A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Alias:
James Davis
Marlin Davis
Birthplace:
Edgerton, Platte County, Missouri, USA
Born:
August 26, 1909
Died:
April 26, 1981
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jim Davis (born Marlin Davis, August 26, 1909 – April 26, 1981) was an American actor, best known for his role as Jock Ewing in the CBS prime-time soap opera, Dallas, a role which continued until he was too ill from a terminal illness to perform. He was known as Jim Davis by the time of his first major screen role, which was opposite Bette Davis in the 1948 melodrama Winter Meeting,[3] a lavish failure for which he was lambasted in the press as being too inexperienced to play the part properly. His subsequent film career consisted of mostly B movies, many of them westerns, although he made an impression as a U.S. senator in the Warren Beatty conspiracy thriller The Parallax View. Davis performed in numerous television series episodes in the 1950s-1970s. After years of relatively low-profile roles, Davis was cast as family patriarch Jock Ewing on Dallas, which debuted in 1978. During season four, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma but continued to film the show as long as he could. In many scenes as the season progressed he was shown seated, and his voice became softer and more obviously affected by his illness. He wore a hairpiece to cover the hair he'd lost from chemotherapy. A season four storyline regarding the Takapa development and Jock's separation from Miss Ellie was ended abruptly at the end of season four. The writers depicted the couple suddenly leaving to go on an extended second honeymoon when it became obvious that Davis could no longer continue to work. Their departure in a limousine in the episode "New Beginnings" was Davis' only scene in that episode, and his condition was so poor that close watching reveals (based on his unsynchronized lip movement) that he overdubbed his one last line of dialogue. It was his final appearance on the show. He died of complications from his illness while season four was being aired.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.