Louis Edmonds in "The Choice is Murder," 1964

Louis Edmonds would have been 94 years old today. At this point, I'm willing to accept that the well has been pumped dry in regards to his complex tenure on DARK SHADOWS. When I went spelunking for obscure media about the actor, it was with little anticipation of finding anything new related to the series. My goal was to find something interesting about his work on ALL MY CHILDREN, but the best piece -- a newspaper editorial slamming the show's producers for its failure to recognize Edmonds' death in 2001 -- seemed a bit dark for the occasion.

Instead, let's look back on something so ephemeral that its very existence is even dubious: 1964's "The Choice is Murder." The play had a two-week run in July that year at Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania, with hopes that it would make the leap to Broadway later that year (though I could find no evidence this actually happened.)

"I had an idea for the perfect murder and originally planned to build the whole play around it," author Denis Heber told The Philadelphia Inquirer shortly before the play's debut. (Note: Copyright information on the play credits the author as Denis Heber Caslon.) "But the script has undergone such radical revisions since then that now my idea only occupies the first act."

The story suggests that Edmonds was already in danger of being typecast. The play's principals are once-wealthy married couple brought low by the husband's many gambling debts. "The wife wants to get rid of him before all the money runs out," Heber explained in 1964.

The play is set in Surrey, England, and had at least one honest-to-god British actor in the cast: Paddi Edwards played the sinister spouse. While the name might not sound familiar, you've absolutely heard her voice: She provided the voices of Flotsam and Jetsam in Disney's THE LITTLE MERMAID and Gozer in GHOSTBUSTERS. The play's third lead, Gerald S. O'Loughlin, was among the stars of William Blinn's THE ROOKIES from 1972-1976, and had a wildly varied theatrical career that includes IN COLD BLOOD, ENSIGN PULVER and THE VALACHI PAPERS.

Located in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Bucks County Playhouse opened its doors in 1939 and eventually became a jumping-off point for both actors and entire productions. Bela Lugosi starred in a production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" there in 1947 .Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" had its premiere at the theater in 1963, starring Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley. In 1964, Rob Reiner completed an apprenticeship at the Bucks County Playhouse, not only working on "The Choice is Murder," but also "Sunday In New York" (starring Alan Alda), and "Broadway" (with Merv Griffin). At the moment, George Wendt is appearing there as J. Edgar Hoover in ROCK AND ROLL MAN: THE ALAN FREED STORY.

Louis Edmonds: The Country Gentleman of Collinsport, 1969

LOUIS EDMONDS 
The Country Gentleman of Collinsport 

From "Afternoon TV" #9, 1969

by Jay Edwards

"Right now—especially when we go into the past—I always hope I can be a tyrant, or very selfish, or anything unattractive. Bad people are much more fun to play."

That terribly proper, terribly English, terribly dignified aristocrat who has been a star of Dark Shadows right from the beginning —that Louis Edmonds — had a teen age ambition that may come as a surprise to you.

"When I was a teenager I always wanted to play the villain in a cowboy picture," he said recently.

There's another interesting thing you discover in talking to him—he would probably still love to play the villain in a cowboy picture. You realize this when he starts talking in the present tense, saying "Actually, I could save them a lot of money, since they wouldn't have to hire a stuntman. I could do my own riding; I can even jump — moderately but not extravagantly."

Louis Edmonds, today, is a star. But the teen-age dream is still there.

There is also no reason to doubt that he could do it since he not only plays a country gentleman as Roger Collins— Louis Edmonds is a country gentleman. As a child (he was born in Baton Rouge on Sept. 24) he grew up on a sugar plantation near a levee on the Mississippi River, visiting his grandfather's farm in upstate New York during the summers.

"I was always around open spaces without really being conscious of it," he said. "I was very active in outdoor sports — not competitive things like football; I mean sports like riding and swimming. I did all the things little boys do when they grow up in the country."

That part of Louis Edmonds really hasn't changed as much as you might assume, considering that he is now a successful New York actor with two movies, several Broadway plays and almost three years of Dark Shadows to his credit. He doesn't live in an over-priced, noisy, hectic, uncomfortable Manhattan apartment. Louis Edmonds is still a country gentleman.

"About four years ago I realized that New York was changing," he said, "and I didn't like the city anymore. I still have an apartment here, where I stay when I'm in town, but I live now in a little New England-style farmhouse on Long Island, where I have maximum privacy."

Louis (pronounced Louie by his friends) was obviously reacting to his Southern boyhood when he withdrew from the hustle of the city, but the house itself is not necessarily done in a Southern style.

"When I was up in Cape Cod (Mass.) I saw lots of little farmhouses like mine painted in a pure blue with no green in it — there it's called Puritan Blue; in Virginia it's called Williamsburg Blue; some places it's called Dutch Blue — with white trim and bottle-green shutters. I liked it so much I decided to have my house done that way."

Somewhere between leaving the countryside of Louisiana and settling in the countryside of New York Louis Edmonds lost — obviously—the Southern accent that comes with a Louisiana childhood. Even when he is not playing Roger Collins he still has the sound and rhythm that has made English actors think he is English, too.

"It's not unusual for Southern people to do an English accent easily," he said, "but it has been a problem. As an actor I get typed as anything but an American — and that's not good.

"I can get back into a Southern sound if I need to, and I played a German in a movie once. I think I was blessed with a good ear for the way people talk; the only sound that's very difficult for me is the Midwestern or the Madison Avenue sort of businessman."



Acting—which certainly contributed to his present very correct English diction—has been the most important thing in Louis Edmonds' life. "I wasn't a very good student in high school," he said, " but I made the Honors List when I started studying acting at Carnegie Tech because expressing myself made me interested in learning. I didn't become aware of me until I started acting."

After he discovered himself as an actor in college he was off to the navy (he started as a pilot then became a Communications Officer in Panama), after which he wound up in New York (where he was once a doorman at Radio City Music Hall), then did a series of plays that finally led to Dark Shadows.

"l started out as a villain on the show, which was great fun, but they made me nicer as time went along. Right now — especially when we go into the past — I always hope I can be a tyrant, or very selfish, or anything unattractive. Bad people are much more fun to play."

Again the word villain, so unlikely coming from this gentle, flawlessly dressed country gentleman (he was wearing a terribly British brown jacket with short lapels which the wardrobe mistress had originally brought in for Roger Collins, gray pin-striped slacks, a brown pullover shirt, suede walking boots and one of those short-brimmed British caps made famous here by singers such as Donovan and Bob Dylan).

The fact is that Louis Edmonds requires challenge — like playing roles from Shakespeare to the musical version of Candide—and he most enjoys playing eerie, evil roles; roles unlike himself.

But his life does — unlikely as it may seem—include one thing very much in keeping with the foggy, mysterious world of Dark Shadows.

Louis Edmonds, in the comfort of his quiet, dignified farmhouse, really does live right across the street from a graveyard. 

Louis Edmonds: “You have to be shameless to be a singer," 1973

In 1973, Louis Edmonds took the stage in Bridgeport, Conn., to play the mad knight Don Quixote in MAN OF LA MANCHA. While there, he spoke to the local newspaper about the production, and also went into surprising detail about his life and career.

There's a touch of sadness to the interview. A few paragraphs after noting that the success of DARK SHADOWS didn't lead to more television work, he went on to say: “Acting is a glorious career. It offers dignity and good money if you are successful and if you are not, you better get out." Luckily, stubbornness prevailed. Edmonds continued to entertain people for decades to come, stopping only when he was physically unable to take the stage.

I've been sitting on this interview for a while. Edmonds would have been 92 years old today, which seems like a good enough excuse to share it. I've cleaned up a few of the factual errors (the writer cites Thornton Wilder as the author of "The Importance of Being Ernest," for example) but have left the rest of the article untouched.

I added a few hotlinks within the article, for those of you interested in learning more about some of the productions discussed here.

As Quixote has his horse, so actor has his bike
The Bridgeport Post, Aug. 15, 1973

By SUSAN WARNER

About two-and-a-half weeks ago, actor Louis Sterling Edmonds left his Setauket, L.I., home on his bicycle and rode to the Port Jefferson ferry.

When he arrived in Bridgeport an hour-and-a-half later and a little windblown, he hopped on his bicycle and rode to the Mertens theater at the Arnold Bernhard Arts and Humanities Center of the University of Bridgeport, where he started rehearsals for the final play of the UB Musical Repertory theater season.

His carefree entry and nature are similar to Don Quixote taking off on a weatherbeaten horse for another adventure.

Louis Edmonds is an actor whose personality complements the roles he will create "Man of La Mancha” both as Miguel Cervantes, the author of “The Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote of La Mancha,” the book on which the play is based, and as the character, Don Quixote.

The play will open tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. in the Mertens theatre and will run Aug. 17, 18, 22, 24, 25 and 26.

During a break in rehearsals yesterday, the actor said: “I am grateful to the Bridgeport shore, the beach sand and the soft breezes. Each day I bicycle down to Seaside, take a swim for exercise, then study my lines on the beach and I’m well prepared and relaxed for the day’s rehearsal.”

The Baton Rouge, La., native said he loves singing. This is not the first musical he’s done.

From left, Gerriane Raphael, Louis Edmonds, John Irving and Leila Martin in the studio for ERNEST IN LOVE.

In Wilde Musical 

He performed in the musical version of Oscar Wilde's play, “The Importance of Being Ernest,” which opened on Broadway as “Ernest in Love.”

"It was delight to work in that play," he recalled, adding that the play opened the night after the opening night of the “Fantastiks.”

“We got great reviews,” he said, “even better than those the ‘Fantastiks’ received, but our show didn’t make it.”

He also played in two other off-Broadway musicals, “Subways Are for Sleeping” and “Royal Flush,” the latter “which closed in Philadelphia as it deserved to,” he added.

"You have to be shameless to be a singer,” he said with a smile, adding that sounds overheard earlier were exercises for his “golden voice.”

“It helps in strengthening the muscles in your throat,” he explained, noting that he wouldn’t be caught on Madison Avenue in New York doing voice exercices.

“I am sorry I haven’t had more musical opportunities in my rather spotty career,” he admitted.

“I studied voice in New York City under Emy Joseph. I guess it’s part of my Southern upbringing but I always called that gray-haired, beautiful blue-eyed lady, ‘Miss Emy,” the casually dressed actor said.

Louis Edmonds and Andrea Dromm in COME SPY WITH ME, 1967.

Theater or Movies?

“I feel at home in both the theater and television, but I cannot really answer whether I prefer the theater to the movies because I’ve never had the good fortune of being in a good movie,” the blond, blue-eyed actor said.

At Carnegie Tech, he said “I received good training in the classics, like Shaw, Chekov and Shakespeare.

“I made my Broadway debut under the direction of Sir Tyrone Guthrie in Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Candide’ and I was not singing in those days and was hired strictly as a speaking actor.

“I feel at home in Shakespere,” he said of his many performances as Antony in “Antony and Cleopatra” and his performances in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Philadelphia.

“Shakespeare is a beautiful world to work in. The climate in Shakespeare is so expansive and free, if you have the voice, speech training and leather lungs necessary for some of those epic monologues.  It’s an absolute joy to bring meaning to a play and make it alive for the people,” he said.

“My sister and brother-in-law and two nephews came to see ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in Philadelphia,” he said. “When they came backstage they had tears in their eyes because they laughed so much.

“It’s a wonderful feeling to have people get the message of a play and be responsive to an actor’s interpretation. It’s like being turned on,” he said.

“Yes, people do recognize me as the actor who played Roger Collins for four and a half years in the television series, ‘Dark Shadows,’ but they do not identify me with just that type of role,” he said.

However, he added, it may have influenced the New York casting people, because “There ain’t been any nibbles to do something else on the telly.”

Louis Edmonds on DARK SHADOWS.

Cast as a “Heavy”

"I was the old conservative in the series but it was fun.” He explained that when he first started in the series he was cast as a “heavy” and was expected to be written out of the cast in the first 13-week cycle. However, the executive director, Dan Curtis and he got along well, and the part was made to atone for his beginning character in the series, and he was accepted as a regular by the viewers, he said.

His first professional job in the business was in 1946 in Woodstock, N.Y., when he was in “Candida.” He went into the Navy Air Corps shortly after and thee years later was honorably discharged and resumed his career.

“I’ve been in the mean world ever since then,” he said.

“My favorite part was playing ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ at the Great Lakes Shakespeare festival and I think Don Quixote will also be a favorite. I hope I’ll be able to do ‘Man of La Mancha’ other places. It’s a beautiful part,” he said.

“Acting is a glorious career. It offers dignity and good money if you are successful and if you are not, you better get out,” he said.

Asked what he plans to do when he finished his run with the play year, he said: “Go home and paint my house.”

Louis Edmonds as Cyrano de Bergerac, 1967

On Sept. 6, 1967, Roger Collins returned home following an unusually long trip to Boston.

It was a trip that lasted 44 days.

With an ensemble show like DARK SHADOWS, it was common for members of the cast to be absent from the program for weeks at a time. Even at its peak, DARK SHADOWS had restrictions on the number of characters that could be featured on any given episode. Those restrictions never seemed to affect Jonathan Frid or Alexandra Moltke, who practically lived at the ABC soundstage where the show was filmed, but the rest of the cast had time off to pursue other interests.

Edmonds had been a fixture on DARK SHADOWS since the very beginning, so his absence from the show for more than a month was difficult overlook for fans. The writers explained that Roger Collins was on a business trip to Boston, but this trip kept Edmonds away from DARK SHADOWS for a whopping 31 episodes. He returned just in time to deliver his famous "incestors" blooper on Episode #313.

So, where had Edmonds got off too during his break?

Edmonds as Cyrano.

Edmonds recorded his previous episode of DARK SHADOWS on July 6; twenty days later he took the stage as Cyrano de Bergerac for the 1967 Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Ohio. If you think the idea of Louis Edmonds running around the stage with a huge prosthetic nose (and sword!) sounds awesome, then you're not alone. The critics loved Edmonds in the role, even if they found his skills with the character's preferred weapon to be a little underdeveloped.

"My fears regarding the playing of the main role proved baseless," wrote Al Thomas, of the Medina County Gazette. "Louis Edmonds, currently starring in the TV serial ‘DARK SHADOWS,’ sweeps through the rich part, exploring each facet of virility, dignity, loneliness and warmth. Above all, the warmth."

"If there is a weakness in this strong characterization, it would lie in the absence of stage proof that this is truly the greatest swordsman in France. Edmonds is not (Lawrence Luckinbill), climbing up the Lakewood theater walls in hot pursuit of Hotspur. The dueling scenes lack conviction.

"The criticism is minor, for Author Edmond Rostand meant the play to be a love sonnet with swords. And both he and the Shakespeare Festival crew interpret it that way."

SHADOWS ON THE WALL: The DARK SHADOWS that almost was

It’s no secret that television shows live or die based on the production’s ability to think on its feet. A pilot episode is almost a notional thing, a rough draft that suggests story and character without ever having much of either. You don’t learn the strengths and weaknesses of your actors, writers and production team by shooting a single episode; you learn these things by spending an extended period of time with them in the creative trenches.

So, it’s not shocking that a look back at Art Wallace’s “bible” for DARK SHADOWS differs in a great many ways from the show it quickly became. Overall, the outline and character sketches presented in Wallace’s long-out-of-print SHADOWS ON THE WALL feel like the show’s first year. The central mysteries are the same, as are many of the character’s relationships and basic plot points. But the outline failed to anticipate a central piece of casting that would change the course of the show’s first year in unexpected ways:

LOUIS EDMONDS.

On the page, Roger Collins isn’t a role to get excited about. Wallace describes him (several times, actually) as a charmless, irresponsible layabout. The show’s first mystery doesn’t hinge on the death of Bill Malloy and the subsequent justice meted out to his killer by Collinwood’s ghosts. Instead, Roger takes an untimely dive off Widow’s Hill during a violent confrontation with Victoria regarding the conspiracy to send Burke Devlin to prison.

The difference, I’d speculate, was that Roger Collins proved himself to be a more interesting and useful character than first intended. Edmonds deserves a fair share of the credit here, as do the other writers who worked to create a character that played to the actor’s droll strengths. It should have been obvious to all involved that Collinsport would have been a much less interesting place without Edmonds around. Which is why the show spent so much time chasing the whereabouts of a silver fountain pen ... the writers were retooling the story to keep Roger Collins around.

SHADOWS ON THE WALL goes into a shocking level of detail about the show’s settings and characters, almost none of which was ever intended for audience consumption. For example, Collinsport is located in the very real Hancock County, Maine. A sizable chunk of the Collins family history is covered in the outline, but I won’t waste much of your time with it here. Suffice to say, almost all of it was heavily revised by the time Barnabas Collins is introduced, and most of the names were shuffled to other characters.

Curiously, the seeds for both Barnabas and Quentin Collins might even have been planted in the show’s bible long before they were introduced. The outline makes references to “Samuel Collins,” a man who mysteriously left the country around 1895 shortly after the east wing was destroyed by fire. His ghost can occasionally be seen from the windows of the re-built property, standing in a darkened window and holding a lit candle.

Also, Roger and Liz’s parents are identified in the bible by the names Joseph and Carolyn. Their mother died giving birth to Roger, and their father followed her to the grave a few years later of natural causes, leaving a very young Liz in charge of the family business. Liz’s daughter, Carolyn, was named for her grandmother.

While Laura Collins (referred to in the bible as “Laura Robin”) is mentioned throughout, she makes no on-screen appearance in the story’s original draft. She was conveniently shuffled off to a sanitarium not long after Burke Devlin was released from prison.
 

As for David Collins, the bible lets slip a fairly important detail: David was born seven months after Roger and Laura were married. Roger was not especially happy about the discrepancy, and didn’t buy Laura’s “It was an early birth!” defense. Wallace makes a note in the book to deal with that plot point later in the show, in a manner that best serves the developing storyline.

We also get small bits of character details for the show’s supporting cast. Joe Haskell’s father was also a fisherman, and died as sea when Joe was only 14. The younger Haskell was forced to drop out of school to help his family make ends meet. His mother worked as an occasional housekeeper at Collins House, which is how he first met Carolyn.

The version of Maggie Evans that’s presented in the series bible disappeared from the series after a few episodes. That brassy, sassy, and blonde Maggie we first meet on the show is the character outlines in SHADOWS ON THE WALL, which describes her as “the kind of gal that’s everybody’s pal … and nobody’s friend.” It's impressive how quickly the show corrected course to take advantage of Kathryn Leigh Scott's natural charm.

SHADOWS ON THE WALL is an embarrassment of riches in regards to character descriptions. Burke Devlin is described as “an angry, hungry man born 200 years too late.” Liz is “a ghost living in a house of ghosts.” Carolyn gets a lengthy character profile that, strangely, doesn’t do much to illustrate her as an actual character. What we get are a lot of ideas, mostly about her conflicting love and resentment for her shut-in mother, and the vague motives for her own bad behavior. The impression I was left with was of Carolyn as a 20th century Rapunzel: “As much as she longed to breathe the fresh air away from Collins House, the tormented girl was terrified of what that air might be like.”
 
There are a few notable omissions from the bible, as well as a surprising early appearance by one of DARK SHADOWS favorite rogues. The names Mrs. Johnson, “B. Hanscombe” and Matthew Morgan make a total of zero appearances in the DARK SHADOWS bible. But, a name that does make numerous appearances is that of “Walt Cummings,” described in the cast of characters as “a seaman who comes to live in Collins House.”

Don’t be alarmed if that description has you scratching your head. “Collins House” was the original name of Collinwood, and “Walt Cummings” came to be known later in the series as Jason McGuire. Willie Loomis was not invited to this version of the familiar story, which has “Walt Cummings” blackmailing Elizabeth Collins Stoddard for the usual reasons.

Originally, plans called for Jason/Walt to be introduced fairly early in the show. The Laura/Phoenix arc isn’t mentioned, instead allowing the various plot devises to revolve around the central mystery of Victoria’s lineage. And that mystery was actually intended to be solved during the first year … more or less.

As you already know, Victoria was dropped off at a “foundling home” as an infant, along with a note identifying her by name. She was given the last name “Winters” in honor of the season in which she was abandoned (though just barely, since the bible lists her date of abandonment as early March.) The show's plans called for her eventually find love letters from Paul Stoddard to Liz, with his handwriting matching that of her note. Walt/Jason admits to Victoria that Paul Stoddard claimed to be her father … and then provides the writers with an "out" by further elaborating that Paul was a known liar. The floor of the locked basement is excavated by local authorities in hopes of finding Paul’s corpse, but they find nothing but dirt. Walt/Jason further confesses that Paul survived Liz’s attack, but hasn't been seen for more than a decade.

These many differences aside, it’s hard to imagine where the show might have next gone had they stuck to the outline as presented in SHADOWS ON THE WALL. Sure, we still don’t know who Victoria’s mother is (and we’re not given much reason to care), and the bible leave us with the promise that Paul Stoddard will soon return to "Collins House" to generate more drama. But, without the show’s central mystery of Victoria’s parentage -- not to mention the absence of Barnabas Collins -- it seems to me that DARK SHADOWS was almost doomed to becoming another faceless daytime drama. Fortunately, the production team behind DARK SHADOWS knew how to tell their strengths from their weaknesses and was unafraid of trying new things.

NOTE: SHADOWS ON THE WALL is notoriously difficult to find (I dare you to see how much it’s selling for on Amazon) but it’s worth seeking out.

Collinsport Cooking: BIG LOU'S GUMBO

By SARA SHIVER McBRIDE

“Hey, we have a chicken carcass?!”

So it’s another Saturday night at the Collinsport Historical Society headquarters.  Let me start out by saying that while I’ll admit to being a fairly accomplished home cook, I flunk a lot of foodie tests.  I’m the most hypocritical carnivore around; I eat plenty of meat but just cannot deal with the actual physicality of bones and skin and chewy bits and stuff.  I know, I know, it’s by far the most economical choice, we ought to be roasting a chicken on the weekend and eating leftovers the rest of the week and urrrrgh, no.  It’s vanishingly rare for me to bring home anything that isn’t boneless and skinless, but I couldn’t pass up a really good coupon on a whole chicken.  Mostly because it had been a while since I had to deal with all that gross stuff and I’d forgotten how much I can’t stand it.  So after I roasted it and we ate the breasts which is all we really wanted anyway, Wallace asked if I wanted to make Louis Edmonds’ gumbo from Craig Hamrick’s BIG LOU: THE LIFE AND CAREER OF ACTOR LOUIS EDMONDS.  After all, who can resist a recipe where the first ingredient contains the word “carcass”?

Me.  I can.  But we already had a carcass on hand so I couldn’t think of a plausible excuse.

And then I saw how horribly this recipe is written and I had to make the gumbo just so I could fix the recipe.  Seriously, this is awful.  The sausage disappears halfway through.  It doesn’t bother to mention that step one is “make chicken stock” (although it does explain how to make a roux, thereby sidestepping the cardinal sin of recipe writers.)  I did a little research to see if anybody else had some comments on it and found that it appears in almost exactly the same wording in Diana Millay’s memoir, so I suspect this is what Edmonds wrote down on a cocktail napkin for somebody and then a total non-cook stuck it in a book.  You can find the recipe HERE.

I spent an afternoon trying to extrapolate a gumbo from that - not just a gumbo that I knew would be good but specifically Edmonds’ gumbo.  I hope I came fairly close; it definitely ended up tasty.  You know how good it was?  It was so good we accidentally found ourselves in an Olive Garden commercial.  We threw a spontaneous dinner party.  For introverts.  Who all showed up.  There were hugs.  You know how many times we’ve done that?  Never.  Never times.  So this was good stuff.

I’ll give narrative instructions and then at the end of this post a clear recipe.

I’m really not sure what he’s up to with the chicken carcass.  He doesn’t cook it long enough to really make stock, and if you only have a carcass you won’t have any meat to throw in the gumbo later, which you’re going to want.  And ain’t nobody got time for that anyway - I really only had time to either make gumbo or make stock.  So I scavenged the rest of the meat from our, ugh, do we have to keep saying “carcass”?  Anyway, I saved the meat and threw the rest in a pot to make stock to freeze and used the storebought stuff for the gumbo.

By the way, did you know Cooks Illustrated’s choice for storebought stock is now that Better than Bouillon jarred concentrate?  Evidently all the stock in the grocery store is from concentrate anyway, and it’s cheaper, tastes as good, and doesn’t go bad in the fridge like the stuff in the boxes does.  Everybody wins.  I had to guess on the quantity but I figured eight cups would have been enough to cover the chicken if we were making our own, so let’s say you’ll need eight cups of stock plus one for messing around with the roux.  Homemade, mixed up from concentrate, or aseptically packaged in a box (and get the lower sodium kind while you’re at it).  Just never that canned stuff.  Canned stock is nasty and it makes the baby Jesus cry. 

Haul out your dutch oven (you do have a dutch oven, right?) and start by slicing and sauteing a pound of smoked spicy sausage.  Now this is critical - you’ve got to get good sausage.  Andouille would be traditional, but they’ve just started stocking Gaspar’s Chourico in Publix, and that shit is awesome.  A friend of ours gave us some once and I’ve been craving it ever since - it’s a Portugese sausage with some spice but a lot of rich flavor.  It ended up being a lot of the flavor of the finished gumbo, so don’t cheap out on crappy sausage.  You won’t need any oil in the pan; there’s plenty of fat in the sausage.

Take the sausage out (pro tip: if you’re cooking something you intend to cover with a lid and have to do things in batches or brown meat and then take it out for a while, use the pot lid upside down as a plate for whatever you’re holding - that way you have one less bowl to clean) and sautee a bell pepper, an onion, and three cloves of garlic, all chopped.  If you were using okra you’d put it in now too, but okra is nasty.  We used file powder at the end instead only I forgot to put it on mine.  It was fine anyway.  (Gumbo has to have one or the other, but never both.  It’s a thickener because you’ll be using a dark roux.)  I’m assuming the basil and thyme are dried because he puts them in now, and the bay leaves.

When you’ve got your onions translucent, throw in two tomatoes which you’ve chopped or a can of them diced or pureed.  Unless it’s July, canned tomatoes are almost certainly going to be better.  Put down the pink grocery store tomato and back away.

For some reason you let this simmer for fifteen minutes.  I think it’s so you can make yourself a drink.  That’s what I did, anyway.

Add your eight cups of stock, reserving the ninth.  If you  have a little more or a little less that’s fine, but eight worked fine for me.  Put the sausage back in and throw your chicken in too - it’s fine if it’s cooked like ours was, but raw would be fine too, or browned.  I’d put in about a pound - I wish I’d had a bit more chicken in ours.  Bring it all up to boil and then turn it down to simmer.

The roux begins.

Now you’ll make a roux.  Chill out, a roux is a bit tedious but it isn’t at all hard.  I don’t know why people are so scared of it - of all the things I don’t understand in the grocery store, the gravy crap takes the cake for me.  It’s even worse than pancake mix, and pancake mix is for people who wear Velcro shoes.  Gravy packets, cans of gravy, gravy helper - what is that crap?  It all tastes like salty ass and you can make your own even if you don’t have pan drippings with a little flour and fat and broth and it will taste a million times better and not give you a heart attack in your forties.  If you can make a roux you can make any number of classical sauces like bechamel or veloute, you can make your own gravy, you can thicken things - it’s very versatile and not at all difficult.  The thickening power of a roux is inversely proportionate to its flavor, however, so a dark roux like we’re going to make here isn’t going to do much thickening.  That’s why gumbos also have either okra or file.  (If you’re using file, you do it individually at the table because it doesn’t do well in heat.  Unless you forget to, like I did.  Then you can at least say you tried and isn’t it authentic?)

The almost-finished roux.

So all you do is heat up about three tablespoons of vegetable oil in a good thick bottomed pan. (Edmonds suggests cast iron - that’s because cast iron heats very evenly which makes it harder to burn your flour in.  I used a good All-Clad pan because you can see what you’re doing in there - the important thing is that you need to buy a good pan because you’re not in college anymore.  A cheap pan will make this a lot harder because if your flour burns you have to throw it out and start all over again.)  Slowly add three tablespoons of flour to your oil, stirring constantly.  It might clump up at first but then relax; that’s okay.  And then keep stirring.  And keep stirring.  Don’t stop stirring or it will burn.  It will not “take 3 to 5 minutes”, recipe.  It took at least ten for mine to turn the color of milk chocolate, which is when I pulled the plug - you can and probably should go quite a bit darker, but I got bored.  Once you’ve gotten it to the desired color, you can turn the heat off and slowly, a bit at a time, add in the cup of stock you’ve reserved (heat it up in the microwave.)  It’s going to freak out.  Don’t worry about it, just keep stirring and it’ll sort itself out.  Once you’ve got that combined and it isn’t all weird and clumpy (keep stirring if it is) you can add that whole thing into your gumbo pot.

Now simmer that bad boy two or three hours.  Go knit or something.  If you like you can toss in other meat (the recipe suggests seafood) but we didn’t.  Stir it every so often just to make sure it’s okay, and taste it to adjust seasonings.  You might or might not need more salt, depending on your broth.  You might as well tell people that you’re going to be home for the evening and then have them start to assemble in your living room.  And start the rice if you’re serving it over rice.  At some point, shrug and take the bay leaves out and call it done.  It served seven comfortably but I’m not sure how many people got seconds before it ran out.

BIG LOU'S GUMBO
1 lb spicy smoked sausage, sliced into rounds
2 cups okra, sliced (if you must) or file powder at the table
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
3 bay leaves
1 tsp dried basil
2 tsp dried thyme
1 14 oz can diced or pureed tomatoes, or 2 fresh tomatoes chopped
9 cups chicken stock (reserve 1 cup for roux)
1 lb chicken parts, cooked or uncooked
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp flour
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional seafood

In large dutch oven, fry sausage rounds over medium heat. 

Remove sausage from pot and saute okra, pepper, onion, garlic, basil, and thyme until softened and onions become transparent.  Add tomatoes with their liquid and bay leaves and bring to simmer, stirring frequently.

Add 8 cups stock and chicken.  Return sausage to pot.  Bring to boil and then reduce to simmer.

In separate small saucepan, heat vegetable oil over medium heat.  Slowly add flour, stirring constantly.  Continuing to stir, cook roux until dark brown (at least milk chocolate color).  Turn off heat and slowly, gradually pour reserved cup of stock (warmed) into saucepan while continuing to stir.  Once stock is incorporated and mixture is free of clumps, add to large gumbo pot.

Add optional seafood if desired.  Simmer two to three hours, tasting to adjust salt and pepper.

Serve over rice.

Sara Shiver McBride is qualified to neither speak nor write about film, but once lost on Jeopardy. She makes up one half of the podcast team of DAY DRINKING WITH SARA AND ALEXIS.

Louis Edmonds in COME SPY WITH ME, 1967

Chances are, if you've heard the phrase COME SPY WITH ME, it was in reference to the song by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, which was the theme to a 1967 comedy thriller starring TROY DONAHUE. The movie made little impression on audiences and is currently unavailable on home video.

Beyond the success of the movie's theme song, the only reason anybody talks about the film today is because of its connection to a pair of cult TV institutions: DARK SHADOWS and STAR TREK. Not only does the film feature ANDREA DROMM, a part of the original cast of Trek in the the show's second pilot, WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE, but SPY also features Collinwood's own LOUIS EDMONDS as a German assassin.

"It was sort of a fifth-rate James Bond type of movie, with so many pretty young girls -- and boys -- lounging around a swimming pool in Jamaica," Edmonds explained in Craig Hamrick's BIG LOU: THE LIFE AND CAREER OF LOUIS EDMONDS. "It was a fun part because I was a hired assassin, and I had a German accent and carried a gun. Eventually, my character was drowned by Troy in a grotto."

The "handsome stuffiness" of LOUIS EDMONDS, 1960

LOUIS EDMONDS and  GERRIANNE RAPHAEL found themselves prominent featured in the May 5, 1960, issue of The New York Times. The two were among the cast of ERNEST IN LOVE, a musical adaption of Oscar Wilde's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST. (You can see photos of the recording session for the soundtrack, as well as soundclips of Edmonds singing, by clicking HERE.)

I think we're all pretty familiar with Edmonds' career, but Raphael is best known to geeks of a certain age as the voice of Jaguara, the sorceress from the '80s cartoon THUNDERCATS.

Louis Edmonds in ERNEST IN LOVE, 1960

Ever wanted to hear Roger Collins sing? In 1960 you could have heard just that, thanks to an appearance by LOUIS EDMONDS in the off-Broadway play ERNEST IN LOVE. The two-act musical was an adaption of Oscar Wilde's  comedy of manners, "The Importance of Being Earnest."

The play was well-received, with The New York Times review noting Edmonds' "handsome stuffiness." The photos come courtesy of Masterworks Broadway, which has several more photos of the recording sessions for the ERNEST soundtrack.

The soundtrack is available from Amazon, but the track listing incorrectly attributes Edmonds songs to "Louis Edmonts." 

1987 PBS documentary celebrates Dark Shadows

I'm still in the process of watching this, but what I've seen so far is fascinating. CASTING SHADOWS is a documentary produced by the defunct PBS affiliate WNYC-TV in 1987 to promote a new broadcast of the original episodes.

JONATHAN FRID introduces the proceedings, which also includes extensive interviews with Frid, KATHRYN LEIGH SCOTT, CLARICE BLACKBURN, JOAN BENNETT, NANCY BARRETT and LOUIS EDMONDS. It also includes some footage from a DARK SHADOWS FESTIVAL of the time.

Thanks to David-Elijah Nahmod for the link!

Thanksgiving with Louis Edmonds

Bill Branch is no stranger to Collinwood. His art, publications and games are well known to DARK SHADOWS fans, so I was delighted when he agreed to share some of his memories with this website. You can also look for his classic HOWLERS comics to appear here on Fridays for the next few months (and keep an eye out next week for the story behind the Victoria Winters painting seen in one of the photos below.) 

- COUSIN BARNABAS

I met Louis at one of the Festivals in the early 90s and thought he was charming, so when I saw Craig Hamrick’s book, Big Lou, there, I bought it, devoured it and sent Louis and Craig my praises.

The next thing I know, my partner & I are invited by Louis through Craig Hamrick to spend the weekend at Louis’ home, the Rookery.

We went to the Rookery one other time for a weekend, then invited Louis and Craig to our home, Winter Cottage, in Deep River for Thanksgiving overnight.

The following year, 2000, I was amazed when Louis drove with his nurse/friend Robert all the way from Long Island to Vermont for our Civil Union ceremony. It really made us feel special.

I won’t pretend that I was at the top of Louis list, but he was at the top of mine. He called us his Deep River Angels and I miss him every day. I keep his photo out in our dining room.

Louis was a doll, with his slightly naughty humor, sweet to the core.

- BILL BRANCH

Louis Edmonds talks about playing badguys (and Roger Collins)

From Romantic Lead to Moody Menace

The Daily Review (TV Week),  Oct.  9, 1966

Louis Edmonds has the kind of face you hiss and boo at—a quality that makes him menacingly appropriate for the role of Roger Collins, the skulking no-goodnick of ABC's new romantic suspense drama, Dark Shadows, weekdays at 4 PM on ABC.

Things, however, were not always thus. Edmonds was once a romantic lead and cavorted merrily in such off-Broadway musicals as :Candide" and "Ernest in Love."  But ever since his face "defined," he has lapsed into the roles of villainy. In two feature films soon to be released — "The Fifth Arm of the Swastika" and "Come Spy with Me"—he plays a ruthless Nazi officer and an unctuous Russian spy.

"Actually, I enjoy being the bad guy," said Edmonds. "The role is usually more interesting and fun to play. Besides, at any given time, you can be hysterical, temperamental and even scary."


And in Dark Shadows Edmonds is all of these. He cringes in the face of strength, erupts into little rages and petrifies the young girl who acts as governess to his ten-year-old son, whom, of course, he hates.

"But nobody can be obnoxious 24 hours a day," said Edmonds. "So I try to give Roger some wry or sardonic moments."

You may sometimes sympathize with Roger, but you will never love him. It is hard to love a man with bushy eyebrows, deep sunken eyes, and who always seems to be lurking. Add to this the mysterious quality of Edmond's face, which has been mistaken for Russian, English, German and Slavic. During rehearsals for his Broadway debut in "Passage to India," he overheard Gladys Cooper, the show's star, whisper, "Who is that curious-looking German boy with the English accent?"

The truth is that Edmonds is 100 percent American, so native, in fact, that he was born on a sugar plantation near Baton Rogue, Louisiana. His accent and voice have been cultivated by years of playing the classical characters of Shaw, Chekhov, and Shakespeare.

"Oddly enough, there are many people who actually believe that Roger Collins is a real person," said Edmonds. "They want to know how I can be so detestable. An actor friend of mine, who once played a similar role, had so many belligerent calls that he had to get an unlisted phone number."

Still, Edmonds is so convincing as Roger, it is hard to divorce fact from fiction. In Newport, R.I., where ABC filmed the exteriors of a mansion that serves as the show's focal point, he was the only actor addressed by the cast name. And in a scene where he moved furtively along a moonlit seacoast. the cameraman  remarked, "There goes the dirty rat!"

When he is not working, Edmonds lives quietly in a large house on Long Island. But the setting is decorously perfect for a villain. Across the street is an 18th century cemetery.