…So I made no qualms about tricking him back. How did he trick us, you ask? If you were a fan of the TV series Dallas during the 1980’s, you might recall an entire season of the show that in essence ‘never was’. This was because Patrick Duffy who was portraying Bobby Ewing had decided to leave the series and so the producers killed him off in a car accident. The next year he decided to return, so in a season cliffhanger, it was revealed that his death – along with the entire season – had been a lengthy dream sequence. Longest damn dream until Bob Newhart would have one that lasted for an entire series.
But I guess I’m going to admit that it wasn’t really the Dallas debacle that persuaded me to trick Bobby Ewing…er, Patrick Duffy…when he appeared at the Chiller Theatre Show on October 30, 2010. After all, he had redeemed himself as a friendly, upstanding guy in Step By Step throughout the 1990’s. But the greed of the Ewing family was still pervasive with Duffy and his former co-stars Larry Hagman, Linda Gray, and Charlene Tilton – all of whom were present in the same room.
My trick was mostly above-board. I told him that I was out of money and asked if he might cut me a $10 deal by offering a signed picture and a photo with him for the combined price of $30. He agreed, and said with a smile as I began to dig through my wallet, “…as you go past all those $100 bills in there.” Well, guess what. I was a bit embarrassed to find all that I did have at that point was a hundred dollar bill. I recovered by saying, “Well, I still have to get home.”
As he signed my picture, my friend Peter asked him if he recalled one of his friends who had acted in a bit part in Dallas as a little girl in a skating rink. Oddly enough, he had no recollection of it. Perhaps he was sleeping during that time…or dead.
But what was even more unsettling was when I woke up the next summer and realized that the entire Chiller Show had been a dream…I had never actually met Patrick Duffy at all, despite the picture above.
Celebrities from the dream sequence at the Fall 2010 Chiller Theatre Show will continue…
Leave a Reply