Hi Julia,
I'm ba-ack from my trip to Maryland. Sorry to hear about your computer woes. I hope everything is all sorted out now!
In the Seventies, Grayson suffered from osteoperosis, and I think if you look carefully you can already see signs of a stoop in her Sixties episodes on Dark Shadows. One fan who spent some time with Grayson in the early Eighties told me that she thought a big reason why G avoided attending the DS conventions that they held then was because she was worried about pushing, shoving fans such as she had been around on certain occasions in the Sixties. She could have easily fallen and suffered another major break (she broke an arm in 1977 and her hip in 1980).
In addition, I have been informed that an actress who did stage work with Grayson recalls her wearing a back brace. I don't have a time frame for that but I imagine it was in the Seventies, possibly at some point in the early Eighties.
One last note on this topic--I believe that in the script for the conclusion of the 1995 Parallel Time sequence, Barnabas was supposed to pick Julia up from the floor and carry her up the Stairway through Time. If you play the tape you'll see that they settled for having her lean on him. I suspect that back issues may have been responsible for how they played that scene.
Given all this, it is truly remarkable that Grayson seemed so limber and physically vibrant in the video of the Suicide production in 1980. She had just recovered from a broken hip when she did this!
She was, in every sense of the word, a truly REMARKABLE woman.
Steve
