GLITZY telly soap Dallas helped topple Communism, according to star Larry Hagman.
The actor, who played oil baddie JR Ewing in the ’80s show, said the series made downtrodden Eastern Europeans realise what they were missing.
He told how dictator Nicolae Ceausescu allowed the Texas-set soap to be shown in Romania, intending it to demonstrate how corrupt and greedy the West was.
But Ceausescu’s plan backfired because all his citizens were goggle-eyed at luxuries they never knew existed and rose up against him.
One Romanian gangster even built a replica of the Ewing family’s Southfork ranch and strutted round it wearing a cowboy hat and carrying six-shooters.
Larry said: “Romania put on Dallas to show how corrupt the American system was and they all said, ‘Yeah we want some of it’.
“It ended up with them lining up Ceausescu and shooting him 500 times.”
Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad after a violent uprising in Bucharest in 1989.
Larry, who is filming a comeback version of Dallas, said Communist countries went mad for it because it was all about family life.
He said: “Everybody has a jerk like JR in the family, and somebody like a Sue Ellen and a Bobby.”