{{Alex Ness here, Pop thought is grateful to Stuart Manning of Collinwood.net for this account of the history of DARK SHADOWS and its starts and stops on TV and elsewhere. With the upcoming series we appreciate his help filling us in. Visit Stuart’s Site Dark Shadows .}}
For a story so epic, Dark Shadows began very simply. Whilst attempting to come up with a daytime soap opera format, producer Dan Curtis had a dream about a girl on a train, reading a letter, bound for an ominous dark mansion. For Curtis, the simple image seemed ripe with possibilities, hinting at intrigue and mystery in the traditional gothic vein. ABC Television was quickly sold on the idea, and on June 27 1966 Curtis’ dream was faithfully reproduced on-screen in the opening moments of Dark Shadows, television’s first supernatural soap opera.
Writer Art Wallace faced the task of expanding Curtis’ sketchy ideas into a workable format. The show would be built around the adventures of orphan governess Victoria Winters(Alexandra Moltke), the girl in Curtis’ dream. Victoria arrives in the remote coastal town of Collinsport, Maine, to work at the foreboding Collinwood mansion. She soon finds herself plunged into a world of mystery and intrigue, as she attempts to unravel the secrets of her lost past and those of her troubled employers, the wealthy Collins family, led by matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett).
The concept was innovative for a daytime show, with its eerie locations and haunted atmosphere, yet the ratings were disappointing. The missing element was deceptively simple: Collinwood, the perfect embodiment of the classic haunted house, lacked any ghosts of its own. Doors creaked, strange sounds were heard, but the all-too rational explanations wore thin quickly. Eventually, Curtis indulged a whim and added a phantom white woman to an episode, claiming his children had told him to make the show scary.
The audience approved and the results were far-reaching. Within weeks, long-term story lines were suddenly rewritten with a supernatural bent, as the vengeful spirits of the dead invigorated the show’s tame murder mystery. Before long, Victoria’s charge, David Collins (David Henesy), found himself the object of desire for an immortal phoenix in the form of his mother Laura (Diana Millay), who attempted to lure him to a fiery demise. As the ratings improved, the supernatural floodgates were opened and Dark Shadows would never be the same again.
Having now gained a modest episode renewal to the fall of 1967, the producers were convinced that fantasy stories were the way forward. Dan Curtis’ favorite monster was a vampire, so he decided to bring the undead to Collinsport for a short-term crowd-pleaser. The censors initially vetoed the word ‘vampire’, but they eased up when the ratings skyrocketed.
Barnabas Collins was nothing short of a pop culture phenomenon. Shakespearean actor Jonathan Frid loaned the vampire character a sense of aloof dignity and old-world ambiance, becoming a perverse teenage idol along the way. Despite trouble learning lines and being anxious around the cameras, Frid’s contribution to the show was crucial. Part villain, part romantic lead, Barnabas’ yearnings for love and salvation gripped the viewers and brought a massive influx of young fans. After a shaky start, Dark Shadows had arrived.
Produced on a shoestring budget in its tiny Manhattan studio, the show was a victim of high volume, low cost television production. Each week, five episodes were taped as live on weekday afternoons, with just hours of rehearsal and virtually no facility for retakes. Compounding these difficult conditions was the show’s regular use of involved special effects and trick photography. So, amidst a steady stream of boom microphones hovering in shot, flubbed lines and other gaffes, Dark Shadows was rarely a product of polish<
