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Leonard Katzman; like him or loathe him?

LMLDallas78

LMLDallas78

Telly Talk Enthusiast
Leonard Katzman has often been described as the genius behind Dallas, but was he?
He's been described as many things, some of them derogatory. How do we know these things about him? Or was it just down to his writing?
I've drawn my own conclusions about him from various books I've read and interviews I've seen as well as watching Dallas with older eyes.
It appears he was loved by some cast members (mainly male) And maybe not so loved by others.
So was he the genius behind Dallas? Or was he the real one we love to hate? Or just hate?
 
Snarky Oracle!

Snarky Oracle!

Telly Talk Supreme
I do kind of wish he'd stubbed his toe around 1988, leaving someone else to run the show while he simply "consults" -- and that someone else would not be Howard Lakin.
 
LMLDallas78

LMLDallas78

Telly Talk Enthusiast
Garry

Garry

Telly Talk Fan
Snarky Oracle said:
I do kind of wish he'd stubbed his toe around 1988, leaving someone else to run the show while he simply "consults" -- and that someone else would not be Howard Lakin.
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A producer on the show did admit that by 1988 Mr Katzman was creatively dried up. But he did eat and breathe Dallas for seven years in a row, and rather successfully.
 
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Luke_Krebbs_Ewing

Luke_Krebbs_Ewing

Telly Talk Champion
LMLDallas78 said:
Didn't mean to repeat it, I did a search on past threads and that one didn't show. I'll enjoy reading that and hope for some posts that didn't take part back then.
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You will find it an eye opener as reference is made to a certain someone who acted as an unpaid Executive Story Consultant on the TNT Dallas series. Cidre tried to get storyline ideas out of him but he later got frustrated with her and subsequently told her: " Kiss my little black butt Cidre!" :)
 
J

Jock Ewing Fan

Telly Talk Star
I respect what he has accomplished

From Wikipedia,
...He started out on adventure movie serials such as Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945), Superman (1948), Batman and Robin (1949), The Great Adventures of Captain Kidd (1951), Riding with Buffalo Bill (1954), et al.[1] During the 1950s he continued working as assistant director, mostly with his uncle, in feature films such as A Yank in Korea (1951), The Giant Claw (1957), Face of a Fugitive (1959) and Angel Baby (1961). Besides his big screen work, Katzman also served on television shows, including The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, The Mickey Rooney Show and Bat Masterson.

In 1960, Katzman made his production debut, serving not only as assistant director, but also as associate producer, on all four seasons of adventure drama Route 66 (1960-1964), which he would later regard as his favorite production.[1] His additional early work in television production (and occasional writing and directing) includes shows crime drama Tallahassee 7000 (1961), western drama The Wild Wild West (1965-1969), the second season of crime drama Hawaii Five-O (1969-1970), legal drama Storefront Lawyers (1970-1971), the final five seasons of western drama Gunsmoke (1970-1975) as well as its spinoff series Dirty Sally (1974), legal drama Petrocelli (1974-1976) for which he was nominated an Edgar Allan Poe Award, and the two science fiction dramas The Fantastic Journey (1977) and Logan's Run (1977-1978). In 1965, he wrote, produced and directed the science fiction film Space Probe Taurus (also known as Space Monster). Aside from his work as assistant director, this was his only venture into feature films."

This was all prior to Dallas

I liked his work on Gunsmoke

Dallas was certainly not as good seasons 11-14. All of that can not be attributed to Katzman, as a result of reduced budgets, the departure of major actors/actresses and the increased power of Hagman and Duffy in the show's content. Maybe Dallas had just run its course and audiences lost interest.
I think that the show could have been better with better scripts, better stories but we will never know
 
Snarky Oracle!

Snarky Oracle!

Telly Talk Supreme
Jock Ewing Fan said:
I liked his work on Gunsmoke
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Yes, it was good.

Jock Ewing Fan said:
Dallas was certainly not as good seasons 11-14. All of that can not be attributed to Katzman, as a result of reduced budgets, the departure of major actors/actresses and the increased power of Hagman and Duffy in the show's content. Maybe Dallas had just run its course and audiences lost interest.
I think that the show could have been better with better scripts, better stories but we will never know
Click to expand...

Budgets and audience fatigue don't have to hurt the writing, which became increasingly tone deaf... Why is the matriarch cut back to almost nothing? Only silly in-and-out girlfriends were allowed after a while, in terms of female roles.

That's not the fault of reduced money, or the return of sitcoms, or reduced viewer interest due to age and time.

I'll say it again: post-Paulsen's exit, Katzman couldn't do the show by himself -- and Art Lewis and Howard Lakin weren't gonna help much.
 
the-lost-son

the-lost-son

Telly Talk Well-Known Member
Katzman's only work I know is Dallas. There is a highly recommended interview of David Paulsen from 2008 (https://web.archive.org/web/2018121...dallas.com/dallasinterviews/davidpaulsen.html) in which he described the creative control of Dallas as a very tiny group with Katzman at the top (in contrast to KL where David Jacobs ran things differently with more people involved).

So most of Dallas' success and its failures have to be attributed to Katzman.
During his first years there were fundamental decisions taken which made Dallas the icon we remember:
- Recognizing the potential of JR and making him the center of the show
- Recognizing the potential of at first secondary character SueEllen and giving her room and material to work with.
- the serial, ongoing format
and among others my personal no.1:
- creating a year-long fabulous storyline when a major character died (Jock) instead of taking the usual trodden path of just giving MissEllie another love interest after +/- 10 episodes (which seemed standard procedure at that time).

In regards to his 2nd stint, "dried-up" is the right word to describe it. Sometimes you get a rare glimpse of what was still possible. For example making this Wes Parmalee storyline work which on paper sounds far-fetched and convoluted (X-rays, fevers and lie detectors). One has to wonder why he did not care for a proper solution to bring Bobby back.

The problem with the last 4 years is the writing, additionally with cast exodus descreasing production values etc., but in the end it all comes down to the writing.

The days are gone when a season is closed with a cliffhanger which brings the season full circle (eg. Ewing inferno, Bobby shot, Swan Song). Now things just happen without rhyme or reason - JR shot by SueEllen, SueEllen in a movie theater, JR in the sanatorium and the series' finale. It feels like scenes or short-term storylines happen out of the blue and are just added to the last season's episode - addmitedly with some shock value - but without any longterm effect on the following season - just like Bobby in the shower.
 
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