Charlene Tilton, 66, was the flirty but spoiled blonde teenager on Dallas

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Charlene Tilton played Lucy Ewing on the smash hit TV series Dallas about the booming oil business in 1970s Texas.
Lucy was the teenaged daughter of Gary Ewing and Valene Ewing. She was also the granddaughter of Jock and Miss Ellie Ewing, and the niece of J.R. Ewing and Bobby Ewing.
Her costars were Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Linda Gray and Victoria Principal.
The 66-year-old siren was seen on social media this week in images taken at the Southfork Experience, which ran from August 8 to 10 in Richardson, Texas.
The event allowed fans to meet Dallas actors at the Renaissance hotel and Southfork Ranch.
Tilton looked youthful as she posed alongside her former Dallas costars Morgan Fairchild and Sheree J Wilson. Also there were Knot's Landing stars Joan Van Ark, Donna Mills and Michelle Lee.
Charlene is best known for her work as the young naïve sweetheart on the oil baron saga Dallas.
But she acted in several other high-profile projects. Tilton had early roles on such television series such Happy Days and Eight Is Enough.
She made her first film appearance alongside Jodie Foster in Freaky Friday (1976).
In 1978, Tilton made a cameo appearance in the John Milius film Big Wednesday.
That same year she was cast as Lucy Ewing, the granddaughter of John 'Jock' Ewing Sr. and the former Eleanor 'Ellie' Southworth on Dallas.
She held her own against vets like Hollywood vets Jim Davis and Barbara Bel Geddes.
The series ran from 1978 to 1985 and from 1988 to 1990.
She also appeared on one episode of the series' spin-off Knots Landing in 1980.
Tilton is also a singer. And she sang on a 1978 episode of Dallas titled Runaway.
In 1984, she released the dance-pop single C'est la Vie.
Tilton also appeared on game shows, such as Family Feud, Battle of the Network Stars, Hollywood Squares, Pyramid, 1 vs. 100, and Catch 21.
And the star was a panelist on the 1979–1982 syndicated version of Match Game.
After Dallas, Tilton went to star in the television films Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker and The Fall of the House of Usher, both from 1979.
During the 1980s, she guest-starred on Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy, Hotel, The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote.
She was also in Problem Child 2.
In 1993, she appeared as herself in an episode of Married... with Children.
In addition, she has appeared in several send-up comedies, such as The Silence of the Hams (1994), Superhero Movie (2008), and Paranormal Calamity (2010). In 2005, she appeared in the British reality television show The Farm.
In January 2012, Tilton was a contestant on the British ice-skating show Dancing on Ice in its seventh season.
In 2012, Tilton joined the cast of TNT's Dallas revival series, and reprised her role as Lucy Ewing.
She later appeared in the ABC comedy series The Middle in 2015, and the thriller film Vengeance: A Love Story.
Tilton also appeared in Lifetime and Hallmark Channel films.
Tilton was married to country singer Johnny Lee from 1982 to 1984. Their daughter, Cherish Lee, was born in 1982. In 2001, Tilton began dating cinematographer Cheddy Hart. In December 2009, Hart suddenly died of heart failure at age 54.
In 2023, Tilton opened up about her 'tumultuous' childhood and her struggles being raised by her mentally ill mother in People.
The actress revealed that her mother's schizophrenia progressed throughout her childhood to the point that she was institutionalized for several years.
Tilton described how her mother Katherine got pregnant after she began seeing an Air Force pilot during a period when she was working as a secretary at the Pentagon.
However, her father didn't stick around after Charlene was born.
'My biological father didn't want anything to do with me,' she said, noting that her fame as an adult didn't change that. 'He had to have known about me — Dallas was so huge — but he never reached out.'
She later learned via a DNA test that she had three half-siblings who had also never met their father, though she also learned that he had died six months before her discovery. Despite never being able to speak to her father, she stayed optimistic.
'I don't carry a chip on my shoulder. I don't get into self-pity,' she said. 'I see the bright side of things, and that's served me well during tumultuous times/'
But Tilton went on to recall a sense of instability while living with her mother as a young child.
She recounted seeing her mother furious after their television set was repossessed as she was trying to watch Captain Kangaroo, as well as a train trip from Los Angeles, to Omaha, Nebraska, where they were forced to get off at an early stop because her mother suffered a break down.
Another disturbing memory was of police taking her mother away, leaving her alone in an unfamiliar place, and she shared the traumatizing memory of seeing Katherine outfitted with a straight jacket.
In that atmosphere, she turned to movies to help her escape her fears and troubles.
'Everything was magical on screen,' Tilton said. 'I saw Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins and The Sound Of Music and thought, ' I want her to be my mother.''
Her mother's illness progressed to the point where she was institutionalized, beginning when Tilton was five and concluding with her release shortly before she turned eight.
Without her parent, she was forced to travel between relatives' homes for years.
'I remember the kids saying, 'When is she going to go?' and the parents said, 'We're trying to send her off but we can't get anyone to take her.' I thought, 'I'm never going to depend on anybody to take care of me,'' she recalled.
After she was able to live with her mother again in California, Tilton described how there were 'always a lot of pill bottles around,' but medication didn't seem to make much of an impact on her mother's condition.
Their home was filthy, and Tilton revealed that her mother refused to use a toilet and would only urinate in plastic food storage containers.
'That went on for years. I could never bring friends over,' she lamented.
At the time, Tilton's mother's struggles were even more stigmatized than today. 'Back then mental illness wasn't talked about,' she said. 'It was swept under the rug.'
Katherine's illness spilled over into Charlene's school life when her mother offered to chaperone a school dance, but then had an episode in which she carried on an argument aloud with herself.
Now, though, she finds solace in being able to share those stories without shame. 'Bringing things out in the open is so helpful,' she said.
Tilton eventually moved out of her mother's apartment after a rat crawled across her. ''I can't live like this,'' she thought at the time.
It wasn't until 1978, when she began starring on Dallas, that she gained a sense of stability, though her mother's mental illness still intruded.
She shared that Katherine would write 'crazy' letters to the primetime soap opera's producers, though she stayed focused on her acting.
Now that she was making $15,000 per week, it was easier to help her mother, but the money only went so far. She recounted learning that police had picked up her mother after she was found walking around in the nude in Hollywood, though she was released since she didn't pose a danger to others.
While appearing on Dallas, Tilton said she empathized with her character Lucy, who had been raised by her grandparents.
'She was desperate to find the love of the parents she never had. I understood what made her tick,' she said.
After her stint on the series ended in 1990, Tilton dealt with a 'lot of stress,' as she 'wasn't working and I wasn't taking care of myself.'
In the wake of her failed two-year marriage to country singer Johnny Lee, which she called a 'disaster in the making,' she was left with her 'beautiful daughter' Cherish, whom she doted on.
The cost of raising her daughter alone and caring for her mother, who eventually moved to an assisted-living facility, sapped most of her savings.
'My house was foreclosed. I left everything except what we could fit in a one-bedroom house.'
After her mother's death in 2001, Tilton began to work on screen again with modest roles, and she found new love with the cinematographer Cheddy Hart. The two were eventually engaged, but then Hart died unexpectedly of heart failure in 2009, leaving Tilton devastated.
'I just sat on the couch drinking and smoking cigarettes,' she said. But she found new motivation after a friend encouraged her to volunteer with Actors for Autism. 'I fell in love with the students,' she gushed. 'To get out of your own depression or grief, you go help somebody.'
Now, Tilton spends plenty of time with her grandsons and acts occasionally in faith-based movies, and she mused that aging suits her.
'When I was on Dallas and doing bathing suit magazine covers, I couldn't wait to get older,' she admitted. 'I always saw myself as a character actress. I'm petite and curvy, not tall and thin. I'm not elegant, I'm spunky. What I love about the age I am now is it brings different characters.'