The Full Biography
Larry Hagman. Actor. Mary Martin’s son. The man who made an oil baron into a national weather report.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a Stetson, a grin that is not a smile, and a Friday night in 1980 when half the country asked the same question. Who shot J.R.? The series was Dallas. The living room was America. What the still cannot show is a boy shuttled between Texas and a famous mother’s tour, an astronaut in a sitcom bottle, and a liver that had to be replaced before he could put the hat back on.
He was born Larry Martin Hagman on September 21, 1931, in Fort Worth, Texas. His mother was Mary Martin, who would become Peter Pan and Nellie Forbush in South Pacific — Broadway weather, not a hobby. His father, Benjamin Jackson Hagman, was an accountant and a lawyer, a district attorney who wanted the son in the firm. The parents divorced when Larry was five. He lived with his maternal grandmother, Juanita, in Texas and California while Martin became a Paramount contract player and then a New York star. Black-Foxe Military Institute. A boarding school in Vermont. Weatherford High School, back in the county, class of 1949. The famous mother was the first pressure. The father wanted briefs. The boy wanted a stage that was not hers.
He lasted a year at Bard, dance and drama, then left. Summer stock, Margo Jones in Dallas, tent musicals. In 1951 he went to London and stood in the company of South Pacific with his mother. The Air Force took him in 1952. Stationed in London, he spent the hitch entertaining troops, not flying missions. In 1954, in England, he married Maj Axelsson, a Swedish-born woman who would stay for the rest of his life. After the service: off-Broadway, then Broadway, then live television. The Edge of Night for two years. Sidney Lumet used him in Fail Safe (1964). The door the public still uses opened in 1965.
NBC’s I Dream of Jeannie ran five seasons. He was Captain, then Major, Anthony Nelson, an astronaut who finds a bottle. Barbara Eden was the weather inside it. The show is still a rerun climate: Cocoa Beach, a folded-arms blink, a straight man who had to be decent so the joke could land. He did not appear in the reunion films. He said, years on, that no one had asked. The sitcom made him famous enough to be offered two series in 1978. One was The Waverly Wonders. The other was a CBS oil opera. Maj read the Dallas script and told him it was his.
J.R. Ewing was the elder son at Southfork, a man who treated a family company as a weapon. Hagman based the walk, in part, on an oilfield boss he had worked for as a teenager at Antelope Tool in Weatherford. The show went around the world. On March 21, 1980, in the episode “A House Divided,” someone shot J.R. The summer became a guessing game. Hagman held out for money and went to London while the studio pretended it might write the character out. It did not. He became one of the highest-paid actors in television. The reveal aired November 21, 1980, and remains one of the most-watched hours the medium has ever admitted to. He was nominated for Emmys and Golden Globes. He did not need the statue. He had the question.
As J.R. I could get away with anything — bribery, blackmail and adultery, but I got caught by cancer.Larry Hagman, 2011
The work before the hat is a longer ledger than the sitcom rerun admits. Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe (1964) put him in a Pentagon that had already launched. Joshua Logan’s Ensign Pulver the same year asked him to be a Navy clown. Jack Smight’s The Third Day (1965) used him as a man who could not remember a crash. He directed one feature, Beware! The Blob (1972), a sequel to the 1958 goo picture, and treated the job as a dare rather than a calling. Between Jeannie and Southfork he took pilots that died and guest weeks that paid the Malibu mortgage. The astronaut made him recognizable. The oilman made him a climate. Both jobs required the same craft: hit the mark, hold the smirk, let the other actor have the pretty line. I Dream of Jeannie ran from September 1965 to May 1970 — 139 episodes, Cocoa Beach as a backlot, a bottle that blinked. He was Tony Nelson for five seasons and did not return for the reunion pictures. The reruns did the rest. In 1978 Lorimar offered two series at once. The Waverly Wonders was a coach sitcom. Dallas was an oil family in a house the camera could sell. Maj read both scripts and told him the Ewing part was the one. He took it. The show premiered April 2, 1978. He was the only actor in all 357 episodes of the original run, 1978 to 1991. He directed a stack of those hours. He held out in 1980, went to London, and came back with a salary that matched the smirk. “A House Divided,” March 21, 1980, put a bullet in J.R. “Who Done It,” November 21, 1980, named Kristin Shepard. The summer between those dates is still the sentence people use for any cliffhanger that ate a country. He also took features the hat still eclipses. Stardust is not his. Superman is not his. What is his, besides Stone and Nichols: a string of television films in the 1970s that paid the Malibu mortgage, a pink house the columns photographed, and a professional who treated a sitcom rerun as a pension and a soap opera as a second life. He guest-starred. He directed. He showed up. The résumé is a working actor’s, not a two-show myth. Southfork was a set in Plano and a tourist stop that outlived the series. Hagman based the walk on an oilfield boss from Antelope Tool in Weatherford, a teenage job that had taught him how a man enters a room he already owns. Linda Gray was Sue Ellen. Patrick Duffy was Bobby. Jim Davis was Jock until 1981. Barbara Bel Geddes was Miss Ellie, then Donna Reed for a season, then Bel Geddes again. The ensemble was the parish. Hagman ran the set like a party he intended everyone to survive: jokes between takes, a bar that was not a secret, a professionalism that showed up on time even when the character did not. Golden Globe and Emmy nominations arrived and left without a competitive statue. He did not need the metal. He had the question, the syndication, and a character the world could pick out of a lineup in a hat. That is the turn, and it is easy to miss because the public remembers the hat. He drank for decades and said so. Cirrhosis, then liver cancer. In August 1995 he received a transplant at Cedars-Sinai and treated the second liver as a job he did not intend to waste. He wrote Hello Darlin’: Tall (and Absolutely True) Tales About My Life in 2001. He put solar panels on a house in Ojai he called Heaven and, in 2010, spoke for SolarWorld as a man who had left the oil business for a different kind of energy. In June 2011 he told the press he had stage 2 throat cancer, an acorn-sized tumor on the tongue, and that he would take treatment while shooting TNT’s Dallas revival. The cancer went into remission. Myelodysplastic syndrome arrived. Acute myeloid leukemia followed.
Six things most people never knew
- Mary Martin is the first climate, not a footnote. He stood in her South Pacific company in London. The rest of the life is a man leaving that weather without disowning it.
- He entertained Air Force troops instead of flying. London, 1952–56. The astronaut on Jeannie had already worn a different uniform.
- He was the only actor in all 357 episodes of the original Dallas. Fourteen seasons, 1978–1991. The holdout in 1980 is why the salary matched the smirk.
- He chose Dallas over The Waverly Wonders. Maj read both. She picked the oilman. The other show died quickly.
- The 1995 liver was public, not a whisper. Forty years of drink, cirrhosis, cancer, a donor match through the ordinary list. He did not romanticize it.
- He directed Beware! The Blob (1972). A sequel to a 1958 horror picture. It is the only feature he directed. The hat is not the whole résumé.
Maj and Larry had two children, Heidi Kristina and Preston. They lived in Malibu, then on forty-three acres in Ojai. In 2008 Maj was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He cared for her until the house required nurses around the clock and he put the estate up for sale. She outlived him by four years. Friends from Dallas — Linda Gray, Patrick Duffy — describe a man who ran a set like a party he intended everyone to survive. He had reconciled with Martin after his stepfather’s death in 1973. She died in 1990. The famous mother and the oil baron had, by then, become two careers in one family album.
The later years
The original Dallas ended on May 3, 1991, with J.R. imagining a different life. Hagman did not treat the cancellation as a funeral. He came back for the television films J.R. Returns (1996) and War of the Ewings (1998), both shot as if the hat still paid rent. Oliver Stone used him in Nixon (1995) as Jack Jones, a Texas fixer who understood how a room is bought. Mike Nichols put him in Primary Colors (1998) as Governor Fred Picker, a Southern politician with a smile that had already done the damage. In 1997 he played Judge Luther Charbonnet on CBS’s Orleans, a New Orleans bench that did not last a season. The parts were not a decline. They were a working actor’s calendar after fourteen years of Friday night.
The second liver, received in August 1995 at Cedars-Sinai, became a public job. He chaired the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout for years and worked with the National Kidney Foundation, a man who had quit cigarettes at thirty-four and then had to argue with an organ. He talked about the donor list without romance. He talked about drink without a conversion speech. The Ojai place he called Heaven sat on forty-three acres: solar panels, a house he had painted to please himself, a view he treated as the opposite of Southfork. Maj’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2008 turned the estate into a care site. Nurses around the clock. A listing. He stayed with her as long as the house could hold the illness, then sold. She would outlive him by four years and die in 2016.
In 2011 he turned up on Desperate Housewives as Frank Kaminsky, a husband for Polly Bergen’s Stella Wingfield — a week of work that reminded a new audience the astronaut and the oilman were the same instrument. TNT’s Dallas revival premiered June 13, 2012. He wanted the part: the same man, older, still useful as a villain who could still run a room. He shot it sick. He told interviewers the throat cancer was treatable and that he could not think of a better place to be than a show he loved. Gray and Duffy were back. The hat still photographed. The smirk still landed. He finished the first season and started the second.
He died on November 23, 2012, at Medical City Dallas Hospital, of complications of acute myeloid leukemia, with family in town for Thanksgiving. He was eighty-one. Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy were in the room. The character was written out of the new series the next season. Unused footage of Hagman still walked through a third. The last jobs were not a farewell tour with a logo. They were the same Friday-night work he had taken in 1978: show up, hold the grin that is not a smile, leave the room with a question. Fort Worth is the first room. Weatherford is the walk. Ojai was the solar house. Dallas is where he stopped. The hat is the still. The second liver and Maj in the script pile are the life.
After he was gone
Heidi and Preston remain. Maj died in 2016. Southfork is still a tourist stop. “Who shot J.R.?” is still a phrase people use for any cliffhanger that ate a summer. Barbara Eden still talks about a partner who hit his marks and knew the business. The hat will last. It should. The second liver, the solar house, and the decision to die in Dallas while the revival was still shooting are the parts the still cannot show.
He came out of Fort Worth and a Broadway mother’s shadow, played a decent astronaut so a joke could live, then made a Texas crook into a global appointment. If you only remember the shooting, you have the night. If you remember Weatherford, the transplant, and Maj in the script pile, you have him.
Portrait: Eva Rinaldi · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons