Dallas Star and Fort Worth Native Gayle Hunnicutt Dies in London

One of the biggest stars from Fort Worth and TV's Dallas has passed away in the United Kindgom.

Gayle Hunnicutt, 80, died from an unspecified illness on Aug. 31, in London, where she had lived and worked for the last three decades, according to the Washington Post. 

Hunnicutt is best remembered for her role on the hit CBS primetime soap opera Dallas. She played the English aristocrat Vanessa Beaumont in the show's last three seasons, from 1989 to 1991. When her character joined the show, it was revealed that she had had an affair with the conniving J.R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman, that produced his oldest son.

Hunnicutt was born on Feb. 6, 1943, in Fort Worth, to Army Col. Sam Lloyd Hunnicutt, who served in the South Pacific during World War II, and Mary Virginia Dickerson, who gave birth to her while her husband served overseas. Hunnicutt chronicled her father's service and parents' life as a military family in a 2005 book, Dearest Virginia: Love Letters from Cavalry Officer in South Pacific.

"We were a military family of three, plus a small cocker spaniel name Pudgey," Hunnicutt wrote. "Our quarters were comfortable and my vague memories, stirred by family snapshots, are happy ones."

Gayle's mother was two months pregnant when her husband shipped out to serve in the war. He corresponded with her in a series of lovingly written letters that Gayle published in the book. Col. Hunnicutt learned that he became a father in one of these letters. The letters he received were destroyed, according to military protocol at the time, but he kept the pictures and returned with them following his tour of duty.

"I'm really hurting because I am away from you and because I know so well what I'm missing in love and companionship and sheer physical delight by being separated from you so long," Col. Hunnicutt wrote in a letter on Feb. 23, 1943, just a few weeks after becoming a father. "Sweet thoughts of you are with me all day and much of the night, and when I get upset or unhappy, I draw on that love to bolster my courage just as one would draw money out of a bank."

Gayle attended Texas Christian University and won a scholarship to attend the University of California as a theatre student, where she studied under famed French director Jean Renoir. She started her career in stage production at colleges and at the Cahuenga Playhouse while working a day job in advertising.

A Warner Bros. talent scout discovered her in the mid-1960s and cast her on the TV sitcom Mister Roberts in 1965. It starred Roger Smith and was based on the acclaimed stage play and movie of the same name, which starred Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon. Her first film role came courtesy of B-movie maven Roger Corman, who cast her in a minor role the following year in an outlaw biker flick called The Wild Angels with Peter Fonda. She later found work in guest roles on TV sitcoms such as The Beverly Hillbillies and as a KAOS agent named Octavia on the spy spoof Get Smart. In the latter show, she was revealed to be an android when her character fell for CONTROL's agent android Hymie, played by Dick Gautier.  By the end of the 1960s, she found fame both as an actress and in her private life. She started a steady stream of film roles starting in 1969 with a co-starring part in James Garner's neo-noir thriller Marlowe. The year before that, she married David Hemmings, the British actor and star of the critically acclaimed Michaelangelo Antonioni mystery thriller Blow-Up, whom she met at a beach house party thrown by movie star Peter Lawford. The marriage thrust both into the tabloid spotlight as a celebrity power couple who worked together in films like Fragment of Fear in 1970 and Running Scared.

The couple moved to England, where Gayle pursued a career in theater and the British film and TV industry. Her first big hit landed in theaters in 1973 with the cult horror classic The Legend of Hill House, in which she starred alongside Roddy McDowell and Clive Revill. The Gothic-style horror film tells the story of a group of paranormal investigators called to investigate the secrets and evil presence of what one of them calls "the Mount Everest of haunted houses." The screenplay was penned by horror novelist and Twilight Zone writer Richard Matheson.   She took full advantage of Britain's historic, active theater industry and found roles in British television throughout the 1970s. She played Charlotte Stant in the British Broadcasting Corp.'s adaptation of Henry James' The Golden Bowl and acted in TV mini-series, including the historic royal family chronicle Fall of Eagles, in which she portrayed Alexanda Feodorovna, the last Tsarina of Russia; in a two-part episode of the adventure series The Return of the Saint; and as love interest and rival Irene Adler in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring Jeremy Brett.

Hunnicutt and Hemmings had one son, Nolan, before divorcing in 1974. Four years later, she married British newspaper editor and writer Simon Jenkins. The two had Hunnicutt's second son, Edward, before divorcing in 2009.

Toward the end of her career, she returned to star in American television shows around the mid-1980s, leading to her role on Dallas. Her character almost immediately dropped one of the series' biggest bombshells: J.R. Ewing was the father of a son conceived during an affair almost 20 years earlier. The bombshell plot line kept her character on the show for the soap's three remaining seasons. She retired from acting by 2000.