Hey gang,

I was watching this excellent film the other day and spotted several Dark Shadows alumni in the flick.  Appearing along with Gene Hackman and the late Melvyn Douglas were Lovelady Powell (Portia Fitzsimmons) as Mr. Hackman's paramour, and Daniel Keyes (The Eagle Hill Cemetery caretaker) as a medical doctor.

Mr. Keyes portrayed a physician, who was assisting Mr. Hackman in finding a suitable nursing home for his elderly, and recently widowed father, Melvyn Douglas.  It was strange seeing Mr. Keyes portraying a character who was so lucid and in command (so unlike the wonderfully spacey Eagle Hill Cemetery caretaker character).

You know, the film's title, "I Never Sang For My Father," could almost also apply to Barnabas' somewhat strained relationship with his own stern and domineering father, Joshua, imo.

Bob

A number of years ago, I saw the great Dame Diana Rigg on Broadway in the play, "The Misanthrope" with her fellow British actor, Alec McCowen.


In the play, Dame Diana wore a red curly wig (so unlike her long, beautiful straight hair as Mrs. Peel on the great television show, "The Avengers").   Anyway, during a scene in a drawing room looking very much like the one in the great house of Collinwood, Mr. McCowen, while standing behind a seated Dame Diana, put his hands on her shoulders and accidentally pulled-up on her red Harpo Marx-like wig, forcing her to jump up from her chair to prevent the wig from coming off of her head, and resulting, with both Dame Diana and the audience erupting into uproarious laughter!   

The point I 'm getting at is that the extemporaneous bloopers are part of "Dark Shadows'" great charm.  At one of the Dark Shadows Festivals in California, the late, great Louis Edmonds once stood and received a standing ovation from the assembled Dark Shadows fans after his famous blooper was shown, in which he said to the late Joel "Joe Haskell" Crothers in the Collins Family Mausoleum that, "Many of my incestors are buried here."

Heck, I can vividly remember that great blooper, way back in 1969, when Charity Trask (a/k/a the reincarnation of Pansy Faye) walks into Charles Delaware Tate's art studio (which, incidentally, looked suspiciously very much like the Evans Cottage) and the window shade falls down after Charity/Pansy closes the front door with a bit too much authority!  (To their great credit, both Nancy Barrett and Roger Davis just kept right on acting as if nothing at all had just occurred.)


By the way, I know that MPI put a Dark Shadows Bloopers videotape a number of years ago.  Has MPI also put out a Dark Shadows Blooper dvd?

And, as the patrician Roger Collins once said to George Patterson (regarding Liz Stoddard's former fiancee, Jason McGuire): "Sheriff, I inshist that you arrest this man!" 

As Ezra Braithwaite was saying just the other day:

"Ah, to be 32-years-old again!"

And, as Charles Delaware Tate often said to Grandma-ma Edith Collins:

"Edith, age is most definitely, a state of mind."

Hey gang,

I happened to be watching the 1795 storyline flashback the other day on the above mentioned dvd, and I noticed during the famous DS scene, in which actress Anita Bolster, as Bathia Mapes, forgets her line of: "Then go to the house of the curse!," that MPI had apparently edited out actress Ms. Bolster's unfortunate faux pas.

On both the numerous, earlier PBS and the SCI-FI Channel broadcasts of "Dark Shadows," you can clearly hear the director (or some other member of the production crew) shouting that line to Ms. Bolster as both Louis Edmonds and Jonathan Frid, almost desperately, wait for her to tell Joshua Collins where to take the poor, cursed Barnabas to.  (Thankfully, Ms. Bolster's blooper has been preserved, no doubt, on thousands of DS videotapes across America and the world for posterity's sake!) 

It's kind of sad that future generations of DS fans (if they only watch the MPI dvds) will never get to hear, or possibly even be aware of, one of the show's classic bloopers on episode 451, which aired on March 18, 1968.  (I personally think that the Bathia Mapes blooper is "Dark Shadows'" greatest blooper, bar none.)

Ironically, during those 1795 episodes, MPI was not able to edit out actor Joel Crothers' two contretemps, when, as the dashing, but dastardly Lt. Nathan Forbes, Mr. Crothers had difficulty in placing his coat and hat on the Collinwood foyer table (without them falling off of the table) and also when he later stormed out of Collinwood in a rage, slamming the door behind him (only to have the door open up behind him, forcing him to turn and close the door extremely slowly!)  

Bob

Quentin I and Samantha Collins - The War of the Roses and Kramer vs. Kramer

Istvan, the mute gypsy - Johnny Belinda, The Spiral Staircase and Children of a Lesser God

Abigail Collins - Night of the Iguana

Jason McGuire and Willie Loomis - The Grifters

In the days before the advent of vcrs and dvd recorders, it was great to see "Dark Shadows" on a twice daily basis.

I understand that some fans actually tape recorded episodes of "Dark Shadows" in order to help maintain a sort of audio diary of the show.  (Some fans even took Polaroid shots of the various DS actors for posterity's sake!).

When ABC aired the final episode of "The Fugitive," back during 1967 (I think?), I had to attend my aunt's wedding reception that night, so I had a friend tape record that final, dramatic episode to see how it all turned out for Dr. Kimble, Inspector Gerard and the notorious "one-armed-man." 

 

Hey, gang,

I think that KLS' recent novel, "Dark Passages," is outstanding.  Ms. Scott deftly combines her own experiences as an actress and Playboy Club bunny in New York City in the book, along with a very compelling supernatural storyline.

It was fun to "contrast" the fictional members of the cast of "Dark Passages" with the members of the cast of "Dark Shadows."   Two "Dark Passages" characters, leading man Steve (Burke Devlin?) and Mr. Harrison (Sam Evans?), were very "outgoing" and even ribald individuals on and off camera! 

Ms. Scott also incorporates the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy into her novel.  (I remember one of my boyhood friend's fathers, a local policeman, clearing out his family home's basement in order to set up a makeshift bomb shelter in the event that Nikita Kruschev did fire missiles at New York City back then.  I thought this was a bit silly, since we only lived about two miles from Times Square!)   

Ian Fletcher/Sebastian Stanhope (Barnabas Collins?) was another terrific character with a European background in the novel.  Mr. Fletcher and Margie Blatch (KLS' "real" name in the novel) also have a budding romance to go along with the supernatural intrigue.

I hope that Ms. Scott intends to write a sequel to "Dark Passages."  Maybe Johnny Depp will even want to portray Ian Fletcher/Sebastian Stanhope in a screen version of ""Dark Passages" in a couple of years!?!

Bob