In the 1980s, there were two questions on everyone’s lips: “How fast can you solve a Rubik’s Cube?” and “What did you think of Dallas this week?”
The CBS primetime soap opera brought audiences oil-rich, 10-gallon seductiveness courtesy of its alluring cast, led by Larry Hagman and Linda Gray, plus Patrick Duffy, Victoria Principal, and a slew of others. Each episode was guaranteed to feature a conniving scheme, a shocking betrayal, and some steamy-for-its-time smooching.
While these intimate encounters may have been what the millions of dedicated viewers were most interested in, it was just business as usual for the cast — and also an opportunity to play some pranks.
Linda Gray in a promotional image from ‘Dallas’ in 1978.
CBS via Getty
While speaking on a recent episode of the That’s Classic podcast, Gray, who played Sue Ellen Ewing during most of the initial 14-season run (and returned for two made-for-television movies and the more recent revival series), shed some light on filming the love scenes between the characters.
“Larry didn’t like intimate… he didn’t like the kissing scenes,” she said about Hagman, who played her onscreen spouse J.R. Ewing. “Not that he didn’t like them, but he just felt, you know, it was awkward.”
How did the actor, who also appeared in the films Fail Safe and The Eagle Has Landed, deal with this awkwardness? In an annoying way!
“He would do things like eat an onion before a kissing scene with me,” Gray shared. “Like, ‘Oh, great, Larry. Thanks.'”
Larry Hagman’s scene partner for kissing moments on ‘Dallas’.
Getty
Gray said he would also sometimes eat peanut butter, and she would struggle to keep a straight face.
This yuckster attitude was apparently contagious, because Gray herself got in on the act on a day in which she was scheduled to kiss the young hunk Christopher Atkins, who had a recurring role for one season as a camp counselor.
Though the precise details are a little murky in her memory, Gray confessed that she did, one time, put some kind of dental numbing agent on her mouth in a scene with her (as she put it) “toy boy.”
Linda Gray with Christopher Atkins on ‘Dallas’ in 1983.
CBS Photo Archive/Getty
“I kissed him, and then the whole crew was kind of standing there not moving when the scene was over,” she remembered. “We’re all watching him, and he was like ‘Wow, my lips…'”
She added, “Oh, poor Chris. I felt terrible, because I was in on it, and it was, ‘You’re gonna have to think like you’re at the dentist.'”
Gray concluded that the fun atmosphere on set was “the beauty of Dallas — we felt so comfortable, we could do pranks.”
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If you would like to watch Linda Gray chat with That’s Classic’s John Cato for a full hour, you are in luck. All you need to do is press play on the video below.