Thanks for such an intimate account.  It's amazing that he enjoys such stamina at such an age!  I guess it is the product of all that healthy living.

You and the others who worked on this event deserve a big round of applause of your own!

Best, Steve

Michael, I hadn't heard about the new book, Dark Shadows: The First Year, and it sounds stunning!  Thanks so much for quoting that description of the Great House and the grounds.  I just love stuff like this.

Technically speaking, "the first year" includes the intro of Barnabas and the arrival of a certain meddlesome doctor on the scene... but I would guess that this book ends with the disappearance of Laura Collins and the arrival of Jason Maguire.

I had heard that fan vendors were excluded from this event which no doubt accounts for the lack of anything new to buy.  In theory, I would have loved to have come out for Saturday, but I had a very full weekend here trying to get my new house organized and being taken out to lunch by various kind friends who were concerned that I might be getting a little loopy surrounded by my "orgy of hatboxes."

cheers, Steve

Dear Housefly,

this story was told in the late Craig Hamrick's biography of Mr. Edmonds, BIG LOU.  There really weren't many more details beyond what was reported on the IMDB page, however.  I think there are other anecdotes regarding Louis' dedication to Nature in ALL its marvelous forms and manifestations... including nudity!

I have the original printing of BIG LOU, but I believe that before he passed away, Craig saw an enlarged edition through the press with more photographs and new material.  Maybe another fan here will post the details.  The book is well worth reading!

cheers, Gothick

There was a thread on here recently where the topic of sound was discussed.  Apparently the age of the master tapes has resulted in some rather strange phenomena ... such as bleedthrough on the soundtrack, or, in some cases, a pre-echo of the dialogue.  I haven't noticed the echo at the end but I would imagine it has the same explanation--age of the master materials.

G.

Hi Miranda,

I believe Delilah was supposed to be Euphemia's daughter.  Grayson mentions on the Grayson Gathering tape that a line where she was supposed to say "to hell with her!" in reference to Delilah was cut because it was considered bad form for a mother to say such a thing about her own daughter.

Just think of any Jerry Springer episode of the last ten years in this regard and it will tell you what a different world that was, even as "recently" as 1982...

G.

Some years ago I had the privilege of speaking to one of the women who helped run Grayson's last fan club (that I am aware of--I'm thinking of the group that published the zine Shades of Grayson).  She thought that Grayson held back from attending the Festivals because she had been in at least one mob-scene level crowd at a Frid appearance in the late Sixties and was afraid of her personal safety in the context of crazy crowd behavior.  Grayson had a number of falls and accidents in later life and may have suffered from lowered bone density (we've speculated about this but I don't believe it has ever been confirmed).  At the premiere of Happy End, she went on with her arm in a sling--pretty amazing!  She was a firm believer in "the show must go on."

In an interview with a fan done while she was appearing in the play The Suicide (opposite Derek Jacobi) in '80, he asks her if she'd like to come to a DS Festival and she playfully responds:  "Why not?  We'll go together."

There was a special dinner organized by a few fans that around fifteen people attended in 1982.  It was known as the Grayson Gathering.  Thankfully the event was tape recorded so posterity does not have to imagine Grayson telling all the witty stories and bantering away with her fans.  On that occasion, she spoke very lovingly of Jonathan Frid and called him "a dear man."  I think in '73 when the other tape to which reference has been made here, Grayson and Sam were still smarting from Frid's refusal at nearly the last minute to do the second DS feature film, necessitating a complete re-tooling of the concept for the film.  In the event, I think that NoDS was a more interesting concept--as a film--than a second Barnabas story would have been.  Heresy?  Perhaps.  But it's my opinion.  It helps of course that I think of Carlotta as one of Grayson's most fabulous roles.

cheers, G.

I had a horrifying revelation last night, thinking about this cassette... somewhere out there on tape there is, or at least used to be, passages where Mr. Frid was impersonating Julia.

I think I would crawl over broken glass in the alleyway behind Jacque's (a notorious tranny bar in Boston patronized mostly by married men from the outer surburbs)  to hear Mr. Frid hoasely intoning: "B-B-B-Barnabas!!!!"

G.

Oh, I miss her so much, and yet, whenever I put on Satan in High Heels, or Night of the Iguana, or one of her stratospherically-megafabulous Magda episodes, it's as if she's never gone.  Her flame still burns brightly in my heart.

I love the moment in Night of DS when her character says to Selby's:  "We're rare people, you and I..."  Rarest of the rare!

Since I have a firm belief in reincarnation I love the thought of a fierce young woman with curly dark red hair, "no boobs, no bottom," raspy Bankhead basso voice and attitude that could slice titanium out terrorizing the world... off in the distance I hear her unforgettable, rollicking laughter.

G.