Quote from: Vlad on December 20, 2005, 05:09:03 AM

As I write this, something is tugging at my memory that I dimly recall having been mentioned on the forum way back when ... something about Dan Curtis having written or produced a Christmas episode for the show?  Whatever can I be thinking of, I wonder ...

It was when the Museum of TV & Radio honored DS, I believe.  Dan Curtis mentioned that he'd always wanted to set aside some time around the holidays to do a DS storyline based on A Christmas Carol.  As I recall, the actors seemled relieved that he hadn't done it.

Thank you, ProfStokes!

I was wracking my brain after posting that and sometime later it came to me, though what I seemed to remember was slightly different.  What I thought had been posted (by MB?) was that Curtis wanted to actually do a production of "A Christmas Carol" with the DS cast that would air in DS's time slot one afternoon.  In followup comments to the post, I thought that people speculated on which actor would have played which part - but my memory on this could be faulty.

 

Ah, Christmas and Dark Shadows!  I too would have loved it if Christmas had been worked into a yearly episode.  As I write this, something is tugging at my memory that I dimly recall having been mentioned on the forum way back when ... something about Dan Curtis having written or produced a Christmas episode for the show?  Whatever can I be thinking of, I wonder ...

At any rate, I recall Christmas being mentioned only once, back during the B&W episodes when Victoria Winters was still at Collinwood.  I think Carolyn walks into the drawing room and says something about her and David doing Christmas shopping in Bangor.

I'd like to have seen the Collins family in the present day singing carols around the Christmas tree and sipping wassail (or glogg - or something that warms one up!).  No doubt singing carols would be a bittersweet experience for Barnabas, thinking back to his relatively untroubled life before 1795, spending Christmas with his parents and little sister.  I wonder what sort of facial expressions Angelique or Cassandra would have worn while singing carols?  "God rest ye merry gentlemen ... "

 

The only other Christmas reference I remember that made it on air is that at the end of one of the episodes (I just saw this on one of my tapes), I think just before the arrival of Laura (the Phoenix) in Collinsport, during the closing credits the announcer says something to the effect that "The producers and staff of Dark Shadows wish you and your family a very happy holiday season."  I wonder if they did that each year?  I thought it was a nice touch.  Note, too, in light of some recent political controversy (some would say a tempest in a teapot) that this was nearly forty years ago, and the greeting was for a happy "holiday season" - gasp! - NOT "we wish you a Merry Christmas".  Was DS ahead of its time?

I like Rainey's reminder about the old English tradition of reading ghost stories at Christmas.  Having no British Isles heritage myself, this is not something I ever experienced, but it sounds delightful.  (Though, come to think of it, I did read "A Christmas Carol" every Christmas Eve from about the ages of 11 to 17).  I have gotten into the ghostly spirit this year, rather by chance, when I re-read H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Festival," which is set in a New England village at Yuletide.  Very creepy!

Earlier in this thread, someone said that Roger Davis wouldn't be attending any more DS festivals.  This was the first I had heard of that.  Did something happen at one of the festivals that led to his making this decision?  Has he publically stated that he would not be attending in the future, and if so, why?

I haven't seen the reunion tape that was talked about where he is supposed to have criticized or mocked Frid.  Someone else later made the point that RD is not the first DS actor/actress to have made comments about Frid's difficulty with memorizing lines.  Were Davis' comments more belittling than what other DS actors have said on this subject, or how were RD's comments different from what others have said many times?

 

This is fabulously fascinating and will take some time to study.  I'm not sure if it's a bit beyond my comprehension or if it's just that I'm bleary-eyed from having spent the last five hours or so trying to read from a photocopy of a microfilm of a photocopy of a 375-page book in French on the home town of one of my ancestral branches, which I'm mentioning because it was quite interesting to find about five pages on the history of the chateau of this town.  I'm a bit embarrassed about having made sweeping statements about French chateaux being constructed of limestone - I probably was a bit overenthusiastic - because there are all sorts of chateaux spanning hundreds of years, of course, and obviously all weren't built of limestone, though I think that stone may have been used in some from the Renaissance era; I believe I found a reference to its being used at Versailles.  So at least my perceiving a link between chateaux - limestone - and Collinwood may not have been too far off.  And I see from your comments about the tower that I recognized one element correctly!  It has seemed somewhat confusing that Seaview Terrace incorporates Tudor elements along with the French elements.  I had perceived the Tudor elements, and had heard the chateau references, but hadn't really thought about it.

The research you've done, MB, makes me wonder why no one in DS, er - buffdom, seems to have looked into this before.  It seems this could be developed into an essay and printed somewhere.  Perhaps submitted to Pomegranate Press for a future book?

I wish I could print this out with your well-chosen photographs and annotations to tuck away.

Thanks for the crash course on "French eclectic style"!

I'd almost forgotten about the chateau in my avatar photograph.  Time to check into my notes on that ... If I remember correctly it was constructed over different time periods, so maybe it could be called "French eclectic" ... 

Wonderfully evocative description of Collinwood by Mark Rainey ...

I find echoes of Collinwood in this description as well:

"[The house] was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and somber reminiscences. . . . You could not pass it without the idea that it had secrets to keep . . . Under that roof, through a portion of three centuries, there has been perpetual remorse of conscience, a constantly defeated hope, strife amongst kindred, various misery, a strange form of death, dark suspicion, unspeakable disgrace."

(from Chapter 1 of "The House of the Seven Gables," Nathanial Hawthorne)


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MB -

It's exciting to see the results of your research!  You've answered some burning questions about Collinwood that have heretofore remained obscure!

From what you've found (and I'm curious whether you just happen to have these architecture books lying around, or if you went to the library ...), it seems the oft-repeated statement found in various sources that Seaview Terrace was built to resemble a French chateau is inaccurate.  From what you say, the French aspects were a later re-design of the house.  That point aside, the French Eclectic Style by definition does not seem to be the same thing as modeling a building on a chateau, would you agree?

I like how you've pointed out some of the specific elements of this style in actual photographs of Seaview Terrace.

Like Patti, I've wondered what the building material of Seaview Terrace is, and I would also have hesitated to say concrete, thinking that couldn't be right, could it?  But then again it doesn't look as though it's actual stone either.

French chateaux appear to be a light tan color, from what I know, which looks like limestone, but I have no idea if limestone is the building material or if it's even found in France.*  The one aspect of Collinwood that does remind me of a French chateau is the circular (as opposed to square) tower with small windows, topped by a (bluish) pointed top - no idea what the architectural term for this would be!  It would be fun to research the French chateau connection further.

For a look at what a stately house built in 1795 in Maine actually looks like, see the fascinating photographs on this website:  http://www.generalknoxmuseum.org/montpelier.html.  Take the tour and clip on the floorplan to see photographs of the rooms and grounds.

Interesting discussion as just yesterday I was taking photographs of a small stone (yes, true stone blocks) mansion about a block from where I live, known as Mansion Hill.  And yes, it has reminded me of Collinwood from the moment I saw it.  Strange that this is the second city where I've lived where I've been only a couple of blocks from a stone mansion that is very reminiscent of Collinwood!  I like to walk by it as much as possible.


*On a hunch I did a quick search on google recalling that my great-grandfather from Lorraine, France, settled in an area of Minnesota known for its limestone quarries, and sure enough, Lorraine (and neighboring Alsace), were major sources of limestone for France - and a further quick search finds that limestone was used for chateaux throughout France.  Collinwood, I thought, had a limestone appearance, but on closer examination of photographs I have, Seaview Terrace is a much cooler color, and, as mentioned above, does not appear to be actual "stone," though it's hard to see enough detail in photographs to say for sure.  Anyone who has been there, do you remember?

Why are the DVD producers such idiots?  What is the point of cutting off the top and bottom of the picture to make it look like a movie?  Why would anyone want that?

Darren, I'm shocked that you say the 1991 revival series will sell way better than the original series.  As far as I can tell, not that many people even know about the 1991 series.

In response to Hornet's post -  Gosh, now I need to find a region-free DVD player (not so easy to find, I've discovered) that also records ... Are the ones that record much more expensive than regular DVD players?  Maybe I can ask for this for Christmas ...

Also, is there any loss in quality when you record to DVD as there is when, for example, you record something from TV to VHS?  Or is the difference in quality you refer to the fact that the VHS quality is lower than the DVD quality to start with?