David Jacobs, the television writer, producer, and director known for his masterminding of Knots Landing, Paradise, and the influential Dallas, passed away earlier today at the age of 84. The cause of death has been attributed to complications brought on by a variety of infections, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Active in the television industry from 1977 to 2005, Jacobs premiered his magnum opus – the prime time soap opera Dallas – on CBS in 1978, and it remains one of the most well-regarded television shows of all time.
Snatching four Emmy wins during its time, Dallas follows the dysfunctional Ewing family – the owners of the lucrative Ewing Oil company in Texas – as they clash with their competitors and each other, with the many dirty schemes only eclipsed by the increasingly dire developments.
Dallas is the sixth-longest hour-long prime time drama in the history of American television, with 357 episodes stretched across 14 seasons from 1978 to 1990, and the show’s 58th episode, “Who shot J.R.?,” is the second-highest-rated prime-time telecast in history, with only the series finale of M*A*S*H beating it.
Knots Landing, a spinoff sit in Los Angeles, later premiered in 1979, and the mainline show was also revived in 2012, lasting for three seasons until its end in 2014.
Indeed, before Succession, there was Dallas, a piece of television history that Jacobs didn’t get off the ground until he was 38. So, for all you aspiring screenwriters out there, know that you’re anything but a failure if you haven’t made an impact by your early-to-mid-20s; if the one and only David Jacobs didn’t get his first script produced until he was pushing 40, then why should it be too late for you?