It's hard to limit myself to five, but I'll give it a shot:

(1)  Grayson Hall as Hoffman, the housekeeper in 1970 Parallel Time.  An amazingly subtle and well-crafted characterization, and very different from the rest of her work on DS.

(2)  Thayer David as Count Petofi.  Bravura acting at its most unforgettable.  I loved the subtlety with which Thayer suggested the Count's vulnerability beneath the mantle of arrogant superiority with which he enveloped himself.

(3)  Lara Parker as Cassandra Collins.  Too bad Tammy Wynette didn't record a theme song for Mrs Roger Collins: B-I-T-C-H!

(4)  Humbert Allen Astredo as Nicholas Blair.  Proving that evil is so much more fascinating to watch than good.

(5)  Nancy Barrett as Charity Trask possessed by the spirit of Pansy Faye.  Just ... superb.

There are MANY others but before I have time to think of them, I give honorary mention to Joan Bennett's 1966-67 work as Liz, and Jonathan Frid's extraordinary performance as Barnabas--both iconic characterizations that were THE faces of Dark Shadows at the time and in our memories for many, many years.

G.

Belated Birthday love to the Divine One!  I love to think of her dutifully signing an autograph, then turning to her son and commenting:  "that and a dime will get you a ride on the New York subway!"

xo G.

The same friend also pointed me towards this site: WARNING, ADULT content (mostly female nudity but they ARE paintings)
http://astrocat.com/samaras/paintings.html

There are several exposed breasts or, as Sister Wendy used to say, "breathtth."

I just love the paintings of Robin and Kato and Morticia and Lily.  Gorgeous!

Moderators, please feel free to delete this if deemed inappropriate to our boards. Thanks.

G.

Dear fans, earlier today a friend was kind enough to send me this link to a website promoting a show last summer by Pop Artist Glenn Barr:

http://www.mmoderngallery.com/galleries/25_glenn_barr/

If you scroll down the menu on the lefthand side box, look for "Satan in High Heels" and the main panel on the right will disolay a charming, early Sixties exploitation-style portrait of our very own Grayson Hall in her role in the cult 1962 Times Square feature film.

For fans of the movie, the painting titled "Stacey" depicts Meg Myles (later known for her work on soap operas as well) in her role in Satan in High Heels.

Enjoy!

Gothick

It sounds to me as if a "wiki" is a combination between a chatgroup or e-list (like the yahoogroups) AND a blog--perhaps like an affinity group on LiveJournal.  From what you're saying, Proudhug, it's as much a social thing, a sharing of fannish enthusiasm, as it is an attempt to create a metatextual artifact focused around a specific topic (Dark Shadows).

I would think that the people who would be into this would be people who do other "wiki" projects.  I'm obviously completely unfamiliar with those.

If you want to post links to other projects to give me a better idea of what you have in mind, that might help!

Good luck!

G.

I am personally not at all enamoured of the idea that I would write something for this, then have some other individual go in and "edit" it with a lot of mistakes and bad writing.  (You have to be aware that those of us who have been here for awhile have seen a lot of misiinformation about this series aired--some of it was in the DS entry in Wikipedia the last time I looked.)

So, this is not for me, but I hope you and your friends enjoy it.  And, obviously, hope to see you posting more on this board.

Long live Dark Shadows!

G.

This is just my personal opinion, and I'm not criticizing anyone intentionally by stating it, but I really do not think fans should be expected to purchase sub-par products or deliberately mangled prints of DS material in the altruistic interest of "supporting the DS franchise."

I also want to issue a plea for fans to wait until we get hands-on reviews of the actual product from the trade sites before proceeding to write letters of complaint.

If you want to take the time to write a letter, I suggest sending it via snail mail. It may have changed but I remember being told back in the 1990s that studio offices took snail mail letters much more seriously than stuff received online, for whatever reason.

Finally, I don't see why Warners would take the sales of the itty-bitty 1991 series set more seriously than those of the massively plentiful MPI sets, which seem to be doing very well--or at least getting an awful lot of exposure in trade sites on the Internet!

but then, I do not pretend to know what goes on inside the head of today's studio executive--far from it!

G.