Customer Reviews

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

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Mr. Hagman has a way with words that lulls you into a comfort zone and before you know it you feel as if you're sitting and listening to an old friend telling tall (and absolutely true) tales about his life. He's honest about his relationships and his own shortcomings without stripping his soul (embarrassingly) bare as some autobiographers are prone to do. Instead Larry keeps it real but light and he makes reading his book a truly entertaining experience, which is all I ever ask of any book. Whether you liked him best as Tony Nelson or J.R. Ewing or both, it's worth getting to know the man behind the characters he gave life to.

I loved this book...but I may be a little prejudiced, cuz I love Larry Hagman! I was lucky enough to have met him when he autographed my copy. I must say, he's very personable, not one bit stuck-up. He also signed my 1980's can of JR Beer and couldn't believe someone still had a full JR Beer from the 80's!!! A real genuine kind of guy...which I imagine is a little rare of such a long-time celebrity. I only regret his wife, Maj wasn't there...I'd have loved to meet her too. She must be SOME LADY to have put up with Larry all these 45+ years! If you want a good, funny, light-hearted read about some of Larry's antics thru his life, this is the book for you! My only negative about the book? I wish it had been longer...I couldn't put it down and finished it in two bedtime reads. THUMBS UP!

It's not too often you read an Autobio that allows you to both learn something and be "enlightened". After reading this, I felt my heart smile. It's hard to explain, but I gained a bit more respect for the "old school" actors after reading this. It's a great read!

Someone left this book in my house last summer and I kept it around for months waiting to see if anyone wanted it back. If no one's coming to claim it, it must not be very good, I thought. One day, when I was bored, I picked it up and read it out by the pool, and you know, contrary to my expectations that this wouldn't be my sort of book, it was pretty darn good.

Actor Larry Hagman is a cool guy. He's funny, surprisingly spiritual and deep, and boy has he ever lived one amazing life. In this memoir, he talks about growing up in Texas, son of a good old boy rancher and the famous actress Mary Martin, then discusses his assorted misadventures in the years before he first found fame playing Major Nelson opposite Barbara Eden on the '60's sitcom I Dream Of Jeannie. Hagman went on in the '70's and '80's to play the iconic bad guy J.R. Ewing on the massively popular prime time soap opera Dallas, and fans of that series will especially delight in his behind the scenes tales of the making of that drama. In among his wisecracks and jaw-dropping stories, and especially anecdotes of his trademark elaborate practical jokes, Hagman also strikes into his serious side when he waxes philosophically about death and dying, and is brutally frank about the lessons he painfully learned from his own brush with oblivion following his liver transplant in the 1990's.

Before I read this short, fast-paced autobiography, I had little idea who Larry Hagman was, but for fans of his or the series he helped make famous, this is a treasure trove of facts and tall tales. Like I said, it's a pretty funny book.

I found this book quite by accident and enjoyed it a great deal. I'm surprised that this book did not get more play in the media. It is honest to the core and gives a candid insight into the man who played JR and Major Nelson. The best parts of the book deal not with acting but with Hagman's relationship with his mother. It is truly moving to read. I also found it interesting how fond of and close he ramains with Dallas co-star Linda Gray (Sue Ellen). Evidently his mother loved her just as much. When the great actress Mary Martin died, Hagman had a photo of Gray placed inside his mother's casket.

There's a whole lotta fun in this autobiography. Hagman is a great teller of hilarious stories. It seems amazing he survived long enough to need a liver transplant, that's how wild some of his earlier adventures were. The transplant tale is inspirational and informative too. Being a fan of his helps, but Hagman's story is really an inspired blueprint of living with gusto no matter of the times are good or bad. Hagman has lived, and readers get to laugh. That's a good value, if you ask me.

Hagman's tall tales are not only hard to believe, but told without flair in this dull book that skips past significant events in the actor's life while celebrating his time as a drunk, a drug user and a nutty spiritualist. There is little about his TV years, so if you are looking for inside stories on the business you won't find them here.

The book gets off to the wrong start by focusing on his mother, Mary Martin. Hagman had almost no relationship with her and his talking about her background sheds little light on why he is as quirky as he is, other than the fact that she basically ignored him.

He then tries to claim that he had no money, even though he was sent to private schools, took expensive foreign trips and owned high-end cars. He smoked for decades, traveled across country all the time and moved to California without having a job. He says he could have asked for money from his rich mother but he didn't--so either he is a fool or he's lying, because there is no way someone could do all the things he did and have no money in his pocket the way he claims.

Some of the stories he tells about his young adult years aren't that interesting and he has a couple that are just plain unnecessary (I can't retell them here, but he likes to throw in little teasers about sex, guns, drinking, drugs and nakedness). Either he is making stuff up or if his escapades are true then he's really screwed up.

He doesn't get to I Dream of Jeannie until literally the halfway point in the book. And once he's there he only uses a few pages to defend himself as wanting better scripts (it's a show about a genie, not Shakespeare!) and his reputation for being difficult to work with. Of course in his life story everyone else is unreasonable, but he give enough evidence to support his reputation has a jerk.

At this point he dwells on the high he got from LSD and on his following eastern spiritual philosophy, including his wacky "going without talking on Sunday" for a couple decades. He doesn't apologize for anything and appears to have no moral compass, but rather seems proud that his 12 year old daughter uses profanity with him or that his wife "does everything" with him, including LSD.

The book turns into "and then I made this TV movie" and "then I made this TV series that lasted 13 weeks." No stories, just boringly going through his resume. He eventually gets to Dallas and spends a little time on that, but by then you don't really care. He has proven himself to be similar to his J.R. character and it's difficult to feel sympathy for him when his health problems occur. In the end you don't really feel like you know the real Larry Hagman, but more like he's winking at you knowing that he's just suckered you into reading stuff that may not be true. Just like J.R.

Larry Hagman's Autobiography, "Hello Darlin'" is not one of those bios of boring facts. It's an entertaining, hysterical at times, intelligent, and honest account of the guy we know as Major Nelson and/or J.R. It's really incredible all the experiences described here which are pretty much at the center of the acting world.

Larry's mother was Mary Martin (Peter Pan, Sound of Music, etc.) and we get good anecdotes about her and the hundred plus other stars Hagman lived his life with. From his early Broadway work with George C. Scott, his "Jeannie" years in which he did LSD with the likes of Peter Fonda to his experiences with neighbor Burgess Meredith and his trips to Eastern Europe where "Dallas" was a force that helped end communism.

Also covered is his drinking, his health problems, and his bouts of pre- and post- fame poverty, all delivered with good humor and a healthy outlook on life. And why not? He had a great one.

I do wish though the "Jeannie" years were covered more indepth as that was one of my favorite shows and really part of my consciousness. You'll finish the book feeling like you know Larry personally, and know he's someone of a lot more depth than his TV and movie characters.

Larry Hagman was born September 21, 1931 in Forth Worth, Texas. His 17 year old mother, Mary Martin, was a perpetual Peter Pan, who did not want to grow up. After a stint as a TV astronaut with a Jeannie in a bottle, Larry finally made it over to Dallas. Here's what he says about his autobiography: "In this book I'm going to describe how I did my best. A lot already has been said about me. I've been described as the Mad Monk of Malibu, the kooky actor in the caftan who led flag parades up and down the beach, didn't speak on Sundays, and occasionally roared up to the grocery store on a Harley while dressed in a yellow chicken suit. It's also no secret that I'm a recovering alcoholic whose life has been prolonged by a liver transplant. It's all true, but there's more to say, lots more. Some of it's funny, some of it's serious, and some contains the wisdom that comes from discovering that having it all doesn't mean you *actually* have it all. In writing this book, I decided to throw all that mumbo in the gumbo, to stir in the stories, the little-known details, and the lessons I've learned, and I wanted to do it before I couldn't remember it anymore or we destroy the planet, whichever comes first."

Larry Hagman shines through and co-writer Todd Gold doesn't get in the way. "As I see it, I've spent much of my life in the business of crowd control. Each night, millions of people are at home staring at a box, and I'm inside it. If they weren't watching TV, they'd be outside rioting in the streets, breaking windows, and overturning police cars. I help keep them sedated, and at the same time I help sell cars, aspirin, deodorant, and feminine hygiene products. So far I've been pretty good at it. ... I even take a little credit for helping bring down the Eastern bloc."

That's not all faux bravado. As an amateur philosopher/sociologist, the "man in the hat" does a pretty fair job that'd make Marshall McLuhan proud.. While filming episodes of *Dallas* on-location in Moscow, Larry, a/k/a J. R. Ewing, "Walked around the city unrecognized. It felt great to be anonymous again. I walked leisurely through museums and churches without being stopped once for an autograph. All of us actors remarked on a similar experience. But then we ran into a group of East German tourists who picked up television signals from West Germany and they were fanatical *Dallas* fans. Our guide, a pretty little girl, had no idea why four hundred people suddenly went nuts seeing us. ... `That's J.R.!' they screamed. `J.R., we love you!' Our guide didn't understand and called for security. `But you're just an actor.' She kept saying . ... Nine months later, I watched CNN's coverage of the Berlin Wall being torn down and realized that *Dallas* had impacted that side of the world. Pop music also had an effect, but ideas combined with pictures were even more powerful. Every time people in Hungary, Poland, and East Germany watched *Dallas*, they saw what they didn't have - the beautiful clothes, the big homes, the abundant food, and the lifestyle. Eventually, enough people began to say, `Wait a minute, I want that stuff too! And why don't we have it?' ... When the people from the Eastern bloc countries saw what they were missing, they realized what a farce communism was."

How much did the Ewing family mean to Larry Hagman? Remember the oil painting of Jock Ewing (Jim Davis) that hung over the mantle at Southfork? It's the first thing one sees when entering Hagman's house.

This is an entertaining celebrity bio that gets its points across - the good, the bad, the happy and the sad.

I received this book as a gift from someone who new I enjoyed the television show Dallas, and I can really say it was a treat.

I must say that Mr. Hagman had a very interesting life that goes way beyond what we know him best for: playing the merciless J.R. Ewing on Dallas and his other hit I Dream of Jennie.

From the get go, Larry speaks about his youth, being the son to Broadway star Mary Martin (famous for being Peter Pan), his father and tenuous relationship with his step-father Richard.

The book reads in a chronological order from boyhood, through his stint in the military (where he met his one and only wife Maj), to his first movie roles, through his television career and wraps up with his last series 'Orleans' and his liver transplant.

He has many stories which are entertaining and fun reads. So fun in fact I wanted more and was disapointed only in the fact they weren't long enough or more of them. Mr. Hagman had some fascinating quips and stories regarding such people at Burgess Meredith, Carol O'Conner, and other tv and silver screen legends.

But not everything was picture perfect....There were times of poverty, illicit drug use, and confronts his drinking issues which led to his liver transplant head on.

I was amazed at what a world traveler he was, even before his most memorable character of playing oil tycoon J.R. Ewing. He had seen more of the world before his 20th birthday than most people do their whole lives, and many times early in his youth, he did it with no job or no money, but always had a positive outlook on life.

A very inspirational autobiography where Larry does show you the silver lining on all dark clouds.

Again, for me the trouble with this book was it just seemed to short....I would have loved to read many more of his 'tall, but true' tales, many of them with a martini or bottle of champagne in his hand.