November 8th
Southfork Ranch
Parker, TX
Anyone who knows me personally will attest to my crazy addiction to one of the greatest prime time drama / soap operas ever to hit the television screen – Dallas. Upon hearing that they were doing a reunion of sorts in the California area in December of 2008, I immediately started to try figuring out how my wife and I could come up with the money to fly out to the event and make a weekend of it for our anniversary. Alas, it didn’t seem to be in the cards, as they say. I had to come to grips with the fact that I would miss this opportunity. Fast-forward three months to mid-August. An acquaintance of mine who does a vendor booth at my comic book collectible events drops the wonderful bomb on me that there is going to be a Dallas reunion in the Dallas / Fort Worth area in November and that they already have Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, and Linda Gray (the three living major roles from the series) confirmed to be there. I couldn’t contain my excitement. The next bit of news almost made me faint. The reunion would be at the actual “home” of the fictional Ewing clan – Southfork Ranch. I called my wife immediately and told her.
I contacted the event coordinators as fast as I could find their information and told them that I would love to be a part of helping to promote the event. That ended up being an interesting job, as I made and ran the MySpace page and Google Blogspot for the event. I even got to interview J.R. himself in the living room of Southfork Ranch. Mr. Hagman turned out to be an extremely generous gentleman who wanted nothing more than to help deliver an event that would make the life-long fans of the legendary television show happy and overjoyed at being able to spend some quality time with the cast in the sprawling setting of their fictional homestead. For many event-goers, this would be a bittersweet and disappointing experience, especially for those who spent several thousand dollars on VIP tickets and airfare from overseas and abroad. I’m sure anyone who cares or is even remotely interested has read the past week’s internet and newspaper buzz about how terribly coordinated and unorganized the event was. I am not writing this story to agree with or fend off these stories and opinions by any means. I am writing this to reflect on an unforgettable and once-in-a-lifetime evening with my wife and friends. Am I disappointed in some of the circumstances that went down in and around this event? Absolutely. Promises were made to ticket-buyers that were not followed up on and those people should be upset and demand to get something back in return.
On to the event. My wife and I took our friends to the event and we arrived around 5PM. We even got dressed up in cowboy boots, jeans, and sport coats. My wife wore cowboy boots with a blue jean skirt and we were fully ready to get in the spirit of the event. There were already at least a thousand people there milling around the house and stage. It was almost like a movie set, with giant pot lights and a swooping camera crane that was filming the event. It was all too apparent from the moment we walked into the VIP section that they had most definitely overbooked the area. There was nowhere for probably half the people to sit. Staff was making a mad scramble to find space to set up additional tables for guests. We just worked through this and let it pass. We weren’t going to let that ruin the night, but there was already angry grumbling from many of the guests.
We decided to head over to the front of the house and observe the red carpet walk the actors would be doing when they arrived. There were tons of people already surrounding the walkway, anticipating the arrival. Larry Hagman was to fly in on a helicopter, showering the crowd with his token thousand dollar J.R. bills. First, he would do a couple of helicopter rides with people who bid on them and won the rides through an E-bay auction for charity. Apparently, these were running very behind, as the red carpet walk was supposed to start at 6:30 and it was already going on 7:30. Every time the helicopter would fly over and come to a stop in the landing field, several hundred people with cameras would rush over to the fence and try to get a photo of J.R. arriving in style, only to be disappointed.
Finally, a Gibson guitar bus pulled up in front of the red carpet and the cast and their families arrived. They were very accommodating and considerate of their fans. They took a lot of time and stopped every couple of feet to sign autographs and even take pictures with people on both sides of the ropes. It was wonderful and a definite highlight of the evening. Just to see how surprised and grateful they were for all the praise and excitement that surrounded them. So here they all come – Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray, Steve Kanaly, Susan Howard, Ken Kercheval, Audrey Landers, Mary Crosby, Sheree J. Wilson, Charlene Tilton, and…J.R.? Everybody is standing around for several minutes wondering where J.R. is.
It took so long, that people just started leaving the red carpet. Apparently he was held up with the helicopter rides. Oh well, everyone started to just mill around and head back to their seats. The food lines opened up and soon the problems there started. First, they ran out of plates and silverware. Then they ran out of food and drinks. It became all too apparent that the 2,000 people in attendance were somehow not expected and planned for.
The event got kicked off with the cast coming out onto the famous balcony where Kristen took a nosedive to her death. They all took turns telling the crowd how grateful they were that they all came out. Then they headed down to eat (or so they thought) at their tables on the presentation stage, which was located in front of the famous breakfast patio in front of the garage doors and next to the pool. The cast came up to the stage and began sitting with their families at the tables, only to be quickly ushered out of their seats and into the Q & A area, which was made up of some chairs and a couple nice couches. The actors took their places and began an hour or so of questioning from the crowd.
They passed around eight microphones throughout the crowd and the questions came firing at the cast. The cast, especially Patrick Duffy, showed a great amount of wit and charm as they answered one question after the next, some being ridiculous (“What wife in the show was your favorite?”, to which he said his favorite wife was his real one) to a rather rude and completely uncalled for question for Larry Hagman which I will not even entertain going into, except to say that whoever asked it is an idiot and I can’t imagine how he could have even been smart enough to find the event, much less drive his primate self to it. The actors were all very attentive to the questions and very polite in their answers.
After the question and answer session, the mayor of Parker, TX came up with the owner of Southfork Ranch and thanked him for letting them have the event there. Then the two of them presented keys to the city to all the cast members. Each actor thanked the mayor and took the plaque. Ken Kercheval came up to get his plaque and fished around in his pocket to pull his keys out and put the key to the city on his ring, but said it was too big to fit in his pocket. Larry Hagman simply asked the mayor just exactly what the key opened. Then the mike went dead for about 15 minutes and the actors tried to still give their acceptance speeches, but couldn’t be heard.
Then the event basically started to go downhill. It wasn’t because of the actors or anything they did. They were all wonderful and did everything they could to make the night memorable for everyone there. The auctioning of the original cast paintings began. Were the paintings good? Absolutely. The problem was, that if you weren’t one of about 150 people there with over $1,000 in your pocket, you couldn’t give a crap about this particular part of the event. A painting of J.R. went for around $7,000 and I believe the lowest any of them went for was around $1,500. This is about the time everybody (meaning 2,000 people) decided they just wanted to mill around and look at everything. Someone (not very smart) decided to open pretty much every (yes, EVERY – there might have been three doors not open) door to the mansion and let people come in to see the home of the Ewings.
My wife and I went inside to try to look around and it was virtually impossible. There must have been 300 people shoved in that house milling around. By the end of the night, that place looked like a frat party had taken place. There were beer bottles and dirty dishes all over the place, sitting right next to the furniture. I even saw a foot in diameter spill stain where someone had dropped their drink in the middle of the living room. Yes, you read that right. There was a spill stain in the middle of the legendary Southfork Ranch living room. It was a display of complete disrespect to a historical monument of television history. I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of little knick-knacks and items were stolen out of that place.
We stuck around for the cast to say their goodbyes to the crowd and Audrey Landers sang one of her legendary songs she wrote for the part of Afton on the show. This was followed by a thunderous applause and then the cast headed over to the Conference Center for a press meeting.
Why the press meeting was scheduled for after the event is beyond me. The cast came in after several minutes of what seemed to be confusion over who was to participate in the press Q & A and who was supposed to get back on the Gibson bus to wait to be taken back to the hotel. Patrick Duffy greeted the 15 or 20 reporters and members of the press with the question, “Don’t you people have homes or families?” The press meeting featured Larry Hagman, his wife Maj, Patrick Duffy, and Linda Gray. After about 15 minutes of the questioning they brought in Mary Crosby and about 5 minutes later, it was all over. The cast was rushed out the door and put on the bus to be taken to their hotels. They did take a couple more minutes to take a few pictures with some fans still hanging around.
So what are my thoughts on how the event went? Well, for me and my party it was a lot of fun and very memorable. For people who spent thousands upon thousands of dollars to fly there from other countries and attend, I can definitely understand how they would be extremely irritated and angry with how the whole thing turned out.
Did the actors do everything in their power to make the event successful and memorable for their fans? Absolutely. Do I know who’s to blame or what really happened behind the scenes? No. Was there a lot of confusion and what seemed to be disorganization? Definitely. In my opinion, I just think that the organizers weren’t prepared for the turnout and it just got out of hand. Either way, it’s not an event I’ll ever be forgetting.
(Article by Eric Shirey)
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