the vicki switch

[michael c]

the departure of alexandra/vicki seems to be the subject of endless lore in d.s. fandom.there seems to be more versions of it than josette's death-fall from widows hill.i just read another.on another topic a poster stated that after alex left betsy durkin was brought in to tie-up the loose ends of the character before she was written out permanantly.i was always under the impression that ms.durkin was brought in with the full intention of her going foreward with the character vicki but that she proved unpopular with viewers and the writers decided only then to write vicki out.what up?

[Joeytrom]

I think BD was intended to be permanent but she just didn't work out and they decided to write Vicky off the show.


Carolyn Groves was a better Victoria Winters though, if she had taken the role instead of BD, Vicky may have stayed on.

[murph]

I just watched these episodes again on DVD and I really don't know what the intentions of the Vickie character were after Alexandra left the show.  Her character had really been deminished from the early days of the show when she was the central character.  It made sense to me that the Vickie character would fade back into time to join her husband.  I just didn't see them making her even close to a key figure again.

I know most people here don't care for Betsy Durkin but it really seems to me that they wrote for her a lot differently than they did for Alexandra.  The very first episode Betsy was in she showed Vickie's feisty side by standing up to Nicholas Blair.  I hadn't seen the feisty side of Vickie for a very long time.  I think she did a decent job in the part because how could she win?  I think having Vickie be feisty again was jarring to the audience because she hadn't been like that for so long.  It was like a totally different character to the audience and a new actress trying to be Alexandra just didn't work.  The only character on the show that would have been more difficult to recast IMO is Barnabas .  I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be that actor!!

Does anyone know for sure what the future for the Vickie character was to be?  Does anyone know whatever became of Betsy Durkin and Carolyn Groves?  I put Betsy's name in Google and only received that she appeared in Dark Shadows.  I would think she would have had more acting jobs than one.  I certainly hope she wasn't shattered by her experience on the show.

Murph

[Miss_Winthrop]

Murph:
I looked up BD in IMDB. COM and also only find her in DS. I thougt she was a decent actor and I too was surprised that she hasn't been in anything else (at least TV or movies).  I didn't see CG in enough episodes to form an opinion one way or the other about her.  I too am one of the few on the board that liked Betsy.  She did display a more feisty character and  I thought she showed passion and determination which was called for in that part of the storyline. Alexandra seemed overwhelmed by Roger Davis at times and I thought that Betsy did a good job of matching his passion.

[michael c]

i agree that besides barnabas vicki would have been the most difficult role to re-cast.although grayson hall would have been nearly impossible to replace as well.alexandra was so identified with the character that perhaps that's the reason d.c. never thought she could play another.a similar thing happened with frid.when he tried to play another charcter than barnabas the audience was not respnosive.
but why do we think d.c. allowed vicki to become so marginalized by the end of her days on the show? he's cast victoria as his female lead in both the 1991 revival and the recent unsuccessful attempt so obviously he "believes" in the character.

[Maria_Merriweather]

By the time her role was downplayed the show was dominated by supernatural characters. Maybe TPTB thought this pulled in the ratings and convinced DC to de-emphasize the governess searching for her identity angle. AM/Vicky was never a ghost like Josette/Maggie or a vampire victim like Carolyn. I've wondered why Vicky wasn't meant to play Josette instead of KLAS--I think she resembled the portrait more. I read in one of KLAS's books that she volunteered to play Josette's ghost instead of an extra. Maybe that's why she got to play Josette and not AM. With the downplaying of Vicky's story the show lost some of it's appeal for me.

[IluvBarnabas]

It's a shame that Alexandra left when she did because it also struck me that when Betsy took over as Vicki did show a little more backbone. However, with being pregnant at the time I can see why she left when she did.

I would have loved to have seen Alexandra play out that scene [spoiler]where Vicki confronted Nicholas about his plans to wed Maggie.[/spoiler] There were too few Vicki/Nicholas confrontations and a missed opportunity to allow Alexandra to reinfuse Vicki with the spunkiness she had at the beginning of the show.

From all accounts I hear Betsy Durkin is very nice in real life, and I think she did what she could in the role, but Alexandra was just too well identified in the role it's not hard to understand why fans never took to her.

[Sandor]

Betsy Durkin had a tough road to hoe, and for me, some of that came from one cruel fact about the character of Victoria Winters on DS: the part belonged to Alexandra Moltke. There was something calming yet alluring about her presence on camera. True, she was often menaced by ghosts, vampires, witches, dream curses, crazed handymen, man-made monsters, narcissistic boyfriends and the like, but she never overplayed her outrageous dilemmas to the point of their obvious incredulity. Moltke's keen underplaying helped set the stage for more flamboyant, often campy, otherworldly characters to play against her, and while ultimately upstaging her, gained the audience's acceptance (i.e, "If Vicki's going into the ether, we might as well come along for the ride!"). Until mid-to-late 1968, Alex always carried herself like the melancholy monarch of the show that she was (Joan Bennett was the Queen Bee and Grayson Hall the Grande Dame). As her storyline and purpose in the show became peripheral, Alex seemed more detached and less compelled (as Vicki) to exert any wonderment about the goings-on at Collinwood. Yet she continued to retain a loyal fan base, because for long-term DSers who watched the show from the beginning, it was Victoria Winters who brought us into this story with her voice-over at the beginning of each episode (this changed in later years). She brought us to Collinwood. To the past. To a place (as kids) where we could escape at 4pm every weekday.
Betsy did her best, but I'm glad they wrapped up the Victoria storyline since Alex was not planning to return.

[MagnusTrask]

BD taking over seemed to coincide with a transformation of VW, I noticed in watching all this for the first time since first airing, recently.    It was right at this point that VW had a sort of breakthrough, and realized the supernatural was going on all around them, it was real, and she could never go back to "normal life".   That's a big life-changing moment, if you really try to imagine it.    It seems to make sense for her to be a different person.   I can't imagine AM's VW in a world where the supernatural is everyday.

[michael c]

i always thought that alexandra moltke's placidness perfectly suited her character's melancholy nature.

but being something of an alexandra enthusiast i did notice that during her final few months on the show she seemed practically sedated.i mean she took the trouble to learn her lines.she never screwed up.but her delivery was detatched and disinterested.

to me it seemed like something must have been going on in her personal life.she just wasn't 100% there.

[Willie]

Although I'm not a big fan of Betsy Durkin, I think she did an admirable job with what she had to work with.  If she'd been given more time to really grow into the role and for the audience to get used to her, I think she would have done just fine. 

[IluvBarnabas]

Although I'm not a big fan of Betsy Durkin, I think she did an admirable job with what she had to work with.  If she'd been given more time to really grow into the role and for the audience to get used to her, I think she would have done just fine. 

Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes the audiences just won't accept a recast no matter how much time passes.

I remember Donna Reed replacing Barbara Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie on Dallas for a year.....the viewers just never took to her, at all. Donna Reed was an excellent actress, an Oscar winner and legendary film and TV star, but for all that the Dallas audience never warmed up to her.

I don't mean this as any disrespect to Betsy, because she did do the best she could, but I too have to concur it was just as well they wrote Vicki's character off the show altogether. No fault of her own, Betsy had another problem other than stepping into the shoes of Alexandra when she was cast.....like James Hall, I don't feel Betsy really clicked real well with the actors, especially with Kathryn Leigh Scott. Kathryn and Alexandra had a great female buddy chemistry, something that was painfully missing in the scenes between Kathryn and Betsy.

Just my two cents (again).