by David Selby
And surely somewhere in this evocative setting, lurking in the Dark Shadows of the wharf, Barnabas Collins was watching us, a sinister gleam in his eye.
The Blue Whale set
Program History
DARK SHADOWS DEBUTED JUNE 27, 1966, ON THE ABC-TV NETWORK as the first Gothic daytime drama. The program was the creation of producer Dan Curtis, who would later gain critical acclaim with the monumental television mini-series The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.
The original plot of Dark Shadows centered on a young woman named Victoria Winters who becomes the governess of a ten-year-old boy in Collinsport, Maine, a small and stormy fishing village. She was employed by the wealthy Collins family, who reside in a mysterious old mansion overlooking the ocean.
Veteran motion picture actress Joan Bennett was featured in the role of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, matriarch of the Collins family and mistress of the great house called Collinwood. After several months on the air, the show was failing to attract a large enough audience with its traditional Gothic suspense formula. In a dramatic effort to save the show from cancellation, Dan Curtis decided to introduce one of the most unusual characters in daytime television history.
In April of 1967, Shakespearean actor Jonathan Frid joined the cast as Barnabas Collins, a 175-year-old vampire. Frid’s portrayal of Barnabas was a surprise success when he added humanity to his characterization and made Barnabas a tragic figure.
After more supernatural elements were added to Dark Shadows, it became the most popular daytime series on ABC. Numerous ghosts, a werewolf, and a witch named Angélique appeared as the show alternated its stories between the present day Collins family and their ancestors in the past In 1970, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a theatrical film based on the series entitled House of Dark Shadows. Many of the television cast members reprised their roles, but they were surrounded by more explicit displays of horror that were not suitable for the daytime television program.
On April 2, 1971, while still a respectably popular attraction, Dark Shadows ended its five-year network run. At that time, production commenced on a second MGM film, Night of Dark Shadows, released later in the year.
Since ending production, Dark Shadows has retained a devoted following through reruns and home video releases. Regular cast reunions and an active fan network continue to celebrate Dark Shadows’ unique and timeless appeal. Thirty-five years after its debut, Dark Shadows’ reputation as a television classic remains firmly intact.
Dark Shadows Through the Years
1966 Dark Shadows debuts as an ABC-TV afternoon soap opera on June 27. The first of 32 Paperback Library novels is issued, starting a Dark Shadows merchandising blitz.
1967 Jonathan Frid joins the cast as reluctant vampire Barnabas Collins.
1968 David Selby makes his first appearance as the ghost of Quentin Collins.
1969 Dark Shadows achieves its highest ratings ever with the 1897 storyline. Original Music from Dark Shadows reaches #18 on the Billboard album chart, and the single Quentin’s Theme, by the Charles Randolph Grean Sounde, hits the Top 20.
1970 The MGM motion picture House of Dark Shadows is released. Quentin’s Theme is nominated for a Grammy Award.
1971 After 1,225 shows, Dark Shadows ends its run on April 2. The MGM motion picture Night of Dark Shadows is released.
1973 Jonathan Frid tours South America to promote Spanish language broadcasts of Dark Shadows.
1975 Dark Shadows reruns debut in U.S. syndication with 260 episodes, starting with Barnabas’ introduction. The World of Dark Shadows fanzine begins publishing.
1979 The first issue of ShadowGram, the Dark Shadows current events news-letter , is published.
1982 Dark Shadows reruns air for the first time on PBS stations.
1983 The first Dark Shadows Festival is held in Newark, New Jersey. An additional 260 episodes are released in syndication.
1985 New Jersey Network airs the first Dark Shadows Special. An additional 260 episodes are released in syndication.
1986 The book My Scrapbook Memories of Dark Shadows and Original Music from Dark Shadows Volume 2 are issued.
1987 WNYC-TV airs the special Casting Shadows. Original Music from Dark Shadows Volume 3 is released.
1988 Dark Shadows stage play presented by Dance Theatre Workshop in New York. Original Music from Dark Shadows Volume 4 is released.
1989 Dark Shadows debuts on home video.
1990 MGM’s primetime revival of Dark Shadows goes into production. The Dark Shadows Companion book is issued. Quentin’s Theme is given Broadcast Music Incorporated’s one-million radio performances award.
1991 Dark Shadows revival series airs for 12 episodes on NBC-TV The 25th Anniversary is celebrated at the Dark Shadows Festivals in Los Angeles and New York.
1992 Dark Shadows reruns begin on the Sci-Fi Channel national cable station. The revival series debuts on home video.
1994 The revival series reairs for the first time on the Sci-Fi Channel.
1995 The Dark Shadows Almanac, original edition, is issued.
1996 The 30th Anniversary is celebrated at the The Dark Shadows Festival in Los Angeles.
1998 HarperCollins issues first Dark Shadows novel in 26 years, Angélique’s Descent, written by Lara Parker.
1999 Dark Shadows Special Edition, the show’s first DVD is released. Original Music from Dark Shadows is reissued on CD in a deluxe edition with bonus cast radio interviews.
2000 Dan Curtis prepares a Dark Shadows stage musical. Restoration of Night of Dark Shadows is proposed.
Broadcast History
DARK SHADOWS DEBUTED JUNE 27, 1966 AT 4:00 P.M. EASTERN & Pacific Standard Time (3:00 p.m. Central Time.) It followed another soap opera, The Nurses. An afternoon teenage music series, & another soap opera, The Nurses. An afternoon teenage music series, Where The Action Is, followed Dark Shadows.
When The Nurses was cancelled, Dark Shadows moved to 3:30 p.m. Eastern/Pacific on April 2, 1967, and General Hospital was its new lead-in program. The Dating Game was now the program that aired immediately after Dark Shadows.
As Dark Shadows became a popular attraction with school kids, ABC received thousands of requests to move the show to a later time period. As a result, the show returned to its original time period of 4:00 p.m. Eastern/ Pacific on July 15, 1968. On this day, the serial One Life To Live debuted, airing in Dark Shadows’ old time slot. Dark Shadows remained at this time until it went off the air on April 2, 1971. It was replaced by a revival of the game show Password.
Dark Shadows Origine
IN 1965, UPSTART TELEVISION PRODUCER DAN CURTIS HAD A DREAM which led to the eventual birth of Dark Shadows. His nocturnal vision involved a beautiful young woman riding on a train, with her tination being a brooding old mansion.
Writer Art Wallace was commisioned to develop a story outline for Curtis’ proposed series, which was tentatively named Shadows on the Wall. Wallace drew heavily from one of his previous works—an original teleplay entitled The House, which had been seen as an episode of NBC-TV’s Goodyear TV Playhouse on September 8, 1957.
According to TV Guide, The House was set in a New England fishing village where middle-aged Caroline Barnes has lived the life of a recluse since her seafaring husband disappeared years ago. The only people she sees are her daughter Elizabeth and her piano pupils. In an attempt to change her life of seclusion, Caroline plans a dinner party.
For Dark Shadows, the New England fishing village from The House became Collinsport, Caroline Barnes became Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the missing husband became Paul Stoddard, and daughter Elizabeth became daughter Carolyn. The piano teacher aspect was dropped for Dark Shadows, although Elizabeth Collins Stoddard was depicted as playing the piano in early episodes.
The House, directed by Paul Stanley, was a one-hour color program broadcast live from New York. Videotape was not yet commonly used, so the program was recorded via the kinescope method on black-and-white film. Hope Emerson portrayed Caroline, and
Frances Sternhagen portrayed Elizabeth. Other cast members included Jay C. Flippen as Jeb, Peter Mark Richman as Larry, Ford Rainey as Walt, and Paula Trueman as Martha.
Lara’s Descent Into Gothic Romance
by Lara Parker
HOW IN THE WORLD DOES AN ACTRESS END UP WRITING A NOVEL? Actresses are those vain, frivolous creatures who bask in the limelight and would never think of holing up in a dark office for months struggling to produce a piece of fiction. Actresses spend all their time waiting for that big break taking acting classes, maybe dance classes, voice classes—but not English, not Composition, not World Lit.
I was sure the editor from HarperCollins, Caitlin Blasdell, who invited me to lunch at the Marriott Marquis in New York City’s Times Square was thinking along these lines. I was there for the 1997 Dark Shadows convention and she had come over from her Fifth Avenue office to meet me and to discuss the possibility of my writing the first of a series of novels based on the television show. She was young and soft-spoken, wore a dove colored business suit, and her shiny ash-blond hair was cut short. Jim Pierson, who had been working for months putting together this meeting, was with us. These book spin-offs were his idea, and he had succeeded in getting Caitlin and HarperCollins interested.
I appreciated the opportunity but I really didn’t believe I’d be able to do it. Granted, I had taken some screen writing courses at UCLA. In fact I had written three unsold screenplays. But a novel? Well, no, I had never written a novel. I had never written a short story. I was neither foolish enough nor presumptuous enough to assume that I would have the ability to generate hundreds of pages that in any way that would resemble the many fascinating, intriguing novels I had read in my life—the twists and turns of the plot, the complexities of character. I had great respect of the craft of writing and I knew how difficult it was to write even one cohesive paragraph. Needless to say I was resistant to the whole idea.
But as Caitlin and I talked over our Caesar salads, I realized she was much more optimistic than I was, and I wondered why. She said she had a lot of faith in me. I told her, hesitantly, that I might like to write the story of Angelique’s childhood, and she was very pleased with that idea. Then she cleared up the whole mystery of her confident demeanor. Dropping her voice to a conspiratorial tone, she confided gently, “Please don’t worry, Lara. Just write it the best you can. We have professional writers at Harpers who will take what you do, fix it up, and make it into a real book.”
They would do what? I bristled at the very idea. Ahhhh ... of course: “ghost writers ...” That’s how those “celebrity writers” become authors. A ghost writer ... how in keeping with Dark Shadows, I thought with a grim chuckle. But Caitlin’s proposition, meant to reassure me, to ease my panic, had the absolute opposite effect. Make it into a real book? She meant someone would re-write my writing, change what I had agonized over for months without my being able to stop them. (You realize I had yet to write a single word.) I was insulted, my pride was injured, and I could think of nothing but how much I resented her offer.
I remember mumbling something like, “But how could some hack writer at Harpers know as much about Angélique as I do?” Caitlin smiled, asked me to send her an outline, and said we would go from there.
My “outline” was a re-hash of a letter I had sent to the Dark Shadows writer, Sam Hall, when he was working on the new Dark Shadows series. Trying to remember how Angélique had become a witch, he called me to see whether I knew. I had no recollections from the show, but luckily, I had just returned from a trip to Nepal.
In Katmandu I had seen the “Living Goddess,” a lonely little girl with dark kohl around her eyes, dressed in colored silks, dripping with jewels. She sat in an upstairs window of a house on a public square, and stared blankly down at the crowd. My tour guide said she had been chosen at nine years of age in an ordeal which tested her composure. A group of little girls were placed in a room with rabid dogs who tore apart a slaughtered buffalo. The little girl who did not cry became the “Living Goddess”, and as an idol of worship, she remained in seclusion until she reached puberty. At times she was carried through the streets in a curtained chaise to the temple, but most of the time was kept alone. She grew up with no friends, no real childhood. I remember feeling deeply sorry for her.
In my letter to Sam Hall, I co-opted this amazing story. I had always wondered what series of events could transform an innocent child into someone as evil as Angélique. What complex experiences would shape a woman who loved so compulsively and hated with such intensity?
The Living Goddess in Katmandu also seemed the perfect place to begin my scenario for HarperCollins. My outline was accepted and Caitlin told me to start writing the book.
But how? Too terrified to actually begin writing, I started reading. Trying to discover the vocabulary and sentence structure which gave Gothic Literature its lush, emotional tone, I read Daphne du Maurier, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Henry James, the Bronte sisters, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, to name only a few. I read Interview with a Vampire and Gone With the Wind, digging beneath the stories to focus on structure and point of view. I was determined to steep myself in the romantic style.
The months slipped by and still I didn’t write a page. I spent many hours perusing history books on the Caribbean and taking notes. I studied plans of sugar plantations, read about the sufferings of the slaves. I found a five hundred page diary kept by a sugar planter in Martinique in 1801 which detailed his day-to-day difficulties and inconveniences, and I experienced them all with him. I was thrilled to discover, since any horror story demands a dark and gloomy mansion, that many great houses, even castles, were built in the islands by the plantation owners homesick for their European homelands, the stones shipped from the continent as ballast on the schooners. I found a book written by a Jesuit priest who had lived for a time in Martinique and I was able to procrastinate for another week trudging through his life story. And of course it was necessary that I become familiar with the history of the French and English conquest of the islands as well as the history of America in those early days of the new nation.
Whenever anyone asked how the novel was going, I said, “Oh, fine ... I’m ... uh ... doing a lot of research.”
Naturally, it was important that I learn about voodoo, the pagan religion of Haiti brought over from Africa by the slaves. I read of the ceremonies, possession by the spirits, and I found Erzulie, the Voodoo goddess of sensuality who seemed perfect as Angélique’s spiritual guardian.
Immersed in these rich discoveries, I began to feel intriguing ideas emerging, and I told myself that when I did begin to write I would have a wealth of material to draw from. Most time consuming of all was the need to watch hours and hours of the original series again and this time to imagine what all the characters were thinking, especially my own. Writing Angélique’s interior dialogue, I told myself, would be my chance to reveal her emotional identity, her torturous indecision and her increasing obsession with Barnabas.
I do remember being amazed at how well the shows were written, how skillfully the tension was sustained and how well the conflict grew out of the characters. Once again I was paralyzed with feelings of inadequacy. More and more I realized what a hard job I had ahead of me, especially if I kept putting it off.
Finally, one day after I had finished listening to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on my car stereo, and been inspired by the language, almost on a whim I pulled over into a parking lot and began to scribble a few lines on a piece of scrap paper: “Barnabas woke trembling, his heart pounding, his breath coming in gasps.”
A week or so later, with great trepidation, I sent fifty pages off to Caitlin at Harpers and sat back to wait for her reply. I would say I had butterflies in my stomach every time I thought of her reading my manuscript, but it was more like huge frogs leaping around in there. When I thought about what I had written I felt sick. Who was I kidding? This was all a huge mistake. I was humbled and humiliated and very embarrassed.
&nbs
p; But to my amazement, she responded right away. She said she had enjoyed the story very much so far, that she thought everything was going to be fine, and that, perhaps, there was just a little too much “moonlight.” Stung by this criticism, I nevertheless breathed a huge sigh of relief that she had not rejected everything out of hand. I took out a few adjectives describing the moon, and kept writing. I knew I had some problems. I had always believed that Angélique was a victim of seduction and abandonment. One of the first lessons in acting is to find a way to believe you are right to do what you do, even if you are playing the villain. Therefore, as I was doing the part on the television show, I always searched for deeper motivations whenever Angélique became insanely jealous, or unleashed her ruthless vengeance on others. People are not born evil, I reasoned, experiences turn them evil. Hearts are not hard at first; betrayal and disillusionment turn hearts to stone.
Also, I realized that if Angélique were to be the protagonist of the novel, she would have to be sympathetic on some level. The reader does not remain involved if he can’t identify with the main character. I wanted Angélique to be a tragic heroine, doomed by fate, twisted by envy, and tortured by unrequited love. But on the show she had always seemed to be pure evil, “the witch you loved to hate.” How could I make her more complex—even vulnerable?
