I have to be satisfied with windy images like these (it looks suspiciously like the white clapboard exterior of the house has been replaced -- or covered -- by tacky aluminum siding, with the corner tabs torn-off by the traffic):

 

[Slugworth]

In early 1984, I even made, by hand, a miniature Southfork that sits on the top shelf of my study even to this day, forty years later.

That's awesome.

In 1985, my 5th grade class was studying the Spanish missions in California. Our final project for the class was we had to pick a mission and build it with sugar cubes.

After doing it, my mom had bought so many sugar cubes for the project I wound up also building a sugar cube Southfork...a very crude, basic version of Southfork.

 

[Rove]

Dallas was an ensemble but not all had the same appeal, and it is not reality to suggest otherwise.

Of course not all had the same appeal and JR was the standout character but when those key characters which made up that ensemble began to leave even JR became a shadow of his former self.

 

[Jimmy Todd]

JR was the breakout star and Larry Hagman was brilliant. However, when it comes to such characters it's important to remember that it's not just them individually that makes them great no matter how good they are. It's also the chemistry and interactions they have with the other actors. Dallas would not have been the phenomenon it was without JR and Larry, but it also would not have been a phenomenon without the other members of the original cast. They all helped make JR the "man we love to hate," in a way other actor's would not have been able to do.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

To his credit, Larry conceded that the audience cares about the entire ensemble.

Fortunately for Larry, the executives didn't know that come time for his salary renegotiations.

 

[LMLDallas78]

when did they ever ask Bel Geddes to say "dear" ??

She did a couple of times actually and it was said without being sarcastic or threatening, much the same as "that girl" as said by Donna and before her Barbara.

Unfortunately for Donna her line delivery always sounded forced and like she was simply.....reading her lines.