If you’ve watched any of the many series in the Law & Order franchise, especially, you’ve seen actors being recycled in multiple parts over the years. Even a short lived series like Millennium might see the same actor getting killed in more than one episode of its three seasons, but usually, actor recycling happens most in a long-running show. If it’s been a while, especially if the actor is good, producers probably forget or hope that no one would notice or care.
The original Dallas ran for 357 episodes between 1978 and 1991. That’s a long time. Throughout those seasons, there were many actors who’d do bit parts on the show, maybe even without any lines. One of those people — brought up at a recent Paley Festival event for the show — was Mitch Pileggi. You see, before he was mama’s boy Harris Ryland on the new incarnation of Dallas, and before he was Agent Skinner on The X-Files, he was a bit player on several episodes of Dallas, finally landing a decently sized speaking role as “Morrissey” in episodes including “Three, Three, Three,” in which J.R. (Larry Hagman) is institutionalized. Here’s a clip:
One could fan-wank that “Morrissey” is an alias for Harris Ryland, put there by his mother to teach him a lesson, though we kind of doubt it, no matter how amusing that connection might have been. You’ll note, though, that Morrisey has many similar character tics that Harris would later exhibit.
Another major player in the new Dallas to appear on the original series was Brenda Strong. Before she became TV’s go-to dead wife, she had roles on shows like Twin Peaks, and, yes, Dallas, where she played a random hookup of Cliff Barnes (!!) in 1987’s “Cat And Mouse.”
The interesting thing to note here in this scene with Ken Kercheval is that Brenda Strong’s character’s name is never said. She DOES look a little bit like Julie Gonzalo here, which made me think for a time that Cynthia Cidre & co. were going to reveal Ann as Rebecca’s mother, before the notion of her being Pamela Rebecca came into the series. Alas, it doesn’t seem like Ann Ryland Ewing knows Cliff Barnes, so this probably isn’t a sequence with Ann in her drugged out, bad days. Still fun to see. As far as we know, this scene had little bearing on later show events, except to show that Cliff was guilty for the things he had said and money he had borrowed from Pam.
Other Dallas folks to show up on the original series? Kevin Page (Bum), also known as the man who fatally shot J.R. at J.R.’s request, appeared as a cop in the “J.R. Returns” movie, and Sam Anderson, who assumed the role of Dr. David Gordon for the Dallas Season 2 finale, appeared on the original show as a detective in two episodes of the original show’s Season 8. Who’ll show up next year? We will have to wait until 2014 to find out.
