I'm really grateful to everyone who has posted about the cuts in the episodes on DVD.  If I ever do get the DVD's, I will be sure to hang onto my videos as well, since MPI didn't bother paying someone to "correct" those!!!!!

I shudder to think what further cuts await in future volumes...

Oh, I remember Ashenrider very well!  He was charming and talented.  Another one from  the old days I miss is Marcos.  That guy was a real sweetheart.

G.

Agree that the mention of Gerard's "wife" in that scene was darling Joan making one of her slips.  I'll never forget Nancy Barrett telling me of how Joan would turn to her while they were doing one of their scenes in the drawing room and there would be TERROR in her eyes because she had dried on her lines again...

I'll make a vague stab and say that Gerard was "bad, not evil" (to paraphrase the Shangri-las) before his encounter with a certain bodiless head (!).  There were actually a lot of young men like Gerard Stiles running around the world in the 1830s.  And I suppose that there still are a lot of them today, only instead of elegant bows and fancy suits, they tend to inhabit a world of "gangsta chic."

As for Mrs. Julia Collins in PT, if you watch the story, there is a long-running intimation that Julia is Melanie's real Mother--you have to watch to find out, of course!

Steve

People age at different rates.  I know people around my age (mid 40s) who look and act 20 years older than me, in some cases due to debilitating ailments.  I have a dear friend who is a year younger than me.  She's acted like an old lady since I first knew her back in the late 1980s, and now speaks of herself as a "crone in training."

The real problem is with the info given in 1968 about Ben dying in 1830.  But of course, in 1967 the events with Barnabas and Josette were originally described as happening around 1832. So Dark Shadows has kind of a set pattern of just "correcting" its own history.

With the 1840 storyline, the biggest problem of all is that NONE of the material revealed about the period in the immediately preceding 1970 story turns out to be relevant to what's going on when Julia arrives. Some months down the line, when Stokes shows up, she has to try to explain what's been going on to him.  The results are semi-comical.  I think Grayson and Thayer must have just looked at one another doing the read through and agreed to go for a stiff drink at the Brittany du Soir once they were done with THAT day's taping!

G.

All I'll say in regard to this topic is that at this stage in the game, and for some years at this point, "reality" and "Dark Shadows" do not really exist in the same space-time continuum.  At all.

It's fascinating going back to 1966 and seeing how relentlessly realistic the early scripts by Art Wallace and Francis Swann were.

I was delighted recently when discussing the series with a friend who watched it way back during the original Sixties broadcast.  He told me he wanted to see tapes of the early shows but commented, "after a couple of years, it really got rather ... Rococo."  I hooted with laughter at that turn of phrase. So apt.

G.

If it hasn't been posted on the link Nicky gave above, you can read it here:

http://bboard.scifi.com/bboard/browse.cgi/1/1/1231/136?pnum=1

Bette, your avatar comment makes me scream!

hugs,  Steve

Gerard, perhaps some jasmine perfume will help remind you of your lost love.  And why not try playing a pretty tune on this sweet little music box?

A friend told me that when the current run is finished, Sci Fi is going to start again from Episode 1. I really hope that's the case.  I noticed more missing episodes on my tapes from 1966, and I want to see all those shows--and that includes some of KLS' finest moments on the series!

G.

Hi Claude, have you ever seen the late 1950s gang drama, The Violators?  I'd love to see that one.  And Pretty Poison sounds like a real gem.  Unfortunately it does not seem to have been released on VHS.

At one Festival, they played this anthology tape of scenes by DS actors who had passed over in both DS and non-DS roles.   (I honestly can't recall what they showed for The Divine One--NotI, probably.)  For Thayer, they ran the clip of his wonderful appearance on that episode of Harry O, and for Clarice, they showed an emotional scene where she was giving testimony in a courtroom.  I always wondered whether that might have been a clip from The Violators. At the time, I thought it was an episode of Perry Mason, but then a nice friend alerted me that Clarice never appeared on that show.

G.

Wow, MB, what a FABULOUS farewell salute to Clarice!  I've been watching 1966 episodes in the past weeks and really enjoying her performance.  Unfortunately, I don't have what I think must be her very first episode, which I believe had her visiting Burke Devlin immediately after Bill Malloy's death--I'll have to check the DS Memories episode guide to see if that is the case.

That scene with her and Blair was so moody and evocative.  Mrs. J telling Blair she is convinced that there is a curse on Collinwood.  It's the same episode in which Julia comes staggering in from her little constitutional in the woods moaning for Tom... one of the top ten episodes of all DS, in my book.  Grayson and Joan had some fabulous scenes in that, as well...

As for why Clarice left, I'm not sure that she had a contract for DS after Minerva's death in 1897.  She only had a couple of episodes during Leviathan, nothing in Parallel Time (she would've been great casting for Hannah Stokes--I wonder whether she was simply unavailable at that point), and then that wonderful string of episodes in 1995.

I don't know when she started working on Secret Storm.  Around this time, as well, she began her new career as a writer, in which she found a great deal of success.

There is a letter from her in that fan-published book of letters from the DS actors to fans.  She thanks whoever had written to her and asks if fans can write in asking for more of Mrs. Johnson... kind of breaks my heart to read that.

G.