1966 Season

[Josette]

hey gang......does anyone recall the 1st season gaff where mitch ryan as burke goes blank on one of his lines and just tells another one of the characters to take it from there......as he walks off the set.......i think it is at the cannery and some character named amos is left to recite ryans line........i am going over the vhs versions from mpi, and i cant seem to locate it.......any help would be appreciated.......btw.....vid caps and wav files from season one are posted on yahoo groups/ds......for all to share

I think it took place in his hotel room.  Several of the workers were there for a meeting.  That might have been the time he was trying to lure them away from the Collins cannery.

[Devlin66]

thanks for the update Josette------i am surprised that scene at the hotel regarding the cannery isnt on the bloopers tape..........something fishy going on?

[Gerard]

Maybe one of the reasons why it didn't make it to the bloopers tape (if our collective memories are serving correctly about what happened) is that the other actors in the scene undoubtedly knew what was happening and carried it on their own, having to try and improvise and ad-lib until back on cue.  Ironically, there are a few very obvious bloopers that, going into we've-got-no-choice-but-to-go-with-the-flow mode, actually made it more realistic.  One was when Elizabeth was on the phone after receiving news of Burke's plane going down in South America, and she momentarily couldn't remember the name of the city of Belem.  She was playing the scene with great embellishment of being nearly hysterical, and just incorporated her temporary memory loss into it, clicking her fingers, ad-libbing:  "Oh, what's the name of that city in Brazil?..........Belem!"  It's just how someone would react when under a great deal of pressure.  And, of course, there are all the Roger bloopers where he ad-libbed a follow-up to a misspoken line.

Gerard

[stefan]

  I was surprised to see his return in 1968 a few months later as Sam Evans.  Perhaps it would have been better to recast him again.

Yeau, what happened there? Maybe he was under stress or something because he certainly seemed distracted in 1795. He did convince me of Sam Evans though and I found him likeable so I would have hated to see him replaced. I especialy thought he was VERY good in the initial Barnabas/Maggie vampire stuff.

[dom]

It could have had something to do with the 'five characters per episode' unwritten rule of production cost that kept him from appearing more often. Perhaps his character was the least important to the plot during this time period, hence his 'non-use'. Just a (non-educated) guess on my part. 

[Patti Feinberg]

Okay...somebody please post pics of both Sams Evans' side by side...I can't remember....

Thanks,

Patti

[Midnite]

Okay...somebody please post pics of both Sams Evans' side by side...I can't remember....

Regarding the original Sam, Dom posted this back in March:

New DS Format

[Philippe Cordier]

I have mixed feelings about the episodes.  IMO they were way too slow moving for my tastes.  I'll have to watch those episodes again.  Dark Shadows is the only Soap Opera that I've ever gotten into.  I have always believed that the show is more exciting when Barnabas is on.  I began watching the show in '68 at the age of 8.

As an adult I like more character driven shows and I especially enjoyed the dynamics between Joan Bennett and Louis Edmonds in the early episodes.  I too believe the writers got carried away with ridiculous plots after Barnabas arrived that probably hurt it's  chances of becoming a longer running soap.  Dark Shadows, I believe had more children watching it than other soaps at the time and children do not have the attention spans of an adult and I'm sure the writers knew that.

I see a lot of you really liked the Phoenix storyline and I didn't at all.   I'll have to watch that one again.

I'm looking at this thread for the first time now and felt compelled to comment on Murph's because nearly every line in it could have been written by me.   

I do like the way the early episodes of the show developed the characters more, but I agree they were quite slow moving.  I've never watched any other soap -- I've tried but haven't been able to stomach more than a handful of episodes of any of them.    DS does capture and hold my interest though, from the very first episode; I guess it's the  whole Gothic atmostphere that makes it unique right from the start.

The development of the supernatural aspects made the show far more interesting, and Frid as Barnabas really "made" the show.

I would encourage Murph to try the Phoenix story line again.  I had never seen that as a child (was probably pre-school) but saw it for the first time as an adult a few years ago when I got cable for the first time upon learning that DS would be re-airing on SciFi.  They started with the Phoenix storyline, and I was entranced -- even spooked by it, as I would watch my tape of the day's episodes in bed just before falling asleep ...

Patti wrote:

Okay...somebody please post pics of both Sams Evans' side by side...I can't remember....

LOL, I couldn't remember either.  Thanks, Midnite, for directing us to Dom's earlier post.  The photos help clarify what everyone's talking about in this thread.  I'd been confused in the past by comments that David Ford couldn't remember his lines and even statements to the effect that his character was made blind so that he could read his lines through sunglasses.  That seems a little far-fetched to me, and it seems puzzling that he would suddenly have developed some sort of amnesia with respect to his lines at this point during the show.  Yet I believe KLS has remarked that Ford couldn't remember his lines and maybe she was even the source of the story that that's why they decided to make the character blind.  (I think KLS sometimes spins a good yarn ...  )

Very strange.  Did Ford go on to success in other acting roles?

I suppose it could have been a temporary problem he had, like Mitch Ryan did before being canned after previous good work on the show.

[ProfStokes]

Very strange.  Did Ford go on to success in other acting roles?

Ford played John Hancock in 1776 on Broadway and film.  Presumably, it was the fast pace and few rehearsals for which DS was famous that proved to be so challenging.

ProfStokes

[Devlin66]

I think David Fords forte was commercial voiceovers for radio and tv......with a script in front of him of course.....

[Patti Feinberg]

I can't believe I haven't thought of this until this a.m. in the shower...but, a big highlight of 1966 is

DR. GUTHRIE!![/b]

IMHO, he was terrific!!

Patti

[Gothick]

David Ford's marriage with Nancy Barrett was on the rocks in 1967-68.  I believe this has been discussed in public sources, but if this is an infringement on the Board regs of not discussing the actors personal lives, hope the Mods will delete this post.

I think Ford had another acting gig in 1968 which is why he suddenly disappeared as Andre.  A lot of the DS actors appear to have worked under verbal agreements rather than written contracts--a situation that is unimaginable in today's world.

Anyway, I always thought the personal dynamics of him and Nancy needing not to be working together on the same show were responsible for his appearances and disappearances, and eventually to his leaving altogether.

A fan who knew the people involved claimed that Nancy herself was going to leave at one point in '68, but Grayson talked her out of it one night over dinner.

G.

[Joeytrom]

David Ford played a character on "Search for Tomorrow" from 1972-1973 named Karl Devlin, who slowly went insane.

I remember DF (in retrospect) as the announcer in a commercial for Time Magazine back in the 70's.  Even now I can hear his voice in that commercial.

[Sandor]

I enjoyed the pre-Barnabas episodes and credit their establishing the appeal of characters like Vicki, Elizabeth, Carolyn, David and Roger . By the time Barnabas arrived, we could suspend our disbelief of the vampire gimmick, as we had grown to care about the human characters, and were intrigued by how this "cousin from England" would interplay in their Gothic world.  Perhaps if the series started out with the supernatural, audiences wouldn't have bought it, because we'd have been preoccupied with the premise, rather than have the leisure to focus on the dysfunctional Collins family, as individuals, whom we grew to know and love in 1966.

I just found a December 1966 TV Guide that shows DARK SHADOWS on at 10:30AM! Its competition was CONCENTRATION game show, the JOHNNY GILBERT Variety Show, reruns of BEVERLY HILLBILLIES or BACHELOR FATHER, and ROMPER ROOM! Ah, the 60's!

As for David Ford (Sam Evans), he popped up on SEARCH FOR TOMORROW in 1973, playing a psychotic, murdering magazine editor named Carl Devlin.  See what happens to people who leave Collinwood??!!

[Joeytrom]

For many years, it was believed that when Sam Evans comes to Collinwood for the first time in the 1966 episodes, Joan Bennett says "Welcome to Hollywood!" instead of "Welcome to Collinwood".

Upon viewing these episodes that has proven to be false.