Belated but warm birthday wishes to a fabulous writer, wonderful researcher, sterling librarian, and all around great gal!

Au reservoir,

G.

Thayer David is really good in Savages, which also stars Chris Pennock.  The movie itself is very odd but I enjoyed seeing it.

Not a film, but I really enjoyed Lara's guest role on Kojak: The Night Stalker.  I think the title of her episode is something like The Trevi Connection.  Nina Foch is in it, as well, and the episode sort of winks at both the dark Forties B-horror films in which Nina Foch got her start, and Lara Parker's work on Dark Shadows.

Satan in High Heels is one of my top ten movies of all time, for Grayson's performance and for the look and feel of the movie--great soundtrack, too.  She was nominated for an Oscar in Iguana, and none of those big H'wood stars got noms, so I always cackle a bit when I think of that.  It's cute that Gargoyles was mentioned; I was just thinking of that film the other day.  I also love GH's moments in Adam at Six A. M. (she plays Michael "Mikey" Douglas' busybody, meddling aunt); End of the Road (short but bittersweet); and the DC produced telefilm, The Great Ice Ripoff, in which she's quietly effective as the wife of a retiring detective.

I really wish "Back to Back" would be made available.  It's a 52 minute drama shot in color in 1965. Grayson played the imperious, snobbish head of an exclusive resort, opposite Shelley Winters and Jack Hawkins as a pair who were trying to get jobs on her staff.  It was shown in Oct. 1965 on the "Bob Hope Chrysler Theatre" show.  My attempts at finding a copy have gone absolutely nowhere.

Joan Bennett's scenes in Suspiria are fun--I find that film otherwise unwatchable, but I'm in a small minority on that--most people rate it as a classic.

There's more... but who knows where the time goes?

G.

On a related topic, if there's ever news about SoapNet airing the 1982-83 episodes of OLTL on which Grayson appeared, I would appreciate knowing about it (and discussing arrangeing to get copies of tapes!!).

Good luck everybody--hope DS has a good prospect of finding a new home on SoapNet.  It does need a home on current broadcast television.

G.

Hi Connie and Rainey, I'd love to see old episodes of Where the Action is!  From voiceovers on the early MPI collectors series tapes, I gather it followed DS at 4 in the afternoon.  They may have promoted DS on that show's commercial breaks during June 1966 and that may be how you found out about it.

I love watching old rock and roll shows from that era.  I just got some 1967 tapes of a German show called the Beat Club and, believe me, the groovy threads those guys were wearing made *me* shriek, though perhaps not in the way you intended.

cackling obscenely,

Gothick

For the most part, I agree with your estimation of this pilot episode.

It's OK as entertainment.  For me, it just doesn't work as Dark Shadows.

I thought the real badness of the series came in the actual episodes, particularly when they moved to 1790 and started flashing backwards and forwards to then and the 1990 story.  This was a bee that flew out of the bonnet of some tiresome executive at NBC.  Apparently, he thought it would make the pace more exciting.  It didn't.

Agree absolutely about Jean Simmons as Liz, and Roy Thinnes as Roger isn't much better, although very good on the eyes I must say.

I don't remember Michael Cavanaugh at all, sorry to say.

S.

Isn't it the episode where Julia brings Quentin/Grant to Collinwood and his old room and plays his favorite record for him?

rather a sweet scene...

Fabulous work, Connie!  I love the first image. Classic Julia.

G.

Julia darling, I'm pretty sure that G owned the hairpiece she wore for all but the very first of the 1967 episodes.  In the Billy Rose coll. there's a publicity photo from Feb. 1965 (she was snapped by a paparazzi at an antiques fair the day the Oscar nom was announced) and I'm pretty sure she was wearing that hairpiece.  I think she's wearing it, as well, in the UNCLE shows, and in the candid photo of her at Grauman's Chinese theatre around this time ('65-'66).

In her very first episode, she wears a full on wig.  She mentioned wearing an unflattering wig at one point and Mrs Dan Curtis telling her that she should just wear her own hair on the show because it was more attractive.

G.

Many thanks to the MB for the spiffy, gorgeous 1968 New Year's Montage!

1968 is still my all-time favorite DS storyline--it was when I started watching so I guess you always think most fondly of your first love!

Interesting idea to poll about where to go from here.  I have fun reading *any* discussions of the show, and I know I can't commit to watching 2 episodes a day, so I will abstain.  FWIW, I have been watching the Introduction of Julia shows off and on, and have been having great fun.  Last night, oddly, I pulled out a Forever Knight tape that had the episodes of Barnabas' arrival on them.  It's been a really long time since I watched those shows (they were on the tape because I often taped FK and DS on the same day while I was at work--back in '99, Sci Fi was playing the shows back to back--this was when they had people with some degree of sense and taste working for the network).  I'd forgotten how clever the dialogue in Barnabas' first full episode was--and was surprised to see that the script for that show was authored by Ron Sproat.  I may have to revise my opinion of Sproat's writing skills--I'd thought of him as a competent workman, at best.

I watched a couple of scenes, too, with James Hall's Willie.  That guy really made my skin crawl--sometimes in a strangely agreeable fashion.

G.