Dark Shadows False Memory Syndrome

[Joeytrom]

It was mentioned in another post about DS actors remembering things quite differently then the way the actually happened (ex. Joan Bennett saying "Welcome to Hollywood".

I read the following in cast interviews over the years:

Louis Edmonds always claimed the last role he played on DS was a butler for the Collins family

Donna Wandrey said that in a Summer 1970 episode as she was reading a horoscope, David Selby & Chris Pennock couldn't keep themselves from laughing and Selby threw himself on the table trying to hide his laughing and throwing the cards off and they didnt stop the tape.

[Garth Blackwood]

I was watching at the end of DVD set 16, either Disc 1 or 2 where there was an interview with David Selby. He was talking about how Quentin's theme was used for something else in the show before he ever arrived, then they redid it and used it for him.. I'm pretty sure that never happened-- if so can someone fill me in because I've never seen The Beginning Vol's 3 through 5.

Maybe Louis Edmonds was remembering [spoiler] the few episodes where Edward was crazy and thought he was a butler [/spoiler], but that certainly wasn't his last role...

[ProfStokes]

Terry Crawford claimed that [spoiler]when Beth fell to her death from Widows' Hill, she hit the mattress and bounced back up.[/spoiler]  I thought that was hilarious when I read about it and couldn't wait to see the episode.  I was disappointed when it didn't really happen.

ProfStokes

[michael c]

i almost started a topic like this so i'm glad someone else did.

what i think is funny is when other,less well versed,people "tell" me about the show.

not everyone possesses our encyclopedic knowledge of the series(read:less obsessive)but i have some older coworkers who watched as kids and "tell" me about what they remember from the show...

one fellow "tells" me about the time that the smoke machine ran into overdrive and the actors were choking(never happened),about how barnabas cussed on air(nope),another insists that the town he grew up in in connecticut was where collinwood was(exteriors were filmed in newport,RI)and so forth.

i really don't have the patience to sit and bicker with these guys over such trivialities so i just sort sigh and say nothing.

[Janet the Wicked]

As an old bag about to hit the half century mark, I am well aware of how memory fails. When recently filling out a job application, I was asked to list the salaries I had made over the years. Hell, I don't remember what I grossed in 1984!
One has to take the actor's recollections with a grain of salt. What they may not actually remember, they may enhance or embellish, particularly when fans are clamoring for behind the scenes anecdotes. And they weren't just doing Dark Shadows. Many of them were performing on the stage or doing commercials or movies at the same time.

[Gothick]

I do remember that in the episode where Nicholas goes to Hell *wink*, the later scenes are at Collinwood and his big showdown with Julia.  I can remember that they had pumped up so much brimstone for Hell's Head Office that the drawing room looked almost as foggy as Eagle Hill cemetery.  In that one I think I did hear poor Grayson having one of her hacking fits while offscreen at one point. 

Also, of course, Maggie Evans' cottage and the Collinsport Inn were in Essex, CT--perhaps your friend had a vague memory or had heard about the crew's visit in 1966 and inflated (or conflated) it all into "Collinwood" itself having been located there.

G.

[Nancy]

This false memory discussion is interesting.  I remember Larry King asking JFK, Jr. if he remembered his father's funeral (and saluting the passing casket) and JFK, Jr. said he wasn't sure he actually remembered it or remembers it through what he has seen in film clips and the memories of others, basically a false memory.

[Gerard]

For years, even decades, although I had watched the whole storyline in its original run, I had thought that it wasn't Quentin who had haunted Collinwood, but Petofi who had possessed Quentin's body and got "trapped" in it, the whole thing being revealed in the 1897 flashback.  When I finally saw it all over again on the Sci-Fi Channel in the early 90's, I was stunned how I could've been so wrong.  Classic FDSMS.  I also had another bout, but this one was understandable.  I clearly remembered in a scene in 1970PT, when Quentin and Maggie were in their bedroom and Maggie was changing, even though she had her back to the camera, she was topless - you saw her bare back.  Then when I saw it again on Sci-Fi, she was clearly wearing a slip.  Then something crossed my mind.  I had taped that episode and rewound it and then turned the color off on my TV (we only had a black-and-white set back in 1970; color TV was for, as my dad use to say, "fancy people") so it was black-and-white.  Sure enough, the color of the slip had blended in with the flesh color of Maggie's back.  Unless one looked very close, she appeared topless.  Vindication. 

I have a friend, another DS fanatic like me, who was convinced, in the classic blooper scene during an episode's closing credits. of Jonathan Frid walking through the Collinwood foyer carrying a cup of coffee.  I told him, no, he was carrying his costume.  No, he insisted, it was a cup of coffee.  I informed him I've seen that episode several times in Sci-Fi reruns.  No matter, according to him, I wasn't seeing it right.  It was a cup of coffee.  I'm sure if he even saw it again he still wouldn't be convinced.  Classic FDSMS.

Gerard

[MagnusTrask]

I was sure that Petofi had returned in the present day.

[The Doctor and K9]

I hope I'm remembering my psych professor's lecture properly.  This is the gist of it, to the best of my recollection.  Memory functions, in part, by reconstruction. If we have a gap, sometimes our minds use deduction to try to recreate what must have happened.  Since we can create images, those images mask themselves as true memories.

With regard to the actor's false memories, I have a theory that they reshot more often than the actors remember.  I bought some old records from the Dan Curtis archives at a festival.  One of them talks about an episode being recorded in two parts.  If I can dig the box out of storage, I'll post more about it later.

[Julia99]

False memory led to inaccuracies about sam and grayson--the main one of course, which I think KLS did repeat and got Dan Curtis to agree on stage was that Sam was writing for the show and THAT is how she got the job.  Of course that is completely inaccurate and SHE got HIM the job. .. in hindsight the cast and crew have said to me that Sam was around so much (he did often stop by to pick her up after filming as they only lived a few blocks away)--so their memories are fuzzy.   

[Zahir]

I'm confused.  Does this mean the Partridge Family did or did not play a gig at the Blue Whale? 

[The Doctor and K9]

When I was a kid, I wasn't supposed to watch DS, but I have a faulty memory from it.  I was 7 or so, and I was being watched by a neighbor.  She had the show on. I clearly remember David finding a hangman's noose and getting strangled by it.  Barnabas comes in the next day and saves him.  If not for the taped evidence, I'd be willing to argue to the last that that scene actually was on the show.

[joe integlia]

david selby was probably confused about the use of quentins theme. it was not used earlier in DARK SHADOWS but it was used in 1 of dan curtis earlier productions. i think jeckyl and hyde. terry crawford told that widows hill story at a festival and this time she added "they had to shoot that over again" i also believe that some of these memories are things that took place during rehearsals and they are remembering them as taking place during the taping.

[Philippe Cordier]

david selby was probably confused about the use of quentins theme. it was not used earlier in DARK SHADOWS but it was used in 1 of dan curtis earlier productions. ... i also believe that some of these memories are things that took place during rehearsals and they are remembering them as taking place during the taping.

Those explanations sound very plausible, Joe.

I don't know how to explain two vivid memories I always had from my childhood viewing of Dark Shadows. One concerned either Angelique or Cassandra and I believe took place in the present day (I don't think I ever saw any of the other time periods). In the drawing room of Collinwood, a Bible was open on a table, possibly with a knife stuck into it. Somehow, a verse was indicated which was read aloud: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!" If not from DS, I don't know where I would have gotten that at such an early age (elementary school). Nothing like that was ever read in church, and even if it had been, the King James Bible was simply not used. I wonder if that verse was in "The House of the Seven Gables" - either I or my sister had the Classics Illustrated comic version of that.

The other memory is of Julia poised over Barnabas' coffin with a stake in her hand. Her agony of mind was vivid as she struggled with what she knew she had to do: drive a stake through Barnabas' heart.

If anyone can validate either of these scenes, I'd feel much better!