Recently published in San Francisco's
Bay Area Reporter, a gay and lesbian newsweekly, posted with permission of the author:
Big Lou: The Life and Career of Louis Edmonds by Craig Hamrick, iUniverse Press, March 2003, softcover, $14.95
To fans of the daytime soaps
Dark Shadows and
All My Children, Louis Edmonds was a superstar. But few others have heard of this journeyman actor, even though he worked steadily for 45 years.
Louis Edmonds (1923-2001) lived for the theatre and had hundreds of roles on the stage and in early live TV. A tall, imposing, aristocratic man, he was a grand, old school actor. Had he been born twenty years earlier, he could have been one of Hollywood's great character people. But when Edmonds entered the theatre in the early 1950s, method acting was all the rage. Many classically trained actors were relegated to appearing with small theatre companies around the country, working steadily but getting little recognition. Though occasional small roles on television raised his profile slightly, Louis Edmonds never achieved stardom on any level. That changed in 1966, when he was cast in a new daytime drama called
Dark Shadows.
Dark Shadows began as fairly traditional soap opera fare. About six months into it's network run, the struggling show took a sharp turn and began presenting ghost stories. This seemed to attract some attention, so, in April 1967,
Dark Shadows presented viewers with Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), daytime television's first bona fide, blood sucking vampire! Almost instantly
Dark Shadows shot from the bottom to the top of the daytime ratings. The show became a pop culture phenomenon, and for the first time in his career, Louis Edmonds found himself thrust into the spotlight.
The show's bizarre combination of horror movie cliches and soap opera melodrama was perfect or his grand, slightly over the top style of acting. Louis stayed with the show for it's entire five year run, and appeared with the rest of the cast in MGM's spin-off feature film
House of Dark Shadows in 1970.
Louis had a second brush with fame. In 1979 he began a 16 year run on
All My Children. He made his role, carnival barker turned dapper aristocrat Langley Wallingford his own. It was a larger than life role that suited him perfectly, and he played it with gusto, earning himself three Emmy nominations along the way and millions of fans.
His
All My Children fans included TV legend Carol Burnett, who, in 1983, asked the producers to write her into the show. For one week, Burnett appeared as Verla Grubbs, Langley's long lost daughter. They made a wonderful comedy team, and the show's ratings soared.
All My Children was his moment in the sun.
Louis Edmonds died in March 2001 after an extended illness. He might have been forgotten, as so many daytime actors are. But now, Edmonds is the subject of the first full length biography of a soap star.
Craig Hamrick's
Big Lou is a superbly written study of Edmonds' life and career. Hamrick, a New York based writer and freelance journalist, was a close friend of Edmonds during the last eight years of the actor's life. Because of this, Big Lou could have been nothing more than a shallow, worshipful valentine to Edmonds. But the courageous Hamrick, though clearly in awe of his subject, is not afraid to expose a few warts.
The book serves as both a biography and a career study. After some background information on Edmonds' childhood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the book follows his years as a drama student at Carnegie Technical Institute in Pittsburgh (Jack Klugman and Nancy Marchand were classmates) where he discovered his attraction to men. In the 1940s, there was no gay rights movement, no community to speak of and no positive role models for young gays to look up to. Though he did not officially come out, the enormously self confident Edmonds quietly accepted his sexuality and pursued relationships with men
He could be quite arrogant, Hamrick explains. Though he worked steadily in regional theatre and had roles in live TV, he was far from a well known actor. He had some bitterness over this. In the company of his theatre friends, he often put on airs and played "star". He was a superb actor with a strong stage presence, but his arrogance may have done him in. He was aware of his talent and let numerous opportunities pass him by as he waited for "them" to call "him". He was too proud to pound the pavement, and he resented agents. He felt they took more than their fair share of his pay while he actually showed up and did the work. He often refused to deal with them. Had he "played the game", his career might well have expanded beyond the limited range of daytime TV.
He was also touchy about money. Hamrick documents his two long term relationships, both of which ended over disagreements about money.
Louis Edmonds was an enormously talented man who was often his own worst enemy. This led to severe battles with alcohol and depression. Hamrick relates all of this, never losing sight of his own love and affection for the man.
In the 1980s, Louis Edmonds watched sadly as his second lover, actor Bryce Holman, and his young nephew both succumbed to AIDS. He had seen he struggle for gay rights grow into a major movement. Perhaps inspired by this, he finally, in his 70s, publicly came out at a
Dark Shadows fan gathering in the mid-1990s. He also appeared in
Next Year in Jerusalem, a gay independent film in 1997, his final role.
His final years were spent battling a variety of illnesses, including throat cancer, which robbed him of his career and ultimately of his life. He bore his illnesses with a quiet dignity. His final days were spent at his beloved country home, The Rookery, tending his garden and being visited by old friends and fans.
Craig Hamrick's
Big Lou is a lovely and loving tribute to a very complicated but talented man. At no time does Hamrick's friendship with Edmonds impair his ability tell the truth about his dear friend. His love for his subject comes through on every page. Hamrick, himself a wide eyed semi-closeted gay man fom Kansas when he first arrived in New York City, is introduced by Edmonds to art, theatre and culture. These memories are lovely to read. It is clear that Louis Edmonds had a profound influence on Craig Hamrick's life.
Illustrated with many fascinating photographs, some from Edmonds' personal collection, some from the theatre archives of the New York City Public Library, the book is a fluidly written easy read.
Big Lou gives a fine, neglected artist his due. Without it, Louis Edmonds may have been nothing more than a vague footnote in theatre and television history.
Thanks to Craig Hamrick, he will not be forgotten.
Big Lou is available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.
Dark Shadows, featuring Louis Edmonds, can be seen weekday mornings on the Sci-Fi Channel, and is available on DVD through MPI Home Video.
by David Nahmod
