Pendergast T., Pendergast S. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Volume 1: A-D
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Kostelanetz, Richard, editor. Merce Cunningham: Dancing in Space
and Time. New York, Da Capo Press, 1998.
Curious George
Since 1941, when Curious George was first introduced in an
eponymous children’s book, the mischievous monkey has been
embraced by children and adults alike and has become a cultural icon.
The hero of seven books for children co-created by H. A. and
Margaret Rey, Curious George retains his appeal because he is like a
universal child who often does what his readers are too afraid to do.
As well-known author Madeleine L’Engle writes in the introduction
to The Complete Adventures of Curious George, ‘‘George, like most
true heroes, is a creature of action; he acts, rather than being
acted upon.’’
Often referred to as the ‘‘father’’ of Curious George, Hans
Augusto Rey (1898-1977) began drawing at the age of two. He had a
passion for animals, which could be seen in his initial drawings and
the menagerie of animals he kept as pets over the years. In his native
Hamburg, Germany, H. A. often visited the nearby Hagenbeck Zoo,
where he perfected his animal imitations. A love of languages helped
H. A. to master four different tongues and encouraged a lifelong
fascination with the study of linguistics. As a soldier fighting in
World War I, H. A. would pass the time by studying the constellations
An illustration depicting Curious George.
in the evening sky. His interest in astronomy would later lead to two
books on the subject, one written for a younger audience and the other
for a more advanced reader.
Prior to leaving Germany in 1923 for Rio de Janeiro, H. A. met
Margaret (1906-1996) through mutual friends. While H. A. was
selling bathtubs in Brazil for a relative’s firm, Margaret was studying
art at the Bauhaus in Dessau, the Academy of Art in Dusseldorf, and
attending art school in Berlin. She worked as a newspaper reporter
and a copywriter for an advertising agency. In her memoir, included
in The Complete Adventures of Curious George, Margaret explains
how writing a jingle for a margarine campaign inspired a lifelong
distaste for commercials.
In 1935 Margaret left Germany for Rio, where she and H. A.
became collaborators in business as well as in life. According to
Margaret, they formed ‘‘a sort of two-person advertising agency,
doing a little of everything. . .’’ to make ends meet. After their
marriage in 1936, the Reys traveled to Paris, planning to spend only a
few weeks. Instead, their visit lasted four years. It was here in Paris
that the little monkey first appeared on paper. H. A. had drawn funny
illustrations of a giraffe for a Parisian magazine, which caught the
attention of French publishing house Gallimard, who approached the
illustrator about writing a children’s story using the drawings. The
result was Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys. This book, which featured
a monkey named George, led to other children’s books, and if not for
the start of World War II, the Reys might have remained in Paris.
In a tale that has become as legendary as their fictional creation,
the Reys escaped Paris on bicycles one rainy morning in June of 1940.
Strapped to their bike racks were their manuscripts, which included a
draft of their first book, Curious George. Abandoning their bikes at
the French-Spanish border, the Reys hopped a train to Lisbon. By
October of that same year, they arrived in New York intent on selling
their stories. Shortly after their arrival, they sold Curious George to
publishers Houghton Mifflin, who released the book in 1941. For the
next 20 years, the Reys lived and worked in New York, turning out six
more Houghton Mifflin books about the curious monkey and his
trusted companion, the man with the yellow hat.
According to Margaret, the Reys did not want to write another
book about Curious George, and they took nearly six years to do other
things before they published Curious George Takes a Job in 1947.
Despite their apparent simplicity, the Curious George books took
nearly a year to write and were often quite challenging for the couple.
‘‘Sometimes, it became more like mathematics than writing a book,’’
Margaret once told an interviewer. Inspiration came from many
places: friends, newspaper stories, even chance conversations with
strangers. Generally, H. A. presided over the illustrations and Marga-
ret wrote the stories, but the books more often were a complicated
merger of the couple’s various talents. As Margaret writes in her
memoir, ‘‘at times it confused even us.’’
Many have pondered the appeal of Curious George since the first
book appeared in 1941. Children like how the pictures tell the story,
which liberates non-readers from their literate older brothers, sisters,
or parents, and allows them to tell themselves the stories again and
again. H. A.’s illustrations deftly capture a sense of George’s mischie-
vousness. In Curious George, the little monkey takes an unexpected
swim in the ocean on his voyage from Africa to the United States, and
the illustration of George coughing up sea water and swimming fish
delightfully conveys the results of his curiosity. Children also can
CURRIER AND IVES ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
650
relate to George’s curiosity and the trouble this frequently inspires.
When the Reys wrote, ‘‘George promised to be good, but sometimes
little monkeys forget. . . ,’’ they could have been writing about any
little girl or boy. While George’s adventures are thrilling, they also
can be scary, and the man with the yellow hat adds a soothing quality
to the stories since he often helps George out of his scrapes. George
also shows readers that it is okay to be afraid and to cry, but his quick
mind demonstrates the benefits of becoming self-reliant, too. Above
all, Curious George entertains and delights readers of all ages.
In the 1960s, after writing nearly all of the seven Curious George
books, the Reys moved from New York to Massachusetts. After a
long illness, H. A. died in 1977. In the 1980s, Margaret and collabora-
tor Alan J. Shelleck worked together on a second series of Curious
George stories. Through various licensing agreements carefully se-
lected by Margaret and secured through a series of legal battles in the
1990s, the instantly recognizable image of the curious little monkey
began appearing on greeting cards, children’s toys, clothing, and even
CD-ROMs. Since 1941 when the first book appeared, the Curious
George stories have sold more than 20 million copies and continue to
have solid sales each year. Curious George sales received a boost in
1994 when the movie Forrest Gump featured a scene with Forrest’s
mother (played by Sally Field) reading a Curious George book to her
son (played as an adult by Tom Hanks).
Poet W. H. Auden once wrote that a good children’s book also
should interest a clever adult. If this is true, then the Curious George
series certainly qualify as good children’s books. The stories have
been translated into many languages, which further demonstrates
their wide appeal. ‘‘It does not matter much that there are some I
cannot read,’’ wrote Margaret about the different language versions
of her books. ‘‘It so happens that I know the story.’’
—Alison Macor
F
URTHER READING:
Rey, Margaret and H. A. Rey. The Complete Adventures of Curious
George. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1994.
Williams, Karen. ‘‘She Wrote From the Heart and Touched the Child
in All of Us.’’ The Christian Science Monitor. May 23, 1996, B3.
Currier and Ives
The decorative and hugely popular colored lithographs mass
produced by Currier and Ives in the nineteenth century and familiar to
subsequent generations through Christmas cards and calendars illus-
trate sporting scenes and sailing ships, noteworthy triumphs and
disasters, Indian uprisings and comic vignettes, rustic beauty and
domestic bliss, and, in general, evoke an idealized and sentimental
view of life in nineteenth-century America. Typically, a well-known
artist’s work would be reproduced as a black-and-white lithograph,
hand colored by a team of women, and distributed by the thousands at
costs ranging from a few cents to a few dollars, depending on size.
The firm was founded in New York City in 1834 by Nathaniel
Currier, employed James Merritt Ives in 1852, and became Currier
and Ives in 1857; the two were succeeded by their sons, who managed
the company until its closing in 1907, by which time more than seven
thousand different prints had been produced.
—Craig Bunch
F
URTHER READING:
Baragwanath, Albert K. Currier and Ives. New York, Abbeville
Press, 1980.
Currier and Ives: A Catalogue Raisonné. Detroit, Gale Research, 1984.
651
D
Dahmer, Jeffrey (1960-1994)
At his 1992 trial, Jeffrey Dahmer, an alcoholic worker in a
chocolate factory, admitted to the murder of seventeen young men
during a thirteen-year killing spree. His gruesome full disclosure,
including accounts of cannibalism, fired the popular imagination and
helped spawn a virtual cottage industry of books, trading cards,
movies, and other products. But behind the monstrous ghoul of
popular imagination, there lurked a desperately lonely young man
whose killings were the result of years of progressive mental illness.
While pregnant with Dahmer, his mother, Joyce, endured a
particularly trying pregnancy, suffering extended bouts of nausea and
nervousness and strange fits of rigidity. Doctors prescribed morphine
and phenobarbital, among other medications. At one point Joyce was
taking twenty-six pills a day, immersing her fetus in a soup of
powerful depressants. Joyce Dahmer also found nursing to be acutely
unpleasant and within a week of Dahmer’s birth was nursing him
from a bottle. Nevertheless, Dahmer grew into a happy, normal child,
although displaying an aversion to the roughhousing of most boys and
a predilection for nonconfrontational games based on themes of
stalking and concealment, such as hide-and-seek or kick the can. But
after a hernia operation, six-year-old Dahmer’s behavior changed
profoundly. He became remote, fearful, and distant—sitting for hours
Jeffrey Dahmer
in front of the television without moving. Even his body language
changed. His movements grew stiff and labored, like those of
an old man.
By the time he began grade school, Dahmer had become so shy
and reclusive that a teacher felt compelled to bring his behavior to his
parents’ attention. Nothing was done, and young Dahmer grew
increasingly remote, submerged in a realm of unpleasant fantasies
and, in increasing degrees, alcohol. In early adolescence, he often
occupied himself by collecting road kills, stripping the flesh and
assembling the bones in a nearby wood—once mounting a dog’s head
on a stick as a bizarre totem. In his late teens, Dahmer’s obsessions
had begun to overwhelm him. So fearful was he of others that he could
only relate to them as inert objects. In 1978 he committed his first
murder, picking up a hitchhiker and bringing him back to his
parents’ house where he plied him with beer and marijuana. As the
hitchhiker prepared to depart, Dahmer killed the boy with a piece of
gym equipment.
Unaware of Dahmer’s blossoming psychosis, his father, Lionel—
divorced and remarried—continued to counsel the apathetic boy to
the best of his ability, insisting on his enrollment at Ohio State
University. At the end of Dahmer’s first quarter, he had earned a
cumulative GPA of .45. He was returned home, and Lionel drove to
the university to pick up his possessions, where he was further
dismayed to learn that his son had done little else than drink, selling
his plasma to secure the necessary funds. In frustration, his father
insisted Dahmer join the military. Packed off to boot camp, Dahmer
seemed to blossom under the rigid discipline, but the improvement
was short-lived. Stationed for active duty in Germany, his behavior
quickly lapsed into a nonstop debauch. He received an early discharge
for drunkenness.
Now at his wits’ end, the elder Dahmer packed his son off to live
with his aging grandmother in a suburb outside Milwaukee. There,
Dahmer’s behavior became increasingly bizarre. Once, his grand-
mother found a fully clothed male mannequin in his closet; another
time, a .357 under his bed. At times the house would be suffused with
unpleasant odors. As he had in the past, Dahmer lamely explained
away his activities, though he now convinced no one. Finally, he
moved out of his grandmother’s house. On the first day at his new
apartment, he was arrested for drugging and molesting a thirteen-
year-old Laotian boy. Dahmer served a year in a Milwaukee work-
release program, during which time his father lobbied aggressively
for additional treatment for his alcoholism. It was to no avail. In
March of 1990, Dahmer was released on probation.
In the year and a half before his arrest, Dahmer, now living on his
own, was able to indulge his tastes fully, killing thirteen men in the
ensuing months. His modus operandi consisted of haunting the bars
and street corners, trolling for a likely victim from amongst the
hustlers who worked his neighborhood, many of them black, a fact
that would later lead to charges that the murders were racially
motivated when, in fact, the race of his victims was merely a
consequence of proximity. To conceal his activities, Dahmer bought a
freezer, installed an elaborate security system, and separated his
bedroom from the rest of the apartment with a heavy metal door. Once
secure within apartment 213, Dahmer would drug, then strangle his
victim, molest the corpse, and finally eat or preserve parts of his
victim as he saw fit, disposing of the remains with quicklime and an
DALLAS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
652
enormous plastic bucket. He was finally apprehended when a victim
escaped his clutches, returning accompanied by police officers, who
discovered polaroids of dead and dismembered men strewn about
Dahmer’s bedroom.
Hoping an insanity defense might lead to institutionalization
rather than imprisonment, Dahmer chose a jury trial—during which
he was protected from would-be assailants with the aid of a bullet-
proof glass booth. Dahmer had said he wanted to find out why he did
such things, but the only elucidation to come was to the ravenous
public, who ate up the details of Dahmer’s crimes. The jury, unmoved
by his plea of insanity, sentenced him to nine consecutive life terms.
In prison, Dahmer found Jesus as well as the death he had long
desired. He was fatally bludgeoned in 1994 while mopping a bath-
room facility. (Dahmer’s assailant, himself a convicted killer of
questionable mental health, claimed he had acted under God’s direc-
tion.) A figure at once pathetic and monstrous, Dahmer was generally
reviled, although there was still something in his deflated appearance
that generated sympathy. The wounded little boy had not been
vanquished by the man’s acts. And the enormous volume of letters
Dahmer received after his incarceration, more often sympathetic than
threatening, would seem to bear this out: he was not alone in his
alienation. Ultimately, Dahmer killed not out of hatred, but out
of loneliness.
In a final footnote to Dahmer’s story, in 1996 a Milwaukee civic
group bought his belongings for $407,000 to prevent their public
auction on behalf of the victims’ families. Instead of the auction
block, Dahmer’s possessions were incinerated, and the money was
distributed to the families without fanfare.
—Michael J. Baers
F
URTHER READING:
Baumann, Ed. Step into My Parlour. Chicago, Bonus Books, 1991.
Dahmer, Lionel. A Father’s Story. New York, William Morrow and
Company, 1994.
Dvochak, Robert, and Lisa Holewa. Milwaukee Massacre: Jeffrey
Dahmer and the Milwaukee Murders. New York, Dell Paper-
backs, 1991.
Masters, Brian. Killing for Company: The Case of Dennis Nilsen.
New York, Stein and Day, 1985.
Ressler, Robert K., and Tom Shachtman. I Have Lived in the Monster.
New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Schwartz, Ann E. The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough: The
Secret Murders of Jeffrey Dahmer. New York, Carol Publishing
Group, 1992.
Tithecot, Richard. Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the
Construction of the Serial Killer. Madison, University of Wiscon-
sin Press, 1997.
Dallas
With the 1980 episode that answered the question ‘‘Who Shot
J.R.?,’’ Dallas became the most-watched program in the history of
television. The originator of the prime-time soap opera, Dallas’ serial
Larry Hagman (seated) with Steve Kanaly and Linda Gray as they
appeared on Dallas.
stories about the exploits of a Texas oil family provided fodder for
water-cooler gossip as well as real bookie-joint wagering. The
program enjoyed a 13 year run, making superstars of Larry Hagman,
Victoria Principal, Patrick Duffy, and others. The program foundered
in the early 1990s and is remembered more than any other program as
the epitome of the unabashedly capitalistic Reagan era.
Premiering April 2, 1978 on CBS, the series revolved around the
relationships and tribulations of patriarch Jock Ewing and wife ‘‘Miss
Ellie’’ (played by Jim Davis and Barbara Bel Geddes) and their three
sons: J.R. (Hagman), the deceitful, conniving businessman who with
his father ran the family oil company; Bobby (Duffy) a freewheeling
playboy as the series began; and Gary (first David Ackroyd, then Ted
Shackelford), a weak-willed alcoholic who long ago had fled the
family’s Southfork Ranch. J.R.’s wife was boozy Sue Ellen (Linda
Gray). Bobby, in the series’ first episode, eloped with Pamela
(Victoria Principal), the sexy daughter of family arch-enemy Digger
Barnes. Their marriage set the stage for years of conflict, especially
with Pamela’s brother Cliff (Ken Kercheval).
In early episodes, the series was structured as a traditional
weekly drama; each episode presented a stand-alone story, with
Pamela ostensibly the focal point of the narrative. It quickly became
clear, however, that wily J.R. was the real favorite of both the series’
writers and the audience. By 1979, the series threaded continuing
DALLASENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
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stories through several stand-alone episodes. Alcoholic Sue Ellen
turned up pregnant: was the baby J.R.’s or Cliff’s? J.R.’s turncoat
secretary Julie (Tina Louise) was murdered: would J.R. succeed in
framing Cliff for the killing?
The series settled into a Friday at 10:00 p.m time-slot, growing
in popularity until the final episode of the 1979-1980 season, when
J.R. was shot by an unknown assailant. There was no shortage of
suspects: he had spent the season acquiring, then unloading what
proved to be worthless Asian oil leases, swindling everyone from the
family banker to his own mother in the process; he had driven Bobby
and Pam off Southfork; and he had shipped wife Sue Ellen off to a
sanitarium, even as he bedded her younger sister.
During that summer of 1980, Dallas fever exploded. ‘‘Who Shot
J.R.?’’ was a sensation, the subject of everything from fan speculation
to Las Vegas betting. The press scrambled in vain to uncover details
of the fall scripts; elaborate security precautions were put into effect at
the studio. Producers took no chances; each actor was brought in to
film scenes of his or her character ‘‘shooting’’ J.R.
A lingering actors’ strike—and Larry Hagman’s demand for a
raise—threatened the solution to the mystery, but the public finally
learned the answer on November 21, 1980. Sue Ellen’s sister Kristin,
J.R.’s former mistress, had pulled the trigger, infuriated by J.R.’s
attempts to run her out of town. Sue Ellen herself solved the mystery,
realizing her sister was plotting to frame her for the crime. Unfortu-
nately, Kristin revealed she was pregnant with J.R.’s baby; instead of
sending her to prison, J.R. shipped his assailant off to California,
where she would have her illegitimate child in secret. The episode set
an all-time ratings record: an unprecedented 53.3 Nielsen mark,
meaning more than half of America’s television households were
tuned in—the highest rating in history, a figure exceeded only once in
later years.
Dallas was now the most popular series on American television.
Actor Jim Davis passed away in early 1981 and Jock was eventually
written out of the series. His will set up a power struggle at Ewing Oil
that unfolded over most of the 1982-1983 season, arguably the series’
creative peak. Barbara Bel Geddes (Miss Ellie) departed for health
reasons in 1984; she was replaced by Donna Reed. Barely a year later,
Reed was reportedly livid to discover she had been fired to make way
for Bel Geddes’ return. She sued the series’ producers.
Meanwhile, J.R. and Sue Ellen divorced, remarried, then di-
vorced again; Bobby and Pam had also divorced by 1984. The
characters were moving toward reconciliation when actor Patrick
Duffy announced he was leaving the show. In the final episode of the
1984-1985 season, Bobby was killed—murdered by his deranged
former sister-in-law, even as he had just professed his undying
love for Pam.
Yet even as the series spun its larger-than-life stories, it also
managed to capture the real-life flavor of a turbulent decade: the
1982-1983 recession figured prominently in the story; later, the mid-
decade mania of big-business mergers and take-overs was reflected
on-screen. The fictional Ewing Oil was now worth two billion dollars,
but the Dallas franchise itself was priceless to CBS and its affiliates.
The series had begotten one spin-off (brother Gary and wife Val
set up housekeeping in Knots Landing in 1979) and a host of
imitators, from Falcon Crest to Flamingo Road to Dynasty. Dynasty,
in particular, caught the public’s fancy. Where Dallas’ stories had at
least some grounding in real life, Dynasty was simply glamorous,
over-the-top high camp. By the end of the 1984-1985 season, Dynasty
ran neck-and-neck with Dallas for the number one position in
the ratings.
A behind-the-scenes shakeup followed; that Dallas suddenly
looked a lot more like Dynasty—soapier plots, more elaborate cos-
tumes—was apparently no coincidence. When a Cosby-led sitcom
resurgence pushed all the evening soaps down the ratings chart by
1986, the production staff was overhauled again: much of the old
guard returned, and Larry Hagman began assuming some creative
control over the series. Hagman himself reportedly engineered one of
the biggest television coups of 1986 when he personally convinced
Patrick Duffy to return to the series. In the final 1985-1986 episode,
Pamela awoke from a night’s sleep, only to find the long-dead Bobby
lathering up in her shower. The audience was left to wonder all
summer: Who was that? How did he get there? The cliffhanger was
nearly as big a sensation as ‘‘Who Shot J.R.’’ had been six years
earlier, and the producers hyped it expertly—going so far as to film
fake footage, then allowing it to find its way into the tabloids.
‘‘Bobby in the Shower’’ was an inspired stunt; the resolution
was a disaster. In the opening moments of the fall season, it was
revealed that Bobby had never died; instead, Pamela had simply
dreamt the entire 1985-1986 season. An entire year’s worth of
narrative and character development were simply wiped out. Fans
howled in protest; the move was a critical and creative debacle.
The episode also turned out to be the last great moment of the
‘‘prime-time soap’’ craze. Dynasty’s ratings had collapsed; Dallas,
while strong, was losing ground. Victoria Principal departed in 1987;
several supporting characters were written out about the same time.
Everyone from Priscilla Presley to a young Brad Pitt had passed
through Southfork by this time, but the characters’ antics were
becoming sillier. A stranger claimed to be the presumed-dead Jock;
he was revealed as an impostor. J.R’s dirty dealings finally cost him
Ewing Oil; he went into business for himself. In 1988, J.R. was held
captive by some good ol’ boys in Arkansas; he later married their
virgin young sister. The character’s 1990 stay in a mental institution
(he had infiltrated it to meet a business contact, only to find himself
committed by his disgruntled illegitimate son) was a low point.
Yet even in its dotage, the series made waves. Location filming
in Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989 drew considerable press; later
that year, CBS switchboards lit up when Linda Gray’s final appear-
ance as Sue Ellen was interrupted for news bulletins (the network
repented by showing the ‘‘missing minutes’’ in late-night several
weeks later). An experimental return to single-story episodes in 1988
drew little attention; a try-out of several-episode ‘‘story arcs’’ in 1990
featured a guest appearances by Susan Lucci and a reunion with
Hagman’s I Dream of Jeannie co-star Barbara Eden. The venerable
series ended its run in May, 1991, with a take-off of It’s A Wonderful
Life where J.R. was visited not by an angel, but by a messenger of
Satan (Joel Grey) who, along with favorite characters from the past,
presented a series of vignettes demonstrating what life would have
been had J.R. never been born. In the series’ final scene, the
mysterious visitor goaded the character into an apparent suicide attempt.
A pair of mid-1990s reunion movies (J.R. of course had not
killed himself, but merely shot a mirror!) failed utterly to capture the
spirit of the series in its best day. Inevitably, Dallas’s day had come
and gone. The free-wheeling, politically incorrect, every-man-for-
himself age of the 1980s had long since passed; indeed, Dallas was as
much period piece as soap, a true historical artifact that both reflects
and explains the culture that elevated it to its legendary status.
—Chris Chandler
DALLAS COWBOYS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
654
FURTHER READING:
Brooks, Tim, and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory To Prime
Time Network And Cable TV Shows. New York, Ballantine
Books, 1995.
The Dallas Cowboys
The NFL’s Dallas Cowboys have been characterized as Ameri-
ca’s team, thanks to their winning ways and their once squeaky clean
image. Their immense popularity comes largely from their success,
for the team has won five Super Bowls. The stability of the organiza-
tion has also been unique. The team has had only three owners and
four head coaches, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer, and
Chan Gailey. The first three men led the Cowboys to Super Bowl
wins. Landry established himself as one of the greatest coaches in the
history of the National Football League. Star players also established
the Cowboy’s legacy. A brief list of some of the Cowboys reads like a
Who’s Who of the football world; Bob Lilly, Mel Renfro, Roger
Staubach, Randy White, Tony Dorsett, Michael Irvin, Emmitt Smith,
and Troy Aikman are just a few of the names associated with the
The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
success of the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys are also well known for
the prominence of their cheerleading squad, named simply the Dallas
Cowboy Cheerleaders. Emerging in the mid-1970s as beguiling half-
time entertainment, the cheerleading squad has thousands of fans of
its own, as evidenced by the sales of calendars and the turnout at
promotional events.
Dallas was awarded a National Football League expansion
franchise in 1960. The Cowboys lost their inaugural game 35-28 to
Pittsburgh on September 24, 1960. The Cowboys got their first win in
1961 with a 27-24 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Cotton
Bowl in Dallas. In 1966, the Cowboys won their first Eastern
Conference championship but lost the NFL Championship to the
Green Bay Packers 34-27. Throughout the 1960s the Cowboys were
prime competitors for the NFL championship. In 1967, the Cowboys
fell to Green Bay 21-17 in the NFL Championship. The game,
generally regarded as one of the greatest games in the history of
professional football, has become known as the Ice Bowl because it
was played in Green Bay in temperatures dropping as low as 13
degrees below zero. In 1969, Cowboy quarterback Don Meredith,
who went on to further fame announcing Monday Night Football with
Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford, retired. As an announcer Meredith
was best known for singing the phrase, ‘‘Turn out the lights. The
party’s over,’’ once the outcome of a game was no longer in doubt.
DALYENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
655
In 1970, the Cowboys once again won the Eastern Division
championship, but lost in their first Super Bowl appearance to the
Baltimore Colts, 16-13. In 1971, the Cowboys moved from the Cotton
Bowl in Dallas to Texas Stadium in suburban Irving, a facility known
for a large hole in the roof, left to preserve the atmosphere of an
outdoor stadium, but providing fans with protection from the rain.
That year the Cowboys marched through the playoffs and won their
first NFL Championship by beating the Miami Dolphins 24-3 in
Super Bowl VI in New Orleans. Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach
passed for two touchdowns and was named the Most Valuable Player.
The Cowboys missed the playoffs for the first time in eight years
when they stumbled to an 8-6 record in 1974. In 1975, the Cowboy’s
returned to the playoffs as a wild card team. In the opening round, they
shocked Minnesota on a last second 50-yard touchdown completion
from Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson. One of the most famous plays
in NFL history, the pass became known as the Hail Mary. Despite
contending for the championship for the next several years, the
Cowboys would not win the title again until 1977, when Dallas
defeated the Denver Broncos 27-10. Defensive linemen Harvey
Martin and Randy White were named co-Most Valuable Players.
On March 31, 1980, legendary quarterback Roger Staubach
retired, and on August 2, 1980, Bob Lilly became the first Cowboy to
enter the Professional Football Hall of Fame. Behind new quarterback
Danny White, the Cowboys made the playoffs as a wild card team and
beat Los Angeles 34-13 and Atlanta 30-27 to advance to the NFC
Championship, where they lost 20-7 to Philadelphia. In May of 1984
Clint Murchison sold the Cowboys to H.R. ‘‘Bum’’ Bright. The
Cowboys then went on to post a 9-7 record and miss the playoffs for
the first time in 10 years.
In 1986, the Cowboys streak of 20 consecutive winning seasons
was broken when the club finished 7-9. Jerry Jones purchased the
Cowboys from Bright in 1989 and shocked the city of Dallas, the state
of Texas, and Cowboy fans everywhere when he unceremoniously
replaced Tom Landry, the Cowboy’s only coach for 29 seasons, with
University of Miami head coach Jimmy Johnson. Landry was induct-
ed into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on August 4, 1990.
In 1991, for the first time since 1985, Dallas was back in the
playoffs as a wild card. Dallas defeated the Chicago Bears 17-13 in
the opening round of the playoffs but then lost 38-6 to the Detroit
Lions. The Cowboys claimed the Eastern Division Championship in
1992. They then advanced to the NFC Championship, where they beat
the San Francisco 49ers 30-20 and then defeated the Buffalo Bills
52-17 in Super Bowl XXVII in Pasadena. The Cowboys repeated as
Super Bowl champions the following year, when they again defeated
Buffalo by the score of 30-13.
Due to difficulties with owner Jerry Jones, Jimmy Johnson
resigned as the Cowboys head coach, and Barry Switzer became the
third head coach in team history on March 30, 1994. Tony Dorsett and
Randy White were inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on
July 30, 1994. Later that year the Cowboys went on to capture the
Eastern Division Championship. However, the Cowboys lost the
NFC Championship game to San Francisco 38-28.
In 1995, the Cowboys were again Eastern Division Champions.
Dallas beat Green Bay 38-27 to advance to Super Bowl XXX, where
the Cowboys knocked off Pittsburgh 27-17. Mel Renfro was inducted
into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1996; but the Cowboys did not
continue to enjoy success under Switzer, and he was replaced by Chan
Gailey after the 1997 season. In Gailey’s first season as the Cowboys
head coach, Dallas won the NFC Eastern Division, but lost in the first
round of the playoffs to Arizona 20-7. Few teams in NFL history can
claim the consistent record of success associated with the Dal-
las Cowboys. They remain one of the preeminent franchises in
football history.
—Kerry Owens
F
URTHER READING:
‘‘Cowboys.’’ http://www.dallascowboys.com. April 1999.
Donovan, Jim, Ken Sins, and Frank Coffey. The Dallas Cowboys
Encyclopedia: The Ultimate Guide to America’s Team. Revised
edition. Secaucus, New Jersey, Carol Publishing Group, 1999.
Golenbock, Peter. Cowboys Have Always Been My Heroes: The
Definitive Oral History of America’s Team. New York, Warner
Books, 1997.
Johnson, Jimmy, and Ed Hinton. Turning the Thing Around: Pulling
America’s Team Out of the Dumps. New York, Heperton
Press, 1993.
Landry, Tom, and Greg Lewis. Tom Landry: An Autobiography.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan Publishing House, 1990.
St. John, Bob. Tex! The Man Who Built the Dallas Cowboys.
Englewood Hills, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1988.
Stowers, Carlton. Dallas Cowboys: The First Twenty-Five Years.
Dallas, Taylor Publishing, 1984.
Sugar, Bert Randolph. I Hate the Dallas Cowboys: And Who Elected
Them America’s Team Anyway? New York, St. Martin’s Grif-
fin, 1997.
Wolfe, Jane. The Murchisons: The Rise and Fall of a Texas Dynasty.
New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
Daly, Tyne (1946—)
Actress Tyne Daly earned her high profile through her three-
dimensional portrayal of Mary Beth Lacey, the dark-haired, well-
grounded foil and partner to Sharon Gless’s blonde, less stable
Christine Cagney in television’s pioneering female cop series in the
1980s. She went on to demonstrate her versatility with a stunning,
Tony Award-winning performance as Mama Rose in the Broadway
revival of the musical Gypsy in 1989.
Born Ellen Tyne Daly in Madison, Wisconsin, one of four
children of actors James Daly and Hope Newell, she drifted into
acting over her parents’ objections. Ironically, she audition for the
role of young Louise (Gypsy Rose Lee) to Ethel Merman’s Mama
Rose in the original Gypsy in 1959, but failed to get the part. Her first
television appearance was in The Virginian, followed by a brief run
with the soap opera General Hospital and guest appearances on
several other shows. Daly made a handful of films, including The
Enforcer (1976) opposite Clint Eastwood, before earning her first
Emmy Award nomination for the television movie Intimate Strangers
(1977), and made a number of other TV films before beginning her
run in Cagney and Lacey in 1982. In real life a divorced mother of
three children, Daly brought sympathy and conviction to her role as
an undercover detective, coping with the pressures of New York
police work while dealing with husband, home, children, and even
pregnancy. Her consistently appealing performance over the show’s
DANA ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
656
seven seasons earned her six Emmy nominations and four best
actress awards.
—James R. Belpedio
F
URTHER READING:
Brooks, Tim and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time
Network and Cable TV Shows 1946-Present. 6th edition. New
York, Ballantine Books, 1995.
Dana, Bill (1924—)
In the heyday of the network era of broadcasting, writer, actor,
and producer Bill Dana created a nationally recognized comic charac-
ter who endured in the American consciousness for over a decade.
When that character first uttered his signature phrase, ‘‘My name . . .
Jose Jimenez,’’ on The Steve Allen Show in 1959, he became one of
the clearest representatives of a familiar American type. Portraying a
Mexican immigrant on the bottom half of the social ladder, Dana’s
Jimenez worked at various times as an elevator operator and a
bellboy. By today’s standards, that portrayal, which included Jimenez’s
broken English and naive innocence, appears to many condescending
at best. However, Jimenez was a singularly noble character, possess-
ing goodness, wisdom, and sincerity, traits comparatively unusual in
the history of American TV characters. Although he exhibited
Bill Dana
stereotypical racial characteristics common to the period, at the same
time Jimenez displayed more positive tendencies. He was confused
and clueless, but also resourceful and crafty; he had a stereotypically
huge family back home, but he supported them faithfully through the
sweat of his own brow; he worked as a salaried servant of the
wealthier residents of the hotel, but he often proved kinder and
smarter than his social superiors.
Like many film and television actors, the public identity of Bill
Dana became inseparable from the celebrated persona he portrayed.
What was unusual about Dana/Jimenez, however, was that he was
able to escape the show on which he first appeared and to move
fluidly, and often simultaneously, to an assortment of other venues.
After Dana introduced Jimenez on The Steve Allen Show, the charac-
ter resurfaced regularly over the next five years on The Spike Jones
Show, The Danny Thomas Show, and The New Steve Allen Show, as
well as becoming the principal character of The Bill Dana Show
(NBC, 1963-1965). Through the 1960s, Dana also made guest ap-
pearances as Jimenez on a wide variety of contemporary TV series
and featured the character in several comedy record albums. Dana (as
Jimenez) even showed up briefly in the 1983 feature film, The
Right Stuff.
By 1970, the ethnic humor and dialect comedy upon which Jose
Jimenez depended was growing increasingly less fashionable. The
fact that Dana was not himself Hispanic intensified developing claims
that the character was a racist representation. As American television
moved into the more politically conscious ‘‘relevance’’ era of the
1970s with shows like All in the Family, M*A*S*H, and The Mary
Tyler Moore Show, Jimenez became a vestige of a bygone time and all
but disappeared. Released from his signature creation, however, Dana
would reemerge in other roles.
Born William Szathmary in Quincy, Massachusetts, on October
5, 1924, Dana entered the television industry in 1950 as a page at NBC
in New York City. Through the 1950s he performed in nightclubs and
played bit parts on television shows. He worked as a production
assistant on The Phil Silvers Show, wrote for The Milton Berle Show,
and got his big break when he was hired as a writer on The Steve Allen
Show in 1956. He moved up to head writer, earning an Emmy
nomination for his work, and became a performer on the show in 1959.
Though his other achievements were eclipsed by the popularity
of his Jose Jimenez, Dana also wrote and produced for the several
shows in which Jimenez was featured, and, as a character actor of
some note, he played guest roles on a number of series, including Get
Smart, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Batman. Dana’s presence on
American TV waned after the retirement of the Jose Jimenez charac-
ter, though he did continue to play occasional parts in TV series into
the 1970s. One of the brightest spots in his career came in 1972 when
he wrote the classic episode of All in the Family in which Sammy
Davis, Jr. visits the Bunker household.
In the 1980s, when Jose Jimenez had become a distant memory,
Bill Dana moved into a new period of activity. Having appeared in
Get Smart, he co-wrote and acted in The Nude Bomb (1980), a feature
film based upon the TV comedy. He was in the principal cast of two
network comedy series, No Soap, Radio (ABC, 1982) and Zorro and
Son (CBS, 1983), but neither of these lasted longer than a few months.
In 1988 and 1989, he also wrote for and appeared on a series of
specials featuring the Smothers Brothers, who had appeared regularly
on Steve Allen in 1961. During this decade, Dana was also reunited
with many other of his co-stars from The Steve Allen Show, including
Allen himself, Jayne Meadows, Louis Nye, and Tom Poston, all of
DANCE HALLSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
657
whom played recurring guest roles with Dana on the hit medical
drama St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982-1988).
—Robert Thompson
Dance Halls
Dancing has been regarded as a social institution in America for
over a century. Many famous dance venues, from the Cotton Club and
Roseland in New York, the Avalon Ballroom on Catalina Island, Aly
Baba in Oakland, to the Old Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, attest to
the tremendous influence which dancing has had on American
culture. These are just a few of the popular meeting spots where
people interact socially and can be seen publicly, dancing to the
popular music of the day. Local community dance halls thrive in
recreation centers, churches, and high school gymnasia as well as
commercial night clubs. The primary requirement in any dance hall is
to provide ample music and the room for people to dance. Food and
beverages are often served as light refreshments, and seating arrange-
ments allow people to meet, to comment, and to view others who are
out on the dance floor. An important concept of the dance hall is ‘‘to
see and be seen,’’ and rites of passage into society including coming-
of-age events, proms and pageants, ceremonies such as weddings, and
musical debuts have centered around dance events and subsequently
are popular uses for dance halls.
The forum of entertainment generally known as the dance hall
evolved over the course of several centuries, taking on a distinctive
function and purpose in each succeeding generation. The notion of
halls as social meeting places may have its origins in northern Europe
during the middle ages, when one large, central room with an elevated
ceiling was used for dining, reveling, convening, and even sleeping
by large groups of tenants and visitors of no particular relation. The
British connotation of the word ‘‘hall’’ more often refers to a large
common room used as a meeting place for particular events. By
contrast, the American sense of the word, as a central space or
passageway usually into which the front door opens, is related in the
sense that the hall is a room common to all people who enter a
particular building.
As feudal houses grew in stature and European nobility became
more pronounced, ‘‘great halls’’ were designed as distinct chambers
for meeting and gathering. Great halls were featured in many palaces
and country manors of the 14th through 18th century, used as places
of social gathering for important events, coronations, festivals, and
celebrations. Court dancing evolved in these great halls throughout
Europe, developing intricate codes of conduct and ritual which
persisted through the turn of the 20th century. Grand balls were an
important social component of the 17th through the 19th centuries,
and dancing was regarded as a prime element of display, courtship,
and social manners. Dance balls of the Victorian era usually lasted
entire evenings, where the hosts served multi-coursed suppers and
attendees literally danced ‘‘until they dropped,’’ finding back rooms
and quiet corners to sleep when they could dance no longer. It is
notable that most dance events of the western hemisphere are for the
celebration of social occasions. In the east, dancing is more often
reserved strictly for religious ceremonies, with elaborate costumes
and traditions which have remained intact for centuries.
The modern dance hall has a more obscure origin. Dance halls in
America seem to have grown out of refugee immigration from eastern
and southern Europe during the mid-1900s. Folk dancing, most
particularly the polka, has enjoyed a rich tradition in the immigrant
working-class, who find dancing to be an essential element of
recreation after long hours in labor-intensive jobs. Dance halls
naturally grew up around this need to socialize. Many dance hall
regulars attribute the Polish immigration of the 1940s and 1950s with
the establishment of the American dance hall. The Nazi and Soviet
occupations, leading up to the outbreak of World War II, forced
thousands of working-class and minority Poles and Slavs to come to
the United States. Once arrived, Polish immigrants succeeded in
venerating traditional customs including social folk dancing. Primary
among these was the polka. Polka parties, international polka associa-
tions, and dance competitions continue to thrive in the late 20th
century in the United States, while in eastern Europe this dance form
has virtually died out, mostly likely due to the influence of foreign
political regimes.
In rural areas, dance halls are generally known for their live
bands, and it is not unusual for attendees to drive in from 50 to 100
miles away. Dance halls in rural areas tend to feature food and
beverages more prominently, whereas the urban disco will emphasize
dance floor decorations, settings, and acoustics. The dance hall’s
modern cousin, the discotheque or night club, has distinctly urban
origins. Discotheques, or discos, began in Paris with the advent of the
phonograph album in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Discos tend to
feature more modern forms of popular music, and many new dances
have been invented in reaction to new music. Whether the music is
being played live or in recordings, the important feature of all dance
halls, night clubs, and discos is the emphasis on dancing and socializing.
A resurgence in vintage dancing, most notably 1930s-1940s era
swing parties and 19th century Victorian dance balls, has flowered in
the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. Vintage dance balls
tend to emphasize social entertainment through historic recreation.
These recreations can be very elaborate, and authentic period attire or
costume recreations, selected beverages and foods of the era, and the
teaching and calling of traditional dance forms are key elements of
vintage dance events. Attendees are often educated professionals or
middle-class descendants of European immigrants. Music is most
often supplied by live musicians, although recorded music may be
featured in regular clubs.
Dance halls in the 1990s have often featured a wide variety of
dance events on their calendars. Many dance halls are rented out for
rehearsals, parties, social occasions and receptions, or are otherwise
used for public recreational evenings which may or may not feature
noted bands. Attendees tend to favor one form or series of forms over
others based on cultural bias, perceived social stature, or personal
tastes. Fans of noted bands will anticipate scheduled appearances and
may prepare for occasions for months in advance. In general, attendees
may gather for celebration of a particular event such as a wedding
reception, or as a regular social activity with their friends.
—Ethan Hay
F
URTHER READING:
Blank, Les. In Heaven There Is No Beer? (video). El Cerrito,
California, Flower Films, 1984.
Croce, Arlene. Going to the Dance. New York, Knopf, 1982.
Jonas, Gerald. Dancing: The Pleasure, Power, and Art of Movement.
New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1992.
DANDRIDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
658
Keller, Kate Van Winkle. The Playford Ball. Remington, New Jersey,
A Capella Books, 1990.
McDonagh, Don. Dance Fever. New York, Random House, 1979.
Saltie, Randolph. Putting On Perfect Proms, Programs and Pag-
eants. New York, F. Watts, 1991.
Dandridge, Dorothy (1924-1965)
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, actor-singer-entertainer Dorothy
Dandridge was smart, immensely talented, and alluringly beautiful.
In her three-decade career in Hollywood she endured the bittersweet
distinction of being the first sexy black woman film artist of the
postwar period. Dandridge attempted to forge a career in Hollywood
when the only roles for black women were as servants, or in brief,
non-speaking cameo roles. Dandridge claimed a number of ‘‘firsts’’:
she was the first African American woman to grace the covers of Life
magazine; the first black woman to showcase the posh, all-white
Waldorf-Astoria; and the first black woman to receive an Oscar
nomination for a leading role. Dandridge’s film credits include Bright
Road (1953), Carmen Jones (1954), Tamango (1957), Island in the
Sun (1957), The Decks Ran Red (1958), Porgy and Bess (1959) and
Malanga (1959). Dandridge’s tragedy-filled life and her mysterious
death on September 8, 1965, resulted in exposés, film biographies,
and a major biography.
—Pamala S. Deane
F
URTHER READING:
Bogle, Donald. Blacks in American Films and Television. New York:
Garland, 1988.
———. Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography, New York, Amistad, 1997.
Dandridge, Dorothy, and Earl Conrad. Everything and Nothing: The
Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy. New York, Abelard-Schuman, 1970.
‘‘Dorothy Dandridge, 41, Found Dead in Home.’’ Washington Eve-
ning Star. September 9, 1965.
‘‘Dorothy Dandridge, Victim of Freak Fall.’’ The Afro American
(Baltimore, Maryland). September 18, 1965.
‘‘Dorothy Dandridge’s Greatest Triumph.’’ Ebony. July, 1954.
‘‘Hollywood’s New Glamour Queen.’’ Ebony. April, 1951.
‘‘Island In the Sun: Dandridge, Belafonte Star in Romantic Interracial
Film.’’ Ebony. July, 1957.
Johnson, Albert. ‘‘Beige, Brown, or Black.’’ Film Quarterly. Fall, 1959.
‘‘The Private World of Dorothy Dandridge.’’ Ebony. June, 1962.
Robinson, Louie. ‘‘Dorothy Dandridge: Hollywood’s Tragic Enig-
ma.’’ Ebony. March, 1966.
Daniels, Charlie (1936—)
Charlie Daniels came to prominence during the early 1970s, at a
time when country music was caught up in Vietnam patriotism and
anti-hippie sentiment. Rock was the music of the counterculture,
which saw the South through newsreels of civil rights battles and
movies like Easy Rider. A white southern band had to choose one or
Charlie Daniels
the other, and many followed the lead of the likes of the Allman
Brothers to create the sound known as Southern Rock. The Charlie
Daniels Band began as Southern Rockers with an anti-redneck
anthem, ‘‘Uneasy Rider’’ (1973), a song about a longhaired guy
going into a bar full of good old boys. One of the few musicians to fit
into both rock and country genres, Daniels’ manipulated his image
and music brilliantly in an attempt to capture his place in twentieth-
century popular culture.
Most of the Southern Rockers separated themselves totally from
country music . . . and they remained separate. Even in the 1980s and
1990s, when rock had become a staple of the new country sound,
groups like the Allman Brothers, Little Feat, and the Marshall Tucker
Band never showed up at country concerts or on the country charts.
Daniels was an exception. Right from the start he managed to keep a
presence in both worlds, working as a studio fiddle player on
Nashville sessions. When pop came to Nashville, Daniels was there,
playing hot fiddle parts on Bob Dylan’s album Nashville Skyline.
Even ‘‘Uneasy Rider’’ made the lower rungs of the country charts (it
was in the top ten on the pop charts).
Southern Rock faded as a chart phenomenon with the end of the
1970s; it did, however, retain a core audience. Daniels then made his
move toward country. In 1980, country music was in the grip of the
Urban Cowboy phenomenon, and there was a lot of country overlap
on the pop charts. Daniels was no Urban Cowboy, but he was an artist
with the capacity to play to both audiences, and he made the most of it
with his biggest hit ‘‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia,’’ which hit
number one on the country charts and was number three as a pop hit. It
won him a Grammy for best country music performance by a group,