Now you know someone is a stud when he can still look sexy even when given pasty white makeup and rings under his eyes.  I think Don looks incredibly hot in the snap on today's montage.  The fact that his head is tilted a little back and his mouth is slightly open is giving rise to all sorts of fantasies here.

I'm sure the Mysterious Benefactor would never, EVER deliberately choose a photo that would make me so distracted, horny and crazy, I just couldn't function ... WOULD HE????

Anxiously biting nails,

Gothick

Hi again, Rod,

thanks for taking the time to write about your fun experiences.  I'm very fond of both Robert and Dee, although I've only met them on a couple of occasions. They are both lovely people.  And I can't say enough about Marie Wallace, who is a great lady, incredibly sweet and VERY talented.  I loved her work as Megan Todd, and had the chance to tell her so at a Festival a few years back.  (Her work as Megan doesn't get as much coverage in DS books as her time on the series as Jenny.)

Hope you get the chance to visit with Diana Millay at some point.  She's a lot of fun.

Best wishes,

Steve

Connie, this Quentin montage is beautiful.  I think David Selby would enjoy seeing it sometime.  Have you given him printouts of any of your work?

The only album I know by the Moody Blues is Days of Future Passed, but it's one of my favorite albums.  The old videos of their Sixties TV performances are quite haunting, as well.  They had some real lookers in that band back in the day.  I'm sure they all look like grizzled parchment now.  Time is not kind ...

Gothick

Kuanyin,  I was shocked when I saw an early episode (from the first weeks of 1966) and there was a scene where either Liz or Vicki walks out the front door of Collinwood, and the cottage is within plain sight a few yards away from the door!  In 1967 and beyond, it is made to seem a further distance away, and out in the woods.  Don't forget that the infamous Laura was using it as her safehouse.

I guess that the Parallel Time room wasn't the only spatio temporal anomaly on the grounds!  And the weirdness spread beyond the estate itself; sometimes Wyndcliffe Sanatarium is a short hike away, and other times, it's 100 miles away!

Gotta love our wonderfully whacky DS,

Gothy

Back during the original broadcast, I was always feeling sorry for Barnabas.  I missed both 1968 and 1795, and when I first saw him, he was the hapless victim of Cass/Angelique, stuggling to redeem himself and live a halfway decent life.  Even as an adult when I see Barnabas' shortcomings with a much less bedazzled eye, Jonathan Frid's performance often wrings my heartstrings.

Willie is one of the finest tragic characters in the entire series.  I really wish they had resolved his storyline towards the end and allowed him to go off with his Roxanne and enjoy a happy married life.  Over the period of the series, he is definitely a man who gets way more misery to endure than he ever deserved.  And, of course, John Karlen's wonderful acting imbued the character with a lot more than was there on the printed page.

Some of the characters that people can't stand, such as Count Petofi, Cassandra Collins, and Jeb Hawkes, are among my favorites on the show because the actors portray them so magnificently and really show the charisma that these evil supernatural beings possess.  

Magda is another wonderful tragic character.  Even though she is responsible for nearly everything that happens to her, I find myself riveted every time I watch the episodes where she encounters yet another layer of tragedy in her life.  Even though Magda was larger than life, I felt that Grayson played her with wonderful subtlety, and I think there was more of the real Grayson in Magda than in Julia.

I could go on and on ... wonderful topic ... but the last one I'll mention is Buzz Hackett.  Well, if I had been living in C'port back in the glory days of '67, Miss "Poor Little Rich Girl" Carolyn Stoddard wouldn't have had 5 seconds to jerk Buzz around on the love-chain, because I would have nailed that boy and made him forget Blondie ever existed!

It's a big job but somebody has to do it,

Gothick

One of my all time favorite scenes in all of DS was this conversation from about halfway through the 1967 storyline where Barnabas is scheming to make Vicki his new Josette and he's fretting about just what Dr. Hoffman is up to.  He regales Willie with his plans and gloats about how when Vicki becomes his bride, she'll be free of the petty chafings of mortality, untouched by time, untouched by anything.  "Yeah ... cept loneliness," Willie comments bleakly.  It's such a wonderful moment ... and a wonderful scene for WILLIE to have the last word.

I'm sure that one reason why I cherish that scene is because it was on a little cassette tape I carried around the world with me in my travels in the 80s and 90s.  That tape contained scenes I taped during the syndication of DS in 1976. Since I didn't have any tapes from the original broadcast, for nearly 2 decades this tape & one other were all that I had to remember my favorite TV show by.

Gothick

Connie, my dear, you've outdone yourself!

Here's the dialogue to go with the photo:

QUENTIN: (staring at Chris' nether regions) Chris, you're an ANIMAL!!!

CHRIS: (slowly raising head with an evil leer) Is that the pot calling the kettle beige?  Here, let me rip off some more of that shirt for you.

Oh those Collinses, keeping it in the family ... gotta love 'em!

Gothick