DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '05 II => Topic started by: Amy Jennings Fan on August 25, 2005, 01:14:15 AM
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Does anybody know who played Jeremiah Collins and how he came to be left out of the credits.
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If you are talking about the Original Series, Jeremiah Collins was played by Anthony George.
Penthea
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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?
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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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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. ???
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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. :-
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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). ;)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Also, it's funny how we sometimes perceive things. Gerringer was actually 5 years younger than George
D'oh! I didn't realize that. I just assumed Gerringer was older than George.
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when barnabas throws the costume party he suggests that burke come dressed as jeremiah collins.
i belive it is here that the resemblance between burke and jeremiah is established.this is long before robert gerringer leaves the show.
when they first began to tell this "story" i doubt that anyone concerned knew that they would actually send the show back in time.it's remarkable if you think about it.that's why i think there are so many huge inconsistensies between what was established beforehand and how the actual telling of the 1795 story played out.
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Sorry but I don't remember where I read that Gerringer would have had the role of Jeremiah. I think they had a rather strong role in mind for Gerringer. I'm certain that the role was to be that of Jeremiah. In thinking back to the timeline of the show, wasn't the actor who assumed the Dr. Woodard role doing it for about 6 weeks or so? The writers may or may not have been thinking about many different scenarios at that time regarding character relationships.
I wonder if there was even a strong physical resemblance between Jeremiah and Burke. I think that it was more along the lines of a man who felt threatened by another man whose interest was in the woman that Barnabas wanted. Burke wasn't interested in Maggie, who looked like Josette, but was attracted to Vicki. Vicki had become Barnabas's Josette in a sense. Maybe Burke had become like a Jeremiah in Barnabas's mind and he was there to take Vicki away from him.
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I remember when Barnabas decided that Burke should dress the part of Jeremiah at the party he seemed to just be casting him in the role of his rival. I don't think he was supposed to resemble him at this point. The only person who was supposed to resemble anyone at first was Maggie, who looked like Josette. I think that the idea to have people resemble other people was decided when they showed the past. Otherwise they would have had Barnabas commenting to Willie that Liz looked like his Mother, etc.
Misa
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I think that the idea to have people resemble other people was decided when they showed the past. Otherwise they would have had Barnabas commenting to Willie that Liz looked like his Mother, etc.
Actually, during the costume party, Barnabas does comment that Liz looks just like Naomi. From the Robservations for Ep #280:
... Carolyn, Roger and Liz are admiring the work that Barnabas has done so far. He offers them claret cup, then nearly slips and says Liz looks just like his mother, then almost slips again and refers to Roger as his father. ...
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Thanks for those quotes, MB. I just watched those tapes about a month ago. Anybody who doesn't remember, go back and watch. (I heard you can get the DVDs through Netflicks now.)
Barnabas does comment repeatedly on Burke's physical resemblance to Jeremiah. He also makes a ghoulish comment along the lines of "Ah, if only Devlin could be as dead as Jeremiah is now, I would be a most contented man."
Frid was so good in the role of the nasty, devious, scheming Barnabas. He spoke so many of those lines with a cold, deliberate relish. Great stuff.
G.
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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
I'd have to agree w/this wholeheartedly. Although it doesn't lessen my love of DS, it annoys the hell out of me that they completely changed the background of Barnabas' pre-vampire days. Now, having said that, I like what they ended up doing, making Barn more sympathetic and more of a victim etc...rather than a boorish jackass who stole, or tried to steal at least, his "middle-aged" uncle's wife. So, even though the inconsistancy of them having him go from this jerk to someone we'd actually care about and cry with bugs me, I do think the change was the right one.
On a related note, more than one fan has suggested that when Vickie traveled back to 1795, that she *actually* went to a PARALLEL 1795 and subsequently returned to the future of that PT 1795. And as we all know, in 1968, when Barn is cured and Vickie goes back to be w/Peter and we learn of her hanging via David's photograph, I think Barnabas even says to Julia that he remembered Vickie being in the past after all, rather than it being Phyllis Wick. I tend to agree w/the theory that when Vickie left the present, she went to an alternate universe, not only to the past. That at least helps me cope w/the plot inconsistancies before that infamous seance. ;D
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It wouldn't have made sense if Gerringer had portrayed Jeremiah especially since Barnabas kept commenting on how much [spoiler]it was Burke and not Woodard who resembled Jeremiah so much.[/spoiler]
As for Anthony George, I liked him better as Jeremiah rather than Burke Devlin.