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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kenny Coyote" data-source="post: 159050" data-attributes="member: 102">To me it's not surprising. Technically Dallas wasn't a soap at all when it began because it had self contained episodes. Sometimes they had two part stories that concluded in a second episode. Eventually they stopped having the stories that started and ended within one or two episodes. Yesterday, the next line I typed would be "After a few years they turned it into a soap opera."Today, after reading your post, I'm more inclined to describe it this way: They moved away from the self-contained episode format and they turned it into a serialized western saga. That what it was. It's fine to call it a primetime soap opera instead, but I think  "a serialized western saga" is at least as good a description. I love shows and movies about families so a western saga about 3 generations of a family in the ranching and oil businesses felt like it had been tailor made for me.To me that makes Dallas uniquely American among the primetime soaps even though they were all American made. It's no wonder they cast actors who had acted in western movies. That was a brilliant casting decision. For the benefit of our international forum members, The U.S.A. raised the generations that grew up in the middle 20th century on westerns! There is no movie star who is a bigger American icon than John Wayne. He made some movies which weren't westerns but westerns were how he made his name and what he was most closely associated with.Americans, at least back when Dallas aired, had been raised on western movies and western TV shows like Gunsmoke. The western is deeply embedded in our culture. One of my favorite games to play with my friends when I was a little boy was "Cowboys and Indians." I had a cowboy outfit and I had an indian outfit as well. I read books about indians. I knew the names of almost all the indian tribes and a bunch of other information. They fascinated me. So did cowboys. I remember begging my parents to take me to the rodeo when it came to town one year when I was around 7 years old. It was amazing! I enjoyed the rodeo as much or more than the circus. I remember trying to learn to lasso things with a rope. That's hard to do! I had a toy bow and arrow I loved playing with and a good collection of toy guns. I especially loved cap guns. My favorite Tv show at that age was "The Lone Ranger." I don't know if they still show that on Saturday mornings or not.So when we saw the Ewings running a ranch, doing the things that cowboys do, wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots, getting into fistfights, even if we didn't consciously think of it this way, it reminded us of great childhood memories. It had enough of the western in it that it was equally appealing to men and women. This helped Dallas stand out compared to other soaps. The rugged western feel of it attracted men and women of all ages which gave it the best, widest demographics any studio or network could hope for!</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?