Every Sunday the "The New York Times" has a column called "Metropolitan Diary" and people send in stories of interesting, humorous, strange events in the city. Missing out on the library for a year or more at the start of the pandemic, I eventually started looking up the papers I had missed. After making a lot of progress, I missed some time, and now am about 11 months behind the present.
I was just reading the "Metropolitan Diary" for September 26, 2021 and found the following:
"Encounter With a Vampire
DEAR DIARY:
It was the 1960s, and I was commuting from New Jersey into the city for acting classes and auditions. To earn some money, I took a job selling men’s toiletries at Stern’s department store on 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue.
Besides the mild headaches I got from smelling so much cologne, the job had its perks. So many interesting people would pass by that I never got bored.
One day, a man in a cape came sweeping through the aisles and stopped at my counter. It was the actor Jonathan Frid in his role as Barnabas Collins.
Someone with him asked if I would like to take some publicity pictures with daytime TV’s resident vampire.
Yes, I said immediately.
Mr. Frid bared his fangs. I was told to brandish a bottle of perfume and act scared.
I tried not to laugh. (Some actress!)
One day years later, my acting career long dead and buried, I happened to think of the encounter and to wonder whether copies of the pictures existed.
I called ABC’s publicity department, and I soon had a couple of 8x10 glossies of me and the star of “Dark Shadows” in the men’s toiletries department at Stern’s.
JANET KOLSTEIN"
