Barnabas & Company: The Cast of the Tv Classic Dark Shadows

Barnabas

& Company

The Cast of the TV Classic

Dark Shadows

Craig Hamrick

and R.J. Jamison

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Barnabas & Company

The Cast of the TV Classic Dark Shadows

2nd Edition,

Copyright © 2012 by Craig Hamrick and R.J. Jamison

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cover and various interior photographs courtesy of Dan Curtis Productions.

Used with permission.

Interior Photo editing by Michael Canavan. CANAGraphics.

www.canaconcepts.com

Dark Shadows © Dan Curtis Productions, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4759-1034-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-1032-2 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 04/19/2012

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword to barnabas & company

Introduction

I    The History of Dark Shadows

II    The Company

The Core Cast

Humbert Allen Astredo

Nancy Barrett

Joan Bennett

Christopher Bernau

Clarice Blackburn

Donald Briscoe

Kathleen Cody

Terrayne Crawford

Joel Crothers

Thayer David

Roger Davis

Betsy Durkin

Louis Edmonds

David Ford

Conard Fowkes

Jonathan Frid

Anthony George

Robert Gerringer

Grayson Hall

David Henesy

Kate Jackson

John Karlen

Jerry Lacy

Donna McKechnie

Diana Millay

Alexandra Moltke

Denise Nickerson

Lara Parker

Dennis Patrick

Christopher Pennock

Addison Powell

Keith Prentice

Lisa Richards

Robert Rodan

Mitch Ryan

Kathryn Leigh Scott

David Selby

Sharon Smyth

James Storm

Michael Stroka

Peter Turgeon

Virginia Vestoff

Marie Wallace

Donna Wandrey

III    Photo Gallery

IV    Dark Shadows Reborn

V    Cast Trivia

Why Dark Shadows by Craig Hamrick

Afterword by Stuart Manning

Appendix #2:    Additional Cast Lists

Appendix #3    DS related Web Sites & Addresses

Appendix # 4    References/Selected Bibliography

Endnotes

From Craig Hamrick:

For Joe Salvatore, whose love and support has made all the difference.

From R.J. Jamison:

Quite simply, for Craig.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for discussing Dark Shadows: Humbert Allen Astredo, Conrad Bain, David Baclaski, Nancy Barrett, Carol Burnett, Gordon Connell, Jane Connell, Terrayne Crawford, Louis Edmonds, Greg Evans, Janet Ferrara, Conard Fowkes, Jonathan Frid, Darren Gross, Sam Hall, David Henesy, Eileen Herlie, Alexandra Moltke Isles, R.J. Jamison, Brian Jucha, John Karlen, Nancy Kersey, Rod Labbe, Jerry Lacy, Gloria Lillibridge, Stuart Manning, Betsy Durkin Matthes, Donna McKechnie, Diana Millay, Mimi Newton, Denise Nickerson, Giulia Pagano, Lara Parker, Jim Pierson, Dennis Patrick, Chris Pennock, Marcy Robin, Dan Ross, Marilyn Ross, Robert Rodan, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Chip Selby, David Selby, Cheryl Singletary, Sada Thompson, Charles Thorpe, Wendy Turgeon, Marie Wallace, Donna Wandrey, and Ruth Warrick.

The following people generously shared their video collections and personal scrapbooks: Nancy Barrett, Louis Edmonds, Betsy Durkin Matthes, Diana Millay, Denise Nickerson, Jim Pierson, Donna Wandrey, and Marie Wallace.

From Craig Hamrick

Special Thanks to: editors, Julie Filby, Michael Karol, and Joe Salvatore; and Craig’s friends Stuart Manning and Craig Lucas, for their ongoing support and inspiration.

From R.J. Jamison

Joe Salvatore for his patience and commitment to honoring Craig’s desire for this book to be finished for Dark Shadows and Craig Hamrick fans alike. It was Craig’s intention to flesh out the full career of the DS actors and provide a source for all DS-related arcania he had accumulated over the years for fans to enjoy.

Francesca Robert and Michael Miozza for providing detailed information on all things DS. And lastly, Nancy Eron for editorial assistance on the final drafts which involved marrying two writers’ not always convergent styles, theatre or theater?

Foreword to barnabas & company

by Joe Salvatore

As fans of Dark Shadows celebrated the show’s 45th anniversary in 2011 and anxiously await the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp movie remake slated for release in 2012, Barnabas & Company offers a significant contribution to fans of Dark Shadows, as well as to a larger audience interested in the culture of theater, film, and television in the mid-twentieth century.

Craig Hamrick’s relationship with Dark Shadows began not with the television show itself, but rather by discovering it through the short novels based on the serial and written by Marilyn Ross and others. While most fans became attached to the characters living in and around Collinwood, Craig took that one step further and became most interested in the people who played these characters. Over his years of attending festivals, creating websites, and writing about the show, Craig befriended many of the actors, and as a result he gained entrée into the behind-the-scenes world of the festivals, as well as into the personal lives of the people who brought life to characters like Angelique, Carolyn, and Roger, just to name a few.

When I first met Craig in May 2001, he gave me a draft manuscript of Big Lou, his biography of Louis Edmonds, one of the core DS actors who was in the very first and absolute last episode. I knew Edmonds’ work from watching him on All My Children as a teenager. This biography served for me as an initial introduction to Dark Shadows, but it also illustrated something very clear to me about Craig’s work in that book and a trend that he would carry through into Barnabas & Company. Craig had an interest in how Edmonds’ work on Dark Shadows had interacted with and played off of his career as an actor. As I read Big Lou, I became fascinated with the depth and scope of Edmonds’ career in the theater, and I realized that Craig had done something very special. In illuminating the experiences of one actor working in the mid-twentieth century, he had provided a window into a world that I, as a theater director and playwright, wanted to know more about: the world of the working actor, who was straddling television and live theatre, and making a living. It was then that I recognized that Big Lou, and subsequently Barnabas & Company, would make significant contributions to our understanding of how an actor’s career unfolded in this time period, and would allow us to place this moment into a broader historical context.

The idea that an actor is so much more than her or his signature character is not a new idea. However, Craig’s dedication to researching people’s careers beyond Dark Shadows allows the readers of this book to see the level of talent that populated the world of Collinwood. The diversity of experiences within the acting company truly highlights for me why the show worked for so many viewers. Yes, fans identified with the plights of the characters, but that’s only possible when an actor can play those moments with integrity and commitment, even when the world tends to be outlandish and unrealistic. Not to mention running on a shooting schedule that ran at a mile a minute. Craig has left us that information in this book, and as a result, I hope that readers can finally fully appreciate the talent and skills of this acting company.

Craig Hamrick passed away in September 2006 with this new edition only partially completed, and I promised him before he died that his additional work would eventually see the light of day. I’m indebted to R.J. Jamison for her dedication and commitment to completing Craig’s work, and for helping to bring Barnabas & Company’s second edition to fruition.

Introduction

When starting research for the first edition of this book, Dark Shadows was already recognized as a truly distinctive TV series. It was a soap opera about monsters—a show that inspired millions of school kids in the late 1960s and early ’70s to rush home from school and park themselves in front of their TV sets.

For some it was actually pretty frightening, with creepy music and cobwebbed sets. Other times it’s laugh-out-loud bad. It has a kitschy, camp element—actors in outlandish costumes, playing over-sized roles to the hilt, sometimes blowing their lines or knocking over prop tombstones in the process. And with characters clad in miniskirts and bell-bottoms, some episodes of Dark Shadows serve up a deliciously psychedelic slice of ’70s nostalgia.

But in watching more and more of the show, interviewing cast members, and poring through archives learning about the lives and careers of the actors who brought it all to life, something else is realized about what makes Dark Shadows a remarkable cultural touchstone. It’s a time capsule: 1,225 half-hour installments that freeze the work of dozens of gifted, New York-based actors, writers, producers, and technicians.

The cast featured an amazing mixture of talent: former and future stars of stage, screen, and television. Some of the actors had performed in vaudeville and in the early days of television and radio; others had appeared in classic films. Many of them had played prestigious roles in landmark Broadway productions like Bus Stop and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof garnering theatrical awards and one came with an Oscar® nomination under her belt.. (A few were also involved in some of the most infamous theatrical flops, like the musical Breakfast at Tiffany’s.¹) But because those performances weren’t recorded, if it weren’t for their stints on this Gothic soap opera, today we’d never be able to see some of them act.

For some performers, Dark Shadows was a brief blip in their careers—a day or two of work, not even worth noting on their resumes. For others, the TV studio was a comfortable environment where they could spend a few weeks or even years honing their craft and making a living as an actor.

The series was a launching pad for young actors. A few of the cast members suddenly found themselves the focus of overwhelming attention—fame that would only grow. Some left the spotlight as soon as they walked out of the DS studio; others went on to grace magazine covers and movie and TV screens for decades.

Of course there were inexperienced actors, too, occasionally brought on to fill a bar or restaurant scene. While many of these background performers didn’t continue as actors, others went on to much bigger roles. Some later won Tonys® and Emmys®, and one Day Player received the Theater Hall Achievement Award. Another of the actors became a TV icon as an Angel, and one young girl who played a vampire for one day even went on to be nominated for an Oscar four times (Marsha Mason).

Actors were drawn to the show. Marie Wallace, who had appeared in the original Broadway productions of Gypsy and Sweet Charity before joining the Dark Shadows cast, said that landing a role on DS was considered a coup in the acting community. It looked like such a fun show—with all the special effects and the costumes and far-out stories—that just about every actor in New York wanted to be on it, she said². Maybe they just wanted to be on for a day or two, but they really wanted to do the show.

Dark Shadows broke new ground and lured millions of viewers to daytime television—a genre that almost everyone, actors and TV viewers alike, had long considered substandard. With spooky sets and scary stories, it gained fans of all ages and attracted some of the best actors in the business.

According to actress Diana Millay—already a veteran of dozens of TV shows before her stint on Dark Shadows—the series wasn’t considered a soap opera. Soaps were about simple domestic crises, she said. "Dark Shadows was about another world. Everyone wants to believe there’s more to life than what we know for certain. That’s why we captured everyone’s imagination. And that’s why very talented actors wanted to take part."

The show gives a nostalgic glimpse at the world as it was—and how it was dramatically altered—from 1966 to 1971. For example, Nancy Barrett’s characterization of Carolyn Stoddard changes a great deal through the course of the series. At the beginning, during those first extra-spooky-looking black-and-white episodes, she may be rebelliously dancing at the Blue Whale bar, but her look is pretty conventional. Her hair is in a neatly combed flip and she’s clad in conservative knee-length, long-sleeved dresses. Fast-forward to the 1970 episodes, and there’s Carolyn in saturated color, with an Age of Aquarius long, straight hairdo, love beads, and groovy threads. When once asked what she thought led to these drastic changes in such a relatively short period of time, Nancy Barrett summed it up in three words: The Vietnam War. During that conflict, bloody real-life scenes were brought into the nation’s living rooms. The horrific images forced a generation of Americans to come of age quickly. This collision with reality also made a lot of people want to escape.

Housewives, who’d always been the core audience of soap operas, got caught up in Dark Shadows. Hordes of young children ran home from school to watch the spooky soap opera, too.

Young fan Charles Thorpe (later a college professor) was one of the kids who couldn’t get enough of the show. I rushed home from school to see it, he said, years later. "A few times, my mother’s chubby little boy surprised her by showing up only a few minutes after 3 p.m.—having run all the way home to catch even a glimpse of DS. Funny, I don’t remember ever having run for anything else if I didn’t absolutely have to."

Even hip college students got hooked—and not just on Dark Shadows. A University of Chicago student told Newsweek³ about some friends who took drugs, then watched the show. I know five scag [heroin] freaks who watch it religiously, he said. They shoot up in the afternoon to watch. The show’s supernatural, ugly vibes are just right for when you’re strung out on scag.

After the show shifted to color, the special effects sometimes resembled LSD trips. When Christopher Pennock’s Dr. Jekyll-inspired character Cyrus Longworth sucked down his mysterious, transforming potions, vibrant colors on the TV screen danced, and images multiplied before the gleeful eyes of some fans at home sucking down mysterious potions of their own. They may even have picked up on the fact that, by his own later admission, Pennock often ingested a jolt of hallucinogenic help.

Lara Parker, whose evil Angelique was also featured in a lot of these trippy scenes, explained what she thought the appeal of the show was for everyone from freewheeling hippies to fans of comedy. "It was the ’60s, when there were a lot of people that were experimenting with mind-altering substances. And they were tripping out on Dark Shadows, she said. It was so silly and so dumb and so funny and so scary and so unpredictable and at the same time, you could not watch a show when you didn’t see somebody make a mistake. And so, it was a howl.

"I realize that there was something unique about Dark Shadows, and you can still see it, she continued. I think it had to do with the performances. The people who played the leading roles…their energy level was very high, and they really committed themselves to the truth of the moment very, very strongly. Nobody on that show was cool or laid-back. It was sort of ‘pre-cool’ in society. I can remember when my kids told me, ‘The most important thing in the world is to be cool, Mom.’ And we were not cool. We were passionate. It was a hot show and everybody that watched it either got scared, or they could be sexually aroused, or they could giggle. It was just something they could get off on. It broke all the rules."

• I

The History of

Dark Shadows

"Dark Shadows has remained popular because of a unique combination of story and chemistry among actors. I think that’s the only valid explanation after all these years. It’s just some sort of divine combination."

—Kathryn Leigh Scott

In 1965, a young TV executive named Dan Curtis had a nightmare that changed his life—and altered the destinies of countless others. Curtis was an Emmy -winning producer of CBS Golf Classics, and he was more than a little bored in that job. One night he dreamt of a mysterious young woman on a train.

I saw a girl with long, dark hair, he told 16 magazine in March 1970. She was about 19, and she was on a train that stopped in the dark, isolated town. She got off the train and started walking and walking. Finally, she came to a huge, forbidding house. She turned and slowly walked up the long path towards the house. At the door, she lifted a huge brass knocker and gently tapped it three times. I heard a dog howl, and then—just as the door creaked open—I woke up!

The next morning at the breakfast table, the producer told his wife, Norma, about his eerie dream. She thought it sounded like a great plot for a new TV show. Soon Dan pitched it to ABC, and network officials agreed with Norma.

Curtis hired Art Wallace to develop a story from the fragment he’d dreamed, the show’s original working structure entitled Shadows on the Wall. Robert Costello joined as Line Producer, Curtis’ title was Creator and Executive Producer, and Lela Swift, one of the few female directors in the industry, agreed to take the helm of the new soap opera. Robert Cobert composed atmospheric theme music, and Sy Tomashoff set out to design Collinwood, the dreary mansion where the action would take place. With his dream team in place, Curtis had to find the people who would populate the town of Collinsport.

Alexandra Moltke, a 19-year-old actress with a handful of stage credits and an aristocratic lineage, was cast as Victoria Winters, the orphaned governess who finds herself working for the Collins family and searching for clues about her mysterious past. Movie star Joan Bennett was tapped to play Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Victoria’s stern employer. Elizabeth’s arrogant, hard-drinking brother, Roger, was played by Louis Edmonds, a Louisiana native who had spent the previous twenty years acting on and Off-Broadway in New York. Stage actress Nancy Barrett was cast as Elizabeth’s daughter, Carolyn, and child actor David Henesy played Victoria’s charge, Roger’s son, David Collins.

The first episode, beginning with Victoria on Curtis’ dreamed-about train, was taped June 13, 1966, and it aired two weeks later, on June 27. To enhance the Gothic tone, the show was introduced by Alexandra Moltke telling the audience, My name is Victoria Winters. My journey is beginning….

Variety reviewed the first installment of Dark Shadows in its June 29, 1966, issue: Writer Art Wallace took so much time getting into his story that the first episode of this neo Gothic soaper added up to one big contemporary yawn.

The reviewer would have preferred to see more of legendary Joan Bennett and less of relative-unknown Alexandra Moltke, who did okay in her ambiguous part. Variety did praise producer Robert Costello and director Lela Swift for creating a dark and somber mood. But critics and fans were fairly unanimous: There wasn’t much happening on this new show. Ratings were bleak.

Monsters and Witches in the Family

Dark Shadows is best remembered as a supernatural thriller, filled with vampires, zombies, werewolves, and mad scientists. But in the beginning, the scariest thing on the screen was the tacky blonde wig Kathryn Leigh Scott was forced to don for her first few outings as waitress Maggie Evans. As Victoria poked around Collinwood’s dusty deserted west wing, trying to figure out if she was a long-lost Collins, there were occasional supernatural undertones. Young David Collins claimed to see ghosts all over the place, and in the 70th episode, which aired September 30, 1966, viewers saw a specter emerge from the portrait of long-dead Josette Collins, then dance around the grounds of the great estate. Dark Shadows was finally heading where no soap opera had strayed before. The ratings, though still anemic, were goosed a bit by the unusual story.

In December, almost six months into the show’s run, Diana Millay was cast as Laura Collins, Roger’s wayward wife, who turned out to be a real monster. There was no more hinting about the supernatural—the writers showed Laura using magic to make trouble for her family members. The character’s evil deeds caused the ratings to climb a bit, but Diana was pregnant, so her stay on the show had to be short, and Laura was destroyed. Wanting to continue to ride the increasing ratings and advertising support, Curtis decided to go for broke when, in April 1967, a vampire named Barnabas Collins showed up at the front door of Collinwood and changed the face of daytime programming forever.

Canadian stage actor Jonathan Frid was an unlikely choice as a soap opera leading man. He had almost no previous television experience, though he was a British and American-trained Shakespearean actor with a long list of stage credits. And while he was attractive in an offbeat way, the over forty actor didn’t have the typical pretty boy features of most soap stars. Actually, Dan Curtis didn’t plan for Barnabas to stick around long enough for any of that to matter. With any luck, the producer hoped, the presence of a vampire would draw some attention, and in a few weeks he could be staked so things could move on, as they would on a normal soap opera. In his wildest dreams, Dan had no idea just how much attention Barnabas would attract. Because he was so new to the working conditions on a TV soundstage, Jonathan was uneasy about acting on the daily Dark Shadows.

Jonathan’s on-camera unease—which never totally evaporated—gave Barnabas a sympathetic edge. Jonathan was uncertain of his lines and where he should be standing on the set, so Barnabas seemed to wish he didn’t have to skulk around Collinwood drinking blood. With his Shakespearian experience, Jonathan also gave Barnabas a sophisticated bearing that was fitting for a nobleman from another century. And by emphasizing the vampire’s revulsion at his own compulsions, Jonathan added a layer to the character that had never been seen in a vampire story.

Every Dracula needs his Van Helsing, so Oscar -nominated Grayson Hall was brought on to the show in June 1967, as Julia Hoffman, a doctor whose mission was supposed to be the vampire’s destruction. Instead, as her story developed, Julia fell in love with an oblivious Barnabas, providing an unexpected twist. In her memoirs, Marie Wallace remembers both Frid and Hall as having the highest cheekbones I’d ever seen, and the hollow below their cheekbones was so deep, it added to their most unusual looks. The high cheek-boned, rail-thin 44-year old Grayson was a far cry from the dewy blonde twenty-something heroines that housewives had been rooting for on soaps for decades—and the Barnabas/Julia romance was anything but normal. But fans responded.

"Like all the actors on the show, Grayson was directed to play her lines to the hilt—as if she was on stage instead of just a few feet from the camera. This led to a heightened sense of reality, and at times it added a camp element to the portrayals. Grayson commented on this, years later, when a Soap Opera Digest reporter asked in May 1977 if she had taken her parts seriously. Absolutely seriously, she replied. "You cannot do it camp. When we read the script through for the first time, we would indeed laugh. But after that, we would buckle down and go to work and be serious. There’s no choice. In acting, you can’t act if you are camping. If you’re joking around, you are not acting. You have to take it seriously, because that is the only way it would be valid.

Yes, I was a ridiculous doctor, she continued. I killed people to protect a vampire. I changed his blood, and Barnabas was cured for a while. Oh, the things I did for that man! I also created a man who wanted a wife with the same background, so I made a wife. I think all this is funny to talk about now, but when I did it I was actually serious and believed every minute of it. Barnabas was a very serious vampire. He was an unhappy vampire—‘Stop me before I kill.’ That was part of why it was fascinating. I think if you were a happy vampire…you couldn’t sustain it for years. That’s why it was an interesting choice to make Barnabas an unhappy vampire.

The melancholy vampire storyline was enormously popular. Ratings climbed. The actors were deluged with fan mail, and as they left the studio each day they were mobbed by kids seeking pictures and autographs. Dark Shadows’ cancellation, Dr.Hoffman’s death, and Barnabas’ staking were postponed, and Jonathan Frid and Grayson Hall both became permanent members of the cast. Teenage fans began gathering outside the studio to catch the actors on the way to their apartments. Other admirers of the show included former First Lady Jacqueline Onassis, and future larger than life personalities including Oprah Winfrey, horror author Stephen King, Madonna, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman who sent a fan letter to the show, a Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood girl named Caren Johnson (a.k.a. Whoopi Goldberg), a ten-year old future film director, Tim Burton, his frequent collaborator Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer.

When the time came to explain how Barnabas had evolved into a bloodsucker, the DS writers moved the storyline to the past. During a séance, Victoria Winters was drawn back to 1795, where she met the pre-vampire Barnabas. The storyline lasted for five months and gave the cast members an opportunity to play other roles—their present-day characters’ ancestors, like members of a repertory acting company. Fans accepted this wholeheartedly, preferring to see their favorite actors instead of a whole new cast. This set another unusual standard for the soap opera, and throughout the rest of the show’s run, most of the primary cast members played a variety of parts, in various time periods, and even in an alternate universe, where characters’ circumstances were different than those in present time because of different life choices.

During the 1795 flashback, Lara Parker joined the ensemble as Angelique, the scorned witch who cursed Barnabas with vampirism. I was just a young, naive actress who wanted to play the lead, Lara later told People magazine. "I had to be the princess. I wanted to cry when things went wrong. They kept pulling me aside and saying, ‘Honey, you’re the heavy. Don’t cry. Think vicious.’"⁴

Lara’s evil-flavored performance added to the show’s supernatural tone, and she became a fan favorite. Angelique returned from the past shortly after Victoria did, and the immensely popular actress remained on the show for the remainder of its run.

Public Frenzy

In response to the frenzy of public interest drummed up by his performance, Jonathan Frid found himself appearing in almost every episode of Dark Shadows for a while. This, coupled with promotional appearances, started taking its toll on the actor.

It’s a difficult show, Jonathan said to The New York Times.⁵ They’re like nighttime specials we do every day. When you think about it, it’s really rather like doing stock—five new half-hours each week—a full-length play performed. Mainly, you know, it moves. That’s the essence of the show—tunnels, secret doors, running around—the most elaborate daytime show going.

In July 1968, he told TV Guide about the hectic pace of his life. I’m so busy, I haven’t time to pick up my laundry, he said. I find myself wearing bathing suits for underwear.

Besides losing his free time, Jonathan had to give up a great deal of his treasured privacy. He was subjected to numerous interviews and photo shoots. For a feature in Flip magazine, he even had to put up with a photographer looking over his shoulder while he lathered up his face and shaved. In 1970, the then 46-year-old Frid told Women’s Wear Daily, I always feel like an ass being a teenage idol in a teeny-bopper magazine.

Jonathan told the New York Times that he changed his vacation plans in order to find some anonymity: I went to Mexico rather than Hawaii when I realized that our show is on prime time in the islands.⁶

In costume as Barnabas, Jonathan Frid made personal appearances everywhere from the White House to the clown-hosted TV show Bozo’s Bigtop. He was whisked across the country in a private jet, to be mobbed by dangerously huge crowds at shopping malls and car shows.

Newsweek called Frid the most illustrious creature of the night since Bela Lugosi. In the same 1970 article, John Carroll, an editor at Rolling Stone magazine, was identified as a big Dark Shadows fan. He called the show incredibly bad. That’s why it’s so good, he said. It has no redeeming social value.

It’s understandable that Jonathan needed a vacation. Life on the set was stressful. But by all accounts, it was also a fun, family-like environment.

After leaving Dark Shadows, Nancy Barrett worked on other soap operas, including The Doctors and One Life to Live, but she said the relationship between the cast members of Dark Shadows was unique in her experience.

I thought at the time it was very close, she said years later. One of the reasons for that must have to do with how the show was produced as opposed to the way shows are produced today. We literally spent the entire day together, Nancy said. It wasn’t that you rehearsed and did your scene and then you were gone.

Being constantly together made the cast of Dark Shadows like a family, for better or worse. That sort of breeds a camaraderie or terrific enmity, Nancy said with a laugh. The fact is, you’re stuck with these people. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not like you go in and do your thing in an hour and just leave. She continues, In the early days, Alexandra and Louie and I did a lot of scenes together. And almost always, Alexandra and I could absolutely not keep a straight face. Louie was so terribly funny. It happened at least once during taping, and I think it ended with us both simply turning around, with our backs dead to the camera, because of Louie…. And of course the more we laughed, it just fed him. So, I really adored him and always had a terrible time playing scenes with him because he tickled me so.

Also fighting the giggles occasionally was John Karlen who became Barnabas’ indispensible gofer. In 1978, he told the fans gathered at a convention called ShadowCon II about his experiences on the set with Dennis Patrick, who played his character’s cruel associate, Jason McGuire. I had some of the best laughs I ever had, on that show, John said during a Q&A session. I couldn’t look in Dennis Patrick’s face without laughing. His eyes kept going, Karlen crossed his eyes, and he had an incredible seriousness about him. ‘Willie, wake up!’ he’d say, and I’d look up at him and start biting my lip.

In her 1970 autobiography, The Bennett Playbill , Joan Bennett described her Dark Shadows experiences. She coyly mentioned the occasional on-camera blunders: I found television an infinitely more spontaneous medium (than movies), Joan wrote. As our executive producer Dan Curtis says, altogether too cheerfully, ‘We work the hell out of them! It’s death in the afternoon and panic in the streets every day on the set. If somebody blows a line, that’s too bad.’ Although the show is taped ahead of time, it’s a ‘live’ tape technique, there’s no way of going back to correct mistakes and, occasionally, there’s a really spectacular lapse.

These spectacular lapses—also known as bloopers—are one element that makes watching Dark Shadows so much fun. Props fell apart, doors opened or shut without provocation, actors went up on their lines, Jonathan Frid had a habit of reading his costars’ dialogue from the teleprompter, and sometimes a stagehand would even wander into a scene. But because the cost of stopping production and starting over—or even editing the tape later—was prohibitive on the limited daytime budget of that time, the show went on.

Kate Jackson, who joined the cast in 1970, described an on-set mishap to People⁷ magazine in January 1991: "I had to say this long speech, explaining why I was back from the dead, she said. I was standing in an 1800s dress, with candles all around, and the back of the dress caught fire. I was already messing up the lines, and all I could think was, Why is David Henesy dancing around back there?’ He kept me from having to scream, ‘Aaaaaaah! My dress is on fire!’⁸

To help lessen the strain on Jonathan Frid, other heart-throb-worthy monsters were added to the canvas. Six-foot-six Robert Rodan played Adam, a Frankenstein-inspired creature stitched together from cadavers; Broadway veteran Marie Wallace was brought on later to portray his bride, Eve. Don Briscoe played a vampire, then the vampire’s twin brother, a werewolf. David Selby was hired to play the ghost- Quentin Collins, and the storyline shifted to 1897 (and back again) to tell his tale.

Despite the monstrous elements of their characters, Briscoe and Selby were regularly profiled as single men about town in teen magazines like 16 and Tiger Beat, which attracted even more young fans to the previously uncharted territory of daytime television. Other male cast members, including Roger Davis, Christopher Pennock, Michael Stroka, and David Henesy, were also often mentioned in these publications.

Teen magazines in the 1960s and ’70s were unlike today’s entertainment magazines. Rather than printing ostensibly accurate personal profiles of the stars of the kids’ favorite movies and TV shows, magazines like 16 and Tiger Beat often offered fabricated quotes and published ghost-written articles by the celebrities that put glowing, happy spins on everything.

Articles told young female readers how they could be the perfect girlfriend to their favorite actors. In a story titled How to Meet & Get to Know Me by David Henesy, the young thespian (or a ghost writer) shared information like the exact address of the DS studio⁹ and the arrival and departure times of the actors—plus the addresses of a few of his favorite hangouts. It’s difficult to imagine today’s security-conscious stars taking part in anything that would be so encouraging to potential stalkers.

If a teen idol became engaged, devastated young women wrote weepy letters to the editor, distraught that they weren’t going to get a chance to marry the actor themselves. Because the actors needed to be presented as available to readers, the male cast of Dark Shadows—many of whom were gay, married, or too young—offered a special challenge to teen magazine writers. Sex symbols like David Selby, Roger Davis, and Chris Pennock were profiled with little (if any) mention of their wives.

Summing up the way teen idols were viewed by the press in a 1972 TV Land magazine article, writer Eve Steele took David Cassidy (wildly popular star of The Partridge Family) to task for even publicly mentioning that he might someday marry. Marriage to any girl...could prove disastrous to his career, and David should know that, she wrote. The romance of teen idols, in the eyes of their fans, is that they are young and available, symbols of the All American Boy every girl would like to fall in love with when she falls in love for the first time. That’s why no teen star marries. Even older stars with romantic appeal are encouraged to keep up a bachelor image.

Even magazines that were aimed at grownups sometimes contained misleading information. Headlines sometimes hinted at scandal, but the accompanying stories didn’t deliver. An article in Starland magazine titled Jonathan Frid’s Secret Weekends, for example, was about his enjoyment of solitude, and stated that he slipped away from the spotlight on some weekends to visit hospitalized children—not very shocking.

One teen-magazine article, "How Girls Have to Please the Men of Dark Shadows, stated that it took a special kind of girl to please David Selby….the girl who enjoys caring for a home and a family. To please him, David supposedly said, his wife, Chip, managed to be cheerful no matter how awful her day’s been, to have delicious meals that also look great, and to be the best and most loving wife a guy could ask for."

A few decades later, that now-politically-incorrect quote was shown to Chip Selby to check its accuracy. I cannot ever imagine David saying that, she replied. He would’ve been afraid to, even then. He was always a very aggressive feminist, having had a mom who worked. He continues to support women in their careers….I cannot wait to share that quote with him. It will be his biggest laugh of the day.

By the late ’60s, Dark Shadows had evolved into a pop cultural phenomenon. A landslide of memorabilia hit the market, including a series of paperback books, board games, toys, puzzles, bubblegum cards, and posters. Today that’s par for the course for a popular TV show, but Dark Shadows was the first to inspire such a wide variety of items—and just about everything sold as quickly as it hit store shelves.

Curtis Transfers His Vision to the Big Screen

In view of Dark Shadows’ popularity, Dan Curtis decided to expand the story of the Collins family into a theatrical release. He sold MGM on the idea of House of Dark Shadows (HODS) and set out to retell the basic tale already laid out on TV: the unleashing of the Colonial-era vampire Barnabas Collins and his obsession with Maggie Evans, a replica of his 18th century love, Josette DuPrés. But while Barnabas was a sympathetic, heroic character on TV, the movie version of the character was a bloodthirsty, amoral creature, more in keeping with Curtis’ original idea for the character. In the film, Barnabas preyed on the rest of the Collins family. He turned Carolyn, Professor Stokes, and Roger into vampires (giving Nancy Barrett, Thayer David, and Louis Edmonds each a chance to don fangs, which they never got to do on the TV show). Dr. Julia Hoffman, jealously in love with the vampire, tries to destroy Barnabas and in turn is strangled by the furious aged vampire. By the end of the film, nearly all the main characters were dead.

The movie starred members of the TV cast but in a different setting. Rather than trying to recreate the dark and somber Collinwood from the small-screen version, Curtis moved the action to a more elegant mansion— Lyndhurst, a home-turned-museum in Tarrytown, New York near the infamous Sleepy Hollow. Filming took place from March 23 to May 1, 1970.

Back at the TV studio in Manhattan, other cast members carried on with the daytime show. David Selby, Lara Parker, and Michael Stroka had the chance to be front-and-center for several months. But some key actors had to pull double duty on the TV show and film sets, which led to scheduling problems. One day Grayson Hall told an Assistant Director that she couldn’t be on the movie set the next day as requested because she was doing a TV show. What TV show? the exasperated A.D. demanded. "Yours!" Grayson shot back.¹⁰

On the movie set, the actors sometimes got a luxury they weren’t used to: retakes. While promoting the film in the summer of 1970, Nancy Barrett told a newspaper writer that when sinking her fangs into her first victim, she was allowed to nibble on Don Briscoe’s neck ten times to get just the right shot. That would have been impossible on TV, she said. You have to work too fast on TV, and you don’t have time to set up the camera angles. The cameraman took two days to do that scene and told me it should have taken two weeks.

For her staking scene, however, there could be only one take. As protection against the thrusting stake, she wore a white chest plate made of steel and balsa wood. The ‘blood’ spurted all over me, she said. But this scene had to be done just once because they only had two white dresses, and I needed a clean one for the other scenes. The dresses were specially made, with long sleeves reaching down to the floor, and would have taken too much time to replace.

Fans loved the film and flocked to theaters in September 1970. New York newspaper critic Joe Rosen described the setting at the screening he attended: A large claque of girls cheered wildly as the name of each member of the cast was flashed on the screen in the opening credits.

Another critic, in Miami, issued a warning to adult horror movie fans: "Do not attend any kiddie-ridden matinee. At the showing I attended, their wild screams (more, I suspect, for effect than from sheer fright) rent the air and proved more horrendous than the ghastly goings-on up on the screen."

The film didn’t fare as well with most film reviewers.

The New York Times’ Roger Greenspun said the movie really has no subject except its special effects—which aren’t very good—and its various shock sequences. Characters are picked up and dropped with an indifference unacceptable even for a soap opera. Greenspun mentioned that one actress managed to mostly stay out of the action: Joan Bennett has the good fortune to settle into a catatonic state early on.

The New York Times other critic, Joe Rosen, said "HODS is generally an indecipherable hour and half or so of supernatural effects... [with] a flock of girls with enticing necks: Grayson Hall, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Nancy Barrett."

The Atlanta Constitution also highlighted an individual performance, I especially liked Miss Hall who plays a doctor who falls in love…. Bob Geurin continued to praise HODS ’ lack of cliché. I saw very few camera gimmicks, he wrote. There was one slow-motion scene and that was about all. Nor were there all the usual haunted house props. I just saw one sliding wall panel. The eyes in the portraits on the wall didn’t open and close and look around at everybody. And there weren’t lots and lots of nighttime thunderstorms, when lightning usually picks out all kinds of skeletons in closets. In fact, it’s lighting, not lightning that does the trick, I think. That and some good acting.

The New York Post critic wrote, The transfer to the large screen has magnified all the faults and foolishness.

On the brighter side, the Daily News said fans of the TV show would enjoy the film, and Variety called it an okay exploitation serial…laced with a bit of limp camp.

The Newark Evening News’ Don Vaillancourt particularly liked one performance: The real star of the show turns out to be [Kathryn Leigh] Scott…who plays her love scenes with a good show of tenderness and compassion, yet changes her emotions to plausible shock and fright when she learns what her sweetheart really is.

And the Miami Herald’s Jim Meyer actually said he liked it…sort of: What lifts this flagrant nonsense to the high level it achieves is the total professionalism of everyone involved. Producer-director Dan Curtis has approached this foolishness as if it all mattered terribly, and an uncommonly good cast responds eagerly.

Critics be damned, the film did good box office, enough for Warner to ask Curtis to film a sequel. At the end of House of Dark Shadows, Barnabas is staked. But following in vampire-movie tradition, Dan Curtis wanted to resurrect the character for a sequel. Therefore, a bat coyly flies away from the scene in the film’s closing shot. Leery of being typecast, however, Jonathan Frid declined to take part (See Section II, J. Frid profile), so Curtis came up with another concept—a ghost story with no vampires or werewolves in sight.

Night of Dark Shadows (NODS) features David Selby and Kate Jackson as newlyweds Quentin and Tracy Collins, who inherit Collinwood and find the mansion haunted by the fetching spirit of Angelique Collins—Lara Parker floating around the estate in an extremely low-cut, see-through white negligee.

Like HODS, this film was shot at the Lyndhurst estate, with cast members from the TV show portraying a new set of characters.

This time, Nancy Barrett and John Karlen played Claire and Alex Jenkins, a husband-and-wife mystery-writing team and best friends of Quentin and Tracy. Grayson Hall portrayed Carlotta Drake, a menacingly elegant housekeeper who spends most of the movie glaring at Tracy and encouraging Quentin to explore his past-life memories of a relationship with Angelique.

With a cast of film-newbies, Lara Parker recalled Grayson’s film tutelage, "We were watching Deborah Kerr in Tea and Sympathy, she said, ‘Watch her. Watch how she never stops moving. She just could slightly turn her face, drop her face, yet it seemed totally completely natural. Look how she never has an expression on her face, so you can look into her eyes and see what she’s thinking…don’t mush up your face. Leave your face alone. Just act and react. Just don’t do anything, just think it. But keep subtly slowly moving— Hall finished her bits of advice, She said ‘Whatever you do, keep your face quiet, because you are 30 feet tall!’"

The film was released in September 1971 and again, reviewers were not kind. Variety found the NODS plot confusing. The New York Post called it monotonous. And The New York Times said it was an illustration that the pseudosinister can be a bore, even without vampires.

There were some oblique compliments. The movie itself…is not quite as awful as you might expect, wrote Glen Padnick of Boston After Dark. But there’s little positive to be said about a horror movie that doesn’t contain one scary moment. It is very dull.

The behind-the-scenes story of Night of Dark Shadows has become legendary with fans. The film was panned for having a disjointed plot and shallow character development. Many felt the movie seemed to be missing something—and in fact, it was.

As the oft-told story goes, Dan Curtis delivered a 129-minute (already cut from 151-minute) version of the film to MGM executives who demanded that it be cut, literally overnight, to a 90-minute running time. Under the pressure of that deadline, the film was slashed, and much of the heart of what could have been a romantic, chilling ghost story ended up on the cutting-room floor. (The unabridged script was published in The Dark Shadows Movie Book, Pomegranate Press, 1998, finally giving fans an idea at what the film might have been like.)

For decades, it seemed that those cut scenes were lost forever. But after an exhaustive search, film historian and DS fan Darren Gross finally located much of the missing footage in August 1999 in a salt cavern below Kansas City and began to produce a restored director’s cut of the movie.

The Roller Coaster Ride Ends

Getting a taste of working as a movie director, Dan Curtis knew he wanted to create more films. The daytime show storylines were also growing convoluted; fans were starting to drift away from the show, so ratings were in a decline, and ad revenue was shrinking. Former series star Alexandra Moltke, who had left the cast to have a baby, was watching. I couldn’t figure it out, even though I’d been on it all that time, she said. It was pretty far out. But at the same time, there was never a dull moment.

Head writer Sam Hall suggested various tried and true soap devices to rejuvenate the show, including the death of the one character who knew everything about Barnabas, Dr. Hoffman, Curtis rejected all such suggestions. He was ready to relocate to L.A. and move on. So after nearly five years of overseeing stories about time travel and monsters, Curtis decided that he was ready for new challenges—and that he didn’t want to hand over the Dark Shadows reins to anyone else.

Adding a complication, Jonathan Frid insisted on being cast as another character besides Barnabas. Beginning to plan for his life after Shadows, he wanted to break away from the limiting role of a vampire. His Bramwell Collins, modeled after Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Height’s anti-hero Heathcliff, was a lackluster, fangless hero who didn’t inspire the same audience passion Barnabas had garnered.

All these factors added up to the end of the remarkable soap opera’s run. The New York Post was one of the first to deliver the sad news of cancellation to fans: "After some five seasons on daytime TV, the ABC vampire series, Dark Shadows, apparently is running out of blood in the Nielsen ratings," the newspaper reported on March 3, 1971. Although there was a dip in the show’s ratings, they were rising again, but the plan to end it by Curtis and Company remained. On Thursday, March 25, 1971, a farewell party was held at the ABC-TV studio at 433 West 53rd Street in New York. Cast members past and present gathered to toast the end of the series. The final episode aired April 2.

Kate Jackson remembers in an MPI Dark Shadows video interview that at the conclusion of the show, she planned to attend her first wrap party. I’d just gotten to New York, and I was real hip, so yeah, I could sit around and ‘yeah, let’s rap sometime.’ So I thought we were having a party where you know, we all sat around and talked. However, when she arrived at the studio, it was like a fancy ballroom, filled with people, cocktails, and food. I think we all hated to see that happen, but it made you want to go on and do other things.

Taking over the DS time slot was a new version of the old game show Password, which was substantially less expensive to produce.

Thayer David summed up the company’s mixed feelings about the show’s demise: When one is on a roller coaster, one prays for it to end, he said. But then the coaster stops, and one gets off and suddenly the world seems duller and sadder somehow.

But as any true Dark Shadows fan knows, that wasn’t the end. Dark Shadows has lived on in syndication, was redeveloped as a 1990s NBC nighttime series starring