The League of Extraordinary Writers: Dark Shadows

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Check out this blog: The League of Extraordinary Writers: Dark Shadows

Not completely accurate, but a fun read...

[tragic bat]

Hmm, I wasn't aware that Dark Shadows ever ripped on Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie?  Since the Collins are a rich new english family, it would be hard to incorporate that story.  

[Midnite]

When I read

Tennessee Williams’ THE MENAGERIE,

I thought wow, TW wrote for Star Trek??!  

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Hmm, I wasn't aware that Dark Shadows ever ripped on Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie?  Since the Collins are a rich new english family, it would be hard to incorporate that story.

I never really thought about it before, but DS does incorporate some of The Glass Menagerie's themes into the first year of the show. The setting needn't be the same to utilize the themes. 

I thought wow, TW wrote for Star Trek??!  

 

[Philippe Cordier]

I never really thought about it before, but DS does incorporate some of The Glass Menagerie's themes into the first year of the show. The setting needn't be the same to utilize the themes.  

That's a new one on me, too ... I love all of Tennessee Williams's work, including The Glass Menagerie, but this is going to take some thought ... I don't really see any immediate correspondences between DS characters and Tom, who is aching to be free of his family; Amanda, the faded belle mother harking back to a more glorious past (not obviously Liz), the inhibited and shy Laura (certainly not Carolyn), nor the gentleman caller ...  (curious that the blog writer didn't get the name of the play right, so I wonder where she got this information ... )

I also somehow missed seeing where Williams wrote for Star Trek ...

[Midnite]

I was joking about Star Trek, Philippe.  Same as you, I picked up on the blogger getting the name of the play wrong, and "The Menagerie" happens to be a popular ST episode.  I'm such a geek. 

[tragic bat]

That's a new one on me, too ... I love all of Tennessee Williams's work, including The Glass Menagerie, but this is going to take some thought ... I don't really see any immediate correspondences between DS characters and Tom, who is aching to be free of his family; Amanda, the faded belle mother harking back to a more glorious past (not obviously Liz), the inhibited and shy Laura (certainly not Carolyn), nor the gentleman caller ...

Yeah, there isn't a clear adaptation; also because the characters in the play were living in poverty, and that is what drove a great deal of the story.  Perhaps they meant Melanie in 1840 PT, who [spoiler]is a mentally ill recluse and has a gentleman caller, is really the lovechild of aged, impoverished widow Josette, who has a sailor son Bramwell that hates a lot of his family?[/spoiler] But still, unless Melanie had a glass menagerie, it isn't as obvious as DS renditions of Turn Of The Screw or Rebecca.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

One thing that came to my mind when I wrote that there were some thematic similarities between The Glass Menagerie and the first year of DS was how both Amanda and Liz are trying to marry off their daughters for them to supposedly have a better life than living with their mothers. And there's also the whole failure of fathers aspect.

As for where the blog writer got the info that DS took those theme from the play, rather than having read or heard it anywhere, I figured it was simply her own opinion based on the similarities that she saw. Fans here on the forum are often posting similar notions of similarities between DS and other stories without any proof that themes from those stories were actually "borrowed" by the DS writers.