The shot heard ’round world in TV land
‘Who shot J.R.?’ question diehard Dallas viewers asked 35 years ago
NEW YORK Thirty-five years ago, viewers learned the truth.
They found out who shot J.R. Ewing as 90 million of them massed in front of half of America’s TVs watching Dallas that evening of Nov. 21, 1980.
Not that it really mattered whodunit. What mattered was, the issue was settled. The mystery solved. Dallas fans could finally move on.
So could Dallas, which, by the time the shooter’s identity was disclosed, had rocketed from its prior status as a mere TV hit to the far reaches of cultural blockbusterdom.
A saga of the Texas tycoon Ewings, Dallas was epic, ostentatious, outrageous and addictive, with its at-each-other’s-throats clan ruled by J.R. Ewing, a charmingly loathsome oil baron. As embodied by Larry Hagman, J.R. was a bottomless well of corruption who deployed a Lone Star twang, cold hawk eyes and a wicked grin.
By the evening of March 21, 1980, Dallas devotees were smitten with his villainy. But then, on that second-season finale, Dallas threw them a curve unlike anything witnessed before: J.R. was gunned down by an unknown assailant.
Thunderstruck fans were left with the awful possibility that the series’ leading man — its main attraction — might have been disposed of. And even more unsettling: they were left in the dark as to who pulled the trigger.
Obvious persons of interest included Sue Ellen Ewing (played by Linda Gray), J.R.’s long-suffering, cheated-upon wife, and his snivelling arch-enemy Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval). But Dallas producers, who had cooked up the Who Shot J. R.? twist as an effective way to satisfy a last-minute order by CBS for two extra episodes to close out Season 2, hadn’t even settled on whodunit when they decided that the deed be done.
Mary Crosby says she had no idea. When she got the script, Crosby, who played Kristin, thought only, “What a great way to end the season. And J.R. certainly deserves it!”
To ensure the big secret stayed a secret to everyone, including the doer, everybody got a turn oncamera pulling the trigger. “It was a really fun day,” Crosby recalls. “The producers got to shoot J.R. The makeup artist got to shoot him. Larry got to shoot himself.”
The mystery was unleashed on viewers in March, ran rampant much longer than intended: An actors strike would shut down all TV production and push the start of the networks’ Fall 1980 season into November, imposing an extra three months for the nation’s favourite guessing game to rage.
“It was extraordinary that people cared after all that time,” says Crosby.
Viewers picked up Who Shot J.R.? merchandise including T-shirts, coffee cups and beer. They put money down betting on who the culprit would be. They devoured publicity about the stunt, including a sprawling Time magazine cover story whose headline, of course, posed: “WHODUNIT?”.
Running for a second term, President Jimmy Carter reportedly joked at a Dallas fundraiser, “I came to Dallas to find out confidentially who shot J.R.”
No luck. But in the new season’s fourth episode, the answer was finally revealed to all — including Crosby, who only then discovered that she, as Kristin, was the guilty party.
“I knew when everybody else knew,” she declares, and watching Dallas that fateful night “I was thrilled — and spooked. I knew that it would change things, and it did. I was certainly a more recognizable figure after that!”
Needless to say, J.R. would recover and resume his villainy. He lived even beyond the series’ conclusion after 14 seasons in May 1991, when viewers were duped into suspecting that he had committed suicide.
In fact, J.R. didn’t meet his maker until March 2013 on an episode of TNT’s Dallas revival, following the death of Hagman at 81 from cancer four months earlier.
It was a really fun day. The producers got to shoot J.R. The makeup artist got to shoot him. Larry got to shoot himself.