Dark Shadows returns to Sleepy Hollow ...

This year is the 200th anniversary of Washington Irving’s classic American ghost story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." In October, the Sleepy Hollow Film Festival will be celebrating the story's artistic legacy ... and they'll be doing it in a big, big way.

SHIFF has so many activities planed for the weekend of Oct. 10-13 that I'm not even going to attempt to summarize them all here. (You can sort through the details at the festival's official website, sleepyhollowfilmfest.com.) It's worth noting that Dana Gould is bringing his live Plan 9 from Outer Space show (and Bob Goldthwait!) to the festival, but there will also be a showcase for Dark Shadows that weekend. Both House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows were shot in Tarrytown, New York, and the nearby Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, and the Dark Shadows Festival frequently set up shop in Tarrytown over the years.

To celebrate Collinsport's connection to the Washington Irving tale, Jim Pierson, longtime curator of the franchise and producer of the documentary Master of Dark Shadows (and other guests to be announced) dig deep into the private archives of Dan Curtis Productions to present a never-before-seen look behind the House and Night.

Stay tuned for more details about SHFF's A Salute to Dark Shadows event.

From the Vaults: Rare photos of Jonathan Frid

Believe it or not, the creators of DARK SHADOWS were never motivated to archive the show's promotional materials in any meaningful way. These days, businesses like Lucasfilm will keep professional librarians on staff to ensure the legacy of their work is maintained, but for DARK SHADOWS? Because of the perpetual flow of talent into the ABC studios, new marketing materials had relatively short shelf lives. Stories and actors changed so often that photos taken yesterday were rarely of any use tomorrow. Consequently, there was little reason to archive these photos, even during the show's prime.

After it's cancellation in 1971, those motivations disappeared entirely. DARK SHADOWS became a bullet point on the resumes of those involved, and the onus of maintaining the show's legacy fell to fans. Among those folks was Jim Pierson, a fan of the series who worked his way up to essentially become the chief archivist and marketing director for the DARK SHADOWS brand. Part of that job has been to formally locate misplaced marketing materials, such as the thousands of photos taken of the cast members over the years. This has been no small task. Many of the images that appeared in magazines and newspapers were taken by private photographers who weren't always inclined to hold onto every negative, slide or print. Many are photos were lost, others misplaced or labelled incorrectly. All you need to do is look at the strained packaging of the old DARK SHADOWS VHS collection to see how difficult it has been to find interesting, usable images from the series ... near the end, MPI Home Video was relying on such oddities as Conard Fowkes' headshot for the cover art for one tape. The well has a tendency to run dry.

But the search continues! Pierson has recently unearthed an interesting selection of photos of actor Jonathan Frid, images that span his entire career. He's shared with me headshots of Frid as an aspiring young actor, a few from his later year's as a performance artist, and these two shots taken from his days playing vampire Barnabas Collins. Seeing as how Halloween will be arriving in a few short hours, it felt right to share these images first. They were taken during the controversial "Leviathans" storyline, which places the photo's date at sometime during the end of 1969/early 1970. I suspect that some eagle-eyed DARK SHADOWS fan will recognize the tie he's wearing in the photos and be able to pinpoint a specific date for when the photos were taken. If you, feel free to share your speculation in the comments section below.

I have more rare photos of Frid, courtesy of Jim Pierson, that I'll be passing along in upcoming weeks. Happy Halloween!

Dark Shadows: Into the Light, Episode 1 (Part 2)

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of DARK SHADOWS, Jim Romanovich recently launched an 8-part DARK SHADOWS retrospective titled "Into the Light" at radioretropolis.com. The Collinsport Historical Society will be archiving these episodes as they become available; you'll be able to find the series in the tab above titled "Dark Shadows: Into the Light."

Above is the second part of his interview with Dan Curtis Productions major domo Jim Pierson. You can find part one of the interview HERE.

DARK SHADOWS: THE FAVORITE FIVE

Last month, The Collinsport Historical Society asked you to name your five favorite DARK SHADOWS audio dramas from Big Finish. Every day this week we'll be revealing the results.

#1 The Night Whispers

While the character of “Barnabas Collins” has made scattered appearances in Big Finish’s line of DARK SHADOWS audio dramas, only once was he played by the actor who originated the role on television: Jonathan Frid.


In fact, “The Night Whispers” represents Frid’s only return to the role since the cancellation of the series in 1971.

“‘The Night Whispers’ was probably always destined to be Jonathan Frid's swansong,” said Stuart Manning, the episode’s writer. “There was a vague notion that it might be the first of many Barnabas stories, but I always expected it to be a one-off.”

“‘The Night Whispers’ was produced before I joined the DARK SHADOWS audio range, but I remember just how utterly exciting it was to hear Barnabas again,” said Joe Lidster, who today produces of the line for Big Finish. “A fantastic script by Stuart Manning that explores his relationship with Willie, three lovely performances and some beautiful sound design make it really something special.”

"The Night Whispers" received a great deal of attention outside of DARK SHADOWS fandom, as well, and won the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for "Best Horror Soundtrack" in 2012.

Frid has been resistant about not only returning to the role of “Barnabas Collins,” said Jim Pierson, the marketing director and producer at Dan Curtis Productions. The actor also refused to take any role even vaguely similar.

“The art for Jonathan was in delivering the lines,” said Pierson, who directed Frid’s recording session. “He was in paradise when delivering his one-man shows like ‘Fools and Fiends,’ the ‘Shakespearean Odyssey,’ and all the variations of those performances — whether it was in a library, a theater or somebody’s living room.”

The audio dramas proved to be an easy transition for Frid, Pierson said.

“He resisted doing anything vampiric after DARK SHADOWS, and he turned down tons of things,” he said. “Everything from movies to tooth paste commercials. Because he was coming back to be with fans for the 40th anniversary of ‘Barnabas,’ it seemed to be a natural progression.

“He got his fangs wet again and really had a good time,” Pierson said.

Jonathan Frid and John Karlen

 “As detailed in the ‘Remembering Jonathan Frid’ book, the play took a long time to come together and it's really only due to the gentle persistence of Jim Pierson and Bobbi Jacobs-Meadway that it happened at all,” Manning said. “During the writing I listened to Jonathan's narration from the old Dark Shadows music LP on a loop, trying to get his vocal tics down, and those speeches are probably etched onto my psyche permanently as a result. I may well have been the first ever sufferer of Frid earworm.”

Darren Gross, co-director of “The Night Whispers,” said it took careful coordination to get the actors’ lines recorded. Because of the international nature of each production (Big Finish is headquartered in the United Kingdom) the participating actors sometimes never meet in the studio.

“Often the actors are recorded separately, sometimes months apart and thousands of miles away,” Gross said. “‘The Night Whispers’ was done in three pieces, with John Karlen, Barbara Steele and Jonathan Frid done in separate recording sessions.”

Frid in the studio for "The Night Whispers."

Frid’s session was recorded in Canada, while Steele recorded her lines in Burbank, California. Both sessions were supervised by Jim Pierson.

Gross directed Karlen’s performance, which was also recorded in Burbank.

“For this kind of piecemeal recording, I brought in Andrew Collins to read-in for Barnabas and the other characters, so that Karlen had someone to play off of,” Gross said. “You don’t know how the other actors are going to play their lines, so for scenes that are tricky or where there’s arguing, low key line delivery or some kind of intense moments, I would tend to get a couple of different versions to give Nigel Fairs or David Darlington latitude in the editing.”

The goal, he said, is to make sure the actors sound as though they’re performing together in the same room.

“It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it’s miraculous and very convincing,” Gross said. “We did the same thing for ‘Beyond the Grave,’ where most of the pieces were recorded in the U.K., except for the sessions with Kathryn Leigh Scott, which I recorded in Los Angeles, again playing off of Andrew Collins.”

Andrew Collins, who played “Barnabas Collins” in earlier DARK SHADOWS audio dramas from Big Finish, was a vital part of recording sessions, Gross said.

Barbara Steele as "Dr. Julia Hoffman" in the 1991 DARK SHADOWS television series.

“Andrew just makes these sessions fun, as he’ll do a dozen different voices as he jumps from character to character, feeding lines to his scene partner,” Gross said. “These sessions can be a bit of a challenge for the actors, as we’re frequently jumping from scene to scene, but it does create a very focused atmosphere, as we only focus on their character’s scenes.

“I’ve always felt blessed to have actors like John Karlen and Kathryn Leigh Scott, who can just turn on a performance like a light switch,” Gross said. “That kind of engagement in the material is invigorating."

“Honestly, I was just grateful that Jonathan played ball,” Manning said. “After 30-plus years, he finally agreed to be Barnabas again for a day, and that alone was a milestone. It was a little piece of history and I hope we did the old guy proud.”