Wow.  If I trusted the WB suits AT ALL, I'd be very happy right now. Still, this does sound promising.

G.

Hey Taeylor,

I'm a HUGE fan of Leviathan.  It is my second favorite storyline (second only to the Cassandra Collins story in 1968 which was when I started watching, so it will always have pride of place in my heart).  I'm a major Julia Hoffman fan and I love all the fun stuff they gave Grayson to do in this, especially in the first two months of it.  It kind of went downhill rapidly after that, I think because Dan Curtis ordered them to wrap it up in a hurry because of all the hate mail the studio was receiving about it.

In my opinion the real reason why fans back then hated this storyline was because people could not accept Barnabas as a bad guy.  Fans also complained that there were two many scenes "down at that weird antique shop" but IMO the scenes at the shop are among the highlights of the story because Sy created such a wonderful atmosphere in there.

I think DC kept wanting to "push the envelope" with the show.  The original Barnabas storyline in '67 was quite outrageous by the standards of daytime television back then.  I believe that DS was the first soap opera as well to feature shirtless male stars (Don Briscoe, Joel Crothers, David Selby).  With Leviathan and its Lovecraftian overtones (really far more Gothic than sci-fi, despite what some critics and fan commentators have written), there was a perception that the series had gone too far and alienated its fan base.  You will notice that the PT 1970 story which followed it was much more "traditional" in certain ways (I'm a huge fan of that one, as well, btw).

cheers, G.

Ah, but Roger Collins wore HIS ascots "with a difference"!

I'm fascinated by the notion of (RT) Roger Collins as a closet homosexual.  It would actually explain a lot about the character.  In some ways he is very much in the vein of stereotypical "killer queens" in the more lurid 1950s paperback--the sort that came along in between Gore Vidal's "The city and the pillar" (1948) and John Rechy's "City of Night" (1963) (James Barr's "Quatrefoil" published in 1950, evokes the "twilight world" of closeted gay men of that time with a vivid clarity).  I am thinking now particularly of the original concept of Roger as seen in the first year of the series.  With Jason's appearance on the scene, Roger segues more into the snooty rural country club squire type--the kind who would characterize the rough trade his niece was dating as a "cheap, insufferable pig!"  (lol)  I always wondered whether Roger got written out of the Summer of 1970 storyline simply because the writers had run out of things for him to do.  I would guess that the real reason is that Louis Edmonds was doing theatre and needed a break.

The gay man who desires the glamorous woman of wiles appears most obviously in Laura, but in All about Eve the character of Addison is the same, and I still find his scene where he claims "Eve Evil, little Miss Evil" for his very own unutterably delicious.  In my younger days I found this scene just plain confusing because, like Eve herself, I couldn't imagine what Addison was actually planning to DO with her.  Presumably, become a trophy wife who would put paid to those persistent rumors regarding his true nature.

Fascinating speculations in this thread...

G.

Warmest welcome to our beloved Marie!  That's so nice of you to stop by.

We wish you all very best with your current projects.  You know you are a fan favorite!

cheers, Steve
who will never quite forget the day Professor Stokes announced that Eve was the reincarnation of "the most eee-vil woman who ever lived"!

MSC, you always seem to choose scenes for these posts that I absolutely ADORE!  That scene between Burke and Miss Hoffman is better than HEROIN (not that I know what Heroin is like, but if I did, it would be BETTAH).  It's a Land-o-Lakes moment like two sticks of BUTTAH lashed together in a rough-hewn manner!

I love how Miss Hoffman gets treated by Burke "just like one of the boys" and the two of them discuss the future of his courtship with Vicki.  The dialogue may be occasionally banal but the way the two actors play this scene is absolutely priceless.

As for the firetrap thing--I've heard Marie Wallace tell the story more than once about how, in one of the scenes where Eve travelled back in time to revisit her 18th century life as Danielle Roget, her wig caught on fire and Irene Hamalain had to frantically rush in and douse the flames.

G.

I personally blame the writers and directors for a lot of the clumsiness, one-note performances and odd (or, in some cases TOTALLY LACKING) transitions in the 1991 series.  From what I can recall of the circumstances of the time (I was actually living in China when it was being produced and broadcast so this is all very second-hand), I suspect that the real villains were some of the NBC network supremos--"the suits"--who, I seem to have heard, kept interfering and micro-managing.  I know I read somewhere that they were the ones who demanded that during the 1790 story, they keep switching back to show what was going on in 1991.  That leaves even less time to work out an already crowded & compressed storyline for 1790.

Just to cite a specific example--I just re-watched episode 6 and there's a scene at the beginning of the show between Willie and Carolyn that is a re-staging of a scene originally played in the film, house of Dark Shadows.  In the 1991 version, neither actor appears to have been directed, and Barbara Blackburn, who plays Carolyn, doesn't seem to be doing anything at all--literally sleepwalking through the scene.  And not in a way that relates to what is supposed to be happening.

At the end of this episode, I find it clumsy, poorly paced and a complete mood-breaker when Joseph Gordon-Leavitt as David comes into the room and makes his little announcement.  That scene desperately needed a rewrite but, as seems to have often been the case, they probably ran out of time.

I know that the actors cast in the series were an exceptionally talented group.  I have seen Lysette Anthony in other work produced in England and know she has chops.  I really feel sorry for her at the embarrassing antics she had to put on as Angelique--it's really at the level of cheap panto.  But at least, from what I can recall from an interview I saw from her at the time, she had fun doing it.

G.

Yeah, in those first shows, there's kind of a Miss Havishamesque quality to the fact that Liz, who has not left the house in 18 years, is dressed as if to attend Bobby Darin's big concert in the Rainbow Room at Caesar's Palace.

It's too bad we didn't get to see, oh, say, Liz grilling frankfurters at the stove in full tiara 'do, drop earrings, stunning cocktail gown and high heels, glaring with a coldly imperious look in her eyes as she turns the recalcitrant franks.

ROGER:  Liz, why do the hot dogs have to ALWAYS be well done?

LIZ:  Because I CHOOSE to cook them so!

G.