Dallas TV show

Linda Gray ripped up all of her drunl scenes. I'd go with Sue Ellen.

Sue Ellen was the only female character that grew and changed during her time on the show. Pam became weaker and weaker

Sue Ellen.

Sue Ellen was an amazing character. Ballsy, tough, passionate and way too fond of a cocktail.

Loved Linda Gray. There was something grotesquely Capucine-ish about her, both close to the Joan Crawford mold.

Swellen. Linda deserved an Emmy.

Whenever Sue Ellen was in a scene, my eyes always focused on her.

Linda Gray was the best!!

Remember the nightly cocktail hours before dinner at Southfork. One by one they would come in dressed for dinner. JR would whisper the meanest things into Sue Ellen's ear and she would chug drinks. He terrorized her. But she got her digs in too. Poor, sweet Miss Ellie just smiled through it all knowing all too well how to survive life as an oilman's wife.

Loved the scene where Sue Ellen calls room service at the hotel where she was hiding and orders “a bottle of vodka and a bucket of ice.”

Not disparaging Victoria Principal here, but Pam was written in such a way that any moderately talented ingenue could play her.

Sue Ellen was a fully developed character that required a very talented actress. Linda Gray was the right actress for the job.

Apparently Sue Ellen was supposed to just be a minor role on the show, but when the production staff saw how good she was in scenes they expanded her part enormously.

Pam was feisty in the beginning. I loved when she stood up to JR but as others have noted, she regressed to a doormat.

Those cocktail hours were my favorite scenes in the early seasons.

Linda is a better actress & Sue Ellen was a more interesting character.

Both Linda and Victoria are gay friendly but Linda is MORE gay friendly. Almost as dedicated to gays as Elizabeth Taylor.

I loved and adored big sexy daddy Jim Davis and his BDE. Too bad about the cancer; it would have been interesting to see how Jock developed over the course of the series, and how the interpersonal dynamic of the characters/plots would've played out had he lived and remained on the show.

Linda, because she didn't look like her mother drank a lot during the pregnancy, like Pam did.

I loved both. I missed Pam. She was the normal one who witnessed the craziness in that house. Her back story was sad and her loyalty to brother Cliff was admirable. The story arc where she found her real mother was really nice. Loved Linda Gray. Met her a few times, Adorable!!!

r16 How could Linda Gray be more gay friendly than Victoria Principal? Principal gave 99.9% homosexual Tony Perkins such raging boners he married and had kids with her.

This is a gay forum, Op, of course campy drunk Sue Ellen is a favourite of ours.

r20, Anthony Perkins was never married to Victoria Principal, nor did he have children wit her.

While Jock languishes in the ICU after a heart attack, Sue Ellen imagines taking over Southfork upon his death, only to be interrupted by that shopgirl Pam.

I love that Sue Ellen forgave JR after the shooting because he fucked her and bought her a new Mercedes. He tried to throw her in a sanitarium, then knocked up her sister, who shot him and then framed Sue Ellen for the shooting.

r22 I was thinking of Berenson. He did say he thought Victoria Principal was incredibly beautiful though.

Victoria was the first woman Anthony fucked.

Miss Ellie was no match for Sue Ellen. Perhaps she could shove Miss Ellie down those stairs. Ever the feisty Texan, Ellie survives but is locked away in a private hospital unable to speak or move her arms. As luck would have it, a new nurse (Pam in disguise) shows up and works diligently to rehabilitate the Ewing matriarch. Ellie's progress is slow but steady and finally she is able to scribble a crude childlike sketch of two stick figures. One at the bottom of the stairs and the other at the top. The one at the top of the stairs is holding a cocktail glass. Pam races to the sheriff with the sketch and Sue Ellen gets arrested. Stay tuned for next week to see Sue Ellen plotting her revenge from behind bars.

Drunk Sue Ellen was the best...

Sue Ellen was the best. I

Charlene Tilton was the unsung hero of the show.

Linda Gray. Lasted through nearly all of the original series, along with the TNT reboot.

Pam was only good when she stood upto JR. Otherwise she was a useless doormat.

R30 Charlene had some moments.

Linda Gray!

Skid row Sue Ellen was unforgettable.

Linda'a son recently passed in his 50's. Very sad for any mother that looses his son.

One of my favorite scenes from the later seasons-Sue Ellen, now a powerful businessman and the queen of sleazy lingerie, fires that tramp Mandy Winger, who walks into the room like she was fresh from being gang banged in the Dallas Cowboys locker room.

[quote] Charlene Tilton was the unsung hero of the show.

Wrong. It was Barbara Carrera as Angelica Nero.

There was a scene in the second season where they are all at dinner and Sue Ellen very bitchily says, “Miss Ellie, I don’t think Pamela likes your turkey.”

The way she said it was so wonderfully bitchy. Second season Sue Ellen was so fun as the writers were developing her.

I liked Pam until she cut her beautiful 70s hair.

R40, Pam grew it back for her last season.

Pam’s bad hair was just a bad dream.

Lucy got all the funniest bone-dry zingers during the Ewing cocktail hours.

Linda Gray needs a star on the HW Walk of Fame!

I liked Pam more than Sue Ellen. Particularly in the early years, Pam was a more complex character than Sue Ellen. Sue Ellen only had one facet....She struggled with booze and had a lousy marriage.

Sue Ellen was campy. Pam was more nuanced.

I agree with r45! Taking nothing away from Linda Gray’s performance as Sue Ellen, which was pretty awesome, but Pam was and still is my all-time favorite DALLAS character. She kinda had a street edge to her during those early seasons. It wasn’t until she had that mental breakdown and tried to take a swan dive off of the top of her workplace The Store when she became kind of the show’s sweetheart. Even with that, she brought out that street edge whenever she went up against JR and during other situations which I do believe made her character more nuance.

Also back then, Victoria Principal was one of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. Yes, this budding somewhat closeted gay man did have a crush on her. Even when I look at the reruns, I still find myself swooning a little.

TEAM PAMELA BARNES EWING

Sue Ellen was more complex than that, r45. She loved J.R., but she also hated him. She also had a great second love in the cowboy Dusty Farlow. And she was dominated by her horrible pushing mother.

For some reason this thread makes me think not just of Victoria Principal's infomercial for "The Principal Secret," but also Sandra Bernhard saying in a comedy concert how much she loved the infomercial: "She sneaks up on people to surprise them in parking lots, and they practically have heart attacks!"

[quote]Lucy got all the funniest bone-dry zingers during the Ewing cocktail hours.

I'm curious how her incestuous fling with Ray would be handled nowadays, particularly given all the recent White Lotus ruckus in that area.

That Barnes woman.

I think separating Pam from Bobby was very beneficial for the character. Before the separation she was just the nagging wife, questioning every step Bobby took. Once in her own house with a real job, she became a much better developed character. She fought J.R., her brother, her sister... She had a lot to do. Once she married Bobby again, she regressed quickly with a rehashed 'I can't have a baby' story.

Sue Ellen went the opposite way because drama-wise there was no other direction to go anymore. She already divorced and re-married, separated and reconciled so many times. The only way to squeeze more life out of the character was hitting back harder at JR. Her last season with that movie was pretty lame though. It didn't further the show or her character.

Jock was actually quite the door mat, too. He appeared all crusty and rough. But he believed every lie JR told him. He was quite gullible.

Sue Ellen puts JR in his place after he slaps her.

I love the theme they used for Sue Ellen in the early seasons, it is also in the clip posted at r23.

My focus always went to Sue Ellen with her big giant overly made-up 80's eyes and that modllesque walk as if she were modeling fox furs at the tea room while intoxicated,

R52 Miss Ellie was the real leader.

Victoria has been hiding for the last 20 years and has become less relevent than Linda Gray who is still out and about in her mid 80's.

Linda Grays attitude is the best.

R50, I love how I could hear the voice of a flustered JR saying that. Thank you for posting that, it was one of my favorite subtle lines of the show.

The reboot was really good as well. I enjoyed it. It maintained the camp classic vibe while never going overboard and delivering great dialogue.

Sue Ellen got her cougar claws into Christopher Atkins - winner!

[quote]Lucy got all the funniest bone-dry zingers during the Ewing cocktail hours.

Lucille Ball was on Dallas?

The reboot was to dark.

The reboot had lots of problems, but I still wanted it to stay.

I'm still debating whether Dallas was suitable for a cable channel, or streaming today for that matter. Seasons have ten, maybe twelve episodes at the most, which in OG Dallas times would have meant half a season, a third really if you compare to the high-times with 31 episodes. And soaps work so great for that long-seasons format. What's the point of Dallas when you have to develop and wrap up everything in ten episodes? Felt wrong to me.

I want to see Judith Chapman’s Pam.

Linda Gray and Christopher Atkins had no chemistry. The story was boring.

I was so disappointed that Victoria Principal didn’t want to do the reboot. I would have loved to see my Pammy rolled up on John Ross and slapped the shit out of him like she use to do his daddy JR.

Sue Ellen by a mile. The drunker the better.

R65 They missed the chance to have some burly ranch hands repeatedly nail Atkins.

Dallash

Christopher Atkins was miscast. Sue Ellen would never get involved with a boy like Peter; he was too soft. A burly football player or frat bro from SMU is more her style.

R70 I needed the work - my sugar daddy wasn't as interested at that point.

R70, I was about 13 when Sue Ellen met Peter. I thought it was lusty and hot because I resembled Atkins at that time when I was 13. I related to Peter.Maybe that storyline should have been an after school special?

R72 We'd already seen "little Peter" several times at that point, so maybe not.

FYI, Leonard Katzman wanted SueEllen to get pregnant with Peters baby and have and abortion but Linda refused and stud up to the producers. Linda was raised Catholic so they changed the script to a miscariage as the result of a car accident.

*stood up

What's this about Judith Chapman's Pam?

"After the network requested a saga for their contracted actress Linda Evans, (David) Jacobs developed a further treatment for a series he named “Untitled Linda Evans Project” — which according to the outlet, Filerman renamed "Dallas" before submitting. The show was picked up, and Dallas — as well as J.R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman — hit TV screens.

[quote]Loved Linda Gray. There was something grotesquely Capucine-ish about her, both close to the Joan Crawford mold.

Messy drunk Sue Ellen was based on messy drunk Crawford, wasn't she? Before Christian Science, Joan would get blottoed and pick up random burly men from highway truck stops and come home with bruises.