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RELATED LINKS

• Mr. Hagman's official site
• National Kidney Foundation's U.S. Transplant Games
• Mr. Hagman's bio

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Actor talks about his liver transplant and his battle with alcoholism. (3:07)
 

Full Interview. (19:16)
 

Tavis: Pleased to welcome Larry Hagman to this program. The acclaimed actor, of course, starred in one of prime time TV's biggest hits, "Dallas." People these days talk about the success of shows like "American Idol," but how about these numbers: November of 1980, more than 350 million people tune in on one night to an episode to reveal who shot J.R. Remember that? Of course you do.

These days, Mr. Hagman's focus is on the health and well-being of people like himself, who've received life-saving transplants. On July 11th through the 16th, he's once again involved in the National Kidney Foundation's transplant games, this year being held in Pittsburgh. Larry Hagman, honor to have you on this program.

Larry Hagman: Tavis.

Tavis: You brought your hat with you?

Hagman: Yeah, I did.

Tavis: Can I put this on?

Hagman: Absolutely.

Tavis: Which was is the front?

Hagman: That horseshoe is in the front.

Tavis: This is the front right here? All right, Jonathan, here we go.

Hagman: All right.

Tavis: How's that look?

Hagman: You got a big head, that's for sure. (Laughter)

Tavis: And I thought the hat was big when I picked it up. I'm honored to have you here, man.

Hagman: Well, thank you.

Tavis: How you been?

Hagman: I've been well.

Tavis: You look well.

Hagman: I feel well.

Tavis: It's always amazing for me to see persons who have had these kinds of major, life-changing transplants, and not that you're supposed to be able to, but to look at them, you can never tell.

Hagman: Yeah, yeah. Well, I can show you some scars if you like scars. (Laughter)

Tavis: No, that's okay, that's okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me about your transplant.

Hagman: Well, I had it in 1995. It'll be 14 years come August the 23rd. That's a long time - a long time to have a little extra life - and I've got to thank my donator, a great guy. He was in an accident in the Mojave Desert and was on - they went up to harvest all his organs, and I got one, and here I am.

Tavis: How does that rate, how does that compare, your 11 years, to what these liver transplants normally mean for people?

Hagman: Oh, I don't know. I met a girl who's 22 years. She had hers when she was, like, 14. Of course, she was younger; I was 65 when I had mine.

Tavis: The cause of your liver transplant, the cause for the need of it was what?

Hagman: Alcohol.

Tavis: Alcohol.

Hagman: Yeah. I drank my liver out.

Tavis: I want to be respectful about this, but how do you process the fact that you had to get your liver replaced because you brought that on yourself by such heavy drinking?

Hagman: Well, it happens. Five hundred thousand Americans die from tobacco poisoning every year, and it's legal. I don't know, it just, that's the - you can't stop giving people organs because of bad behavior. If you keep on having bad behavior, then of course they'll deny you a liver, or whatever you need.

Tavis: You obviously though have had to change your lifestyle dramatically.

Hagman: Oh, boy, did I, yeah. Well, I changed it a couple of years - the doctor said, "Hey, you've got chronic cirrhosis of the liver, got to stop drinking," and I did, and successfully, too, with help, of course.

Tavis: How did, for you, drinking become such a (unintelligible)?

Hagman: A habit? I don't know. All my heroes, I guess, like John Wayne and all those guys, they drank and they smoked and did all the manly things. It was expected of you. And now abstinence in all kinds of forms is a part of living. It's a pretty - I don't smoke anymore, I quit that 42 years ago.

Tavis: And at one point, you were a spokesperson for the cancer society.

Hagman: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for 11 years.

Tavis: The Great Smoke-Out, yeah.

Hagman: That's right.

Tavis: So you're like Mr. Good Guy.

Hagman: Pretty much.

Tavis: No smoking, no drinking.

Hagman: Yeah, yeah. But I have a lot of fun anyhow.

Tavis: Tell me about these games that you've been involved in now for some years.

Hagman: The National Kidney Foundation games, yeah. Well, they're Olympic-style games that we have every two years around the United States to show that people can live normal lives after transplantation and to make awareness that 18 people die every day waiting for organs.

I often ask people if they would like to give their organs when they pass on, and they say, "Well, I'm not so sure, I don't know." And I said, "Well, would you accept one if you needed one?" "Well, yeah, sure." And I say, "Well, there you go - where do you get them from?"

Tavis: What is it about so many of us who have a problem with the notion of donating our organs?

Hagman: A lot of times I talk to people, they say they don't trust the doctors, they don't trust the hospitals and that kind of stuff. Well, if you go to the hospital, you've got to trust somebody. And it's a wonderful thing to meet these people, especially the families of people who've donated their loved ones' organs. They're wonderful, wonderful, thinking people.

And also people who are living donors who give kidneys. You can't give a heart and you can't give a liver, but you can sure give a lung - well, kidneys, anyhow. And that's where the main part of this whole thing is - one out of every eight people, I believe, is going to have some kind of kidney problem during their lifetime.

Tavis: These 18 people - I was struck by that number a moment ago and I want to come back to that - these 18 persons a day who die waiting for some sort of transplant, tell me more about these people; who these people are, what they're waiting for, why they can't find what they need. Tell me about these 18.

Hagman: Well, the majority, I think, are waiting for kidneys. A lot of people have kidney damage during their lives, and a lot of people are waiting for heart, lung, bone marrow, skin. Skin is an organ, did you know that?

Tavis: I did not know that.

Hagman: I didn't know it either till a couple of days ago.

Tavis: I want to ask beyond changing your lifestyle and beyond, I would expect, the obvious of just being grateful for some additional years of living, did this experience for you, this successful experience for you, bring about any kind of spiritual -

Hagman: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Tavis: Talk to me about that.

Hagman: Well, I had a real epiphany. I guess it was during and after the operation. I did what's a common thing; I kind of raised above the table and could look at me and listen to all the people talking and understand what they were saying and so forth.

And I also got to a point where kind of a oneness with everything and a great compassion. It teaches you compassion. It was a great, enlightening experience, a spiritual experience. Not particularly religious, but spiritual. It was great. I can still go there.

Tavis: To that same place?

Hagman: Yeah, yeah.

Tavis: This may be an impossible question; let me ask anyway. Have you pondered, have you figured out why it is, or why you think it is, at least, that you found the liver that you needed, that you have been given these extra years of life. Do you know why that is?

Hagman: Luck, good doctors. The miracle of this is the technology it takes to do this sort of thing. I think the liver is the most difficult of the operations, even more difficult than heart. It's just a culmination of technical ability and the times we're living in, where we can afford to do that and have the technology.

Tavis: Beyond the science and the technology, what I'm trying to get at is whether or not you think there is some inner reason why you are still living, why you're still here, because you didn't have to be. Is there some purpose behind that?

Hagman: I don't know - luck, maybe. The right time, the right moment, the right team. I don't know - luck is a lot. I'm a very lucky man in a lot of ways - in my career, in my life, in my transplant, my marriage.

Tavis: Let me switch gears now. Great segue - thank you, by the way, I appreciate that. When you say lucky in your career, you mean by what?

Hagman: Well, I've had tremendous luck. I had "I Dream of Jeannie" for five years and 13 years with "Dallas," and a couple of other series that didn't go for various reasons. And not many people get that kind of chance.

Tavis: With so many cable channels now that are doing reruns of everything every day, do you ever get a chance to see some old episodes of either "Jeannie" or "Dallas?"

Hagman: Oh, sure. Yeah, both of them, they're on every day. Yeah.

Tavis: And let me just take them one at a time. When you see these episodes, these reruns of "Jeannie," you think what? Take me back to those days.

Hagman: (Laughs) Oh, they were great days. Comedy's not funny - it's hard work. "Dallas," I always thought, was a comedy anyhow. (Laughter) A cartoon kind of thing.

Tavis: Yeah, in many ways it was.

Hagman: It was. And there's Barbara. Yeah, it was just a combination of good luck and timing, being in the right place at the right time, and prepared for it.

Tavis: So "Jeannie" was really your first big break. What did that do for your career at that time?

Hagman: Oh, well, it got it going. I'd been on Broadway and in regional theater and daytime soap opera for a couple of years in New York, too, so I had a lot of training. Ready for it, I was ready for it. Being ready is a good deal.

Tavis: You did what soap?

Hagman: It was called "Edge of Night."

Tavis: Ooh, yeah, of course.

Hagman: You don't - you're not old enough to remember that.

Tavis: I remember it. I'm not old enough to remember watching it, but I know - I'm a soap opera fan, so if you watch soaps. Yeah, I shouldn't admit this, but in college, I used to watch two of them, like, every day. I would put my college class schedule around these soaps.

Hagman: Really?

Tavis: Don't ask me why I got hooked or how I got hooked, but I'm not the only one. I just saw B.B. King the other day, the great blues -

Hagman: Oh, sure.

Tavis: B.B. King is a huge soap opera fan. He and I were, like, commiserating, just talking about our favorite soaps. But I watched them all through college. So you were on "The Edge of Night." My mother used to watch that.

Hagman: Yeah, of course.

Tavis: So "Dallas -" I mentioned earlier, at the top, of course, who doesn't - that episode, "Who Shot J.R.?" How many times a week do you hear that reference? Somebody walks up to you or you - that must, like, be - that is one question that you must hear consistently, who shot J.R.?

Hagman: Oh, yeah. I was recently with Linda Gray in Ireland, and "Dallas" is still a big deal over there, and they just go nuts over it. They're just - it was one of the biggest things in television history over there, and England, too. Yeah, it's very strange. Somebody offered an idea that "Dallas" helped topple the Soviet Union.

A guy used to come over here, a director I knew in Russia, and he would bring beluga caviar and I'd give him about 50 tapes of Dallas. And he'd go back there and they'd clone them and they'd pass them around, and people would watch them and say, "Well, why don't we have the cars and the clothes and things like that that those Americans have over there?"

And somebody invents the idea that perhaps "Dallas" helped collapse the Soviet empire, because they had information about what was going on.

Tavis: As you look back on it now, what do you think made that show such a hit on American television? Shows come and go, but that thing was revolutionary.

Hagman: Well, a lot of things, but recession helped a lot. We had a recession during that period of time and people couldn't afford to get a babysitter and go out and see a movie and have dinner or something like that. People stayed in - they just had to stay in. We're entering that period of time right now, too, I have a feeling.

So that was one thing. And also, the family - we all lived in one house - get this: the daddy and the two brothers and their wives lived at -

Tavis: South Fork.

Hagman: - at South Fork, and they lived there with one room and one bathroom - these are all multimillionaires. That is just - I don't think it exists in this country, (laughter) but in a lot of countries the mothers, the fathers, the grandfathers, they all live in one house.

Tavis: Absolutely, yeah.

Hagman: So there was that insular kind of island culture. So I think that helped a lot.

Tavis: I think I get this, but I want to hear your take on it. I used to crack up, though, as the years went past, because I was a "Dallas" fan like everybody else. But as the years went past I used to wonder how it is that so many Americans, to your point now of us being in a recession, people were hurting at that time, and we're watching a family that doesn't just have but a family that has in excess.

Hagman: I know.

Tavis: And I could never make the connection how we got turned on to you and the crew in this family that just had excess when we had nothing.

Hagman: I know, I know. Well, it happened during the Depression. In films, they always depicted the elite, the really rich people, and I think people liked to see that. And the problems that the rich people have, too - same as theirs.

Tavis: I can make an assumption about this answer, but let me not do that since I have you here in front of me. If your career had to be judged, if you were going to be judged by these two roles, "I Dream of Jeannie" and the role on "Dallas," I assume that you're happy with that. If those are the benchmarks, the hallmarks of your career.

Hagman: (Laughs) Well, I don't have time for another career. (Laughter) I think - maybe I do.

Tavis: Maybe, yeah.

Hagman: I wouldn't mind a third one, but I don't know.

Tavis: But looking back on it, though, you're okay with that.

Hagman: I'm okay with it.

Tavis: You're okay with that body of work.

Hagman: Well, they're two totally different things.

Tavis: Yeah. What do you make of that very fact, that your stardom comes with two characters that are diametrically different?

Hagman: What is it - when opportunity meets preparation, that's luck? I'm a lucky man. Be in the right time, right place.

Tavis: You mentioned Broadway earlier. How did you get into this acting thing? Take me back to the beginning.

Hagman: Well, okay. My mother was probably the most famous musical comedy actress in America at one time - Mary Martin. And I really didn't know her very well until I was about 12 when my grandmother died; I'd been living with her. And I spent a couple of years with her, and I didn't get along with her husband so I didn't really know her.

And then she asked me if I wanted to go to London in South Pacific - be in South Pacific in London, and I said yes, so I did a year with her. I learned a lot. I learned a lot from her. One thing she said, "There's only three things you really have to remember. It's know your lines, hang up your clothes, and stay reasonably sober." Well, I did two.

Tavis: You did two of the three.

Hagman: Yeah.

Tavis: How did that time with your mother in her environment, her work space, how did that impact the relationship?

Hagman: Well, she was unique in that she had a charismatic personality. When she was on stage, you couldn't take your eyes off her. She had that whatever, that - Marlon Brando had it. My mother had it. Several people have it. But it's a rare thing, it's a rare thing. I don't have it. I'm more of a technician; a craftsman. And she just had this wonderful quality that appealed to people.

Tavis: If you are a technician and a craftsman, then just break down for me what you infused the character J.R. Ewing with that made that character work. We loathed J.R. Ewing, and you made that work. That's more than technical and craft, I think. What did you infuse that character with to make it work so well for us?

Hagman: Well, I thought the guy was kind of funny, to tell you the truth. I thought he was amusing, so I tried to play that angle, underlying. I worked with a guy when I was 16 years old; I moved down with my father, I didn't know him real well, and he was on retainer - he was a lawyer - with this guy named Jess Hall (sp).

And Jess had four sons, and when Jess died, all four sons were trying to get the hierarchy; wanted his position. And his son Jess Hall Jr. won, and I knew him pretty well. And I worked for him digging ditches and baling hay and really heavy-duty work. And I found out that the harder you work, the less money you make.

The less you work, manually, the more you make. So I figured that - and then working in the sun, 110 degrees, baling hay or digging ditches, wasn't my idea of that. So I called my mother and I said, "I think I want to be an actor." Get out of here.

Tavis: That's a funny story to me in that you pick up your phone, your mother is who she is, and you decide that, for the reasons you just laid out, I want to be an actor. What made you think, though, once you got into it, that you had any sort of skill set that could help you become successful at this as opposed to just saying I want to act? A whole lot of folk just want to act.

Hagman: I just wanted to get out of what I was doing. So, well, I went to college, Bard College, and I studied one year there, and they were teaching me how to sew, build sets, and so forth. And I said, "I don't want to do that; I want to act." And I was in a couple of plays there, and I got the thing of being on stage.

Tavis: Got that bug, yeah.

Hagman: Getting your laugh, getting that first laugh, and I really enjoyed it. It was fun. And it was - got to meet a lot of girls that way.

Tavis: Yeah, not a bad gig if you can get it. When you said earlier that comedy is hard work, again, I think I know what you mean by that, but explain comedy is hard work.

Hagman: Well, timing - I was lucky because I had done a lot of stage work, and I could hear the audience. And you get on a set like this and nobody's laughing, you might tell a joke and everybody just kind of stares at you. But when you're on stage, you could hear. And I had years and years of that before I got into television, so I could hear the audience, I knew where they were.

Tavis: And how'd you make the transition into TV when you didn't hear that?

Hagman: Well, I'd had the experience to wait for a laugh. Not a long time, but enough that you could hear that if it's supposed to be there, you've got to wait for a little bit. And it's just kind of a technique you roll with when you've done it enough.

Tavis: One, have you ever longed to go back to Broadway, number one, and I ask that against the backdrop that a lot of persons who - I want to be kind about this - a lot of persons who are chronologically gifted are making their way back to Broadway as they become so.

Hagman: No, I tell you, Broadway is - I don't know, Broadway's a lot of work. Or plays - not Broadway, but just being in front of people is a tremendous amount of work, and you've got to stay healthy for it. And I find that when I'm doing a play, I wake up in the morning and I can't think of anything else. That's it. And each audience is totally different, so they're always throwing you curve balls. But I do like being in front of people, that's kind of fun.

I do kind of a lecture now about my life and so forth, and go around doing that, and it's kind of fun to hear an audience, to feel an audience.

Tavis: I know we don't have time for you to give me the whole back story on it, but give me more about what the lecture series is and how the setting works.

Hagman: Oh, I just go out and talk about me. People, believe it or not, want to pay money for it, so I go out to (laughter) women's groups and stuff like that, and I talk about my mother, of course, who was very important in my life and in the theater, and then "I Dream of Jeannie" and "Dallas." And my homes - my wife is a builder, and she loves building me homes.

And so I show the home that she built for me and stuff like that. It's about 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how many laughs you get.

Tavis: How many laughs, yeah. And the acting thing, you still like doing it? You're still interested?

Hagman: Oh, sure, sure, but I just don't want to do eight shows a week, that's all.

Tavis: What's, like, a perfect gig for you right now?

Hagman: Gosh -

Tavis: Something that you can do -

Hagman: Well, I go out with Linda Gray and we do "Love Letters," and I've gone out with Barbara Eden, too, and we do "Love Letters." And sometimes we'll go on those cruise ships and so forth and do a couple of shows, and that's a lot of fun.

Tavis: So life is good.

Hagman: Oh, couldn't be better.

Tavis: (Laughs) That sounded like J.R. Ewing right there, didn't it? Couldn't be better. Nice to have you on the program.

Hagman: Thank you.

Tavis: It's an honor to meet you, and thank you for all the work you're doing with the kidney transplant; we appreciate that.

Hagman: Thank you, Tavis. Appreciate it.

Tavis: That's Larry Hagman. What a great conversation.