Okay, Stupid Question about Frid

[Willie Loomis]

please don't laugh.......

In the show did he wear prosthetics on his ears to look more like a bat or are those his real ears?   I often wonder, but i noticed when [spoiler]Barnabas went to kill Julia at Collinwood[/spoiler] his ears were pretty prominent and i was trying to discern on my 40 inch tv if they were his or not.    it was still hard to tell.      Can anyone enlighten me?

[MagnusTrask]

Of course Mr. Frid's ears are unusual to start with, being place a bit diagonally on his head, and I think lower than usual... (closet Minbari?)  ... but I remember lately seeing a shot or two where they stuck out more than usual, when he was busy vamping.   If it was intentional, he didn't do it very often.

[BryceLozier]

Okay, sseeing this thread encourages me to share something I personally have noticed about Frid. On one of the blooper-outtake DVDs by MPI, there is a segment where Frid appeared as a guest on the Merv Griffin Show. There, out of character, whenever Frid spoke, he appeared to have a slight speech impediment (namely, a lisp). HOWEVER, on DS, in character Frid never showed the slightest speech problem. What's up with this?

[michaelhacketttodd]

I had the pleasure off attending one of Jonathan's "Readers Theater's" during the summer of '91.  He spoke with me briefly after the performance and showed no indication of a speech impediment.  He has admitted being a "slow study" and this may be because he not only had to learn his lines, but also deal with a lisp.  Who knows.

[MagnusTrask]

I'm on MPI tape 15, and they've given him bat ears on the cover.   As for the lisp, he doesn't have one in the bits of interviews or readings that I've seen.

[Lydia]

I've never heard any trace of a lisp in Frid's speech.

As for ears sticking out, I always notice them in the 1967 portrait of Barnabas in the Old House living room, but I never notice them on Barnabas himself.

[ClaudeNorth]

In the episode in question at the top of this thread, I often thought that the picture seemed slightly distorted/stretched horizontally, as if a wide-angle lens were used for Frid's close-ups.  That could be creating the illusion that his ears are more prominent than they actually are.