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Showing posts with label Alexandra Moltke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alexandra Moltke. Show all posts

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Who can turn the world on with her smile?


Many actresses include the word "modeling" in their biographies, even though the ephemeral nature of the industry makes it difficult to source. The Internet has turned the entire world into a planet of voyeurs detectives, though, and nothing stays hidden for very long anymore. Eventually, even the early modeling careers for such folks as Sharon StoneKeira Knightley and Whitney Houston were brought to light, despite the best intentions of their management.

Even though she was just 21 when she joined the cast of DARK SHADOWS in 1966, Alexandra Moltke's resume was centered on acting, citing stage productions of "The Reluctant Debutante," "I Remember Mama," and "Othello." With the exception of modeling for Vogue when she was four years old, Moltke essentially missed out on the "paying your dues" phase of her acting career.

Near the end of 1967, though, TV Guide offered her the opportunity to correct this professional oversight. In the Dec. 16-22 issue, Moltke was featured on a multi-page spread showing off seasonal fashions. Neal Barr, a contributing photographer for Harper's Bazaar, shot the session. You can see the PETA-unfriendly images below.

For context, this feature was part of an on-going series at TV Guide that (usually) involved up-and-coming actresses. Paula Prentiss was featured in a similar spread in the magazine's final October issue ...


... Claire Bloom modeled for the series in September that year ...


... and Lee Remick appeared in an August issue. That's not bad company.

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Alexandra Moltke in VOGUE, 1949


Today is the birthday of Alexandra Isles, the original “Victoria Winters” on DARK SHADOWS. It’s usually not the kind of occasion I’d recognize here, but a photo crossed my desk involving the former actress that’s just too good to not share.

Above is a photo by Frances McLaughlin-Gill from the April, 1949, issue of Vogue. That’s Isles (then Alexandra Moltke) pictured at far right. The rest of the children in this image are just as interesting. From left are:

  • Actor/author Nat Benchley, the son of author Nathaniel Goddard Benchley and brother of JAWS author, Peter Benchley. He’d go on to play “Det. Augustus Polk” on THE WIRE (among a great many other things);
  • John Steinbeck IV, the son of Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck, who would go on to become a journalist and author; 
  • his brother Thomas Steinbeck, author of 2003’s “Down to a Soundless Sea” and 2011’s “In the Shadow of the Cypress.”
It's nice to see that Alexandra turned out to be such a happy, well-adjusted person given the sketchy characters she grew up with.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Can a 172-year-old vampire find love and happiness?

In 1968, a writer for the Saturday Evening Post spend a week on the New York City sets of DARK SHADOWS. The result was one of the most in-depth pieces written about the show during its prime, though there's still a great deal here that's sure to piss off fans. The tone wanders between wry and condescending, managing to be both honest and spiteful in equal doses. Despite all of this, writer George Fox never really breaks new ground in regards to understanding the appeal of the show. Fox does everyone a disservice by hitting the usual beats found in almost every story written about DARK SHADOWS. Still, it's an interesting read and might still be controversial enough to prompt some discussion more than 40 years after it was originally published.

Note: Following the clues given in the story, it appears Fox was hanging around the DARK SHADOWS studios in May that year. The story was not published until November, around the same time that actor Robert Rodan left the series.

Can a 172-Year-Old Vampire Find Love
and Happiness in a Typical New England Town?
By GEORGE FOX
The Saturday Evening Post
November, 1968

In some ways the situation wasn't unusual for a soap opera. A girl and an older man in the process or eloping had been hurt in an auto accident. However, the condition of the still-unconscious male patient baffled the examining doctors at the hospital. Although he had suffered only a minor head wound and was breathing normally, his veins were almost empty of blood and no heartbeat or pulse could detected. The treatment — massive transfusions — was already under way when the patient's physician and a friend arrived at the emergency ward. "What do you think Will happen to him?" asked the friend in a desperate whisper. "Who can tell?" was the M.D.’s equally tense reply. "After all, no one's ever given massive blood transfusions to a vampire before."

A burst of eerie music is followed by a denture-adhesive commercial, and one more episode of ABC's "continuing suspense drama," Dark Shadows, comes to a cliff-hanging conclusion. "All soaps are basically problem shows," one of the writers says.”'Most deal with issues of tremendous interest to the American housewife. You know, abortion, adultery, adolescent rebellion, drug addiction, stuff like that. Our problem is 'Can Barnabas Collins, a 172-year-old vampire with a guilt complex, find love and happiness in a typical New England town?'"

Seen on ABC at 4 P.M. (E.S.T.) Monday through Friday. Dark Shadows is the top-rated daytime attraction. With females between the ages of 12 and 34. In recent months the show has become something of a national fad. Barnabas Collins board games, posters, Halloween costumes, masks, capes, coloring books and bubble-gum cards are being rushed on the market. One entrepreneur is even preparing Barnabas Collins plastic fangs, adjustable to any juvenile mouth.

Until the character of Barnabas was introduced last year, the program's darkest shadow of all was a cancellation notice lurking in the wings. Surveys made early in 1967 showed that it was being watched in only 2,750,000 homes, as against a whopping 4,480,000 today. The story had originated as a straight "soap" With Gothic trappings — an old dark house on the Maine coast; young governess menaced by unspecified evils, etc. Topping the cast was former movie actress Joan Bennett, the diminutive brunette whose more than 70 film roles had ranged George Arliss' niece in DISRAELI to Elizabeth Taylor's mother in FATHER OF THE BRIDE. "We were really bombing." admits Dan Curtis, the independent producer who packages the show, "so I figured, to hell with it. If I'm going to fail, I’ll at least have a good time. I went wild, tossed in witches and ghosts, you name it. But that vampire made the difference. Two weeks after he came on, the ratings began to climb.”

"That vampire" is, in reality, a 44-year-old Canadian actor named Jonathan Frid, a tall, attractively homely man with a face like a gardening trowel. I first met him in the Dark Shadows studio, a rancid-yellow structure the size of a two-story commercial garage. A warren of cramped dressing rooms and production offices — drenched with antiseptic pale light — fills the top floor. The effect is a little like being trapped in a submarine.

Frid was in full costume: black Inverness cape; long hair plastered down in spiked bangs; tombstone-white skin: large, slightly cruel gray eyes. He was asked if he had any personal theories on why his character had become such a success.

"To be frank, I haven't thought about it much," he said in his somber, dramatic voice. Paradoxically, his off-screen mannerisms — sweeping gestures, eyebrows arching almost to the hairline — are more florid than his acting style. Frid's vampire is restrained almost to the point of rigidity, as if fighting to hold himself back from some dark, nameless act. "There was the fan mail, of course," he went on. "It's up to two thousand letters a week now, mostly from women. They even send me nude pictures of themselves.

"Frid works with a secretary to answer the thousands of letters that pour in each week -- most of them from admiring women."

"I suppose women see Barnabas as a romantic figure because I play him as a lonely, tormented man rather than a Bela Lugosi villain. I bite girls in the neck, but only when my uncontrollable need for blood drives me to It. And I always feel remorseful later. In the story, I was murdered and turned into a vampire by a jealous witch back in 1796. Actually, my main interest is curing my condition. It's even happened occasionally, like the time I was given massive transfusions by mistake. They made me a normal human. Unfortunately, there was a side effect—I actually looked 172 years old. It was either bite girls in the neck again or die of old age …”

The scripts of Dark Shadows are tailored to make Barnabas Collins sympathetic in spite of his more antisocial tendencies. "He does terrible things," says Gordon Russell, one of the writers, "but we always give him a good reason.” An especially vivid example of this philosophy was the demise of the Reverend Mr. Trask. The episode took place during a flashback to the 18th century, detailing the hero's early career as a member of the living dead. The Reverend Mr. Trask, as it happened, was organizing a mass execution of suspected witches at the time. Emerging from his coffin one night. Barnabas learned of the enterprise and immediately denounced it as "superstitious nonsense " (How a man who had been turned a vampire by a witch could be certain the reverend's victims were innocent was never explained.) DARK SHADOWS fans cherish moment when Barnabas trapped the cleric in the basement of an abandoned house and hit him the haughty phrase: "l thought you were a pious hypocrite when I was alive, and I think you're a pious hypocrite now." He then proceeded to wall up Trask in an alcove.

"Dress rehearsal, dress rehearsal," screamed the loudspeaker in Frid's dressing room. "Personally, the success of the show hasn't meant all that much," he said, rising and brushing a spot of talcum powder off the collar of his cape. "l got a raise when I signed a two-year contract, but that's it. The trouble, I guess, is that soaps are rather subterranean. The people you want to impress are working while you're on. Somehow, this sort of thing just isn't real ...”

If Jonathan Frid can't quite come to grips with his offbeat celebrity, it's understandable. Born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, trained in his craft at London’s Royal Academy and the Yale Drama School, he'd spent nearly two decades as one of the hundreds of New York-based actors who, somehow, just never make it. Respected by other professionals, they fill out the years between Broadway roles in regional theaters, touring with road companies, playing small parts in Shakespeare summer festivals.  "l portrayed so many conspirators m Shakespeare's historical plays that even today my only real political allegiance is to the House of York,” Frid says. To find fame and relative fortune as a vampire in a soap opera, his manner hints, is improbable almost to the point of hallucination.

Jonathon Frid, actress E.J. Peaker and Robert Rodan attend a party for the cast of DARK SHADOWS in 1968.
Descending from the neat, sterile confines of the studio's second floor to the bustling, dusty clutter of the taping area is something of a shock. Because of limited space, sets are crammed in one upon another at unexpected angles. A single step takes you from the huge, murky living room of Collinwood — the house around which most of the action revolves — to a sunlit artist's studio, which in turn borders on an ancient graveyard. Through it all move technicians, wheeling their cameras like robot dance partners. The actors — who put in 9-10-11-hour days —sit in odd corners, memorizing their lines, oblivious of the activity around them. The show even has a late shift — stagehands who labor most of the night to erect the sets for the following day's program. The three-man writing staff works in an apartment about 10 blocks from the studio, struggling to keep the scripts at least two weeks ahead of the taping schedule.

The actors talk a lot about wages and working conditions. Daytime serials, some of winch have kept the same character for 18 years, are the closest thing to real job security an actor can find, although the 13-week option clauses add a certain amount of suspense. The week I watched the show, the action revolved around a Frankenstein-type monster, played by a young, six-foot-six-inch actor named Robert Rodan. The role required him to spend most of his time as an inanimate, stitched-together hulk lying on a lab table. Having just come from a talk with the show's writers, I remarked that they were planning to throw him off a cliff in a few months. He sat bolt upright. "Do I get killed?" he said.

Robert Rodan, Grayson Hall and Jonathan Frid.
Other cast members are more casual about their labors. Redheaded Grayson Hall implied that her main reason for staying with the show is professional laziness. A gifted actress with a solid stage-and-screen reputation, she received an Academy Award nomination several years ago for her performance as a Lesbian schoolteacher in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA. "I guess I could have gotten more Hollywood work, she said with an easy laugh, "but it meant living out there and going to the parties and everything. Movie people can't separate an actress from her role. To them I'm still the crazy dyke who chased Sue Lyon all over Mexico. Anyway, this show is comfortable and I get to work with my husband, who's one of the writers.

"I play Dr. Julia Hoffman, a kind of female mad scientist. She's one of the few people who know Barnabas is more than a harmless nut who hates sunlight. Actually, I’m in love with him, and I get jealous as hell because he bites young girls in the neck but refuses to bite me. Middle-aged housewives are always sending me letters saying they understand the situation perfectly."


The girl bitten most often Alexandra Moltke. She plays doe-eyed, virginal Victoria Winters, the show's original protagonist. With three more years to go on her five-year contract, boredom has set in. "Victoria is so dumb," she said with an exasperated grimace. "All I do is stand around saying, ‘I don’t understand what's happening.' Jonathan has hypnotized me into eloping with him, tried to cut off my boyfriend's head to stick on that goofy monster they made, even sent me hundreds of years Into the past during a séance. And I still haven't figured out that he may not be quite normal."

To Joan Bennett, who plays the reclusive mistress of Collinwood, the show is obviously a means of semi-retirement. Although still the only performer given "star" billing, she usually appears only twice a week, at her own request. “I hated the job at first," she admitted in her familiar, tartly suspicious tones. "All that getting up early and eating soup in a paper cup for lunch. But now I don’t mind. After all, poor Jonathan does most of the work. Isn't that amazing about him? Some of it has rubbed off on all of us. A month ago I was In the Midwest, narrating a fashion show, and the teeny-boppers just inundated me. I felt positively like a Beatle.”

Many parents forbid small children to watch the program, less because of the violence (gory scenes usually take place off camera) than because of its odd moral ambiguity. Barnabas is universally accepted by kids as the hero. Barnabas is universally accepted by kids as the hero. Some people apparently get nervous when their children identify with a character who bricks up living people in alcoves. This possibility was mentioned to producer Dan Curtis, a husky, ebullient ex-salesman with one of those suntans that must have been initiated in the cradle. He smiled tolerantly. "We have the only show on the air that kids can accept all the way as make-believe,” he said. "If you watch it regularly, you'll see what I mean. Nobody ever really dies. During the flashback to 1795, we killed off just about the whole cast — and as soon as we returned to 1968, there they there again as their own descendants. If we can't do that, we bring 'em back as ghosts or zombies."

"Frid, as Barnabas Collins, goes over a scene just as the day's shooting begins."
Before leaving, I dropped by to say good-bye to Frid. During the four days I'd followed the shooting, he had been in virtually every scene, a feat requiring countless hours of rehearsal and memorization. "The worst part is that I'm a slow study," he said. "You can't always be looking at the TelePrompTer. The audience notices." Although the concept of DARK SHADOWS seems humorous in print, the actors — Frid, in particular — play it in an intense, realistic style. On Monday, after a weekend's rest, he had delivered his lines with energetic authority. By Thursday, the accumulated strain showed in slurred or misread speeches and ill-timed movements.

"I was awful today." he said. "We never retape, no matter how many fluffs the cast makes, not even when scenery falls over. Costs too much."

It was the first time I'd seen him without makeup, and he looked remarkably the same. His face was still pale and haggard, his eyes shadowed. He collapsed into an armchair. The excessively actorish mannerisms had disappeared, and abruptly I found myself talking to a shy, almost self-depreciating man. "This is the only time I really relax," he said, "when I know I'm not on the next day. You asked me earlier what direction I'd like my career to take, and I couldn't give you an answer. Actually I was trying to keep the day's lines straight in my head. Well, I’d like my own repertory company someplace. I've never been all that ambitious, though I enjoy being a big frog in little pond. The biggest kick I ever had as an actor was playing Richard Ill at a college in Pennsylvania. They really liked it, appreciated what I was trying to do. A show like this pays well enough, but— well, you know …”

As I left, I noticed a dozen or so teen-aged girls patiently waiting for Barnabas Collins to appear. I waved to them as I went out the door and, giggling, they waved back.

Friday, August 7, 2015

CERTAIN HONORABLE MEN: Alexandra Moltke's other TV credit


Alexandra Moltke's acting career wasn't limited to DARK SHADOWS, but it might as well have been.

A few months before she left the series, she appeared on a television movie titled CERTAIN HONORABLE MEN. The film launched Prudential's On Stage series of made-for-television movies, and starred Van Heflin and Peter Fonda. Better yet, it had a screenplay written by Rod Serling.

The movie aired Sept. 12, 1968, on NBC and promptly vanished from the cultural landscape. Despite its pedigree, CERTAIN HONORABLE MEN has essentially been lost to the sands of time. It doesn't appear to have ever been released on video, and what little information I was able to find about the movie was limited to newspaper ephemera and footnotes in books about Serling's career. I can tell you where to find original copies of Serling's drafts of his screenplay, but wasn't able to track down a single photo of it that didn't look like a Rorschach blot. (UPDATE: An OK promotional photo from the telefilm has surfaced. You can see it below.)

Prudential's On Stage is mostly a forgotten relic, as well. The title suggests it was either a live broadcast, or taped live, but online records cast little cast light on the nature of the series.

What's interesting, though, is that the one-time "Victoria Winters" was billed in CERTAIN HONORABLE MEN by her married name, Alexandra Isles. Meanwhile, over at DARK SHADOWS, she was still being credited as "Alexandra Moltke" as late as her final episode ... which was taped about two months after CERTAIN HONORABLE MEN was broadcast.

Below are a handful of 1968 newspaper clippings about the television movies, one of which features a nice caricature of Moltke/Isles in character as secretary "Betty Jo Daly." If you know anything else about the movie (or if you remember watching it) feel free to tell me about it in the comments section below.


Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Clipping: "Collinwood" profiled in TV GUIDE, 1966


Seaview Terrace, the location used for the fictional "Collinwood" of DARK SHADOWS, was profiled in the Dec. 3, 1966, issue of TV GUIDE. Victoria Winters was being menaced by handyman/lunatic Matthew Morgan the week this issue was published, though you won't find any mention of the show's various plot threads mentioned in this photo feature. Instead, the short story touches briefly on the location's history. The real highlight here is a rare color photo of actress Alexandra Moltke in Victoria's bedroom, an image that is contrasted with a photo of a Seaview Terrace window that serves as the set's "exterior."

(Thanks to Bill Branch for the scans!)


Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Clippings: Alexandra Moltke in BEEKMAN PLACE, 1965


Playhouse comedy has globe-trotter
SYRACUSE HERALD-JOURNAL, July 19, 1965

The 20-year-old daughter of a Danish diplomat has a featured role in "Beekman Place," the Eve Arden-Brooks West comedy which opens at the Country Playhouse at 8:30 p.m. today in Henninger High Auditorium.

Alexandra Moltke, plays "Augusta Piper," a kooky British girl who is the daughter of Miss Arden. In real life, she is the offspring of Count Moltke, a member of the permanent mission from Denmark to the UN. Born in Upsala, Sweden, she has lived in Denmark and Ireland prior to coming to New York City with her father. She graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Miss Moltke has appeared on NBC-TV and onstage in "The Reluctant Debutante" and "Othello."

Also featured in "Beekman Place" is Barbara Berjer who plays the wife of Brooks West. She graduated with honors from the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Her Broadway credits are "Tunnel of Love" with Tom
Ewell, "The Best Man" with Melvyn Douglas and Lee Tracy and last season's "Dylan" with Sir Alec Guinness. Off-Broadway audiences h a v e seen her in "Country Girl" and "Separate Tables."

Television claims much of Miss Berjer's time since she has the role of "Claire Cassen" on As the World Turns. Earlier she played running roles in From These Roots and Edge of Night. Nightime viewers have seen her on The Defenders and the old Circle Theater.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Victoria Winters by MILKY MIXER

So, I was in the process of writing up Episode 90 for the DARK SHADOWS DIARY when Blogger went kaput. The site wasn't down long, but I lost half the post before the ship righted itself. I'm going to be away for a few days as I get my nerd on at a comic convention, but wanted to share a few images before I go. These are customized MONSTER HIGH dolls from the Flickr feed of one MILKY MIXER. They're just one more reminder of how we haven't gotten any stylish, fun DARK SHADOWS toys in a while.

See you Monday!


Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Victoria Winters by Bill Branch



Victoria Winters' messy backstory meant she was one of the few leads on DARK SHADOWS that never had a portrait created for her. Barnabas Collins and Angelique Bouchard Blair Rumson Collins Mellencamp both had two, while Maggie Evans/Josette DuPres technically had one.

BILL BRANCH corrected this oversite by creating a portrait of ALEXANDRA MOLTKE as Collinwood's original governess.

"This is a painting of Victoria Winters holding Josette’s Music Box and wearing the dress she wore during the masquerade party," Branch said. "I met Alexandra in the early '90s when she brought her son and guests to Delmonaco’s Restaurant on Wooster Street in New Haven, CT for her son’s Yale graduation party. I recognized her immediately while her party waited to be seated. She was very gracious autographing a notepad, then 20 minutes later signing Kathryn Leigh Scott’s MY SCRAPBOOK MEMORIES. She was fascinated by the book and flipped through it. I was in Heaven to have finally met her since at the time she did not attend Festivals. She was stunning and very sweet."

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Dark Shadows: Week 1


Five episodes down, 1,220 to go.

I don't expect I'll have much of a reason to post weekly recaps of my DARK SHADOWS DIARY entries, but there's enough material archived here concerning the show's 1966 debut that's it's worth a moment to reflect on the beginning of the series. Below are links to my posts about the first five episodes of DARK SHADOWS, as well as links to a variety of newspaper and magazine clippings about the show's early days.

DARK SHADOWS DIARY
Episode 1: Welcome to the Beginning and the End of the World
Episode 2: #1 at The Blue Whale
Episode 3: Conspiracy Theory
Episode 4: The Fear of Darkness
Episode 5: A Ghostly House of Tears

CLASSIC PRESS MATERIAL
Alexandra Moltke In New ABC Series (The Dally Reporter — June 23, 1966)
Vivid Dream Inspires TV's Dark Shadows (The Winnipeg Free Press — March 11, 1967)
Television listings for debut episode of Dark Shadows (June 27, 1966)
From Romantic Lead to Moody Menace (Oct. 6, 1966 interview with Louis Edmonds)
'Dark Shadows' Joins Daytime TV (The Sandusky Register — June 21, 1966)
Joan Bennett talks Dark Shadows (Ruston Daily Leader —Aug. 9, 1966)
1966 Dark Shadows newspaper teaser (June 16, 1966)

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Moltke takes spotlight in Dark Shadows promo story

Alexandra Moltke In New ABC Series
The Dally Reporter, June 23, 1966

Alexandra Moltke, pretty young star of ABC-TV's new romantic suspense series, "Dark Shadows," (premiering Monday, from 3-3:30 p.m., Channel 5), made her acting debut at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts tilting slightly to the left, and with one arm stiffly extended. She was an airplane wing.

Before she graduated in 1965, however, her roles became somewhat more animated. She played featured roles in "The Reluctant Debutante" and "I Remember Mama," drifted languidly as Alexandra In "The Swan," and died the death of Desdemona in "Othello."

Her current role in "Dark Shadows," in which she plays governess Victoria Winters, comes less than a year after a stock tour with Eve Arden in Beekman Place."

By her own admission, Miss Moltke has been play - acting all her life, which began at the end of World War II in Stockholm, Sweden. Three months later, snugly ensconced in a laundry basket and transported via a United States bomber, she arrived with her parents in New York, where the family settled. Her father is Carl Adam Moltke, Special Assistant to the Ambassador from Denmark and her mother is the former Mab Wilson, formerly an editor at Vogue Magazine.

Miss Moltke has spent several summers in her father's native Denmark and in Ireland, her mother's favorite country outside the United States. The rented house in Ireland, surrounded by moors and overlooked by Mount Erigal, inadvertently prepared Alexandra for her involvement in "Dark Shadows," which has as its principal focal point a mysterious and brooding mansion surrounded by correspondingly somber countryside.

Prior to her enrollment at the Academy, with which ABC has a working arrangement to help develop young acting and directing talent for radio and television, Miss Moltke attended the Chapin School in New York. Her acting career at the all - girls school was launched with her portrayal of Joseph in a Christmas play and as the chief inquisitor in a production of St. Joan.

The actress, who lives in Manhattan with her parents, her sister, Vicky,. 20, and a Norfolk Terrier named "Whimsey," is now devoting part of her off - stage time to writing and illustrating a children's novel.
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