General Information
 
 
(revised 11/05/2018)
 
 
Nielsen Ratings: number 8 (of 98) on the TV series hit list.
 
The producers tried to lure movie star RICHARD BURTON into a special guest appearance as Jean-Pierre Charbone (Jacqueline's husband or lover). Rumor has it he was offered $ 2.5 million for a five-minute cameo. But it did not work out.
 
Familiar faces at LORIMAR:
DAVID SELBY moves over to "Falcon Crest" along with several crew members from the recently cancelled soap opera "Flamingo Road".
Besides DAVID SELBY, who had turned down LORIMAR's offer to play the rôle of Gary Ewing on "Knots Landing" before TED SHACKELFORD was cast in 1979, producers also thought about casting JOHN BECK (Sam Curtis, "Flamingo Road" / Mark Graison, "Dallas") and MICHAEL NADER (Dex Dexter, "Dynasty") as Richard Channing.
 
Despite some major storylines spanning the whole year, season 1 was primarily episodic. Season 2, however, starts telling the stories in a serialized mode.
 
ANA ALICIA wished the writers would create for her character, Melissa, to have an affair with Chase as one of the big shockers this season. Her wish did not come true.
 
Location filming in the Wine Country was done for # 019 through # 028.
Spring Mountain Vineyards and Stags' Leap Winery are the major filming locations again (compare season 1).
 
Director HARRY HARRIS felt the Spring Mountain Winery Building was too small for impressive interior scenes. Therefore, he made arrangements for the interior scenes of the Falcon Crest Cooperage to be filmed at two parts of what used to be Inglenook in the Napa Valley:
On the historic site of Inglenook in Rutherford, CA (which is still — or again — Inglenook to this day), their barrel building (erected in 1973) was utilized to portray the big barrel room in the Falcon Crest Cooperage in # 019 (partly), 020, 023 (partly) and 025. Inglenook's barrel room was situated across the historic Inglenook Stone Château (compare # 071) and demolished in 2008.
The former Inglenook crush and fermentation facility in Oakville, CA — nowadays no longer part of Inglenook, but an independent entity named the Napa Wine Company — was used for additional coverage of winery interiors; in particular areas with smaller wine barrels on metal racks, a catwalk and big stainless steel tanks. Filming for the Falcon Crest Cooperage occured here for parts of # 019, 023 and 024.
 
Beginning this season, LORIMAR propped the surroundings of the Falcon Crest Victorian Mansion with silk flowers, especially roses.
 
The Falcon Crest Victorian Mansion interior set was propped with some new furniture, carpets and curtains for this season.
The Gioberti House was also propped with a few pieces of new furniture, especially in the kitchen, den and dining room.
 
One striking thing about many rooms, in particular the ones in the Falcon Crest Victorian Mansion, is that the phones are constantly changing places wherever they are needed in the specific scene. In times long before cordless phones, this would have been possible only with countless phone jacks in all the rooms. The interior sets, of course, had no working phone jacks at all.