Happy Birthday Josette hope your day is as special as you are.
Anne 

Oh, I definitely believe things weren't all wine and roses behind the scenes of Dark Shadows. Sam Hall wasn't unpleasant per se to deal with when I encountered him, but he was opinionated and was determined to only look out for himself. He didn't want to collab with Violet and Ron, he wanted to be in charge of the whole thing and be the only writer.

One aspect of that brief encounter with Mr. Hall has always amused me -- He was horrified that anyone would put as much effort into writing something like we were doing and not be paid for it. I did offer to let him read what we had at that time, hoping he would add critiques, notes, ideas, etc., but that was asking way too much from him without offering a payment to go along with the request.

Jim was good about warning me in advance of anyone he thought might be difficult to deal with, and there were a couple. I never really had any surprises when talking with the original cast and crew. Sometimes it was actually quite fun. I remember Jim saying Alexandra would be lovely to talk with, but in the end I would be wasting of my time. After I explained the simplicity of a Letter of Interest, she was like, "Oh, I can do that for you, and then we'll see how it goes"

Hehe patrickm

——
Julia (talking through her teeth):  They wired my mouth shut.

Barnabas:  I didn’t quite get that Julia, it’s like someone wired your mouth shut or something. 

^_^ happy birthday

You know, I'm not the least surprised that Sam had become what I shall politely call ornery. When Prospect Park did the short-lived online revival of One Life To Live, he was one of the many people who sued them for a piece of the pie. I don't think that the law suit went anywhere. Prospect Park had no assets to speak of. And it's been well over ten years since production ceased, the actors are still owed money.

While most of the writings about DS paint a very rosy picture about cast and crew, the book Llanview In The Afternoon paints a somewhat different picture of Sam. He said some rather nasty things about his longtime collaborator Gordon Russell, he said, in reference to Gordon's occasional acting career, that Gordon had been playing the part of a writer for years. Meow!