Dallas departee: Patrick Duffy

Hello my fellow fans,

This time I'd like to take you all back to 1985. Dallas was at its peak in Finland, so it was shocking to learn that Patrick Duffy and Charlene Tilton were leaving the show. Whaat? Why would anyone leave Dallas? Where would PD and CT even live if not in Southfork? Madness.

Even in the 80s, the time before internet and mobile media, the Finnish press generously printed this piece of news long before it happened on our television screens. At the time, Finland was about one year, or a year and a half behind in showing Dallas, so when The Swan Song finally aired here, we'd had a long time to prepare.

Apu magazine printed this wonderful article in 1985 about Bobby dying. It is titled "Will Bobby be unemployed?" It came out during the time when Bobby was shot, so it kind of gave mixed signals on how he was going to leave the show.

I remember swooning over this next picture of Patrick in his jeans (according the caption, the writer of this article may've done the same thing: "In one week Bobby gets a thousand fan letters, including roughly a couple of hundred marriage proposals. No wonder though, as he is such a Mr. Longlegs and Sugarbums." Teehehee! He surely is!

Next page has this funny cartoon of the cast. I remember wondering why anyone would draw Cliff as a muscular hunk and Bobby as a mousey elderly person. Oh, well.

As I said earlier, this article is about Bobby's shooting, although it also informs us about PD leaving the show year later. Title screams: "Bobby's shooting was an accident?"

Final page dives into Dynasty, as well. It states rather whimsically that "Even Bobby's dog had a motive", "Donna Reed is the new Ellie" and "Lucy becomes a waitress". Of course one of these was merely a joke.

Random tidbits of the text:

* "Charlene Tilton leaves the show alongside Patrick Duffy, although not quite as voluntarily. She is rather surly, because of the treatment she is getting - to put it mildly."

* "Oh Bobby, why do you have to sit in JR's chair? The bullets meant for JR sink into your pretty head."

* "This time, Bobby survives the attack. Wearing dark glasses (maybe imitating Dynasty's Blake?) we will see him next fall when Bobby's final season starts in Finland."  

* Patrick is a sensible guy and has no grand delusions of himself, which would be quite common in Hollywood. He says "All I want is a more challenging role. In a tv series? Why not, since I already have a familiar audience there."  

Of course we all know that Patrick came back to Dallas after a year. I was happy. However, during that year I was thrilled to see Patrick starring in a tv movie Strong Medicine alongside Dynasty's Fallon, Pamela Sue Martin. It was like Bobby and Pamela back together again, in an alternative universe. :)

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays!

This was the Christmas card that was published on Suosikki magazine in the mid-80s. I thought it was sad to see Pam and Bobby in separate pictures. They were divorced on the show during that time, so I figured it was only fitting to put Bobby with his momma and Pam with her precious horse shoes... ;)

Moreover, it was appropriate that Afton should be in this card, after all, she was highly popular in Finland. Audrey Landers even visited Helsinki with her sister Judy in the 80s. Maybe, if Ken Kercheval had sang Manuel Goodbye wearing red glittery dress, he would have made it to this card, as well.

Nevertheless, with this card I want to say thank you to all of you for sticking with me and this blog.
I hope you enjoy the last days of 2016! See y'all soon!

Covers, covers... Linda Gray's relationships

Hello my dear readers,

It's been a while, I know. I apologize. It's been quite a summer and autumn, but now I feel it's time to get back to this blog business. So here we go!

Linda Gray's magazine covers definitely deserve their own post. As you know, I was a Pam-boy myself, but after Victoria Principal left Dallas, I began to see Dallas' other leading lady in a different light. Moreover, I thought that Linda Gray became more radiant and beautiful as she matured. She was also one of the best actresses on the show.

However, before Pamela's departure, I wasn't particularly fond of Gray's character.  When we used to play Dallas with the kids next door, we never had a JR, because nobody wanted to play him, and we also had to force my friend's little sister to be Sue Ellen. It was all about Pam, Bobby and occasional Lucy. We were a bit confused about Sue Ellen's name, though: was 'Sue' her first name and 'Ellen' her middle name, or was 'Ellen' her last name? Eventually we decided  it had to be her last name, after all, no one else on Dallas had two first names. So when the phone rang, our Sue Ellen, 7 years of age, answered accordingly: "Ellen residence, Sue speaking".

Those were the days.

It seems that Linda Gray had more cover stories in Finland than Victoria Principal, although I think it was the other way around globally. Linda seemed to be popular among certain kind of women's magazines, but she never appeared in rock magazines like Victoria, Charlene or even Priscilla.

Especially Linda's divorce seemed to be very popular topic, and particularly in 1983. Here's the first cover story of the year:

I think she looks particularly lovely on this cover. The title of Apu says "Success proved disastrous - Linda Gray gets divorced".

Inside, the magazine dives into Linda's bubbly life: "Nowadays Linda Gray enjoys her baths alone. Earlier she spent much of her free time sitting in the bubbles with her husband Ed".

"Linda caught the disease of Dallas - divorce is happening." Finnish press loved to talk about "the curse of Dallas" or "Dallas disease" when referring to miserable lives of Dallas' stars. I recall several other similar titles of the 1980s.

The story goes on saying Linda doesn't want to be a superwoman anymore. Now she wants peace and quiet. "Sue Ellen is so stupid", Linda is fed up with her. She wants her to be smarter, but obviously it doesn't fit for the story.

Next cover is from Anna later the same year. This is the first time the press hinted that Linda was having an affair with her co-star Larry Hagman:

"Scandalous romance of Dallas stars Linda and Larry!" This was also one of the favourite subjects of the Dallas stories during the 1980s. It used to make me frustrated, because no matter how I wanted it to happen, there were never articles about the scandalous romance of Victoria Principal and Patrick Duffy. It seemed so unfair. Sigh. However, in retrospect we know that these rumours weren't true. Linda and Larry were only good friends.

Next we have September's issue of Jaana telling us that "Linda Gray has fallen in love with a millionaire - even more passionate than on Dallas":

I wonder why they used this old photo of Linda. She already had her famous short look that year, so this old picture really doesn't do her justice.

The year goes on! October issue of Anna spills the T:

"Dallas' Linda Gray opens up about her divorce". Of course this was the time before internet, but it still seems a bit dated: Apu told us about her divorce in March and this is October. Well, inside the mag confesses that the rumours about Linda and Larry were false.

This is all for now. Enjoy and take care, my fellow Dallas fans!

Covers, covers... Victoria Principal Edition

Hello my friends!

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

Promises, promises...

Hello my friends!

So sorry I haven't updated this blog for a long time. I have been busy graduating from the University of the Arts Helsinki and working and generally being a busy bee. However, summer vacation is starting in a week and I'll have time to focus on more important things in life: Dallas and this blog.

I will be posting a new post soon. This I promise.

So, as an apology I give you this random Priscilla Presley -article from 1987. She is looking smoking hot in red. The text tells us, how she met Elvis when she was only 14, married him after seven years and now she is doing it for the second time. (And by 'it' I mean getting married; get your mind out of the gutter, will you!) Her second husband is a film producer Marco Garibaldi.

As it later turned out, the two never actually got married, but stayed together till 2006. They had a son together, Navarone.

Cover me badd

 Happy Easter, my dear readers! It's time for some chocolate eggs, bunnies - and magazine covers!

This time I'd like to spend a few moments with some supporting cast members of Dallas' later years. I realize these were not the golden years of the show, however, there were some bright spots here and there.

First: I give you hunky Jack Scalia a.k.a Nicholas Pearce on the cover of Katso-magazine in 1990. I had a huge crush on him. Oh boy! Of all the leading men in Sue Ellen's life - Peter, Dusty, Cliff, JR, Don - I liked him the best. Too shame they made him wear fat pullovers and sweaters, yet they gave Christopher Atkins speedos a few years earlier. Sigh. Why everything happens to me?

Title says "Jack Scalia saves a bad show" referring not to Dallas, but "Wolf". True or false, I don't know. Most importantly, I remember he had a nice, hairy chest, didn't he? Or was it just a dream I had...? Oh, well.

Next we have lovely Cathy Podewell. Year is still 1990. 

I was kind of excited that in the 1990s Dallas was trying to freshen up with these particular cast members. At the same time, I was sensing they were desperate to find same kind of charisma the original leading ladies had and that Dallas was sliding fast toward cancellation. So, I was praying they'd bring back Victoria Principal and Linda Gray to save the show. Sadly, they didn't.

Now, Cally was not every Dallas fan's favourite character, but I liked her. I wish they had done more with her. I would've liked to see her developing into a strong business woman like Sue Ellen did. But without her paintings, though. 

Title says "Dallas' enchantress Cathy cast a spell on JR". That's nice. (She had a smooth chest, by the way.) 

Last, it's wicked Michelle Stevens, a.k.a Kimberly Foster, in 1990. 

You know, it's funny how Dallas was still kind of hot in Finland in 1990. Three covers on Katso that year, which is not bad for a 12-year-old show. "Kimberly Foster is the newest baddie of Dallas". She surely was! Most importantly, she was the first female antagonist to have such short hair. I adored her style, it was very 90s look. With that look, she could be Justin Bieber's bitchy mom!  

Happy Valentine Girl!

Valentine's day may be long gone, but it's never too late to tribute my favourite Valentine Girl, Mandy Winger!

Oh, Mandy. You came and you gave without taking, but Sue Ellen sent you away...

Although losing Audrey Landers was a bummer, I liked Deborah Shelton equally well as Cliff's and eventually JR's new squeeze. "You'll hear from me again!" she whispered to Sue Ellen in 1987 and left Dallas. Despite her promise, she never came back. (Well, that's not true: she eventually did come back for a few minutes on TNT's new Dallas.)

Nevertheless, here are two articles from the 1980's celebrating her red-hot-beauty.

First one states rather sarcastically that "Deborah Shelton is here for the same reason she is on Dallas: as a decoration. Her fame has never reached the same heights as Victoria Principal's, Linda Gray's or even Priscilla Presley's."

The article goes on to explain how Priscilla has clout; she is now negotiating with the producers to get a real birthing scene on Dallas. "She, like her character Jenna, is pregnant." Priscilla's negotiations must have failed as we were spared from seeing a baby come out of Jenna's vajayjay. Oh, well.

(Same magazine tells us about a new series called Moonlighting starring someone called Bruce Willis. He has already started a singing career and is the coverboy at the moment.)

The second article is much nicer. It says: "Mandy is one fierce seductress, but in real life Deborah Sheldon (!) is the epitome of good mother: My daughter Tamara, 7, is the best thing that ever happened to me. Dallas comes second. Dallas has given me a chance to give my daughter the best possible education, which is more I ever dared to dream."