Jeremiah Collins

[Amy Jennings Fan]

Does anybody know who played Jeremiah Collins and how he came to be left out of the credits.

[Penthea]

If you are talking about the Original Series, Jeremiah Collins was played by Anthony George.



Penthea

[stefan]

When was he left out of the credits? I thought Anthony George/Jeremiah was fairly important in the 1795 series. Are you talking about the MPI tapes or DVDs?

[Penthea]

I might be wrong but the only time that the character might not have been included in the credits was when he was a ghost and at that time the character was being played by Timothy Gordon


Penthea

[Miss_Winthrop]

Robert Gerringer played Dr. Woodard before the strike and afterwards that character was played by another actor.  I believe I read somewhere that Robert Gerringer was originally slated to play Jeremiah Collins in the 1795 storyline. I don't know if it's true or not but I really can picture him playing Jeremiah Collins. He would have been great. Having said that,  Anthony George did a excellent job in the role.  If Gerringer were to have played Jeremiah I wonder what role Anthony George would have played. 

[Joeytrom]

This is the first I have heard of Robert Gerringer playing Jeremiah Collins in 1795.  I guess they would have used the original story of Josette arriving to marry middle aged Jeremiah as Barnabas told Julia on Widows Hill.

As for Anthony George, perhaps he would have played Peter Bradford?

[PennyDreadful]

 This is also the first time I've heard about Robert Gerringer being considered for the role of Jeremiah.  It certainly would have placed the character closer in age to Joshua and Abigail.

[michael c]

this is the first time that i've heard that robert gerringer was up for the part of jeremiah collins as well.

i thought the whole point was that jeremiah resembled burke devlin.hence the rivalry that barnabas and burke had in the present.

[Cassandra Blair]

Does Miss Winthrop know when it was that Robert Gerringer was being considered for the Jeremiah role?  Maybe it was before it was established that Burke bore a resemblance to Barnabas's uncle.  :-

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I tend to doubt that Gerringer would have played Jeremiah. I've never seen so much as a hint of that in any sort of DS publication or article. And, as mscbryk correctly points out, they were paving the way for Anthony George to play Jeremiah (as they did with Nancy Barrett to play Millicent, Joan Bennett to play Naomi, and Louis Edmonds to play Joshua) long before Gerringer was replaced. To me the story seems more like one of those rumors that somehow gets started and then gets spread - like the notion that Joel Crothers revealed in a Soap Opera Digest interview that he was supposed to have played Quentin, when in fact all Crothers actually said was that he would have liked to have played a character like Quentin because Quentin was far more complex than Joe had been.

Also, it's funny how we sometimes perceive things. Gerringer was actually 5 years younger than George (Gerringer was born in 1926, while George was born in 1921), so, even in the unlikely event that Gerringer might have played Jeremiah, it wouldn't have necessitated any sort of change at all in the way we saw the Jeremiah/Barnabas relationship play out in 1795/96. In fact, Gerringer would have been closer to Frid's age (Frid was born in 1924). 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Does Miss Winthrop know when it was that Robert Gerringer was being considered for the Jeremiah role?  Maybe it was before it was established that Burke bore a resemblance to Barnabas's uncle.

I haven't read them in a while, but I'm pretty sure that Frid's letters to his mom reveal that the decision to do a 1795 backstory for Barnabas and the episodes that began equating Burke with Jeremiah took place around the same time. It does *seem* unlikely they would have considered Gerringer for Jeremiah when they were already playing up the Burke/Jeremiah connection.

[Gothick]

MB, you are correct about the chronology.  There is a letter from late Summer of '67 to Mrs. Frid where JF mentions DC taking him aside and revealing the plan to go back in time and reveal how Barnabas came to be a vampire.

I'd really like to know when the story conference that produced the full blown outline for 1795 happened, given how a very different chronology and outline of events was discussed in episodes that were taped only a month or LESS before the start of the 1795 story.

I have also never seen any inkling of Robert Gerringer playing Jeremiah in any publication about the history of Dark Shadows.  Jeremiah's putative resemblance to Burke Devlin was mentioned soon after Anthony George took over the role, IIRC.  There were several episodes in which Barnabas made great play of the fact.

G.

[Miss_Winthrop]

I definitely remember reading somewhere that Gerringer was to have had a role in 1795. I will defintely give it some thought as to where I read it.  I' feel certain that it's true. I remember thinking at the time that he would definitely be the type of man that Josette would not be attracted to and that she would find him to close to her own father's age. Although Anthony George and Gerringer were of similar ages, Anthony George as Jeremiah would be a man that would be hard not to be attracted to IMO.  I think that the role was rewritten when Gerringer left to show the Devlin/Jeremiah connection.  

[stefan]

I think that the role was rewritten when Gerringer left to show the Devlin/Jeremiah connection.

So, a physical resemblance of Burke and Jeremiah was noted by Barnabas early on? I remember that Barnabas was hostile towards Burke. Was there already a Burke/Josette/Barnie/Victoria connection? I guess if I were going to explore this further, I'd say that Barnabas, full knowing Angelique was the cause of Josette falling in love with Jeremiah, and furthermore considering the great sadness Barnabas felt in killing Jeremiah, you'd think then Barmabas would have had sympathy towards Burke instead of hostility. Oh well.

[Gothick]

Hi Stefan, yes, they make Burke's resemblance to Jeremiah part of the pattern of Barnabas' jealousy of the Burke/Victoria relationship in the later part of the 1967 storyline.

When Burke and Vicki announce their engagement, Barnabas angrily exclaims "Jeremiah!"  I think Burke overhears him and the oddity of the exclamation fuels his investigation of Barnabas' background.

This isn't really relevant to the topic, but I personally find Robert Gerringer (vintage '67, obviously) much cuddlier than Anthony George.  Each to his own, I guess.

G.