Larry Hagman, 1931–2012

It was the most widely watched cliff-hanger in television history. In 1980, some 300 million viewers in 57 countries tuned in to the finale of Dallas’s second season and gasped as villainous oil baron J.R. Ewing—played by Larry Hagman—was gunned down by an unknown assailant. Audiences spent the summer puzzling over the would-be assassin’s identity, and the slogan “Who Shot J.R.?” adorned T-shirts, bumper stickers, and billboards. Even Britain’s Queen Mother fell victim to the fever. On meeting Hagman at a charity gala, she asked the actor if he could reveal the culprit. “I said, ‘No ma’am, not even for you,’” Hagman later recalled.

“As an actor, Hagman came with a serious pedigree,” said the Los Angeles Times. He was born in Fort Worth to the actress Mary Martin, who would later become famous for her performances in South Pacific, Peter Pan,and other Broadway shows. His father, Ben Hagman, was a lawyer for several wealthy Texas oil barons. After his parents divorced, when he was 5 years old, Hagman spent his childhood shuttling between private and military schools, said The New York Times. Hagman left most of them “with little distinction and occasionally at their request.” As a young man, he dithered about what to do with his life; he settled on show business after a stint in the U.S. Air Force, organizing entertainment for troops across Europe. He won bit parts in forgettable movies, “but it was television that was the foundation of his career,” said The Guardian (U.K.). In 1965, he was cast in I Dream of Jeannie as bachelor astronaut Tony Nelson, whose life is turned upside down by a beautiful genie. The show was reviled by critics but embraced by audiences in search of escapist fantasy.

When Jeannie ended in 1970, Hagman’s luck seemed to disappear too, and he found himself appearing in a succession of pilots for future sitcoms that never materialized. “This, it seemed, was to be the leitmotif of his career,” said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Then in 1978, his life turned around when he won the part of J.R. on Dallas, a role he’d play for the next 13 years. Dallas was originally intended as a vehicle for stars Linda Evans and Patrick Duffy, but the prospect that Hagman’s wickedly charming J.R.—memorably described in Time as “an overstuffed Iago in a Stetson”—would steal the show led Evans to quit before it aired, claiming it was “unworthy” of her talents.

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Although Hagman became indelibly associated with J.R., in real life he was nothing like the Machiavellian oil boss—although both drank heavily, a habit that led Hagman to undergo a liver transplant in 1995. He was known in his longtime home of Malibu, Calif., as an amiable eccentric who enjoyed dressing up as a British policeman or a French legionnaire and leading impromptu parades down the beach. He would hand out autographs in return for a good joke or a song, and often espoused the benefits of marijuana and psychedelic drugs. In an interview last year, he said he wanted his remains to be spread in a field planted with weed and wheat, which would then be made into “a big marijuana cake, enough for 200 to 300 people,” he said. “People would eat a little Larry.”