Obituary: Leonard Katzman

As an executive producer and writer of Dallas, the American soap opera complete with lust, greed and power, based around the oil-rich Ewing family in Texas, Leonard Katzman helped to create one of the most popular programmes in the history of television, seen by an aud- ience of 200 million world-wide. It was conceived in 1978 as a mini-series of just five episodes, but it went on to become America's No 1 programme and finished in 1991 after 356 episodes, featuring Larry Hagman as nasty J.R. Ewing.

Its cliffhangers became legendary. The 1979 series ended with Pam Ewing (the actress Victoria Principal) having a horrifying car crash after drinking a bottle of vodka. Would she live? She did. The following series ended with the biggest cliffhanger in television: who shot J.R.? To keep the answer secret, four different endings were filmed so that not even the cast knew the answer. When the new series began in the autumn of 1980, 300 million viewers around the world - including a record 83 million Americans, 76 per cent of the audience - tuned in to find out that J.R.'s scorned sister-in-law Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby) had pulled the trigger and J.R. survived. Then, in 1984, came the shooting of Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) and his death in a speeding car. But, after a series away from Dallas, Duffy was to return in 1986 when his screen wife Victoria Principal awoke to find him in the shower - she had dreamed the entire previous series!

Katzman, who was instrumental in Duffy's return, had learnt the ropes as an assistant to his uncle, the Hollywood B-movie producer Sam Katzman, in the Forties and went on to become an assistant director on the Alcoa- Goodyear and Playhouse 90 series, associate producer of Route 66 (1960- 64), a popular CBS series about two young wanderers travelling across America in search of adventure, and co-producer of the long-running western series Gunsmoke (1955-75), starring James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon and set in 1870s Dodge City, Kansas. He also had success as writer and co-producer of The Wild, Wild West (1965-70), starring Robert Conrad and Ross Martin as US government agents in the Old West, co-produced Hawaii Five-O (1968-80), wrote, produced and directed Dirty Sally (1974), produced Petrocelli (1974-76) and wrote and produced The Fantastic Journey (1977) and Logan's Run (1977-78).

Then came Katzman's success with Dallas, which was conceived by the children's author David Jacobs as the first evening soap opera in America since Peyton Place. As an original producer of Dallas, from 1978, Katzman helped to create a television monster, but he left in 1984 after disagreements about the way the serial was going. Viewing figures for the following series fell and he was enticed back 18 months later as executive producer. "The series had lost its way," he said. "J.R. had become Mr Nice Guy walking around with his hat in his hands. That was not what his character was founded on."

Katzman decreed that Patrick Duffy must return as Bobby Ewing and made a pact with Duffy that neither of them would return unless the other did. He also killed off some of the other characters. But Dallas finally ran out of steam in 1991, although Katzman had just finished writing the script for The Dallas Reunion at the time of his death.

He had also been a writer of episodes in the series Private Benjamin (1983, based on the film) and The Dukes of Hazzard (1984), executive producer of the series Our Family Honor (1985-86), creator, writer and executive producer of the television film Dangerous Curves (1992), a producer of the series Walker, Texas Ranger (from 1993), and writer and director of the feature film Space Monster (1965).

Leonard S. Katzman, television producer, writer and director: born 2 September 1927; died 5 September 1996.