Valene Ewing: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit

m

Line 38:

Valene's storyline in her first two episodes on ''Dallas'' focuses on the rebuilding of her relationship with estranged ex-husband Gary Ewing. When Valene arrives in Texas to find her daughter, [[Lucy Ewing]], she is brought back into the drama of the Ewing family. Upon arrival, she is reunited with Gary with whom she slowly falls back in love. Once ''Dallas'' became a hit, series creator [[David Jacobs (writer)|David Jacobs]] proceeded to launch a spin-off series titled ''Knots Landing'', which would feature Valene and Gary prominently. The actress had strong input on how they would create her character outline. She recalled, "I remember going to wardrobe and getting a peachy pink waitress uniform, and the shoes. And then I was trying to get that Texas sound, her all important accent. And so we created her layer by layer."<ref name="Dallas: The Complete Story p-28"/>

Van Ark received positive reviews for her portrayal of Valene, and received two ''[[Soap Opera Digest]]'' award nominations in the category "Outstanding Actress in a Leading Role on a Prime Time Serial". Greg Hernandez {{who|date=March 2013}} said, "Her character of Valene was a best-selling author, but her personal life was always a mess. She had her husband, Gary, stolen by another woman, then got pregnant by him, her twin babies were kidnapped by a crooked doctor, she was given a drug overdose at gunpoint by her ex-husband's fiancee, and she racked up enough marriages to give [[Elizabeth Taylor]] a run for her money. But she and Gary Ewing ([[Ted Shackelford]]) made for one of television's most beloved couples and the audience never stopped rooting for them to get back together."<ref name= "OIH"/>

==Development==

Line 63:

Valene's relationship with Gary is important to the understanding of her overall character. The Gary/Abby/Valene love triangle, which involved Gary cheating on Valene with [[Abby Cunningham]] – the show's main villain – was a monumental storyline for all three characters. Van Ark described the storyline:<blockquote>"There wasn’t really anything I could think of, but I will mention that Ted and I went in way early, whenever Donna Mills came on the show, and told David Jacobs that it made total sense that Gary would fall for Abby. I can’t believe I did that but it really provided me with some great stories. Because they were celebrating Donna Mills and she became the center but Gary and Val were supposed to be this enduring couple. Ted and I were saying Gary and Val should break up and Gary should go with Abby. It was a pretty big deal to break up the couple that the show began with. So (the producers) were going toward this, then they pulled away but eventually returned to it. David Jacobs was against it but we convinced him. And it was the longest running story on the show. It took a long time for them to get back together. Eight years."<ref name= "JVAU"/></blockquote>

[[Ted Shackelford]], who plays Gary, described the love story, "I can't complain. I mean, Gary spent six or seven years being led down the primrose path by one stupid broad after another. So with Val... You'd think after 13 years, at the age they are [Val is 45, Gary is 47] and the amount of bullshit they've been through, they would have learned something! They'd probably have a very comfortable life by now. But it makes for a dead story line."<ref name= "EW">{{cite magazine|url= http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,314025_2,00.html|author= Harris, Mark|title= Totally ''Knots''|magazine= [[Entertainment Weekly]]|publisher= [[Time Warner]]|date= April 19, 1991|access-date= April 16, 2012|archive-date= February 25, 2010|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100225143908/http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,314025_2,00.html|url-status= live}}</ref> When asked about working with Van Ark, he said: "I don't know how it could get any better. She's remarkable, and I'm not blowing smoke up your ass. I'd tell you if I thought she was a pain in the ass, although sometimes she ''is'' a pain in the ass. But my best work is done with Joan."<ref name= "EW"/> Van Ark also discussed Valene's relationship with her daughter, Lucy Ewing. She said, "The spine or the beginning of the series was Gary and Val, coming over from ''Dallas'', so maybe there should have been more Lucy. I do know that CBS and the producers of both shows wanted to keep the two shows separate but in the beginning you had Larry Hagman and others going over to ''Knots''."<ref name= "JVAU"/>

==Return==

Line 83:

===''Knots Landing''===

After their remarriage, Gary and Valene move to Knots Landing, a coastal suburb of Los Angeles, California. Valene is initially skeptical of the move, and describes Knots Landing as "no place to start over". She is struck by her neighbors, the Fairgates, and particularly by Sid's daughter, Annie, from Sid's first marriage, who reminds Val of her own daughter, Lucy. Gary is determined to stay and convinces Val to give Knots Landing a chance. Val becomes involved in [[John B. Anderson|John B. Anderson's]] Independent [[1980 United States presidential election|1980 presidential election]] effort, joining the local chapter of the Anderson-Lucey '80 campaign. She also signs up neighbor [[Karen MacKenzie|Karen Fairgate]] ([[Michele Lee]]) and the pair eventually become best friends, a relationship struck when Annie, on the run, turns to Val for help, and Val convinces her to return to her father and stepmother. Val remained a central character on the show from 1979 to 1992. Gary and Val's daughter, Lucy, visits her parents in Knots Landing and appears in one episode in the show's first season. Though largely uneducated, Valene discovers she has a talent for writing and writes a thinly veiled exposeexposé of the Ewings of ''Dallas'' called "Capricorn Crude". Gary is extremely critical of the book, which affects their marriage. However, the book is published and Val becomes a best-selling novelist and financially independent. Val leaves Gary after Gary's affair with his neighbor and business partner, [[Abby Cunningham]] ([[Donna Mills]]); and Val keeps the house in Seaview Circle. Gary and Val's second marriage ended in divorce nearly a year later. Val is subsequently married to Ben Gibson ([[Doug Sheehan]]) (1985-1987), and later briefly to Danny Waleska ([[Sam Behrens]]) (1990).

One of Val's most memorable storylines occurs during the 1984-85 season when she is told that her infant twins are [[stillbirth|stillborn]]. Val senses that this could not be true as she clearly remembers hearing the babies cry. She suffers a nervous breakdown and disappears from Knots Landing for several months, and is later reunited with her babies, thanks largely to the investigations secretly undertaken by her neighbors Mack and [[Karen MacKenzie]]. During this storyline, Valene's home town is revealed as Shula, [[Tennessee]] (a fictional community in real-life [[Johnson County, Tennessee|Johnson County]]). In 1991, over 8 years after their second divorce, Gary and Val got married for the third time (Valene's fifth marriage, and Gary's fourth). While working on an assignment to write a biography about Greg Sumner ([[William Devane]]) in 1992, Valene crosses paths with some mafioso type characters who are targeting Sumner. Fearing that she could expose them, they kidnap Val and she is later believed to have died in a car accident. Joan Van Ark had decided to leave the series in 1992, at the end of Season 13, which turned out to be the show's penultimate season. However, Van Ark came back in the 2-part finale to the show's final season in 1993, when it was discovered that Val was never in the car. Having escaped her kidnappers, she later returns to the cul-de-sac. Valene is seen once again in the 1997 reunion mini-series ''[[Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac]]'' where she begins a new career as a screenwriter and adapts her best-selling novel "Hostage", which tells the story of her kidnapping five years earlier, into a film.