Valene Ewing

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Valene "Val" Clements Ewing Gibson Waleska Ewing was a character in the American television Dallas, and its spin-off Knots Landing. She was played by Joan Van Ark.

[edit] Dallas

Valene Ewing appeared on Dallas from 1978-1981 as a recurring character. She was the mother of Lucy Ewing (Charlene Tilton) and estranged wife of Gary Ewing (David Ackroyd, later Ted Shackleford), the middle son and the black sheep of the Ewing family. Valene and Gary Ewing married when they were teenagers, he was 17 years old and she was 15 years old, but Gary was both weak and an alcoholic, who was manipulated by his brother J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman).

After Gary and Val's marriage collapsed, and when Val was turned away by her mother, Lilimae Clements (Julie Harris), Valene was unable to stop J.R. from taking Lucy, their infant daughter, to live with the Ewing family on the Southfork ranch.

Valene's bitterness over her mother's indifference, and the subsequent loss of Lucy, would not be resolved for many years, until Valene and Gary's move to Knots Landing. Much of this early backstory was told through flashback in episodes of Knots Landing, and only briefly referenced in Dallas.

When Lucy found her working as a waitress in a diner, she, with the help of her aunt, Pamela Ewing (Victoria Principal), arranged a reunion for her parents in the fall of 1978. Gary and Val moved back to Southfork for a short time, but their reunion was undermined by the evil J.R.

In December of 1979 Val and Gary reunited once more in Dallas, and were remarried. Gary's parents Jock Ewing (Jim Davis) and Miss Ellie (Barbara Bel Geddes), and Gary's brother Bobby (Patrick Duffy) and sister-in-law Pamela (Victoria Principal) attended the wedding. They shortly after moved to California to live in a home purchased for them by Miss Ellie.

Valene Ewing appeared in the final episode of Dallas, in J.R.'s dream. In the dream she meets Gary for the first time.

[edit] Knots Landing

After their re-marriage, Valene and Gary Ewing moved to Knots Landing, a coastal suburb of Los Angeles, California. They moved into a home at 16966 Seaview Circle.

Valene was initially skeptical of the move, describing Knots Landing as "no place to start over". She was particularly struck by her neighbours, the Fairgates, and their estranged daughter Annie, who reminded her of her own daughter Lucy.

Gary was more determined to stay, and convinced Val to give Knots Landing a chance. Val and neighbour Karen Fairgate (Michele Lee) would eventually become best friends, a relationship struck when Annie, on the run, turned to Val for help, and Val convinced her to return to the Fairgate home.

Val remained one of the central characters on Knots Landing from 1979 to 1993. Gary and Val's daughter, Lucy, discovered their remarriage and visited her parents in Knots Landing, appearing in one episode in the show's first season.

She divorced Gary Ewing after his affair with neigbour Abby Cunningham (Donna Mills), and was subsequently married to Ben Gibson and Danny Waleska, both of whom lived at 16966 Seaview Circle. Other residents of Valene's house included her mother, Lilimae Clements, her brother Joshua Rush (Alec Baldwin), Joshua's wife Cathy Geary (Lisa Hartman) and Valene's twins, Bobby and Betsy Ewing.

One of her most memorable storylines occurred during the 1984-1985 season when she was told that her infant twins had been stillborn. Val sensed that this couldn't be true as she had a clear memory of hearing the babies cry. It took an entire season for Val to discover the truth of what had happened to her children (thanks largely to the investigations secretly undertaken by her neighbor and best friend Karen Fairgate MacKenzie) and to be reunited with them.