David Jacobs, who has died aged 84, was an aspiring novelist when he created the show Dallas, a worldwide phenomenon and US television’s first peak-time soap success since Peyton Place. But the writer’s move to the screen was reluctant, made necessary by a need to earn money after his first marriage ended.
In 1975, Jacobs’s ex-wife, Lynn (nee Oliansky), a literary agent and producer whom he had married in 1963, moved from New York to Los Angeles following her second marriage, to the actor John Pleshette. Wanting to be close to his daughter, Jacobs went too and – according to an interview with the TV critic Hilary Kingsley – wrote to Lynn, who continued to be his agent, to ask: “At least can you find me some work? I don’t want to make a career in screen or television writing, just something that pays while I’m trying to write the adequate American novel.”
The novel-writing ambition was never fulfilled, but he was taken on by Lorimar Productions as a story editor on later episodes of a short-lived police drama, The Blue Knight (1975-76), then on the 1977-78 series of Family, about a Pasadena couple and their three children.
Given the chance to come up with his own ideas, Jacobs had talks with Lorimar executives that eventually resulted in Dallas (1978-91), the story of the rich and powerful Texas oil family the Ewings, who would do anything to get richer and become more powerful, after being told that Linda Evans was on contract to the production company.
“I thought of a semi-trashy character, Pam [Barnes], a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who marries Bobby, a boy from a rich family,” Jacobs recalled. “The next character was JR. Jock Ewing, his father, was honourable but corrupt. Bobby was the apple of his eye, so that explained JR’s resentment and warped outlook.”
When it was decided that Evans was too old to play Pam Ewing, Victoria Principal landed the role, with Patrick Duffy as Bobby and Jim Davis as Jock. (Evans went on to star as Krystle Carrington in the subsequent rival soap Dynasty).
Jacobs wanted Robert Foxworth in the part of Southfork Ranch’s “nasty” JR Ewing, the villain of the piece, but the actor turned it down (and was later cast in another Lorimar soap, Falcon Crest).
Dallas’s casting director then called in Larry Hagman to audition as JR. “Larry wore boots, had a Stetson in his hand and called us all ‘darlin’,” recalled Jacobs. “He dressed for that little meeting. I knew he was right for the part. We all knew. But I didn’t know he would become the show.”
With its “Who shot JR?” cliffhanger at the end of the third series, in 1980, the soap became one of the most watched programmes of all time and created endless newspaper headlines. JR survived to wreak more evil while Jacobs had a further success with the Dallas spin-off Knots Landing (1979-93), featuring two Ewing family members seen briefly in the original, Jock’s middle son, Gary, and his wife, Valene, played by Ted Shackelford and Joan Van Ark.
Following the lives of four couples in Seaview Circle, a cul-de-sac in a Los Angeles coastal suburb, Knots Landing had, in fact, been the first idea that Jacobs put to Lorimar executives in 1977, but the CBS network regarded it as too middle class and tame, wanting something “bigger and brasher” (Dallas).
Jacobs, also executive producer of the new soap, had loved the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 film Scenes from a Marriage and saw Knots Landing as an American equivalent. “You should always steal, but only high-class stuff,” he quipped. It was never quite as popular as its parent programme, but ran for slightly longer and remained closest to Jacobs’s heart – and he even fought to have Pleshette cast as Richard Avery.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Ruth (nee Levenson) and Melvin Jacobs, who sold appliances and insurance, David studied at Baltimore city college high school and Maryland Institute College of Art, graduating in fine arts in 1961.
Moving to New York, he became an illustrator and researcher on Grolier’s Encyclopedia and wrote educational books on subjects ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Constantinople, while trying to find success as a novelist.
In television, Jacobs never equalled the success of Dallas and Knots Landing, but his other creations included the drama Married: The First Year (1979); Secrets of Midland Heights (1980-81), a soap aimed at a teen audience, with Linda Hamilton and Lorenzo Lamas in the cast; Behind the Screen (1981-82), a soap set behind the scenes of another fictional soap; Paradise (1988-91), about a gunfighter bringing up his dead sister’s children; Bodies of Evidence (1992-93), a police series starring Lee Horsley and George Clooney; and Four Corners (1998), with Ann-Margret as a ranch owner fighting developers.
Jacobs served as producer or executive producer on those programmes, as well as Berrenger’s (1985), a failed soap about a department-store dynasty, and Homefront (1991-93), a drama set in postwar Ohio. He also wrote the prequel Dallas: The Early Years, a 1986 TV movie, and was an executive producer of the first series (1993) of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and the feature-length Knots Landing Reunion: Together Again (2005).
Jacobs said he “hated” the TV remake of Dallas (2012-14), starring Josh Henderson as JR’s son John Ross, with Hagman, Duffy, Linda Gray (Sue Ellen Ewing) and Ken Kercheval (Cliff Barnes) reprising their original roles.
He is survived by his second wife, Diana (nee Pietrocarli), whom he married in 1977, and their children, Aaron and Molly; and Albyn, the daughter of his first marriage.
• David Arnold Jacobs, writer and producer, born 12 August 1939; died 20 August 2023
