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Current Talk '03 II / Re:Another olive, Barnabas?
« on: August 29, 2003, 02:29:07 PM »I wonder why they started leaving her out of more and more episodes?
At this point Clarice was also appearing on The Secret Storm. I never saw her on TSS, but this excerpt from an interview Clarice did with Afternoon TV makes it seem as if TSS was using her a lot, so she probably wasn't available to coordinate many more appearances on DS:
...she plays a character named Mary Lou on Secret Storm. "Mary Lou is a woman living in the past, twenty years in the past," Clarice explained. "Because of some terrible experience--some overwhelming shock--she remains fixated at that point in her life. She can't get beyond it. It's as if time has stopped for Mary Lou. She still wears the clothes of the period, about 1950, I guess. She plays the records she liked at the time. One of her favorites is an old Jo Stafford recording called You Belong to Me. Playing it so often has made it worn and scratchy."
No, Clarice laughed, she couldn't tell me Mary Lou's secret. As the show goes on the secret -- the thing that happened to Mary Lou will be revealed, but for now it must remain a deep, dark secret. "Actually, I don't quite know myself," Clarice said. "The producers explained something about Mary Lou's problem, then left me guessing."
I said it must be something pretty terrible. Clarice laughed again. "I still can't tell you," she said. "Watch the show and find out for yourself."
We both agreed that Mary Lou sounded something like a Tennessee Williams' creation. "Yes," Clarice said, "there are elements like that. Mary Lou is a completely new character on the show, and absolutely fascinating to me. Highly complex as well; that's why I like her. She is married to a psychiatrist, which makes for an interesting situation in itself, and even with all his knowledge and skill he has been unable to help her. But he refuses to give up; in fact, he has dedicated his life to removing the trauma--the shock--that has made her what she is."
I asked Clarice if she thought the husband-psychiatrist would succeed. "That remains to be seen," Clarice said. She paused and smiled. "However, there are other complications. The husband has fallen in love with another woman."
Wow! I said. It was complicated.
Since Mary Lou was such a special character, Clarice said, there were special problems to be solved before putting her in front of the television cameras. The clothes, for one thing, had to be exactly right. In 1950 The New Look was in full flower. The long skirts were no problem, since long skirts are coming back into style. "But the costume designer, George Drew, had some trouble getting those sweater sets," Clarice said. "But you know designers--they get what they go after."
Not so easy was finding a picture of Clarice herself taken in the same period. Finally, after a lot of rummaging, she dug up an old snapshot taken near Lake Dalles, Texas, during her college days. Now the snapshot has been blown up to portrait size and stands on the desk of Mary Lou's husband. The 1950 Mary Lou had long black hair; the 1970 Mary Lou has greying hair. "I have a thing about wigs," Clarice smiled. "In Dark Shadows I wore a white wig; now I wear a grey wig as Mary Lou."