Hello Darlin': Tall (and Absolutely True) Tales About My Life

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Larry Hagman's autobiography is as entertaining as an episode of Dallas, and he seems a whole lot nicer than J.R. Ewing, his second star TV role (the first was as Barbara Eden's "master" in I Dream of Jeannie); he's candid about the drugs and drinking that led to a 1994 liver transplant. The emphasis, however, is on good times and friends ranging from Keith Moon to Carroll O'Connor. He was born in Fort Worth in 1931, when his mother was only 17. Mary Martin soon divorced his father and departed to claim the stardom she was destined for. Hagman is frank but nonjudgmental about the fact that he had a cool relationship with his mother until after the death of her second husband and manager, Richard Halliday, who gets the book's only hostile portrait. Generally, the mood is sunny as he relates adventures like shooting deer with Dad ("three cases of hard liquor, thirty cases of beer, and something like forty packs of cigarettes ... were the most important ingredients of a good hunt"); military service in London, where he met Swedish clothing designer Maj Axelsson (his wife of 45 years); and a respectable Broadway career in the '50s and TV fame in the '60s. Hagman is refreshingly unpretentious about his place in the scheme of things. "I help keep [TV audiences] sedated," he remarks, "and at the same time I help sell cars, aspirin, deodorant, and feminine hygiene products. So far I've been pretty good at it." --Wendy Smith


From Publishers Weekly
This funny, easygoing autobiography by the man who embodied ruthless mendacity on the 1970s-1980s runaway 13-season hit Dallas is a treat not only for its author's inside scoop on the show, but for its ironic yet compassionate portrayal of the struggling actor. Born in Texas in 1931 to 17-year-old Mary Martin and a father not much older, Hagman was raised by his grandmother after his parents separated and his mother went on to become an international musical comedy star. After living at boarding schools or with alternating parents, Hagman returned to Martin, garnering small parts in her shows. After a stint in the armed forces and getting married, Hagman began the actor's life of scraping by between gigs, from TV series like The West Point Story to small roles in Broadway shows. He found a TV hit in 1965's I Dream of Jeannie, but his career was soon up and down again he directed Beware! The Blob in 1971 between second-rate films until Dallas. The narrative moves best when Hagman describes and makes readers experience the boredom and the thrill of a life that is always on the edge of work and the elusiveness of success. He is also refreshingly direct about his alcoholism, his liver transplant, his troubled relationship with his mother and his enjoyable and rewarding experiments with marijuana and LSD. There is nothing scandalous, earth-shattering or philosophically deep here, but by the end readers have an honest sense of an actor who has worked hard to find himself in his life and his work. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Hagman is best known for characters he played on two long-running television series, the amiable NASA captain Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie for five seasons and the charming villain J.R. Ewing on Dallas for 14 seasons. Full of anecdotes about show-business personalities and his Malibu lifestyle, his entertaining autobiography is most insightful as he recounts his childhood as son of Broadway icon Mary Martin and his acting career, which consisted mainly of uninteresting assignments (apart from the hit series). Written with Gold, who has previously co-written celebrity autobiographies with Richard Pryor, Drew Barrymore, and Ann-Margret, the book has an "as told to" feel and lacks emotional depth, even as Hagman discusses his extensive drug and alcohol abuse, which led to cirrhosis, a successful liver transplant, and an introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous. Recommended for public libraries. Bruce Henson, Georgia Tech. Lib., Atlanta Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
A major participant in two of the kitschiest TV series ever, I Dream of Jeannie and Dallas, offers his autobiographical musings. He walks us through his liver ailments in detail, tells us "there wasn't a bad card in the deck" of the cast of Peter Fonda's minimum opus The Hired Hand, and imparts that, by his lights, George C. Scott "had charisma and power onstage as well as in film" and that he, Larry Hagman, "was always in awe of him." Thanks for sharing, Lar, but how about some Dallas-style dish? Guess Hagman's mellowed since his years as one of the most-talked-about earthlings ever, J. R. Ewing. And thanks to the tabloids, is there really anything about Hagman the fans don't know? Perhaps not, but the book does collocate it all, anyway, and with Dallas (andJeannie) in perpetual reruns, new fans are born daily. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


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