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Ken Kercheval couldn't always count on his acting income to keep groceries in his icebox during his early years in show business. During slack times, Kercheval took a wide variety of part-time jobs: encyclopedia salesman, airline reservation clerk, sewer-line dynamiter, even cemetery plot peddler. When times were good, Kercheval appeared on stage by night, and in such New York-based soap operas as Search for Tomorrow, The Secret Storm and How to Survive a Marriage. He was also a journeyman film actor, essaying supporting roles in such productions as Pretty Poison (1968), The Seven Ups (1971) and Network (1976). Beginning in 1978, Kercheval played lawyer Cliff Barnes, the long-suffering brother-in-law of Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) on TV's Dallas. Evidently Barnes' retainer was generous enough for him to ignore the endless humiliations doled out by the shifty J. R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), inasmuch as Kercheval and Hagman were the only Dallas regulars to appear continuously until the series' cancellation. During Dallas' run, Ken Kercheval occasionally moonlighted in made-for-TV films, notably in the role of Buffalo Bill in 1984's Calamity Jane.