This was a really interesting thread! Thanks to all for posting. I especially enjoyed the interviews. For me - or a least as far as my limited impression of JF goes - this one line sums up what I felt his attitude toward the biz was:
When I attended one of his shows a couple of years ago he came across as an actor with taste, insight, wicked humor, wit and an individual with his own strong viewpoints. He may seem like a downer at times (about DS) but I really do appreciate his honesty.
Castlebee,
I know that in print JF comes across at times as being excessively hard on DS. He believes in being honest but just because he finds fault with the show doesn't mean he doesn't want to be associated with it. He is very hard on himself and his performances; in real life he is a perfectionist and takes the time to get things down just right. Sloppiness in any form drives him nuts so you can imagine how unhappy he is seeing his errors on DS. Sure, he could explain that on top of being given "heavy" scripts and appearing on the show more than any other actor AND doing extensive publicity no one else was asked to do . . . but he doesn't make excuses. If he really disliked DS he certainly would not have attended fan conventions from 1982 to 1993, sometimes three and four a year. He's certainly proud of his contribution to the series and notes it on his website. But, this is a guy who gets easily bored talking about the same thing over and over again. So the impatience fans sometimes see with him in regards to DS things is borne out of "that was fine, but there's other things to talk about" thinking. If you don't have fans, you can't do much else and nobody realizes that more than Jonathan Frid which is why he will spend hours after doing two shows to sign autographs and do Q&As. After the shows, he is pretty tired since that day also included a rehearsal, a tech rehearsal and sometimes travel. But he will make time for the fans.
It's not that he doesn't do Festivals anymore for a negative reason; he doesn't make any appearances at all except for the occasional charity performance. He doesn't give interviews for promoting them which is murder for his producer who tries to generate publicity for the show, especially free publicity. But he doesn't want the spotlight.
This might be covered in Malia Howard's career biography on Jonathan, but I remember him telling stories about the publicity tours he did for DS back in 1968 and 1969 and how horrible they were. There was hardly any such thing as crowd control and then he discovered much to his horror the person in charge of the parade or whatever procession it was sat in the car with him rather than stay outside to keep eyes and ears open to the event. There were times he thought he was going to be hurt or even killed because of the chaos. What scared him the most (and the reason he stopped doing the publicity tours by 1970) was that he saw too many occasions where kids were in harm's way and no one seemed to anticipate many potential hazards that he saw from his vantage point. So since the crowd control was inadequate and no one seemed to care, he stopped doing those big publicity tours even though they paid good money. All the hype of DS and it's popularity got old pretty fast because it had nothing to do with being an actor. He felt like a "thing" and not a person so needless to say all that was not an experience JF would want to relive. He has said that numerous times. All that fuss and publicity did not appeal to him. But that's how the business works when you are in a commercial property that does well.
Before I went to work for Jonathan Frid's production company years ago, I also wondered what the heck ever happened to him and why didn't he go after the kind of work that Vincent Price and Christopher Lee made a nice living doing. I went to a Dark shadows Festival for the express purpose of seeing JF perform there and came away admiring him for being so independent-minded and he even acknowledged that many told him he was screwing up his career making the choices he did. When asked if he regretted making the choices, he said no that he didn't believe in regret and you do what do for a reason. He didn't want that kind of career. And nobody was going to hire him for the kind of work he wanted to do. I think he wishes he knew of other ways to exploit his fame at the time to get him what he wanted, but frankly I don't know what else he could have done. Back then the idea of making independent movies wasn't as popular or viable as it is now. There are more options for actors with some kind of name (and even without a name) to do work they want and not leave it in someone else's hand.
The way JF does things and views the business is by no means the way most actors look at it but as JF said many times, he had other things to fall back on, and with so many interests he was never bored. He didn't intend to stay out of the business for years - he just started to take vacations and with one thing or another wound up staying away for many years. Though he said in the the early 1980s he would take TV or movie roles (before he formed the production company) I never heard of him actually making any great effort. That is why I know how much he loves the theater. He has said in interviews "I've had the perfect life" primarily because he was able to do mostly what he wanted to do. The fact that during my tenure he turned down many TV and film jobs made it clear to me he meant what he said.
What is it that Horton said?
I meant what I said
I said what I meant,
I'm a theater actor
100 percent??
Or maybe I will just stay away from poetry . . . .
Too much time on my hands waiting for the paint to dry in my house. Ramble over.
Nancy
