The Dark Shadows Companion (25th Anniversary Collection)

357 Pages·1990·13.51 MB·English

by  Scott Kathryn Leigh

Table of Contents

Title Page
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Introduction
Foreword
OUT OF ANGÉLIQUE’S SHADOW
DARK SHADOWS AND ME
A WORD FROM ME
THE DARK SHADOWS HISTORY
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
PICTURE GALLERY
THE JOURNEY CONTINUES
The cousin from England: The Arrival of Barnabas Collins
When Every Day Was Opening Night: The Technical &Creative
Conjuring of Shadows
That Year of Insanity: 1968
A Werewolf with a PhD, A Vampire in the Whitehouse& A Count
Without His ...
Rain, Snow, and a Drafty, Old House: The Making of The Dark Shadows
Movies
The Last Days at Collinwood
EPISODE GUIDE
UPDATE
DARDK SHADOWS COLLECTIBLES
IN MEMORIAM
Copyright Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank a great number of individuals and concerns indispensable to
the writing of this book. Among them are: Dan Curtis, Dark Shadows Festival,
Ruth Kennedy, Nancy Kersey, Mary O’Leary, MGM/UA, MPI Home Video,
Larry and Ben Clark, Dan Resch, Clunes Associates.

Jo Ann Christy, Janet Meehan, Caren Parnes, Dale Clark, Lil Robin, Randy
Besch, Marie Bidlack, Smae Davis, Tim Ferrante, Gwen Fields, Robert
Finocchio, Jean Graham, Linda Gray, Guy Haines, Matthew Hall, Joan Jordan,
Liz Kaul, Beth Klapper, Debbie Kreuter, Pat Lammerts, Gloria Lillibridge, Ben
Martin, Alan Mat-lick, Jay Nass, Kristi Nelson, Mary Overstreet, Mary Phipps,
Dan and Marilyn Ross, Jeff Thompson, James Van Hise, Dan Whitley, Scott
Young, Mrs. Jay Newbert and the late Ken Newbert.

And also, a great deal of gratitude to the entire cast and crew of Dark
Shadows, with special thanks to Jonathan Frid, Joan Bennett, Lara Parker, Sam
Hall, Nick Besink, Robert Cobert, Robert Costello, Terry Crawford, Roger
Davis, George DiCenzo, Louis Edmonds, Timothy Gordon, John Karlen, Jerry
Lacy, J.J. Lupatkin, Ken McEwen, Mary McKinley-Haas, Diana Millay, Ramse
Mostoller, Chris Pennock, Lisa Richards, Harriet Rohr, Ross Skipper, Sharon
Smyth, Ron Sproat, Jack Sullivan, Edith Tilles, Sy Tomashoff, Marie Wallace,
Donna Wandrey, Violet Welles.

A unique television series will remain in its viewers’ memories for years after
its original broadcast. Dark Shadows is no exception. While fan clubs have been
around as long as there have been film stars, today’s fandoms are far more
sophisticated. Fans express their interest creatively with clubs, publications, and
conventions. Dark Shadows fandom should be given a good share of the credit
for keeping interest in Dark Shadows alive for nearly a quarter of a century.
Thanks to people like Maria Barbosa (founder of the Dark Shadows Festival and
the Dark Shadows current events newsletter, Shadowgram), Jim Pierson
(Chairman of the Dark Shadows Festival), Kathleen Resch (Editor of The World
of Dark Shadows fan magazine), and Marcy Robin (Editor of Shadowgram),
Dark Shadows lives on.
To

DAN CURTIS

And in loving memory of
JOAN BENNETT
1910-1990

And to all the friends and fans of Dark Shadows.
AN INTRODUCTION

By Kathryn Leigh Scott
“I don’t know why I’m doin’ it, Katy...I’m doin’ it.”

“Well, I’m doing another book, Dan”

“...cheez.”

He grinned and shook his head.

“It had been nearly 25 years since I first met Dan Curtis on a cold, blustery day
in New York to audition for the role of Maggie Evans. Now we were sitting in his
office at MGM Studios in Culver City, California and, once again, Dan was
casting Dark Shadows. He was too busy for lunch. He had a pilot and a six-
episode committment from NBC for the new series—and he had to find his
Barnabas. That day.”

Clearly I need not apply for my old job as the hash-slinging waitress—nor the
role of Josette, the dewy, doomed bride of the vampire. The new Dark Shadows
would sport an entirely new cast—and that was fine with me. Dan, however,
rattled off the names of a number of the original cast members (including mine)
that he eventually wanted to bring back in the new series. That, too, was fine
with me.

I’d landed the role of Maggie Evans shortly after graduating from the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the ABC-TV soap opera became my
first on-camera job. It was one thing to have an enormous audience of daytime
viewers watch me learn my craft and lose my baby fat back then, but it was
appalling to realize I’d got a job on the one soap that went into perpetual rerun!
Talk about mixed feelings... talk about rerun Hell. Forever and ever—no matter
whatever else I did in my career—I would be the skinny ingenue with the
chubby cheeks and the indecently short miniskirts wandering through endless
cobwebby secret passages wailing, “Barnabas, where are you?”

Not all of the original cast members felt as I did, but there were other young
actors with fledgling careers who were dismayed that despite their success in
other roles, they would always be associated with the show everyone “used to
run home from school to watch.” Indeed, many of the 1,225 original episodes we
had taped from June 1966 through April 1971 had been playing in endless
syndication cycles on PBS and independent stations throughout the country since
we’d gone off the air in April 1971. The two MGM feature films based on Dark
Shadows were regularly seen on late-night television. A library of Dark Shadows
episodes were available on home videocassette, and plans to air the entire series
nationwide on a new cable network had been announced. Dark Shadows had
become an institution.

Just as one eventually forgives one’s parents for everything—including a
happy childhood—I began to make my peace with Dark Shadows. It was, after
all, the most fun I’ve ever had as an actress. Imagine playing everything from
slice-of-life melodrama to wig-and-whaleboned restoration comedy in a daily
half-hour program. While other soap actors trod through mundane, molasses-
thick plots, we soared into fanciful tales involving a vampire, a witch and a
werewolf—and got to play an assortment of roles in stories based on classics
from Henry James to Nathanial Hawthorne. At about the same time that I was
going through my period of reckoning, I heard David Selby singing Quentin’s
Theme on Joan Rivers’ show. Another evening, I saw John Karlen telling Joan
about Willie. Kate Jackson even mentioned Dark Shadows in a TV Guide
interview. I don’t know what their personal feelings may have been throughout
the intervening years, but Dark Shadows was being acknowledged by them in
much the same manner that I was now talking about the show. Affectionately,
like summer camp. Fondly, like a first lover. And graciously, because it was a
long time ago.

When I wrote a book about those feelings, I wrote in pencil on yellow legal
pads and rarely used an eraser. That book, My Scrapbook Memories of Dark
Shadows, introduced me to a second career as a publisher and enabled me to
establish Pomegranate Press, Ltd. It provided the family of friends and fans of
Dark Shadows with a much-deserved 20th anniversary souvenir. Its success and
the publicity it generated contributed to the renewed popularity of the show and
surely helped awaken the interest in producing a new Dark Shadows series.
Shortly before last Christmas, Ruth Kennedy, Dan’s longstanding personal
assistant, arrived at my house to pick up a case of My Scrapbook Memories of
Dark Shadows for the production staff of the new series to use for research. Few
things in my life have given me as much pleasure as writing up that invoice.

Writing the book is simply one of the best things I ever did with my time. It
resolved my own ambiguous feelings about the show and released me from any
time-warp sentiment. I also realized how many of the actors from the original
company remain my friends 20-odd years later—and that we rarely talk about
the show, unless we’ve been specifically gathered together to do so at one of the
Dark Shadows Festivals. How refreshing it is that the fans, too, are more
interested in the present, what we’re doing with our lives and careers today.
Even in Dan’s office—with Dan facing the mighty task of finding a new
Barnabas—Dark Shadows is not the sole subject of our conversation. In fact, I’d
hoped to lure him out to lunch so I could talk to him about evil and suggest to
him that such a discussion would be good subject matter for the book. It had
occurred to me that the man who brought us not only Dark Shadows, but such
fine television films as Turn of the Screw, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde, When Every Day Was the Fourth of July, and the two magnificent
miniseries, Winds of War and War and Remembrance, might have some
interesting things to say about the existence of evil. That chat will have to wait
for another day.

I certainly didn’t plan to do another book about the series. I knew when I
published My Scrapbook Memories of Dark Shadows that I had written all I
would ever have to say about the show. It was finished, I was glad and I put it
behind me. But then I came across the text Melody, Marcy and Kathy—longtime
fans of Dark Shadows—had written and I was very impressed with it. I had often
heard Lara and Jonathan speak eloquently at the Dark Shadows Festivals about
their experiences on the show and I encouraged them to write pieces. I
discovered photographs that hadn’t been available when I did the first book.
Then, Dan hired the father/son team, Sam and Matthew Hall, to work on the new
Dark Shadows series. When Sam, who had written many of the original
episodes, and Matthew, a youngster who had visited his parents at the studio,
arrived in town to write the pilot, I jumped at the chance to bring the story full-
circle for our 25th anniversary. Jim Pierson, who has probably done more than
anyone else to keep the Dark Shadows flame burning, offered to help me pull it
all together.

The Dark Shadows Companion goes to press as Dan begins directing the new
series. The NBC nighttime show will have a life of its own and be popular—or
not—on its own terms while the original ABC daytime series continues in
reruns. However, there’s certainly a receptive audience for the new show. In the
world of Dark Shadows we’re used to reincarnation—and embrace it. I wish
them well. And I hope more than anything that the new company of actors has as
much fun together as we’re still having.