LARRY HAGMAN ON CONFRONTING DEATH

Apr 3 2004

Exclusive From Tanith Carey


LARRY Hagman picked up the phone and rang each of his five granddaughters in turn. One by one, the Dallas star asked them how their day had been and what they'd been doing at school - then signed off by telling them he loved them.

What Larry omitted to mention was that he was about to go under the knife to remove a diseased piece of the liver transplanted into him nine years ago. He also left out the fact he might not survive.

"It was my choice to go ahead with the operation. But the choice was between that or dying," says the 72-year-old actor, who is still a household name for his portrayal of evil oil baron JR Ewing in the biggest soap opera of the 80s.

"So I just made out a really good will. And then I called my granddaughters to say I loved them. I didn't say there was a good chance I might not come out because I didn't want to make a mish-mash of it."

Today it looks as if Larry made the right call. Four months after having two operations to get rid of the dead tissue, the actor and former alcoholic is sitting in his living-room with its panoramic views high over the Pacific.

As befits the man who was the most successful TV actor of his generation, there is a fleet of six cars outside, including a Ferrari. For each, he has a bumper sticker: "Hagman Lives."

It is a characteristically defiant statement after two US tabloids went so far as to say that nothing more that could be done for him - and that he had been sent home from hospital to die.

Still, Larry has put a great deal of thought into his last great performance: his funeral. He doesn't know how many years he has left - and doesn't seem worried. But when he does go, he wants it to be a celebration.

"I would like to be minced. Did you ever see Fargo, when they put the guy in the chipper and his feet are sticking out?" he asks. "Then I would like to be spread over half an acre of land. Then I want to spread some wheat over there, and then some marijuana seeds.

"At the end of the year you harvest me for a huge cake - and serve it up for my birthday.

"I want a big party for guests to come and dance for three days. I have had a wonderful life. It's been so good and so blessed. Most things don't bother me.

"If I have a fault it is that I take life too humorously. If you look at the funny side, it is pretty funny most of the time. I am rich, I am alive and I am living well."

Larry is known as the "Mad Monk of Malibu" for his eccentric ways. But he has admitted for the first time that he secretly started drinking again despite receiving a new liver in 1995 to replace the organ he had destroyed with 30 years of alcohol abuse.

HE is at great pains to stress that this had nothing to do with his latest liver problem, which was sparked by a recurring infection.

"I was having a beer for the taste, not for the buzz," he says without a trace of apology. "I was having half a pint once a month with a salad.

"I didn't think it was a serious thing. Then they caught me on it. So I'm human. It was nothing to do with the reason for my operation. I didn't even mention the beers to my doctor."

He also kept it a secret from his regular Monday night Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. "I was breaking the rules. I didn't tell the group about it," he confesses. "That is 'going out', as they call it. A beer a month, a beer a year, a beer every 10 years, is 'going out'. You are not supposed to drink anything.

"When the story came out, I had to go back to the meeting. I threw down the magazine and I said: 'Here's what I have been doing.'

"It wasn't difficult to do. People do it all the time. There was no criticism. They don't shoot the wounded at AA. It wasn't like I was going out getting drunk and crashing the car, beating my wife."

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Harmless or not, Larry says it was the last drop of alcohol he will ever drink. "I don't need alcohol any longer and I don't crave it. It might start me again. I don't want to disgrace the AA movement by going back into that sort of behaviour.

"I don't hate myself for it. I have never hated myself for anything - which is maybe part of the problem."

He can trace his alcoholism back to his first drink at 15. In his Dallas heyday he was getting through four bottles of champagne a day.

"My father was an alcoholic," he explains. "All of my heroes were smokers and drinkers: John Ford, John Wayne. That's what you do in Texas. Real men smoke and drink."

He was such a happy drunk that if the booze hadn't rotted his first liver he would still be on the stuff today.

"If there hadn't been any side-effects on my health, I would have been happy to go on," he admits. "I never was drunk. It just gave me that little click. My wife never minded. We were making so much money at the time that $50,000 a year on champagne really didn't matter."

But though Hagman is enjoying his new lease of life, death holds no fear for him. He recently turned down the offer of a second liver transplant.

"I said to the doctors: 'No, I don't want another liver. I don't want to deprive other people.' I have already had my one, even if it means I could die. Who gives a s**t, honey?

"It doesn't scare me. You are going to die eventually anyhow. I wouldn't have it even if it meant I had another 20 years. Well, I am 72. I don't think I'll be 92." Part of his fearlessness stems from the fact that he has seen the "next level" of existence. During his recent operation, he says, he had an out-of-body experience.

"It is so common, it sounds corny," he says. "I was euphoric and I was having a wonderful time listening to the doctors, playing music and joking below while they operated on me. Then suddenly some-one or something wanted me back. I didn't want to go."

But it was what he "saw" during the 16-hour transplant nine years ago that really changed his views on living and dying.

"I got a look over the edge and it is a wonderful place - full of love," he says. "I remember feeling this huge matrix of electromagnetic energy like the Aurora Borealis.

"It's as if you join a huge curtain of energy and it takes all fear of death away."

Since his last surgery just before Christmas, his liver has already grown back half an inch. The illness has taken a lot out of him, but he is working out again and gradually feeling his strength returning, though he is now diabetic.

Every morning, he still says thank you to his original liver donor, whose picture he has posted next to his shaving mirror.

SUDDENLY pulling a JR voice out of the hat, he bellows: "I say: 'Good morning, Bill, how ya doing? Thanks, you little rascal.'"

Born in Texas in 1931, Larry decided to follow his mother, Broadway legend Mary Martin, into show business as a teenager.

By his early 30s he was a household name as Captain Nelson in I Dream Of Jeannie, one of the most popular TV shows of the 60s. Then came Dallas. It was screened here from 1978 to 1991, and 25 million viewers watched the episode revealing who had pulled the trigger on him.

Today, as we talk in the opulence of his Santa Monica home, his lugubrious face is dominated by a pair of huge aviator shades.

The hair is thinner and the face greyer and the Texas accent more muted. But the swagger returns as soon as he puts on his cowboy hat for the pictures.

Women are the only indulgence he turned down, he says. He has been married to his wife Maj for nearly 50 years - they have two children - and says he was never tempted to stray.

Maj recently persuaded him to give up the high-powered motorcycle he used to ride on 400-mile trips through the desert. But he still skinny-dips in the rock pools at the ranch in Ojai, which he calls Hagman Heaven.

The real heaven can wait.

"I had 18 years in two of the most successful TV shows ever, so who could top that?" he says. "I mean, I have done enough to be remembered by. I don't want to win an Oscar."

Then, in true JR style, he adds: "All I care about is money - and I have enough money to live like this until my life is over."

Does he have any idea how long that might be? "Today. Tomorrow? Who knows?

"Take it one day at a time. That's the lesson that Alcoholics Anonymous teaches you."

US Editor, in Santa Monica