The show Dallas, which aired from 1978 to 1991, portrayed a wealthy oil family with its womanizing and scheming patriarch, J.R. Ewing, at the helm. This series was based on the Hunt family of Texas, which was prosperous and a political force of its own. The family patriarch, Haroldson Lafayette “H.L.” Hunt (1889-1974), was a mathematical prodigy, a cotton plantation owner, and a good gambler. He used his poker winnings to purchase his first oil well and his enterprise grew into the greatest ownership of oil properties in the world and by 1925 he was one of the wealthiest men in the nation. His interest in politics was lifelong: the first presidential candidate he supported was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and as an oilman he absolutely loved Calvin Coolidge. Hunt had also assisted the career of Lyndon B. Johnson, a man he eventually came to bitterly oppose. Controversies surrounded the large family, and like the Kennedys, one their children, H.L. “Hassie” Hunt III, his first son, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1942 and was later lobotomized to try to cure it. As a man of great power and influence, H.L. Hunt was able to get around: he fathered fifteen children with three different women, the first two he was married to at the same time without the other knowing. Thus, he was a bigamist.
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