What is the timeline for William Smithers? When did he want the raise? When I read through the rumors surrounding William Smithers, it seems to me that he was written out quite spontaneously, although the plot of Jeremy Wendell in season 12 seemed well thought out to me. He was needed for a little plot involving Sue Ellen that was used to bring Sue Ellen and Don closer together, but shouldn't the real shock be that the Ewings' new neighbor Carter McKay will be Weststar's new CEO? What else should George Kennedy be hired for? Should he just live in Ray's house after this little neighborhood war and that's it? Looking back, Jeremy Wendell's return always seemed like only an intended short-term return to me.
Smithers said in an interview years later that Larry said to him one day that Smithers received the most fan mail of any guest star and the he "should do something about that," which Smithers thought meant go-for-a-raise. While Telepictures was cutting back. Smithers took the bait and was written out almost immediately.
Longterm-planning made Dallas great. I have a feeling that the producers had the image of a burning Southfork in mind when they started the fight over EwingOil.
Long-term planning in its best years. Paulsen's sense of narrative irony (e.g., JR going south, Bobby going north, during the fight over the will; the family home consumed in hellfire, et al) was brilliant in its best years. But the show's other "head writers" -- Art Lewis, Howard Lakin, and even Katzman himself -- couldn't do what Paulsen could do.
They could sometimes write good individual character-based scripts, but they lack Paulsen's skill at long-term narrative construction. And once Paulsen was gone in 1988, DALLAS quickly stumbled and never got up. (Even Paulsen's last season was overly-flawed in terms of pacing, because they'd had not the usual spring hiatus planning time).
Fortunately, Katzman seemed to be smart enough to recognize Paulsen's abilities.
Obviously the show suffered from lack of gravitas in the end and never thought about ending the show appropriately.
Post-WSJR?, Katzman could never really do the show without Paulsen. And didn't.
You say long term planning, but the Who shot J.R...? plot was developed in a matter of hours when extra shows were ordered and execs just said "Let's just shoot the bastard" = "we'll work out who did it later"= and we all know how that turned out.
Yes, but that was at the end of the season, and CBS asked for -- unexpectedly -- two additional episodes because the ratings had surged.
Why exactly would LH do this? What did he have against Smithers?
Also, why would they fire him as opposed to telling him to take it or leave it?
We'll probably never know for sure what Larry's intentions were, but Smithers seemed to feel he'd taken the bait that Larry'd handed him.
What LH wanted he usually got, they were so terrified of losing him, he was allowed to call the shots, probably had some dislike for William Smithers for one reason or another, would love to know.
Maybe Smithers was turning out to be a better baddie, a genuine real baddie that might've equalled JR's likeable baddie.
Yes, we all know there was more than a little JR in Larry -- even Larry occasionally admitted as much. If Larry felt, subjectively, that Wendell was too much of a match for JR, it's quite possible that, as insecure/egoistic as some actors are, that he might have wanted that competition off the show, despite the fact that the very idea that Katzman might sideline JR in favor of Wendell is obviously laughable to us.
Just as Joan Collins wanting Kate O'Mara gone from DYNASTY, which O'Mara believed was true, is silly. But Joan may have felt another brunette Brit -- one who was far lesser-paid -- might usurp her position on the show. (And in fact, that was the intention when Paulsen brought back Stephanie Beacham for Season 9, but that was later in the series' run, and budget issues were now afoot).
Larry was smart enough to try and keep the family ensemble together as much as he could. But when he wanted somebody gone (e.g. Donna "you ain't my mama" Reed, or Dack "too gay to replace Bobby and you spray on your jeans" Rambo, or perhaps anybody else with the initials "D.R.") Larry would flex his clout and do something about it.
The show was damaged by the exit of Paulsen in 1988 and the sudden removal of Smithers months later.
I mean, Who Shot Dallas? In the end,
it was a suicide!!
More than once!
Or Larry wanted all the money for himself and there just wasn't enough to go round.
In an interview William Smithers says he was paid very little. Bet he was gutted when negotiations for a raise ended up with him being fired, I was certainly gutted he left.
Likely true. And red-faced McKay was no replacement. I mean, I like George Kennedy well-enough as an actor, but once Paulsen and his Biblical Shakespearean-ism structure was gone, the writers just didn't know what they wanted to do with the characters -- old or new. So DALLAS just slipped into that narrative pattern adopted by bad soaps when they don't know where to go:
stuff just happens.
