Picture it. Northern Finland, 1982-83-ish. Dallas was the show among the 8-17-year-olds. Everyone was watching it and talking about it.
Everyone except me.
I couldn’t care less about those fictional characters on TV. After all, there were so much more interesting things to do on Friday nights! Like playing police and robbers outside.
I don’t remember how I came to open the TV and actually watch Dallas for the first time, but it was all it took – I was completely hooked. Instantly.
I had heard about JR, of course, and I was eager to see what the bastard looked like. Then this gorgeous black-haired hunk appeared and I was like "who knew JR was such a piece of meat"? Of course, my dad told me that was not JR, but Bobby. What a relief!
However, when Victoria Principal appeared on my screen, I was stunned.
Stunned, I say!
I had never seen a woman so beautiful! I quickly learned that she was Pam and she was in a mental institute, because she couldn’t have children. Oh no! I only hoped that Pam and Bobby would be together so that those beautiful people could live happily ever after. I was devastated to learn that Bobby was in love with that Pamela-woman and therefore couldn’t be with Pam. You can imagine my embarrasment when I realized that Pam and Pamela were the same person.
(Come on, I was only 10 and English wasn’t my first language! It was like those Tsekhov plays where every character has Russian nicknames and you never know who are they referring to... oh, well.)
Since those days Victoria Principal has been my absolutely favourite Dallas star and therefore the topic of this post, as well. J
It’s surprising how few Finnish magazine covers there are featuring her, given that she was probably the most popular cast member after Larry Hagman. I have already published a couple of her covers earlier, but here are a few more for your pleasure! (If you have more Finnish VP covers that I don’t know about, please let me know and we’ll be BFFs forever.)
The first cover from 1982 Seura has rather small picture of VP, however, it is the classic photo of her with Linda and Charlene. "The girls of Dallas return to our screens." This issue also has a complete family tree inside, however, they have Gary Ewing and Mitch Cooper mixed up. After all, they are both... well, men. Therefore, identical.
The next one is 1984 cover of Apu declaring that ”Happy Victoria Principal wants to be a mom soon”. Nevertheless, this was not meant to be.
The other cover from 1984 is from OK magazine. It says that "Victoria Principal destroyed Andy Gibb!" Oh dear. OK magazine was like a National Enquirer of the rock magazines.
Funny thing about this cover though: it has a red heart over the pic of VP saying "Hundreds of pen pals". I always thought that it was Victoria Principal who had hundreds of pen pals and wanted desperately to be one of them.
Another thing: Hanoi Rocks was a quite famous band from Finland, but I used to think that heavy rock and hanoi rocks mean the same thing. That's how much I cared about rock music.
Fast forward to 2002: Victoria is on the cover of Katso magazine's Soap opera special. It was during the time she was on the short-lived Titans. It says "Age only makes a woman better" or something like that.
Well, that's all for now, darlings. #stillwaitingforthenextvictoriacoverinafinnishmagazine
