{"id":11242,"date":"2024-04-13T10:26:40","date_gmt":"2024-04-13T10:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11242"},"modified":"2024-04-21T13:06:49","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T13:06:49","slug":"going-drink-for-drink-with-dallas-star-howard-keel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11242","title":{"rendered":"Going drink for drink with \u2018Dallas\u2019 star Howard Keel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

In 1981 when he was 62, Howard Keel\u2019s days as the star of great Hollywood musicals were long gone. He was living in Oklahoma with his third wife Judy when he received a phone call. \u2018I was pretty much washed up in Hollywood by the late Seventies,\u2019\u00a0 <\/span>he told me. \u2018We were packed ready to head off to retirement in Colorado.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But Jim Davis, who played patriarch Jock Ewing on the hit TV series \u2018Dallas\u2019, had died and the show needed another senior star to play opposite Barbara Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie. Keel said he hired a U-Haul and headed back to Los Angeles. He played Clayton Farlow on the show for the next ten years.<\/p>\n

Born in Illinois on this day in 1919, Keel had stage success in musicals on Broadway and in London\u2019s West End\u00a0 <\/span>before becoming an instant movie star playing opposite Betty Hutton in Irving Berlin\u2019s \u2018Annie Get Your Gun\u2019 in 1950. More musical hits followed including\u00a0 <\/span>\u2018Show Boat\u2019 with Kathryn Grayson and Ava Gardner and\u00a0 <\/span>\u2018Seven Brides for Seven Brothers\u2019 with Jane Powell. He also was a successful recording artist, especially in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was keen to interview him most of all because he co-starred opposite my favourite, Doris Day, in \u2018Calamity Jane\u2019 (left). When\u00a0 <\/span>his film-musical career faded, he made a couple of pictures in England \u2013 \u2018Floods of Fear\u2019 and \u2019The Day of the Triffids\u2019 \u2013 that I also was curious about.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I met him first at a media event on the Southfork \u2018Dallas\u2019 set at the Sony studio in Culver City where Lorimar, the show\u2019s production company, was based (top photo) and then at the iconic Musso & Frank\u2019s Grill for an interview over lunch in 1982. Keel brought his longtime male PA with him and a young female publicist from Lorimar. It was late morning and the place hadn\u2019t filled up yet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Keel beckoned the waiter and asked for a specific brand of gin. They didn\u2019t have it, so he named another. Not that either. At last, he settled on a brand of gin he could live with and ordered a double dry gin martini on the rocks with two cocktail onions. It was my habit always to follow the lead of the person I was interviewing \u2013 if it was wine or mineral water I followed suit. I told the waiter at Musso & Frank\u2019s that I would have the same thing as Mr. Keel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the next two hours, while we had salads and sandwiches, he and I each nursed four double martinis while he regaled me with tales of working with Doris Day, whom he adored, and being ripped off by film producers in England. He said there was resistance at first to him being a leading man because his voice was bass-baritone rather than the favoured tenor. He also told me that he hated opera because he thought it lacked expression.<\/p>\n

After Keel left our boozy lunch, the publicist from Lorimar told me she\u2019d done scores of interviews with him and had never heard any of the stories he told me. Sadly, the recording of our conversation has been lost. I went for a walk and had some coffee at a nearby cafe before I headed home. Keel\u2019s guy, who didn\u2019t drink, was driving him but when I asked where he was headed, Keel said he was going to meet George C. Scott to play golf at the Beverly Hills Country Club.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, there was a man who could hold his liquor. He died aged 85 in 2004.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett In 1981 when he was 62, Howard Keel\u2019s days as the star of great Hollywood musicals were long gone. He was living in Oklahoma with his third wife Judy when he received a phone call. \u2018I was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11242"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11256,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11242\/revisions\/11256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}