The Dark Shadows Daybook: May 27

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1969: Episode 767

When Jamison dreams of the death of his own grandson, will his recollections teach Barnabas the ultimate truth of Quentin Collins? Quentin Collins: David Selby. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Jamison dreams that David’s morbid birthday party is conducted by relatives who are cruelly unmoved by the actual commemoration of his living death. Only the ghost of Quentin provides David with a sense of belonging as he contemplates the transition to the world of the departed. 

Even if he had not appeared in the first shots of the first episode… even if he had somehow appeared only, by a twist of time, as late as season 3 of Discovery… we all know that Star Trek is Leonard Nimoy. His character, Spock, is Star Trek, and his performance is of the measured, intellectual integrity and focused passion that can be recognized in any of his finest colleagues in the franchise. Star Trek, as we know it, is the water-breaking stone of Nimoy. Everything else? Ripples. Not insignificant. Even in the stone’s absence, the ripples spread ever wider as a growing/fading testament to its impact. 

This lionizing is not meant to imply anything wanting in his cast mates. They didn’t get that character. Their artistry and skill are as honed as Nimoy’s. Maybe more. But there can only be one Spock. 

Were Mr. Nimoy still alive and reading this, I’m sure he’d be mortified at the suspiciously bulbous compliment. Humiliating you is not on purpose, Theo. Go easy. I paint what I see. 

It is with no small consideration that I state that Dark Shadows finds its Nimoy in David Selby. 

That is a difficult truth to write. It’s also a savagely unfair analogy. As with Nimoy and Spock, no one else (except for Thayer David) played Quentin. So, I’m sorry.  Jonathan Frid did the heavy lifting. He blazed the trail, laid the groundwork, and participated in countless other cliches. But, the airwaves made safe for a feral other, David Selby and Quentin stride into the story with both startling drama and the noble glide of a gracious poet from the heart of West Virginia. The audience, writers, ensemble, and very Zeitgeist were prepared for this character. Quentin is the apotheosis of the horror hero on Dark Shadows, which is to say, all horror heroes. He is a flawed man who prizes expedience and operational fictions. Thus, the larger society has no need for him. But those qualities don’t represent the man within the beast-before-the-beast, and we know it. Yes, he is frightening as a ghost. And yet the examples of Burke, Barnabas, Adam, and even Nicholas Blair and Angelique, to various degrees, have taught us to just… wait… a few episodes. These so-called monsters are often kind people are made monstrous by the abuses of love. Usually, they love in too-great abundance, their hearts and deeper passions unable to color within the lines established by Polite Society. Their transformations into horrors are not necessarily representative of some inner impurity becoming manifest on the surface. Instead, the creatures they become are inflated versions of society’s opinion of them.

The Dark Shadows story, then, is Quentin’s story. It’s Barnabas’ story. A good man has debatable flaws that glare when looked at through the eyes of ruling class pedants. Especially when those passions lead him into arms and cultures of the serving class, or, worse, decidedly un-Anglo, Eastern European immigrants. Pressured by imposed guilt or the terror of starving to death, these men return to the family fold only to find that those alternative communities have something to say. Barnabas’ and Quentin’s affections don’t legitimize these cultures… they were already legitimate. But their affections are long-overdue acknowledgements. And not just momentary. Barnabas loved Angelique. Quentin loved Jenny. 

The alternative class curses both men in ways that place their inner differences into the spotlight. After all, those classes are defined by their differences. Now, the ruling class will be unable to hide their allegedly sinful natures. Barnabas can hide that he sapped Angelique’s hope and optimism. Let’s curse him as something famous as a parasite. Quentin barely hides his animalistic lusts? Again… you see where this is going. Make him, literally, a wolf.

Both conditions are temporary. Both men grow up while growing away from their roots. Barnabas falls in love with Angelique. Quentin loses a child he never knew and finds the strength to lead the family with his curious mix of guile and gallantry. And as a romantic, Quentin goes beyond the obscenity of marrying an immigrant to falling in love with a woman who never even existed except in a bohemian artist’s imagination.

Selby captures all of this while never delving into a weary lecture on class warfare. Frid is marvelous, yes, but Barnabas’ affected refinement and mid-Atlantic accent distance him from viewers as too European. Selby is ripely American. Part gentleman, part hell-bent-for-leather frontiersman. Casting a man of the south was a quiet masterstroke by Dan Curtis, for where else but in the American south do we find the fusion of these national identities? Selby represents the very best of southern culture. Joy. A charm that comes from authentic bonhomie. Quiet thoughtfulness. Most of all, cautious friendliness — hardly a Collins trait. There’s Faulkner’s lyricism and Williams’ poignance and Poe’s dreamy irony and Twain’s irascible honesty in Quentin… and in David Selby, himself. All bound by honest benevolence. Once he tells Beth she’s still beautiful, which she is-but-never-hears in a world of prim Judith’s steaming chamber pots and Edward’s careless cigar ash, he’s our guy. He’s the answer to Liz’s isolation, Roger’s repressed rage, Joshua’s hypocrisy, and so on. Naturally, he must suffer for it. 

This is art, after all. 

Both Barnabas and Quentin are good men who stand apart from their families without abandoning them. There is no more ringing evidence than the regard with which they are held by adoring children. Sarah, Jamison, and Nora have no social preconceptions to cloud their honest opinions, and they see and love the truth in these men like no other. 

In 767, Jamison naturally trusts Barnabas with his darkest nightmare. In it, the ghost of Quentin reaches out again to that other outstanding critic of Collins social artifice, David. Yes, they are destined to be ghosts to their families, but they will have each other. Brothers in truth and love, separated by centuries, dreams, and death, itself. In his performance with David Henesy, David Selby shows an effortless loyalty, sincerity, and love that is wholly devoid of the condescension normally reserved for speaking with children. Quentin may be a wolf without a pack, but he is their guardian, nevertheless. And what is a wolf but a liberated dog? And I refer to a dog not as a servant, pet, or a beast, but as humanity’s kindest, most loyal, and intuitive companion. Those who have witnessed the beguilingly alien wisdom of these often majestic compatriots know that the comparison is the highest compliment. It is a rare human who matches their unflagging virtue; they are too easily written off as mere animals.

Quentin is a wolf at heart. In the very best ways. As painted with tireless wit and sensitivity, Selby embodies those noble virtues with the knowing voice of an author and artist. It takes a surreal dream sequence, replete with mocking puppets and the Collinses at their most sadly, honestly calloused, to let Selby crystalize what makes him different. What makes him American. What makes him the friend, guide, and troubled companion that Dark Shadows was destined to impart and always was.

This episode hit the airwaves on June 3, 1969.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: May 17

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 501

Barnabas takes arms against a sea of Adam, but can he, by opposing, end him before the creature works his reamimated charm on the single Ladies of Collinwood? Adam: Robert Rodin. (Repeat; 30 min.)

I love to make things up. And in my defense when it comes to pulling a whopper, I always admit it immediately and then go on telling the tale as if the fact that it’s completely false were irrelevant. Because it is. We’re in the middle of a good story. So just go with it.

I mention all of this because even though I fully confess when I am full of beans, people can still take a lot of convincing when something sounds improbable, but is not. It’s an occupational hazard, and the wolf still hasn’t caught up with me. It goes with the territory of my hobby of claiming ludicrous things, like Ernest Borgnine being Playboy’s 1966 Playmate of the Year, a claim to which a bewildered cheerleader in the class I was teaching murmured in genuine wonder, “How does he know all these things?”

In the case of episode 501, I can’t believe that any description would or could pass as believable.  I would certainly not believe me. But I wouldn’t believe anyone if they described it. I was eating some barbecue as I watched it, and I think it may have been something in the sauce. Or it may have been the fact that it was episode 501. That the entire Dark Shadows staff was absolutely astounded that this bizarre, wonderfully ridiculous show had been going on for 500 episodes, which was over 200 past when 1960s standards and practices should have seen them canceled. I honestly think they just sat around, convinced they were sharing a mutual hallucination, and so they made up the events of episode 501 to test the theory. As far as I know, the top is still spinning. 

We begin with Barnabas, one of the most proper, thoughtful, and deliberately civilized heroes of television loading a gun. A big gun. Not the little flintlock he reserves for shooting occult spouses. No, he has gone completely John Wayne. Except he’s still in men’s clothing. He knows this act will kill him, or turn him into a vampire, which is kind of the same thing, but he has had it up to here with Adam and his entire storyline.  Later, as he is tromping around the woods with Julia, at her most nagging and ineffectual in tow, he brags about the fact that he is not thinking for once. 

Here is where I normally stop and do some sort of analysis of the arc of the character of Barnabas Collins, but this is so gloriously ridiculous that I’m not sure I need to. I may give it a shot anyway. I think this may be his most human moment thus far. When you think about everything that the man has gone through in his past waking year or so, not including his time in suspended animation, I’m not sure I can blame him. And I’m not sure he would stop with Adam. I think he would just go on a spree, then lock himself up in the Collinsport jail with a blanket over his head, and wait for sunrise, hoping that the blanket would protect him like some sort of Nosferatu Otis the drunk. The whole time, just bellowing, “not a jury in the land!“

A potential marriage was destroyed. And then another marriage was destroyed. His mother kills herself. His fiancé jumps off a hill. He winds up in a coffin for nearly two centuries. He meets his fiancée again, and he can’t convince her that she is his fiancée, so we has to lose her to some mouth-breathing fisherman. He falls in love with another girl who probably knows he’s a vampire, but then he loses her to Roger Davis. At some point, his assistant get shot in the back five times, which is actually a relief, but he springs him out of the nuthouse anyway because his only other friend keeps poisoning him. There’s only one person fancy enough for him to talk with about a good scherzo, but he goes off and marries the witch who caused all of the trouble he got into the coffin to avoid. So she’s back. That’s a thing. And he’s had to promise to be nice to her. Most of Collinsport knows where his coffin is. He’s still trying to figure out how Phyllis Wick fits into all of this. He gets cured, and then finds that his life is tied to a big, shambling idiot who doesn’t even have the decency to do a good job of it when it comes to killing Willie. And he probably has to potty train him. Yeah, imagine that. That’s how his day begins. Oh yeah, and he can’t go to sleep because there’s some sort of curse that’s going to kill him after making him walk around a foggy soundstage filled with embarrassing special-effects. And his sister’s ghost won’t forgive him, even though he really couldn’t control what happened and even begged there ineffectual father to kill him. And she won’t stop singing London Bridge.

So, yeah, we see where thinking has gotten him.

Meanwhile, Adam is reenacting a scene from Porky’s as he leers at Carolyn through the window Collinwood. He kind of does a pratfall backwards through the main doors, and Liz thinks she can scare him off with elevator music. But he likes it, so she grabs a knife that just happens to be laying out and goes all Michael Hadge on the lug. He responds, and I may have this out of order at this point, but it’s all a fever dream anyway, by chasing Carolyn around and grabbing at her from behind as her skirt keeps flying up. And there are a number of angles that look like their physical arrangement is exactly what you think it looks like.

Then, he kidnaps her. And that’s the most peaceful moment in the episode.

I swear, I’m not making any of this up. Top that, Secret Storm.

Roger Ebert had a Maxim. It was probably the one with Alyson Hannigan in it. But he also had a saying, and that was, “There are some movies where you would much rather hear the people who made it sit around talking about it for two hours than to watch the movie itself.”

This is the opposite. I’m sure there’s some kind of trenchant analysis that can be made of this hootenanny. But in this case, I need to stop thinking also. To overthink it would be like overthinking an ice cold Pepsi on a hot day because it lacks protein. This episode, when you try to describe it to people who don’t watch the program very often, is the creature on the wing of the plane, and I am, at the very least, John Lithgow.

The important point is that they got away with it. Imagine if they had tried this as the pilot. It would be the greatest pilot ever made, prior to Lookwell, and it would’ve been just as unsellable. But I am convinced, after 500 episodes, Dan and the team sat down, wondered how much longer this could go on, and tested the waters by plunging the entire program as deep as possible. It swam like Esther Williams in a pool full of Baby Ruths. Dry, Dark Shadows was nothing. Wet, and Thayer David is a star.

Children and authors of ostensibly daily columns about increasingly obscure television series often test boundaries to see where they can go and where they cannot. Dark Shadows tests a boundary with 501, and realized that there is none.

Nicholas Blair, Eve and the lucky pantyhose into which she was born, Magda, Szandor, Petofi & Aristede, melting Evan Hanley, John Yaeger, Mr. Juggins, Julianka’s voice, Judah Zachery’s Head, Dameon Edward’s Bea Arthurian pantsuit, Bruno’s hair, Mr. Best, Robot Roger Davis with Head Popping Action, and Chuck Morgan as the Best Fed Zombie in Town? Start limbering up. And you’re welcome. The water is going to be fine for nearly three more years.

This episode hit the airwaves May 27, 1968.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: MAY 27

By PATRICK McCRAY

May 27, 1968
Taped on this date: Episode 514

Bad days at Collinwood. Barnabas is bricked behind a wall in the Old House, Liz is fixated on dying, and Maggie feels more and more drawn to the past. Joe and Maggie get ready for the evening. As Joe gets ready to pick up Sam from the Blue Whale, he wonders if Stokes is a thief. After he leaves, Maggie again dons the earrings and Josette’s theme plays. After she exits, we see Adam looking in through the window. Maggie enters the Old House in a strange reverie. Willie greets her, and she has no idea why she’s there. However she hears a noise. Little do they know it’s Barnabas trying to get their attention. Willie takes her appearances as a cue that she has romantic interest in him. Willie just warns her not to wear the earrings. Is he worried about Barnabas? The moment she takes the earrings off, the trance is broken and she must get to the Blue Whale. Without the earrings, she senses there is something off about the Old House. At Collinwood, Liz leaves, fixated on the man who jumped from Widow’s Hill, and goes to the Old House to see Barnabas. She tells Willie that the police called, reporting that a man matching Adam’s description has been seen vandalizing the neighborhood. Liz then falls into a dark meditation on death. She then hears the knocking from behind the cellar wall. She knows someone was buried alive. Liz runs out wishing that “she” would kill her and get it over with. In her absence, Willie observes that, “She ought to see a doctor.” At the Evans cottage, Joe returns reporting that Sam wants a search party to look for Adam -- he’s a friend in need. Joe further reports that Sam is hostile, and Maggie wonders if it’s frustration over his blindness. She sends Joe back to the Blue Whale. Outside, Joe sees Willie headed inward. Joe warns him away, not knowing that they’ve made peace. Willie says that Joe is just jealous, and Joe responds by beating Willie unconscious. Going back in, Joe reports to Maggie of his meeting with Willie. Maggie explains that Willie meant no harm; when he was shot there, he was trying to warn her from danger. And of her visits to the Old House? She doesn’t know. Joe grows more and more belligerent in his questioning. He angrily exits, giving an ultimatum that she has one day to give him the truth. Willie staggers in, beaten. Adam follows Willie in, reporting, “Willie bad!” He seizes Maggie and she screams for all she’s got.

Lemme tell you, it’s only going to get stranger. 1970 is shot wildly out of sequence, but that’s nothing compared to what’s coming up with 1967. Hoo boy. I feel like Billy Pilgrim. This episode seems to initiate the Fall of Joe Haskell. I have a theory about this sad, alien part of the mythology' they could only afford so many actors, and Quentin was being eyed as The Next Thing After Nicholas Blair. Law of Conservation of Money.  Just my theory. They knew that Quentin was coming, and there was only so much Hunk Money to go around. That’s just a pet theory. In any case, it gave them an opportunity to take a very kind character down an unexpectedly dark road, creating the precedent for what would happen to Maggie and Quentin. Maggie implodes because she is too inflexible to explore the occult. Quentin, because he relies on it too much. Barnabas, however, calls upon humanity whenever possible, and Angelique embraces it as her final act. Just my theories.

(Episode 501 airs on this date.)



May 27, 1969
Taped on this date: Episode 767

1897. Hearing of Jamison’s dream of David’s death, Barnabas is stunned. He must speak to Jamison. Judith brings him down. While waiting, Quentin enters and learns that Jamison is upset. Quentin feels that Barnabas is a strange observer with an odd plan. Barnabas explains that his conversation is deeply tied to Quentin’s good. Quentin wants to know more about Barnabas and the people who will allegedly shape his destiny. Judith orders Quentin out so that Jamison and Barnabas may speak alone. Jamison explains his dream. He was in the cellar of the Old House, seeing Barnabas in his 1969 I Ching trance. Upstairs, Carolyn and Roger plan David’s birthday. She taunts Roger with a puppet, saying that David will have to learn of his impending death. Liz shows David down to his birthday party. David won’t cut the cake without Barnabas and Quentin. No one will answer if Barnabas will be at his next birthday. And Quentin? Roger looks for him in a family record and can’t find a Quentin. They insinuate there’s a surprise. Quentin’s ghost appears, but only David sees him. Carolyn keeps suggesting that the birthday is David’s last. They light the candles, but the thirteenth candle -- the one to grow on -- is missing. David won’t blow out the candles, seized by fear. David makes a silent wish and blows out his candles. When he looks up, the family is missing. Quentin is still there, pledging to remain with him even after he dies. Quentin reports that David has the right to know he’s dying. The family couldn’t see Quentin because he’s dead, and David will soon be joining him. Quentin comforts David that his death will be painless. But he’ll never be alone; he’ll be with Quentin. Quentin didn’t want to die, but three things led to his death. Averting any of them could have saved him. 1. The discovery of a silver bullet. 2. The murder of the one person who could have kept him alive. 3. The only person he loved turned against him. Quentin cuts the cake, but David finds that it’s a prop cake. A make believe cake for a make believe birthday. Carolyn ends the dream by taunting him with “happy birthday.” And then David was dead. The only other thing Jamison remembers is that everyone was dressed strangely except for the dead Quentin. Jamison thinks that Barnabas knows the significance of the dream. Later, Charity speaks of the walking wolf and Judith offers a reward for his killing. Judith will also set up a scholarship for the late Dorcas. Quentin flies into a fury, saying that the animal is just that, and has no idea what he’s doing. Barnabas enters and reports that “David” is simply a way of Jamison dealing with his mother’s death. The funny clothes suggest that Jamison is putting a mask on reality. He’s simply upset. Edward enters, shaken: he discovered a silver bullet. Only two more things remain that will lead to Quentin’s death.

This may very well be DARK SHADOWS strangest episode. If the show is bizarre, anyway, a dream sequence in it is even more so. And unlike the dream curse, this actually feels like a nightmare. Strange conspiracies. People withholding information. Horrible truths uttered only when it’s too late. Nancy Barrett with a puppet.

Although he never appeared on DARK SHADOWS, today is the birthday of Vincent Price, a spiritual incestor to Clan Collins if ever there were one. So go watch one of his movies tonight!

(Episode 762 airs on this date.)

DARK SHADOWS over Fort Wayne, Ind., 1968

(Below is a newspaper interview with Jonathan Frid, taken shortly after his national publicity tour for DARK SHADOWS. While the story was published in The Washington Post, the photos are taken from other sources and show his visit that year to Fort Wayne, Indiana.)

He Shadows Women by Day
The Washington Post, May 27, 1968

By Meryle Secrest

In the weird world of daytime soap opera, housewives are gaga about ghouls.

Jonathan Frid doesn’t quite understand it, but he’s not knocking it either.

He seems to be thoroughly enjoying the sudden fame he has acquired as Barnabas Collins, vampire hero of “Dark Shadows,” on WMAL-TV.

The only time he gets slightly ruffled is when his viewers do not seem to be able to distinguish between Barnabas, the vampire, and Frid, the man.

“I get letters saying ‘Don’t you be so cruel to Willy. You don’t know it but I overheard him saying nice things about you.’ And they vote, these people.”

Frid, 43, a handsome six-footer, is on a promotional tour (nine cities in 10 days), traveling by a six-seater jet, renamed Vampire in his honor.

With him is Phil Kriegler of ABC-TV, a short amiable man: “I play the heavy on this trip. I’m the one who has to pull him away from all the women who want autographs. The last time I did it one woman gave me a punch in the back that nearly crippled me.”

Kriegler said that 12,000 women, children and teenagers were waiting for them at a shopping center in Fort Wayne, Ind.

“The screaming was unbelievable. Eleven women fainted, there were 58 lost children, one broken arm, a broken leg, and $1,500 damage to trees and shrubs.”

However, he defends the adulation of housewives, teenagers and children that has brought him sudden fame after 20 years of hard-working anonymity as a Shakespearean actor.

“I have acted in so many theaters where there were snob audiences. The kind who go into the lobby and say to each other, ‘What do you think of this play?’ before it’s even gotten off the ground. I hate that scene.”

He also said, “I take it very seriously, in spite of the kidding. An actor is not noted for his intelligence. He’s interested in creating around a situation. I’ve played in dozens of Shakespearean plays and some of the characters are utter bores when you take away the language.

“In Barnabas I get a whole range of characters to play. I play the man’s loneliness and yearnings and feelings of guilt. It’s really a Jekyll and Hyde role.”

Jonathan Frid receives the key to the city during his visit to Fort Wayne.