Originally posted by Bob on the Dark Shadows: General Discussion Forum on January 21, 2002 at 09:24:43:
On another forum Jack Klugman's name came up and it brought to mind a relative of his who has a place in Dark Shadows lore. I posed the question of whom it could be to the forum, and Guy came up with the answer.
Anyway, I thought some of the folks here might enjoy a little background on Jack Klugman's nephew.....Ron Klugman (a.k.a.) Ron Barry was the nephew of Jack Klugman. Ron suffered from Parkinson's disease and passed away a few years ago. For those of you not familiar with Ron Barry, he was a radio disc jockey in the late 60's early 70's at W.E.S.T. in Easton,Pa. As the story goes, Ron was home sick one day and turned on the t.v. where he saw an episode of Dark Shadows. He became so enamored with the show that he eventually would make several trips down to the NYC studios to visit with and get to know the actors, as well as watch tapings of the show. Over a 2-3 year period he interviewed many of the actors on his radio show, either in person in the Easton studio, or over the phone.
Using members of his radio show production crew, Ron created a parody version of Dark Shadows entitled 'Dumb Shadows'. The exploits of Barnaby Collar and other members of the Collar family were weaved into satirical tales that were takeoff's of actual Dark Shadows storylines. Some of the characters from the 1795 storyline included; Errol Collar, Lt. Whitey Forbes &Fire Stokes. Ron also did a take off of the Adam storyline where his monster was named Percy. Some other characters from that storyline are; Cliff Parks, Dr. Bruce Fang,Nicholas Kringle, Prof. Blokes, and Dr. Julie Gadaksahagen.
Another parody of the werewolf storyline included characters names Fenton Collar, Janet Fishley, Ezra Weightlift, Larry Talbot Jenkins, and more.... In all, I believe there were 20 episodes of Dumb Shadows that ranged in running time from 7- 13 minutes.
Ron had Thayer David, Humbert Allen Astredo, and Grayson Hall record short promo's that he played on air touting the Dumb Shadows series to his listeners.
Last year I spoke with Ted Weider, the voice of William Loonie of the Dumb Shadows series. While Mr. Weider had no vivid memories of doing the parody, he did remember doing Dumb Shadows as well as a parody on Mission Impossible. He have many nice things to say about Ron. As big a fan Ron was of Dark Shadows, he was an even bigger fan of Laurel and Hardy, and as an adult got to know and befriend Stan Laurel. A photo of Ron Barry with several members of the Dark Shadows cast can be found on page 140 of the Millennium edition of the Dark Shadows Almanac.
For those of you who have never heard any of these cast interviews a few years ago I assembled several of them on two Cd's. Information can be found off the main page of on my DS Events page by clicking on the collectibles button, then the CD's button.
Bob
http://bobubas.topcities.com/index.htm
