The final image in today's Robservation slideshow includes a shot from what I recall as having been Clarice Blackburn's final appearance on the series.  It seems fitting somehow that what we are shown is a moment from a scene with Grayson; I always thought the two actresses had wonderful chemistry onscreen whenever they worked together.

It's nice to reflect that Clarice's debut on the series as Sarah Johnson in 1966 will be coming up soon, I believe (I may have missed it already).  Maybe there'll be a shot of her handing Maggie Evans a dime and saying something like "Thank you dear; you've been very kind.  Now, don't spend it all in one place."  Maggie's expression at that moment is really worth the price of admission...

G.

My understanding has always been that if you're swapping copies of stuff for free with buddies, it comes under the rubric of fair use.  I guess technically you would have to go into a court of law with the whole shebang though to try and get a decision on that and each case would have its own dynamics.

Is Frid going to do his own releases of the bootleg stage recordings?

G.

Thanks mscbryk for the notes about Josette's frock.  Fascinating!

G.

Thanks for sharing that image here, MB.  I agree about the atmospheric use of shadowy lighting and chiaroscuro on the show.  If I'm remembering correctly, it was very unusual to have such lighting effects on a soap opera in 1966--another area in which the series production team pioneered.

It's not quite as dramatic but I do love today's shot from episode 314 of Julia and Willie.  It underlines how subtly these two actors played many of their scenes together.  I always love watching them do their thing on the show.

G.

Hi Bryce, we've all noticed what you're saying.  When I first started watching the show in the Sixties, I found the putative resemblance of Maggie to Josette's portrait very puzzling because the two simply do not look at all alike.  I think the portrait may have been a thrift-shop purchase which also seems to have been the case for the "Isaac Collins" portrait and some of the other "ancestral" (or is that "incestral" since we just enjoyed a wonderful image of Louis doing that line) portraits in the Great House.

My least favorite thing with Josette's portrait was when during one of the last storylines the date 1797 was added to the portrait in garish red paint.  It was so awful it practically looked like vandalism.

There's another thread from recent days here where fans talk about how in the original 1967 storyline, Barnabas did not actually believe Maggie to be the reincarnation of Josette; he simply wanted to brainwash her into his new "Josette."  When Maggie didn't work out, he turned to Vicki.  I think the original storyline was heavily influenced by a 1965 noirish film from England called The Collector. 

So, there actually wasn't supposed to be a resemblance between Maggie and the portrait--and the original story had Barnabas and Josette's doomed love affair taking place in the 1830s which accounts for why the clothing on Josette doesn't look 18th century in the portrait.

Of course, after they rewrote the storyline to have Josette living in the 1790s and portrayed by KLS, fans understandably got the impression that there was a link between Josette and Maggie that existed in objective reality, not just a deluded psychotic fantasy in the brain of the more than half mad Barnabas.  (In those scenes when he is holding Maggie prisoner and terrorizing her emotionally, I swear it is some of the creepiest material ever presented on television--both Frid and KLS do a great job with this unsavory tale--spinechilling!)

G.

Love the two-shot of Stokes and Julia from episode 835 (1969) posted on Robservations today in the slideshow (you have to click all the way through the arrows to get to it).  Not only is it an atmospheric shot of the two (although the lighting and angle could be improved for Stokes), it somehow sums up a lot of what so fascinated me about the series back in the day.

G.

Glad I was able to catch tonight's exquisite, mystical portrait of Carlotta Drake in the NoDS slide show.  I used a very similar shot from this scene in a collage I did in Grayson's honor last year.

Also love the snap (and the dress she's wearing) featured immediately above.  One year, I think it was 1999 or 2000, the DS Festival calendar had a gorgeous still of Grayson from that scene--it was a shot or a moment that wasn't used in the final edit of the movie.  I've always wanted to have that picture framed because it just captures Grayson so beautifully.

Off on vay-kay and unplugging from the Internet for a week--enjoy Dark Shadows, everybody!

cheers, Gothick

Not making any comment at all on the quality of Jonathan Frid's performance as Barnabas (which I think was extraordinary) but can we please move beyond the myth that he "rescued a failing show"?  From posts shared here long ago, I recall that the ratings were pretty healthy during the Laura Collins Phoenix story and on into the run-up to the introduction of Barnabas.  I think the dramatic spike happened in 1968--"that year of insanity" as people on the ground at the time remembered it.  Or am I wrong?

I think a lot of actors don't care about videos of public appearances because they regard the distribution of same as free publicity.  That clearly isn't the case here.

G.