Oh DEAR.

It looks as if the scenery chewing may have led to dangerous projectile perimeters in that shoot.

Very very scarey!

G.

Cousins,

whilst editing a book record here just now I was very surprised to see this title pop up on my screen:

"I believe I shall die an impenetrable secret": the writings of Elizabeth Barstow Stoddard, by Regula Giovanni (who was born in ... 1966!!!)

Elizabeth Stoddard lived from 1823 to 1902.  The book was published by Peter Lang in New York in 2003.

The title quote sounds like dialogue that would have been uttered by Liz in one of her more desperate moments, perhaps during the 1967 Jason Maguire storyline.

Curious, isn't it?

G.

Thanks for clarifying that, Midnite.  That thing has been bothering me for months now, since I have absolutely no recollection of the gaffe as originally stated.  And I don't think I've watched the episode cited in many years now...

btw, there *are* still episodes of DS I haven't seen, because I don't have a complete collection of the Collectors Series tapes.

G.

Julia: Yes, Barnabas, the title is "Clueless Bachelors: a Woman's Guide to the Really Hardcore Cases," by Miss Helen Gurley Brown.  It's just a little... LIGHT reading... nothing of any PRACTICAL value...

I don't have the energy to make a big deal over this point, but I personally do not see the conflict in both celebrating the "camp" elements of DS AND regarding it as a work of art.  (I have philosophical notions with the concept of "taking something seriously"--the late Johan Huizinga argued back in the 1940s that "play" and the playful attitude have been the true sources of whatever progress we've managed to make in human civilization, and Hakim Bey did a witty update on Huizinga's proposals in his 1980s broadsheets, "TAZ: the Temporary Autonomous Zone."  Also, cf Jack Smith's brilliant essay on the Filmic Apotheosis of Maria Montez which suggests a different way of looking at anything from 1940s spectacle films to 1960s TV shows along lines that subvert our culture's obsessive focus upon hierarchies of excellence and achievement.

I think there is something very subversive about DS that occasionally breaks the surface of the narrative but often is simply lurking amidst the spectacular display of fabulous costumes, performances, and dialogue.  To my mind, this is the key thing that makes DS so unique.  A lot of the energy that was emerging in the off-(off-) Broadway scene in NYC theatre seems to have been feeding into DS.  There are a lot of examples that come to mind--the performances of Erica Fitz, Diana Davila, Elizabeth Eis and some of the other day players as much as the performances by the big swingers (Grayson, Thayer, Selby, Parker, Frid) all of whom HAD been involved in some of the more experimental theatre in NYC.

I think this sort of thing may have been what Nancy Barrett had in mind when she claimed that DS died because it was too "ambitious."  Not just ambitious in terms of constantly switching the direction of the story so as to keep the audience surprised and guessing, but also ambitious in an artistic sense.  I really do think it re-defined daytime TV and was truly cutting edge in several respects.

The period that Luciaphil has been chronicling so brilliantly in her column represents the time when DS was at its most literary, in some ways.  I am looking forward to reading Francis Swann's novel, The Brass Key, to see how much his DS scripts resemble an actualy Gothic novel he wrote.

G.

Quentin:  "Bramwell, I TOLD YOU you were expressly forbidden to use my Staircase through Time to borrow Julia's blow-dryer!  Only *I* am allowed that privilege!"

Barnabas:  "Roger, get your tongue out of there immediately!  I told you *I* have first dibs!"

Well, Stuart Townsend is a real sexpot,so it does indeed sound as if they're going for something that looks a lot more like the X Files than Night Stalker (I personally thought the reputed resemblance between the two series was greatly exaggerated).

Does anybody have a photo of Ms. Union handy?  If she looks like the slinky-and-champagne type, it'll be a clue to the UST (unresolved sexual tension) factor in her partnership with the Townsend character.

G.