Hats Off to Larry

People I meet really want me to be J.R., so it`s hard to disappoint them.
Larry Hagman

Larry Hagman. Digital drawing based on pencil sketch.

Can't think of anybody who incarnated the triumphant smile of 80s capitalism better than Larry Hagman. I completed puberty (more or less) successfully during those days of the cold war, and back then Dallas was a comforting, glittering parallel universe of wealth, betrayal, deception, tragedy and big business, populated with really strange folks. Honestly, Tolkien's Simarillion is a pocket book compared to Dallas' register of persons.

What a bestiary! The oil-baron generation headed by good old Jock Ewing, his loyal friend Marvin "Punk" Anderson, both complete with Texas neckties, belt buckles the size of steak plates, sideburns like feather dusters and always flanked by their devoted wives Miss Ellie & Gladys.
The eternal antagonists J.R. and Bobby (Patrick Duffy wearing polyester shirts tight as a neoprene dress and those sausage casing like trousers), complete with their wives and devil's advocates Sue Ellen & Pam and supported by their incredible competent and unweary secretaries Sly and Phyllis.
The annoying braided Lucy Ewing and her even more annoying husband Mitch Cooper, presumably the only honest character in the whole series (even Bobby eventually is discovering the dark side of the force).
There is Cliff Barnes, proverbial loser with a pocket square way too large; the ever trying so hard-Southfork foreman Ray Krebbs, mostly stuffed into hunter style sports jackets with buckskin patches, his intellectual mummified wife Donna Culver; sanguineous Clayton Farlow (played by operetta star Howard Keel), like Bagwhan maintaining a flotilla Rolls Royces. And last but not least I remember Marilee Stone, promiscuous and seductive oil baroness, only female member of the cartel, the oil industry's Jedi-council.
Those thrilling highlight events: the annual Ewing Barbeque on the Southfork Ranch and the Oil Baron's Ball at the Cattlemen's Club (where Bourbon is served in crystal glasses big as buckets - since I was a teenager I wanted to have dinner, or at least a drink at the Cattlemen's Club), with all those people gathering, invited or uninvited, always resulting in a happy slapping kind of catharsis. The great 1986 Oil Baron's ball with the famous "Yes, I am Jock Ewing..." you can see on Youtube.

Larry Hagman. Digital drawing, screenshot (click to enlarge)

Somehow Hagman never escaped his J.R. cocoon, at least not in public, the broad smile galvanised onto his face. A true master of self-portrayal. I always appreciated his dead-pan humour, and actually sensed much deeper insight than the big grin would indicate. But that goes without saying for a man, who fought addiction and deadly disease for over a decade.

Strange to say, but I am going to miss him, in my own private search of lost time.