What the f*ck is ROAR LIKE A DOVE?

If the 1964 production of ROAR LIKE A DOVE is remembered for anything today, it's for the shirttail presence of Jonathan Frid.

In the days following the debut as vampire Barnabas Collins on DARK SHADOWS, the public was clamoring to know about the actor behind the role. A photo of a bearded Frid was widely circulated at the time, and was credited to his appearance in ROAR LIKE A DOVE. Frid's association with the production was actually a lot less glamorous, though. In the playbill, his lead credit is as assistant stage manager.

ROAR was directed by Cyril Ritchard, best known for his turns on stage as Captain Hook in PETER PAN. The star of the show was Betsy Palmer,who would appear opposite David Selby in a 1976 production of THE ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE.

Technically, Frid was a member of the cast, and was an understudy for three roles in the play. The press materials never bothered to mention which role the promotional photo depicted, but it didn't really matter by 1967. The production was shut down after just 20 performances, closing June 6, 1964. The short run probably gave Frid few opportunities to act. Charlie Ruggles, who provided the voice of Aesop for the "Aesop & Son" feature on THE ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE SHOW, was also there.

Jessie Royce Landis, Betsy Palmer and Charlie Ruggles in rehearsal for ROAR LIKE A DOVE, 1964.

The press was not kind to ROAR LIKE A DOVE. "The program of Leslie Storm's 'Roar Like a Dove' says that the comedy ran three years in London; it ran damn near that long this evening in the Booth Theatre," wrote John Chapman, a drama critic for the New York Daily News. History has continued to be unkind to the production, with Playbill Vault providing this hi-larious summary for the comedy: "A Scottish nobleman's American wife refuses to try to conceive a son with him after they have had six daughters." 

David Selby in THE ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE, 1976

Betsy Palmer and David Selby in the 1976 performance of THE ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE.

THE ECCENTRICITIES OF A NIGHTINGALE was a revised production of a TENNESSEE WILLIAMS play originally titled SUMMER AND SMOKE. If you're familiar with the works of Williams, you can probably guess many of the themes and situations featured in the story: Set in Mississippi in the early 20th century, NIGHTINGALE centers on a tumultuous romance between an unmarried minister's daughter and a roguish young doctor. I'm not familiar with the story, but I expect it ends badly for all involved.

New York Times art by Al Herschfeld.

The play was adapted at least twice in 1976, once as a TV movie with future Dracula FRANK LANGELLA, and another on Broadway with DAVID SELBY and BETSY PALMER. ("It) was the last show that Tennessee Williams had anything to do with while he was still alive, and it was beautiful working with him," Palmer told the website ICONS OF FRIGHT. Even though she has a long and varied acting career that spans several decades, Palmer is probably best known to audiences today as Pamela Vorhees in the original FRIDAY THE 13th.

(Interestingly, PALMER previously appeared in the 1964 play, ROAR LIKE A DOVE, which featured one JONATHAN FRID as an assistant stage manager and understudy to several lead roles.)

In his book MY SHADOWED PAST, Selby said SUMMER AND SMOKE had been subjected to so many revisions that NIGHTINGALE "was really a new play."

"I don't see how you could help loving that man," Selby said of Tennessee Williams. "I did love him. One night in Los Angeles, at the opening of his play OUT CRY, Tennessee greeted me with a big wet kiss on the lips. I returned it -- grateful to have had him, if only briefly, in my life."

NIGHTINGALE lasted only 28 performances, a number which includes four previews. I was unable to find any contemporary reviews of the production, but the creator of the blog RICK ON THEATER had this to say about the production:

The Broadway première had something of a curious history itself. Betsy Palmer and David Selby headed the cast of a summer-stock production of Eccentricities. Originally directed by Jeffrey Chambers, this production had problems with its design, direction, and some of the supporting cast. Neal Du Brock, Executive Director of the Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, took over for the last month of the tour. “The play was being buried under props and scenery,” Du Brock complained. He repackaged the production with the same stars but replaced half the supporting cast and remounted the production at the Studio Arena from 8 October to 6 November 1976. Du Brock brought in Edwin Sherin to replace Chambers and a Broadway-quality design team to redo the sets and costumes. When he turned the direction over to Sherin, Du Brock ordered, “[T]hrow it all out and do it on an empty stage.” The producer wanted “to let the actors speak and not have all that other stuff cluttering things up,” and the result was a spare, almost minimalist production. Sherin, harking back to his 1968 attempt on Long Island, averred, “I think some vibrations are set off, and the play’s effects are felt years and years later.”

Jonathan Frid discusses "vampiring for profit and fun," 1968 newspaper interview

"Barnabas" Is a Bloody Matinee Idol Now
The Titusville Herald, July 1, 1968

By MEL HEIMER

THE ACTING wasp stings you when you're at university in your native Canada; then you study at the Royal Academy in London, you do repertory all through England, you are graduated as a directing major from Yale drama school, you do Shakespeare with Katharine Hepburn—and what do you have, finally?

What you have is the juicy part on a. daytime TV soap, opera of—a vampire.

The turn of events is a little confusing to Jonathan Frid, a good-looking mid-40s Canadian who is "Barnabas Collins," the 175-year-old bloodsucker who passes himself off as a Visiting cousin from England to one of the principals on'"Dark Shadows," the ABC-TV serial telecast five times a week to more than six million rapt women and schoolkids munching their mid-afternoon milk and cookies.

However, "I've played, villains before," says Frid, a legitimate professional—and while he isn't sure whether to make a big thing out of vampirism and become the latter-day Bela Lugosi, the fact is, he plays Barnabas for all he's worth. "I always try to play against the villainy of the character," he dissects. "By adding a trace.of humanity, you give the character more dimension and thus make it more believable."
Or, in brief, Barnabas isn't all bad. Only 99 percent.

HIS CHILLING performances, complete with fangs, have resulted in one of those American phenomena — immense popularity with the masses of a good, solid, no-good rat of a character. In one year, Jonathan Frid fan clubs have mushroomed everywhere, he gets more than 700 letters a. week and he just signed to bare his teeth for two more years on the series, which stars the still-lovely Joan Bennett.

Jonathan accepts the good luck with surprise and pleasure. "I came on the show for three 'weeks originally," he says. "That was all the part was supposed to run." But when America's housewives fell in love with the genial ghoul, he was written, in more or less permanently. As one Carmichael, Calif., woman- wrote him: There is no escape from, the burning' light you create! In simple words, you could bite ME anytime, for I would not be able to resist your fatal charms!"

A SIX-FOOT bachelor with hazel eyes and brown hair, Frid has a sound acting background. He studied radio announcing at a Toronto school then, operated, by Lorne Greene, he did all this Shakespearean festival stuff and four years ago he was on Broadway in the British import, "Roar Like a Dove," with Charlie Ruggles and Betsy Palmer. Nor is he new at soap opera; in 1962 be was a psychiatrist in "As the World Turns."

Vampiring for profit and fun, he explains, is no snap, "it have us social life at all," Jonathan says. "I  go home at night and work two or three hours on the script, and get up at 6:30 or 7 and work for an hour over breakfast before going to the studio. There, I work on the script all day long, when I'm not rehearsing."

This sombre Zacherly of the housewives' set got some good practice in villainy by playing Richard III—and we all know what a dirty rat. He allegedly was—at the San Diego, Calif. National Theater. He tempered Richard's rantings, too. "I began to see that he did have a right to the throne and this lent the character some humanity," says Jonathan, who soft-pedaled the way Dickie knocked off every one in his path.

Meanwhile, the mail pours in. "He gets me too excited, I could smoke a pack of cigarettes just watching him," one woman penned. "I just sit there drooling over you," a 15-year-old New Tork girl wrote.

"It makes you, wonder about people," Jonathan Frid says with a smile, baring his fangs slightly.