| Valene Ewing | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | September 23, 1978 "Reunion" Part 1 |
| Last appearance | May 9, 1997 "Back to the Cul-De-Sac" Part 2 |
| Created by | David Jacobs |
| Portrayed by | Joan Van Ark |
| Information | |
| Nickname(s) | Val |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation |
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| Family | Jeremiah Clements (father; deceased) Lilimae Clements (mother) Joshua Rush (half-brother; deceased) |
| Spouse(s) | Gary Ewing (1961-1983, 1991-) Ben Gibson (1985-1987) Danny Waleska (1990, deceased) |
| Children | Lucy Ewing Bobby Ewing Betsy Ewing |
Valene "Val" Ewing (nee Clements; formerly Ewing, Gibson and Waleska) is a fictional character in the American television series Dallas and, more prominently, its spin-off series Knots Landing. She was played by Joan Van Ark.
Valene Ewing first appeared on Dallas in 1978 as a recurring character. She was the mother of Lucy Ewing (Charlene Tilton) and estranged wife of Gary Ewing (David Ackroyd, later Ted Shackelford), 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) but Gary was both weak and an alcoholic, who was often manipulated by his brother J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman).
J.R.'s interference caused Gary and Val's marriage to collapse, and Gary deserted her. When Valene gave birth to their daughter Lucy, J.R. made it clear that the child was a Ewing and would be raised by the Ewings themselves. Valene tried to flee and went to her mother, Lilimae Clements (Julie Harris), but was turned away. Valene was unable to stop J.R. from taking Lucy, and she was then prevented from seeing her daughter for many years.
Valene's bitterness over her mother's indifference, and the subsequent loss of Lucy, was not resolved for many years, until she and Gary moved to Knots Landing in 1979. 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 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 again undermined by J.R.
In December 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. Shortly afterwards, they moved to California to live in a home that Miss Ellie had bought for them as a wedding gift.
Valene also appeared in the final episode of Dallas, in J.R.'s dream. In the dream she meets Gary for the first time, highlighting that they were destined to meet one way or another.
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 MacKenzie(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 1992. Gary and Val's daughter, Lucy, visited her parents in Knots Landing, appearing in one episode in the show's first season.
Though largely uneducated, Valene discovered she had a talent for writing and wrote a thinly-veiled expose of the Ewings of Dallas called "Capricorn Crude". Gary was extremely critical of the book, which had an impact on their marriage. However, the book was published and made Val a best-selling novelist and independent in her own right.
Val divorced Gary after his affair with neighbour Abby Cunningham (Donna Mills), but kept the house at Seaview Circle. She was subsequently married to Ben Gibson (Doug Sheehan) and later briefly to Danny Waleska (Sam Behrens), both of whom lived with her at 16966 Seaview Circle. Other residents of Valene's house included her mother, Lilimae Clements, her half-brother Joshua Rush (Alec Baldwin), Joshua's wife Cathy Geary (Lisa Hartman), Lilimae's sister Virginia "Ginny" Bullock (Betsy Palmer), and Valene's twins, Bobby and Betsy Ewing.
One of Val's most memorable storylines occurred during the 1984-85 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. After suffering a nervous breakdown and disappearing from Knots Landing for some months, Val was later reunited with her babies, thanks largely to the investigations secretly undertaken by her neighbors Karen and Mack MacKenzie.
Whilst working on an assignment to write a biography about Greg Sumner (William Devane) in 1992, Valene crossed paths with some shady mafioso type characters who were targeting Sumner. Fearing that she could expose them, they kidnapped Val and she was later believed to have died in a car accident (actress Joan Van Ark had decided to leave the series prior to its final season). However, it was discovered that she was never in the car and she later returned to Knots Landing, having escaped her kidnappers, for the series finale in 1993.
Valene was seen once again in the 1997 reunion mini-series Knots Landing: Back To The Cul-De-Sac where she began a new career as a screenwriter, adapting her best-selling novel "Hostage" (which told the story of her kidnap five years earlier) into a film.
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