obits

Larry Hagman, Dallas’s J.R. Ewing, Dies at 81

Larry Hagman, who played the villainous oil baron J.R. Ewing for more than a dozen years on the primetime soap Dallas, died today at the age of 81 in the city that his show took its name from. He succumbed to complications surrounding his battle with throat cancer, according to the Dallas Morning News. When a reboot of the Texas oil soap opera premiered this June, co-starring both Hagman and his original co-star Patrick Duffy, Vulture’s TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz wrote, “Hagman was always a terrific actor — the very idea that the same man could be both this show’s cowboy-hatted Richard III and I Dream of Jeannie’s affable Maj. Tony Nelson is staggering when you think about it; he pulled a Bryan Cranston before anyone had heard of Bryan Cranston — and he’s at the peak of his power here.”

Larry Hagman, Dallas’s J.R. Ewing, Dies at 81