DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '08 II => Topic started by: Lydia on August 31, 2008, 10:52:30 AM
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I've seen the box that contained the hand of Count Petofi in two different places before it was used for the hand: on a table in the upstairs hall in the present time, and on a shelf in a bedroom in the Old House in 1795. Has anybody seen in any other place?
Also, do we ever get a good look at the curved lid of the box? I'd like to know if there's anything interesting painted on it.
What might the box have contained when it was not being used for the hand? Did Mrs. Johnson keep a spare can of furniture polish in it?
Outside the Dark Shadows universe, where did the box come from? Did Sy Tomashoff have it made specifically for the upstairs hall set? Or was it purchased? Has anybody ever come across a box like it?
Has anybody ever made copies of the box to sell? I don't do collectables, but containers are useful, so I could be tempted to buy a copy of The Box.
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Put me down for a Petofi Box. I've always wondered about the markings and whether they said something, too. Then there is The Box That I Keep Mistaking For the Petofi Box, with a squarer or boxier lid. I think the Petofi Box was also in Eve's room.
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I am suprised the box didn't ask for a raise considering she was used so much. Of course it's not like Dan would have given her one.
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The box should've gotten together with the afghan and demanded collective bargaining.
Gerard
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How and where do you look for the gender of the Petofi Box?
Does anyone remember when the Box was last seen in 1897 and/or what was supposed to have happened to it? It may be that it was lost in Collinsport in 1897 and found later, and ended up in Collinwood in the 1960s.
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When I first seen the box, I thought it was an antique box made of hand-craved wood and they used it on the set.
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Dear Magnus
I thought it was common for people to refere to inanimate objects in the female tense/ For ex. The Titanic was sinking quickly as she went down in 2 1/2 hours. "How your new car doing?" Man 1 "Aww man she is doing fine" Man 2 Maybe it's a southern thing! I don't know.
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Does anyone remember when the Box was last seen in 1897 and/or what was supposed to have happened to it?
It's been a while since I've seen these episodes, but that last time I can clearly remember seeing the box is when...
[spoiler]...Tim Shaw gives it, wrapped like a present, to Nora to hide for him. She gets curious and opens the package, but can't get the box open. Jamison, who's possessed by Petofi at this point, snatches it from her and takes the hand to Petofi's body to reattach it so he can be restored or something to that effect.[/spoiler]
I don't remember what happens to it after that. Since there's still a good bit of story left, it's likely that it shows up again and I just can't remember it.
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I like Magnus's idea that the box was lost in 1897 and ended up at Collinwood in the 1960s without anybody knowing its history, but it doesn't account for what the box was doing in the Old House in 1795. Searching through my Watching Project posts, I found that it was episode 396 in which I noticed the box there:
And now Angelique has lost control of the entity, with nothing to say why. I keep wondering if it has something to do with the Hand of Count Petofi, the box for which was on a shelf in the bedroom today, I noticed.
The story on Count Petofi, if I remember correctly, was that the gypsies cut the hand off him 100 years before the 1897 action, which would make it 1797, i.e. after the box was seen at the Old House. But my impression was that Petofi had never been to Collinsport before 1897, and that the hand was cut off in the Forest of Ozhden (or however it was spelled). And Magda went on about how special the box was. Sometimes I would just about kill for a chance to have been a fly on the wall at the Dark Shadows studio and to hear what the actors said at the time about the lines they were given.
Taeylor, my understanding is that the inanimate objects that get referred to as she are moving vehicles that can be driven or piloted around cars, boats, planes. That makes it not a Southern thing but a Sexist thing. I remember when I bought my first car and named it Willie, after Willie Loomis. The guy from whom I bought it expressed surprise that I had not given it a feminine name. I told him no, the car was masculine, so I could dominate it.
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Well far be it from me to be SEXIST. I will never say that again as I hate any form of that nonesene!
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Don't worry, Taeylor, I wasn't accusing you!
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I am not worried my GODDESS I just didn't realize it had to do with sexism.
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i've been watching the 'beginning' dvd sets - i'm about halfway through the third set. think i just saw the count petofi box in the hallway of collinwood just outside vicki's room, but i can't remember which episode. did it show up that early?
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i've been watching the 'beginning' dvd sets - i'm about halfway through the third set. think i just saw the count petofi box in the hallway of collinwood just outside vicki's room, but i can't remember which episode. did it show up that early?
I think so! I believe I spotted it a time or two in some of the black and white episodes. I know the box was there long before Count Petofi and his hand.
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The box should've gotten together with the afghan and demanded collective bargaining.
LOL....great comment, but we all know how Dan felt about unions....
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Announcement during the opening titles: "Today the role of the box containing the Hand of Count Petofi will be played by a carefully washed out Campbell's Tomato Soup can."
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LOL Lydia!
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David made a copy of the box with lincoln logs and his erector set. [ghost_cheesy]
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I watched episode 635 for the Watching Project this morning, and noticed that in that episode we get a rather long look at the box when it's in the upstairs hall in 1968.
The shape of it reminds me of the fancier lunch boxes that some of the kids had when I was in elementary school.
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I think I just saw it in 1897 before Petofi, on the mantlepiece in the carriage house, before Laura moves in.
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Magnus, I'll be keeping an eye out for that.
In episode 650, there's a reasonably good look at the box in the upstairs hall for a few seconds. It looks as though the design on the lid is a fairly simple geometric one.
Why is that that they didn't get a different box for the Hand? Surely it wouldn't have been that expensive. What with Magda's rigmarole about how special the box was, you'd think they could get something new for it, or else deleted the rigmarole.
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Then there is The Box That I Keep Mistaking For the Petofi Box, with a squarer or boxier lid.
I saw a box today in episode 661 that might be the box you're talking about, Magnus. It's in the Collinwood study on the mantlepiece, and the lid looks sort of like a roof. I wondered why that box wasn't used to hold the Hand, and thought that perhaps it wasn't long enough - which prompted thoughts of the crew trying out various available boxes for size before choosing the box that had been in the upstairs hall. Did the chosen box feel like Cinderella?
Here's a look at the chosen box, from 1968, giving an unusually good view of the lid:
(http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=15590.0;attach=12723)
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I think I just saw it in 1897 before Petofi, on the mantlepiece in the carriage house, before Laura moves in.
It will be interesting if the box spends some time in the carriage house in 1897, since I saw noticed it in episode 703 on the mantelpiece of the drawing room at Collinwood. Midnite noted it as well:Are we all pretending that we don't notice Petofi's box on the drawing room fireplace?
What I want to know is: does this prove that when the 1897 storyline is started, nobody had any idea that the Hand would figure in it? I understand that 1897 was stretched because it turned out to be so popular; was the Hand part of the stretching?
I also am waiting with bated breath to see what is put on the mantel in the drawing room when the box is taken to house the Hand.
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...my understanding is that the inanimate objects that get referred to as she are moving vehicles that can be driven or piloted around cars, boats, planes. That makes it not a Southern thing but a Sexist thing.
Men give feminine names to things they love and care for - computers, cars, guitars, whatever the case may be. "She," "her," et cetera, are terms of endearment.
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I believe that Violet Welles threw in the first mention of Count Petofi as one of her evocative backstory references, to tell the story of the Hand, and then it was decided to develop that. I don't know if I speculated some of that, though. I think the Hand itself was probably improvised. Someone who knows for sure had better shut me up and set things straight.
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The box is in Liz's bedroom during the Laura storyline - episode 156, I think, but I'm not sure.
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As Midnite noted, we see the box in episode 723:
And Petofi's box is now in the hallway in 1897
It's in its usual 1968 location. So far in 1897 we've seen the box on the mantlepiece in the drawing room and in the upstairs hall, before Magda brings it to the Old House with the Hand in it.
I wish I could have seen the prop storeroom for Dark Shadows. Imagine having to decorate a new set, and heading over to the prop room to check out what's available. "I'll take Fireplace #2...Box #1...Chinese jar #5...Portrait #24...Lamp #7...the Beige Telephone...Bed #6...Love Potion #9..."
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I spotted the box in Naomi and Joshua's room today watching 1795!
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If someone photoshops a picture of the Petofi Box and the Afghan floating in space during the early stages of the formation of the Solar System, when the gas cloud was starting to condense into planets, I will somehow build a womb out of spare parts at home and insert it into myself and have that person's baby.
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[stfl] [9050]
Magnus is the possessor of a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained. (don't credit me, I stole it from a button! [ghost_grin])
Jeannie
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The box shows up in episode 821, when King Johnny comes to Collinwood for the hand. As he opens the box or else as Magda opens it I paused the DVD to look at the lid. There's definitely writing there. I recognized a letter from the Sinhalese alphabet (dha, which looks sort of like a rounded w with an extra long and curvy upswing at the end) but not any other Sinhalese letters, so it may be from a related alphabet that I'm not familiar with. On the other hand, it's been nearly thirty years since I studied Sinhalese, so I may just not have recognized other Sinhalese letters but I'm betting it's a more mainstream Indian language.
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You studied Sinhalese?!
Anyway, this isn't the clearest. Sorry about that.
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I would definitely buy a replica of the Count Petofi box, too. Wish we knew more about it (the actual prop, that is).
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Thanks for the capture, Midnite! I've e-mailed it to a Sri Lankan friend in the hope that even if it isn't Sinhalese, she might recognize a related alphabet. Her family has been friends with mine for 50 years, which (along with my love of learning foreign languages) is why I studied Sinhalese.
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I like where this story is going, Lydia! I sense an adventure coming!
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My Sri Lankan friend e-mailed back that the picture was too blurry for her to make anything out. Does anybody have a sharper picture of the lid of the box? I'd like see if we can give Magnus a happily-ever-after ending to the story.
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The box showed up at the gypsy tribunal that the I Ching staged for Count Petofi in episode 841. I'm waiting with bated breath to find out if this its last appearance as the hand container.
The square box that didn't contain the hand shows up in Quentin's room around this time. I think it was in episode 838, when I was hoping for a second sighting of the picture of the mustachioed man.
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Midnite and Magnus saw the box (the real box) in Millicent's room in 886. I didn't spot it, so I'll have to keep an eye out for it next time I watch that episode.
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In the end of episode 924, and its repeat in 925, we see the box in its old familiar place, outside the room that was once Vicky's and is now Maggie's. Is it chagrined or is it relieved to be out of the limelight and home again once more?
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Something terrible is inside just waiting to be unleashed i'm sure.
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We see the box on the table in the upstairs hall in episode 959, behind a certain ghostly figure. And I think I noticed it in the hall a few episodes before that, but I forgot to note it down.
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The box is shown in the drawing room, and it is filled with hat pins. It is later in the PT story. I won't says who hat pins they were.
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Maybe Lydia should start a new thread for the PT Petofi Box, since it's not really the same box, but a similar box which has made different choices early in its life...
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Magnus, as lori54 demonstrated back in September 2008, I am not the only cousin who can start a Prop Project topic. If you want a topic on the parallel time box, by all means make one. I advise you, however, to think long and hard before you do so. Are you sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the box seen in parallel time is indeed a different box from the one seen in our own time band? I haven't yet noticed the parallel time box myself, but I gather from what lori54 said that it looks just like the box we have seen in our own time. Therefore the box could be moving between parallel time and our own time, having possibly been endowed with special powers when it was the receptacle for Count Petofi's hand, and in fact it could be that it is the box that causes the connection between parallel time and our own.
I am reasonably sure that the drawing room sofa in parallel time is different from the drawing room sofa in our own time, and I'd even venture to guess that the PT sofa, with its sexy curves, is the sofa that married and had children, while the RT sofa, with its angles and strange knobs, is the sofa that went to med school and briefly experimented with using a football helmet as a wig, but again, how can anybody be sure? As Taeylor noted a while back in a Watching Project topic, makeup can make quite a difference in appearance. And if we can't be sure about the drawing room sofa (or sofas), we certainly can't be sure about the box.
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Episode 1043 is the first episode in which the box is used to hold the hatpins.
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Did the murderous hatpin get along with the others I wonder?
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My notes tell me that I saw this box again in parallel time, in episodes 1051 and 1052, in its usual our-time position in the upstairs hall. This is very strange. I assume that Angelique was responsible for the box being there, and...well...this is very strange.
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Back in our time, the box was again seen in the upstairs hall, outside David's room in episode 1075. Meanwhile, the other box was in the hall outside Hallie's room, in episodes 1072 and 1074.
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We see this box in its usual spot in the upstairs hall outside David's room again in episode 1086. I like the idea of using boxes to differentiate halls - one box out side David's room, the other box outside Hallie's. I'm happily imagining Collinwood as a rabbit warren of little halls, and guests using the various boxes as a precursor to GPS.
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I saw the box in the upstairs hall in episodes 1091, 1095, 1098, and 1104. Then we went to 1840, and I thought we would never see it again, until it turned up in the hall outside of Daphne's room in episode 1188.
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The box is in the drawing room in the 1680 flashback in episode 1231. I am ashamed to confess that I didn't notice it until I saw it in a capture int the fill-ins board.
(http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=29580.0;attach=47214)
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It looks as though the PT1680 appearance was the last one for the box.
There is no doubt that the box first appeared in episode 2. Its second appearance is in episode 4.