I'm afraid I almost literally laughed out loud when I read today's script excerpt.  First I imagined Roger delivering the line while literally fondling his own hair.  Then I wondered about the appropriateness of a grown man "rumpling" a fourteen year old's hair.

An interesting moment... well, that's one way to describe it... in our journey through this beleaguered screenplay.

Thanks, MB!

G.

I'm intrigued by the thought of a world where Jeff Clark is an up and coming young artist. And vampire Barnabas Collins, who at this point has barely been out of his coffin six weeks if that, is somehow in a position to "recommend" an unknown artist to a prestigious gallery.  I suppose he could have done it if he had made a trip to the gallery, dropped a huge amount of money on a few pictures, and then told the amazed owner that he knew of a young painter who was going to be "hot."  I'm still having trouble envisioning this.

I'm quite sure however that you are bang on the mark in your scenario regarding the great director's thought process in chopping this scene.  I've wondered how long the cut he originally delivered to MGM was.  My impression is that material such as the current scene wasn't even in the original delivered edit, but doubtful we will ever know for sure...

G.

I don't remember having any real sense of what Barn had done FOR Jeff in my viewings of hoDS over the years.  What I do remember is that I figured that part of the story out thanks to the Dan Ross book.

Evidently there was another earlier scene involving Jeff and Barnabas which hasn't survived in ANY existing recension of the screenplay.  Jeff mentions that the two had already met when they're introduced to one another at the Ball.

Researchers have attributed Roger Davis's abrupt departure from the daytime series to all the material he had in the movie that was cut. Reportedly, Davis tossed his head, cocked his chin, snapped at Dan:  "Well, if that's the way you feel about me... GOODBYE."  And, as the saying goes today, flounced dramatically from the room, to a scattering of applause, while a certain ingenue blew kisses. 

G.

I remember it having been an even smaller ad than that, but yes, those were the images on it.  I think it was edited so you just saw Nancy's face, not the stake (possibly due to how graphic the image is--it was somewhere in the Deep South, for sure, and in 1970 there were more stringent rules about what could be shown in various places, as you recall...).

If you own the hoDS pressbook--which I have never seen--I would think the ad would have been in there. 

Best, G.

Interesting to reflect that at this point in the story, Julia is completely misinterpreting Barnabas's behavior with her, while Barnabas himself is not really comprehending the nature of Maggie's "interest" in his company.

And it all ends in tragedy...

I definitely don't feel that AS FILMED, Maggie is in Barn's thrall at this point.  It's just a replay of the material from the original 1967 storyline with Vicki.  She is fascinated and charmed.  And she has not a clue that he's romantically hot for her.  Between that and her choice of Jeff Clark as a boyfriend, you really have to wonder about this version of Maggie...

G.

Sorry about the goof--the quoted post was written by Mad Margaret.  Somehow, her name got cut off when I copy & pasted.

G.

This is a very cool 30 minute radio show about the cult phenomenon around CHILDREN OF THE STONES, a 1977 serial shot at a village inside the stone circle of Avebury in England.  There are a number of themes DS fans would find of interest, including how occult themed TV shows you watched as a child can change your life (for the better, IMO).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n1rbx

I think the recording will only be available for a month or so.  I found it really fascinating.  The entire serial was on Youtube last time I checked.

G.

Last Sunday night, after spending hours in the kitchen cooking up a lot of vegetables, I sat down and re-watched one of my favorite DS spinoffs, "A Darkness at Blaisedon."  This was Dan Curtis's attempt to launch a regular weekly evening series that would be "a version of DS at night." The proposed series was called DEAD AT NIGHT. I think that Roger Davis hints that this was in the works in the Ron Barry radio interview from 1968 (August or September of that year, I believe?). 

It's been a few years since my previous viewing of "Blaisedon."  The main thing that stuck out for me this time was how it was almost like a montage of several "fan favorite moments" from the daytime show.  We have a spooky old mansion with a fab spiral staircase (I was surprised to see that Sy Tomashoff did not get the credit for the sets), a half-mad caretaker played by Thayer David, Marj Dusay foreshadowing Kate Jackson's performance as the ingenue heroine, a psychic investigator (Kerwin Mathews) and his assistant (Cal Bellini in a role very reminiscent of Michael Stroka), a sobbing ghost in a white dress, a swag portrait of Louis Edmonds, a seance, an exhumation, lots of dry ice and Bob Cobert's lovely cues that make us all feel so much at home.

I was fascinated to see that the Roman bust that nearly killed Julia in 1995 showed up here, and I presume that this was its first appearance onscreen.  MB happened to notice recently that the bust also showed up in hoDS--I am not sure that that post is still available.

The script was by Sam Hall.  Although the series wasn't picked up (and I have no idea what studio politics were at work in that decision), I realized at the end of this viewing that the script did have an interesting kind of afterlife.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'd call this I kind of preliminary draft of some of the ideas that eventually coalesced in the feature script for NIGHT OF DS.
 
G.