RIP David Jacobs

 

R.I.P. David Jacobs, Dallas and Knots Landing creator

The architect of one of TV's most enduring shows, David Jacobs was 86

AV Club

By Matt Schimkowitz

8/22/2023

 

David Jacobs, the two-time Emmy nominee who forever changed television with the late-night soap operas Dallas and Knots Landing, has died. Per Deadline and confirmed by his son Aaron Jacobs, he died of complications from Alzheimer’s on August 20 at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. Jacobs was 86.

Jacobs is best known for creating Dallas, the seismic primetime soap that ran for 14 seasons and over 350 episodes between 1978 and 1991. The show was among history’s longest-running live-action primetime dramas, behind the likes of Gunsmoke, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order, Bonanza, and Gray’s Anatomy. However, it’s probably most remembered for its season three finale, “A House Divided,” which posed a question seemingly every TV owner wanted answered: Who shot J.R.?

Among the most parodied, referenced, and discussed TV phenomenons in history, “Who Shot J.R.?” exploded out of the television and onto magazine covers, T-shirts, and into water cooler conversation in America and abroad. The question lingered until episode four of the fourth season when more than 83 million people in the U.S. (a 76% share of viewership that night) and 350 million people worldwide watched the mystery’s conclusion in “Who Done It?” By then, the show had become so ubiquitous that a session of the Turkish parliament reportedly adjourned early so legislators could tune in.

Though TNT would take another stab at Dallas in 2012, reuniting some of the original cast, including Patrick Duffy, Larry Hagman, and Linda Gray, it would last only three seasons. It was canceled in 2014. Still, the original show’s legacy and impact can be felt throughout the modern TV landscape, from the enduring popularity of Twin Peaks to the success of Yellowstone.

Jacobs also found success with a Dallas spin-off called Knots Landing. Running for 14 seasons, the series was another sprawling, decade-spanning primetime soap that ran from 1979 to 1993. He would continue to create, produce, and shepherd new shows, lending his expertise to Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman and Homefront, which earned him two Emmy nominations.

Jacobs was born on August 12, 1939, in Baltimore, Maryland. He described his father as “an interesting character,” was a “bookie, a billiards champion, a crooner, a songwriter, and my mother took him away from all that.” He married his first wife in 1963 when he began working as a writer, freelancing magazine articles, writing children’s books, and authoring a biography of Charlie Chaplin.

JACOBS, David

Born: 8/12/1939, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.

Died: 8/20/2023, Burbank, California, U.S.A.

 

David Jacobs western – creator, executive producer, producer:

Paradise – 1988-1990