Long life | 6 December 2012

I was sad to read that Larry Hagman had died. As J.R. Ewing, the conniving Texas oilman in Dallas, he may have been ‘an overstuffed Iago in a Stetson hat’, but he was curiously lovable in a way that no Iago ever is. This could be because he was rather lovable in real life and this niceness may have seeped through into the evil television character to temper its hatefulness. Unusually for a Hollywood star, he remained happily married to the same woman for 50 years; and even more unusually, he did so despite being at various times a very heavy drinker, smoker and drug-taker. It was an odd combination for a man who claimed his happiness came entirely ‘from being a husband, father and grandfather of five’ to be at the same time one whose declared purpose in life was ‘to be as outrageous as you possibly can’.

This outrageousness involved drinking five bottles of champagne a day while filming Dallas, and doing so (according to him) without ever getting drunk, it being a common boast among Texan men that they can hold any amount of liquor.