Your Favorite Special Guest Star

Which special guest star is your favorite?

  • Rock Hudson

    Votes: 5 31.3%
  • Ali MacGraw

    Votes: 3 18.8%
  • George Hamilton

    Votes: 4 25.0%
  • Ricardo Montalbán

    Votes: 4 25.0%

  • Total voters
    16

Snarky Oracle!

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Not to be a party-pooper like Screech, but none of them really.

Poor Rock Hudson was so sick, I really wanted his character to be combined with Billy Dee Williams' character. (And why didn't Williams get some kind of vanity billing??)

Poor Ali MacGraw tried her best, her pathetic affectations somehow fitting in almost perfectly to what DYNASTY was as opposed to what it should be. (I want Raquel or Angie or Bisset, oh my...) Some of us want Lady Ashley combined with Frankie Scott.

I'm not sure George Hamilton's Norman Bates performance was entirely necessary for Season 6, but if it was, everything he does always feels comedic, intentionally or not. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing).

My choice: I want Ricardo Montalbán to play the Moldavian King, that character combined with Zach Powers from THE COLBYS (where the king goes after Alexis' dumps him two-thirds of the way through DYNASTY's Season 6).

The guest stars I want on the show are nowhere in sight!


Which one's stiffer? We never found out...
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Monzo

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Robertson was credited as a Special Guest Star in Season 1.
Damn, I didn't even think of Dale Robertson! That makes the poll pointless, because he would probably get the most votes, since so many people love the first season and think every character in it (except Lindsay) is great.

Regarding Dale Robertson, I didn't realize he was such a well-known name back then. Perhaps he was simply a big star of the 1950s whom I, at least, had forgotten about, but Aaron Spelling hadn't, and that's why he gave him the title Special Guest Star.

After Dynasty, he made a guest appearance on Dallas. Was he credited as a Special Guest Star there as well (in the end credits) ?
 

Jock Og

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Imho George Hamilton has the edged over the others here. I liked season 6 and thought although his film director Joel Abrigore was a dark character, there was an element of humour in his storyline. Linda Evans must have been confused with all the OTT Rita then Krystle then Rita again etc goings on. Scheming niece Sammy Jo and Joel the boyo doing the puppetering was bizzare. "From this moment on you're Mrs. Blake Carrington!" Would Rita Lesley and Joel be still alive, 40 years on after being thrown free before their car exploded and went down the mountain side?

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Well are you Krystle or Rita?
 

Snarky Oracle!

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Regarding Dale Robertson, I didn't realize he was such a well-known name back then. Perhaps he was simply a big star of the 1950s whom I, at least, had forgotten about, but Aaron Spelling hadn't, and that's why he gave him the title Special Guest Star.

"Special Guest Star" is a vanity title, often negotiated by agents, and sometimes for clients that aren't that "big". (It's fun watching old '70s cop shows, where the status-discrepancy is particularly obvious --- like, say, STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO --- and you recognize all the "guest stars" and the only one you've never heard of is billed as the "special guest star").

Dale Robertson was a western character actor, known somewhat in the '50s, but he was no Duke Wayne nor Duke Wayne, Jr.

Which again begs the question: Why did Billy Dee Williams never get a title?

But DYNASTY was a little odd about its billings. Why did Diahann Caroll never get a "With"?? When she appears near the end of the opening credits, right after the chauffeur and right before Joan Collins, one assumes she's being given a placing of prominence. But when she gets no "With" billing, it looks like she's less important than the chauffeur.

Is this racism? Is it Doug Cramer's fault (my vote, but I can't yet prove it)?

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Also: sometimes "Special Guest Star" is billing used to justify paying a latecomer to the cast more than the original cast (some of whom have favored nation status clauses in their contracts, and no actor can be paid more than them, unless that new actor is billed as "Special Guest Star").

Which is how Heather Locklear wound up a "Special Guest Star" for 7 years on MELROSE PLACE.
 
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Snarky Oracle!

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Can this include fantasy guest stars who never actually appeared?

I want Gloria Swanson as Minx Morell, Alexis' mum, in one episode early in Season 3 (only six months before she died) just after her daughte inherits ColbyCo.

I want Raquel or Angie or Bisset as Lady Ashley (in fewer episodes) in Season 5.

I wanted Montalban as a King Galen/Zach Powers amalgam in Season 5 & 6, before spinning off to THE COLBYS.

I want Bette Davis in one episode of Season 6 of DYNASTY as Sable's mother, Agatha, just after the Colbys spin-off to THE COLBYS; Agatha then goes to do one episode of THE COLBYS itself, angrily disapproving of her youngest daughter's ongoing affair with her elder daughter's husband. ("Just exactly what are you, Francesca -- a whore??", Agatha chides her interloper offspring, asserting that Constance, whom I want called "Rubenstein" as PEYTON PLACE has threatened to sue, is insufficient in her support of niece Sabella).

I briefly want Joanna Cassidy as a model Alexis hires to be a second "double" for Krystle in mid-to-late-Season 6, one who goes around doing embarrassing things in public while impersonating The Second Mrs. Carrington, in order to cast suspicion on Krystle's claims that she was replaced by Rita at the mansion. ("Apparently, Krystle Carrington thinks everyone wants to be Krystle Carrington!," smirks Alexis to the local media).

I want Judith Anderson as Ursula, the ultimate one-stop-shopping matriarch -- the queen mother of Moldavia in Season 6 in opposition to Alexis' brief tenure on the throne mid-Season 6; also, the mother(?) of Buck Fallmont, and the aunt of Jason Colby. (She's the DYNASTY equivalent to Jacqueline Perrault -- only older and even more connected to international power, if such a thing is possible). Once deposed along with King Galen/Zach and Queen Alexis, joining her nephew Jason in Los Angeles in a decompressing post-dethroning lull, Ursula smugly threatens to kill Constance and Agatha Scott to their faces, Stanwyck's "over my dead body!" posturing "easily accommodated!" according to Ursula.

Perhaps Diana Rigg in a couple of episodes, King Galen's vengeful ex-wife and ex-queen (with Ursula's full support).

Following Cassie Yates' suicide attempt in the Carringtons' garages in Season 7, I want flashbacks with Terri Copley as "Diamond Cook", the vulnerable mob-moll starlet Blake briefly dated in fall of '64 after throwing Alexis out that previous summer; having committed suspicious suicide in her own right, Miss Cook's death set tongues wagging at the time, the story re-energized 23 years' later after Sarah Curtis' attempt on her own life.. Turns out Emily Fallmont did it, kinda-sorta by accident, after learning her hubby, Senator Buck, was sleeping with her. (Which is way more scandalous than merely having an affair with Blake's brother, Ban, decades ago).

But all that's just me.

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