A teenage Dustin Hoffman is seen marveling at a pair of legs in one of the most well-known movie posters from the 1960s, which features a woman rolling on black silk stockings. The legs in the movie that stand out the most are not Anne Bancroft’s in “The Graduate.” They are Linda Gray’s property.
Everyone believed the famed set of legs belonged to Anne Bancroft at the time, but they were actually hers, according to Linda Gray, a costar on the CBS soap opera “Dallas,” who added:
Everyone believed they belonged to Anne Bancroft. She either wasn’t consulted at all about the poster or she had to be out of town. I was given $25. That was adequate for one leg.
Linda Gray gained notoriety for her magnificent legs, earning the nickname “the b*tch with the long legs” from Elizabeth Taylor. But who would have guessed that the “Dallas” co-star had polio as a child and was unable to move her legs?
Linda developed polio when she was only five years old in 1945. According to the actress, the virus had an impact on both her central nervous system and the neural pathways that link the brain to the muscles. She could feel the sensation when she touched her legs, but she was unable to move them.
Gray’s family suffered as a result of the illness, and her mother turned to drink for solace. From being a sociable drinker, she developed an alcoholism. The diagnosis of their daughter caused both of her parents to experience sadness.
Little Linda Gray felt it was her responsibility because of her parents’ melancholy and her mother’s drinking; she claimed that she silently carried the burden of the diagnosis in her memoir, “The Road to Happiness Is Always Under Construction.”
In those days, iron lungs, an 800-pound airtight metal ventilator, were the usual treatment for polio. The physicians advised her parents to place Linda in the metal canister even though, as she noted in her book, the illness hasn’t harmed her lungs.
But her parents made the choice to look for an alternate therapy. She might have suffered even worse injuries if she had been forced into the iron lugs, which could have compromised her lungs and limbs.
The substitute therapy was “Raggedy Ann.” Her mother would stand at the foot of her bed, hold one leg, lift it up, and then lower it again while she was confined to her bed. Every day for months, she carried out the surgery multiple times on each leg.
After a few months, Linda was able to walk once more as her legs gradually began to work normally. Her parents made the choice to sign her up for dancing lessons. Everyone gathered to watch her dance in her debut recital because, in her words, she was “the polio baby plucked out of the clutches of paralysis.”
Linda wanted to leave her house as soon as she could because of family problems and her mother’s alcoholism. She later left school and began working as a model full-time to support herself. She soon after met renowned record album cover artist Ed Thrasher.
The marriage lasted 21 years, and Ed was abusive and deceptive. He was abusive to his wife and insisted she stay at home with him so he could finish his “To-Do List” instead of going to work.
Ed needed Linda to use her advertisements to bring money home so that he could live out his cowboy fantasy. Together, they constructed a home in Canyon Country, Santa Clarita County, 45 minutes outside of Downtown Los Angeles.
The farm wife’s to-do list included cooking, cleaning the house, caring for the animals they co-raised, and looking after their two kids.
Linda resolved to take back control of her life after ten years of following in his footsteps. She studied acting, and following her debut as a transgender person on “All That Glitters,” she was cast in one of the most significant parts of her career—Sue Ellen—in the venerable CBS soap opera “Dallas.”
Being the drunken wife of oil millionaire JR Ewing, Sue Ellen Ewing caused considerable childhood anguish for the actress:
“By adopting the role of Sue Ellen, I hoped to escape my shell and prevent turning into a depressed, lonely, or hopeless woman, like Sue Ellen or my Mom.”
The “Dallas” co-star chose to go for expert assistance in her forties. It was time for her to confront her traumas related to her alcoholic mother and other difficulties, she realized. When the therapist suggested Linda create boundaries with her mother, the process got under way.
Her mother would frequently call “The Graduate” leg-double and “ramble incoherently.” The therapist advised her to advise her mother not to call her when intoxicated. Linda first resisted, but the tactic was effective.
This initial move served as a springboard for her to develop the ability to establish boundaries with her mother and, subsequently, with her ex-husband.
Linda said that Sue Ellen had assisted her in talking to her mother about her past traumas and drinking. After her father went away, she lived with her in Palm Springs and cared for her mother during her last years.
For 11 years, the actress portrayed Sue Ellen, JR Ewing’s wife, before divorcing him. She relocated to Malibu and started living next door to Larry Hagman, her best friend and “Dallas” husband. Linda found a new sex life after her divorce:
“For the past thirty years, my unmarried sexual life has been a source of happiness and pleasure. At the age of 75, you care about orgasm exactly as much as you did when you were 25.
Linda Gray appeared in a number of “Dallas” reboots from 2012 to 2014 in addition to the 12 out of 14 seasons of the show. For her portrayal of JR Ewing’s wife, the actress won two Golden Globe nods and one Emmy nomination.
The 80-year-old actress lost her 54-year-old son Jeff Thrasher to AML leukemia in 2020. Kehly Sloane, her daughter, is 54. 2009 saw the passing of Linda’s ex-husband, Jeff and Kehly’s father.
