Last day of DS

[loril54]

A very sad day is tomarrow, . Because it was cancelled so early did it liven on? I think so. It as special.

[rosebud cottage]

Gee, I remember that afternoon in 1971 like it was yesterday. Even my parents watched DS with me that day - they knew how sad & upset I was over the show being cancelled. I remember how happy I was that all the loose ends from the 1841 Parallel Time storyline had been tied up - I was so nervous that the last episode would end with a cliffhanger & we would never know what happened. At least we had the next DS movie to look forward to & a few more Marilyn Ross DS novels came out for awhile...
I also remember creating a petition to save DS & getting my neighbors & friends at school to sign it - even my six year old little brother pitched in with his first grade scrawl! I remember sending it in & weeks later getting a fairly nice letter from ABC saying how sorry they were over not being able to satisfy my request. I wish I had saved that letter!
For years I held a grudge against PASSWORD, the series that replaced DS!
Well, it took me awhile to recover - I  started writing my own DS fiction & I was still buying the teen magazines like "16" ,(oh, god, remember those magazines!) always searching for DS news & pictures for my DS scrapbook ,(which, sadly, got ruined in a flood in my parents' basement where I had left it after moving away from home) as well as shirtless photos of David Cassidy! Eventually the magazines had less & less on DS & then nothing.
The second DS movie came & went & I stopped finding new DS novels at the nearby People's Drugstore. I started reading the books over & over!
I thought I was the only person left in the world who still cared about DS...
...thank god I would find out how wrong I was in just a few years!

P.S. In high school, when I became theater-crazy, I tried to write a DS musical!

[Gerard]

I so remember that day, too, running home from junior high school, not wanting to miss a minute.  As Thayer David's closing monologue was coming to an end, tears welled up in my eyes; I just didn't want to believe it was over, even though I knew it was.  I, too, took solace that there were still more Marilyn Ross novels coming out, the comic book series (which, let's face it, was not that good) and one more movie.  While many held out hope that ABC would, over the weekend, realize its mistake and the show would be back on Monday, I held out the hope that it would return in September, 1971, not as a daily soap, but as a prime-time, one hour, weekly program, with the exact same cast, bigger sets, picking right up from when Barnabas, Julia and Eliot returned to Collinwood finding Elizabeth looking for Roger's speech.  Well, you can dream.  We still got "glimpses" of DS with Dan Curtis' movies on TV, complete with Robert Cobert DSish music; we saw DS performers in other movies, such as Jonathin Frid in "The Devil's Daughter," and Grayson Hall in "Gargoyles."   Within a year, the paperback and comic book continuations were gone and what was left of DS passed into history.  Or so we thought.  But all throughout high school, and even thereafter, in my mind I composed my own plotlines, novels and even movies.  As a matter of fact, I've never stopped.

Gerard

[MagnusTrask]

Very cool I think to keep writing, as long as the writing matures, as you do.   I want to do writing including fanfic, but it's just been parodies so far.    Not even DS parodies yet.

I do remember the last day but only dimly.   I was surprised to find in 2002 when I got DS on tape that the 1971 loose ends were tied up.    I'd thought everything was hastily and sloppily ended.

[joe integlia]

i did watch the last episode on april 2nd, 1971 but i stopped watching years earlier except for a few sparactic episodes because i got a paper route after school sometime in late 1969. never would have known it was ending if a friend didnt tell me. i picked up my papers and brought them home that day instead of delivering them immediately like i should have. i was wrapping the papers with rubber bands while watching the final episode. i remember being totally confused wondering why barnabas wasnt being called barnabas and angelique wasnt angelique and why were they kissing! then the last few minutes, melanie who i thought was still carolyn was brought in with bites on her neck. finally, i thought to myself, the ds i remember, only to realize that in a few minutes it would all be over and how are they going to wrap all this up in 1 minute? then the narration explaining it all and then it was over. then the phone started ringing. customers calling wondering where their newspapers were. thats what i remember about that day. then a few years later in fall 1975 to discover its return(at least in the philadelphia area) in reruns for a year at least. 

[Nancy]

I was theater crazy too, Rosebud (some might say just plain crazy) and starting in junior high school I was constantly in a play or out on the hockey or lacrosse field playing competitive sports.  I've met other DS fans who wound up missing a lot of DS due to after school practices or activities.  I got rather bored with the show by around the third year so missing it wasn't particularly traumatic.  However, the day the show ended I called out sick from hockey practice to see it.  I was curious to see how it ended.

When I moved to a new house in 1975 I tossed out all the DS books and related items I had. I figured that was the end of that!

However, I came to love Password which replaced DS and whenever I was home after school watched the game show.

Nancy

P.S. In high school, when I became theater-crazy, I tried to write a DS musical!

[David]

Though I hated to see the show go, I honestly wasn't surprsed!
The bad, unresolved conclusion to 1840, and the dull 1841PT story, which had no relation to the show's history, seemed to indicate that the show was on it's way out.

In the mid-1970s, I heard that the show was airing at 11PM
in Los Angeles. Remembering the wonderful 1795 & 1897 stories, I yearned to see it again.
All through the late 70s, into 1981, HODS & NODS aired on
local TV.
I recall one airing, aroun 1981. HODS aired on a Monday at 4PM on channel 9 in NYC. NODS aired the following day, same time.
It was a cold, rainy week in New York, and the weather suited my brief, return visit to Collinsport.
I was glad to see my familiar characters again, & I really ached to see the original show, which had been such a big part of my childhood. The 1969 album, the Ross books, the movies were not enough!
One year later, DS reruns finally came to NYC.

I remember walking down Times Square in early Aprl 1982, looking at a big, electric billboard
proclaiming "It Has Risen Again......Dark Shadows...."
What a thrill that was!
When WNBC TV began airing promos for the show, I cheered!
I still have tapes of those promos.

Dark Shadows was back in my life, and it never left me again!

David

[Gothick]

Oh, I remember it well!  I still remember reeling in disbelief when I read somewhere (either on one of those yellow pages inside the front cover of TV Guide or in the newspaper) that they were pulling the plug on the show.  I knew it was going to end and I knew that when Thayer David's voice came on to tell us there would be no more dark shadows for the Collinses, that it was curtains, but, even so, I tuned in on April 5 to witness the appalling banality of Password (a show I had actually enjoyed occasionally before this date) where vampires, witches, werewolves and fabulous scenery-ripping shrieking eccentrics in yards of black eyeliner once RULED.

still feeling the bitter taste in my mouth...

G.

[MagnusTrask]

Everyone here is really putting me in the mood to launch a big protest against Password, but it's probably a little late for that, isn't it?

[Darren Gross]

I was conceived right around this time, but even as a bubbling zygote, I KNEW! I KNEW!

 

[MagnusTrask]

I was conceived right around this time, but even as a bubbling zygote, I KNEW! I KNEW!

Bram and Catherine's illicit love child, eh?

You should have refused to come out, in protest over the cancellation.

Zygotes bubble?

[Raineypark]

It was my senior year in High School......and I was hip deep in college preparations, and the Senior Musical.  I don't think I realized it was gone until after graduation........ :-

[Elmont]

I remember the day of the last show. I had no idea that the show was ending. When Thayer David gave the closing monologue I remember grabbing the TV and yelling  " Noooo"!!!!   I too tuned in the following Monday just to see if it was true.

[Ben]

I was in eighth grade in April 1971.  Although I had been following DS regularly since 1969, some after-school interests began to develop in eighth grade, which made me less compelled to run immediately home from school to catch, at the earliest, the last 20 minutes of any episode.  The friends I had begun hanging out with weren't into DS, while at the same time, it became more difficult to follow the storyline (especially the final one) if I missed even a day or two. 

But I did feel very sad knowing that the series was coming to an end, and I did make it a point to run home that final day.  I even taped the show on my Panasonic cassette recorderwith the piano-style keys, although I didn't quite understand the storyline by then and was still missing the Barnabas-Julia-Prof. Stokes triumvirate.  1971 marked the end of two of my all-time favorite series: DS and "The Andy Williams Show" (his latter series with the Cookie Bear and guests like Elton John, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, and Smokey Robinson). 

DS ran in syndication in Chicago for several months in late-night in the late '70s, but I couldn't keep staying up late every night.  How lucky I was, however, to discover DS on Sci-Fi in the late '90s, viewing familiar episodes again (this time, in color), watching many others for the first time, and videotaping them all.  And then I discovered this website and made it to two Festivals.  How fortunate that those of us who loved the show can gather on this site and in person at the Fests.

I always loved the musical score and all those tags at the end of a scene.  Over the years, even if the show itself wasn't on my mind, the music always was.  Duh-duh-DUUUHHHHHH!!!! 

[Amy Jennings Fan]

Yes I Remember it. I wished they hadn't endit it because it left a lot of loose ends.