Dark Shadows Debuted 50 Years Ago- June 27th!!!

[jjkrkwood]

I like horror, but am more partial to "5 o'clock shadows"

 

http://www.gaychannel.one/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/12950373_629304053889929_1391229189_n.jpg

[+ Gar1eth]

 

http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/581394997574d7c951847667/master/h_606,c_limit/dark-shadows-50th-anniversary-03.jpg

 

 

Maggie, Quentin, and Angelique. I'd know them anywhere.

 

Gman

[AdamSmith]

Maggie, Quentin, and Angelique. I'd know them anywhere.

Think I mentioned before that Selby looks horribly aged in most photos these days. But when I last personally laid eyes on him at the August 2011 DS Fest -- a time when he was already photographing badly -- he was startlingly better-looking in person. Still hot, in fact.

[AdamSmith]

More Lyndhurst porn...

 

http://www.lyndhurst.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SlideF.jpg

 

http://www.lyndhurst.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SlideD.jpg

 

http://www.lyndhurst.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SlideC.jpg

 

http://www.lyndhurst.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/slideshow-image1.jpg

 

http://www.lyndhurst.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SlideB.jpg

 

http://www.lyndhurst.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/slideE.jpg

 

http://www.lyndhurst.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Lyndenhurst.jpg

 

http://www.lyndhurst.org/about/room-tour/

[AdamSmith]

http://2h3mh837ken53kitqv1co5fh83o.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/HOUSE-OF-DARK-SHADOWS.jpg

[AdamSmith]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zrC3Ug4-VqM/TylkQZAr9vI/AAAAAAAADBs/F0jQ9K8kigw/s1600/HOD6A.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lsmBP-AImQw/Ty7BwEJXUAI/AAAAAAAADJY/x91_GfQ2GbU/s1600/HOD10A.jpg

http://cdn2-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/housenight-of-dark-shadows-STYD/cobert3.jpg

[AdamSmith]

 

http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/house-of-dark-shadows/w448/house-of-dark-shadows.jpg

[AdamSmith]

[MrMiniver]

Damn, I'm old, I remember that.

[AdamSmith]

When Dan Curtis arranged to film HODS and then NODS at Lyndhurst, whatever local bit of the National Trust was managing the place gladly accepted his offer because they needed the moolah. They were subsequently appalled to see, in the released film (if not indeed in the property's condition post-use), Selby violently slamming the mansion's delicate old interior doors, kicking some of the (original!) chairs -- they filmed using the actual real historic furniture (Curtis's justifiably penny-pinching ways ), etc.

 

Even decades later, the docents were still touchy about the association with the DS films. I have a Barnabas cane...

 

http://www.fashionablecanes.com/mm5/graphics/im/117.jpg

 

...it's a stock item that the show bought from an umbrella and cane shop in NYC located across the street from the old Russian Tea Room. I bought mine there too, just before attending my first DS Fest in 1993 at the Marriott Marquis. You can still buy it today: http://www.fashionablecanes.com/117.html?gclid=CK-Mq5Pkg9ACFYdEhgodDQoJ5A

 

I paid $399; now it's $589. The head/handle is cast in 'German silver,' a nickel-silver amalgam that's much stronger than pure silver, thus much more proof against dents and bending. For whatever odd reason, you don't polish it with silver polish, but with Burma-Shave. And it works!

 

[Edit P.S.: I just recalled the head is cast brass plated with German silver. X out my yakking about strength above. ]

 

In filming House of Dark Shadows, in rehearsal of a scene where Barnabas beats Willy violently with the head of the cane, those pointed dog-ears cut John Karlen so badly that the techs took pains to hammer them forward and down before the scene was acted again.

 

Anyway, one time a friend (one of the show fan fanatics referenced in above posts) and I went to take the standard guided tour of Lyndhurst which he had done many times before. We thought it would be funny to take my cane, so I did.

 

The docent was most frosty about the reference. She was not old enough to have watched the movies on first release, but clearly knew that -- evidently to the custodians -- less than savory episode in the mansion's past.

[+ LIguy]

All of this brings back many memories. I used to hang outside the ABC studio on West 53rd St where Dark Shadows was taped. I sold many of the photos I took of the cast on Ebay several years ago. The cast members were always accomodating in signing autographs and posing for pictures for the group of anywhere from 10 to 25 fans that were there everyday. Sometimes Jonathon Frid or David Selby would come out in costume and makeup and pose with fans. Kate Jackson, Lara Parker, Frid, Selby, Grayson Hall were incredibly sweet. Frid recruited a bunch of us to help sort and answer his fan mail using pre printed cards and we did this once at a hotel and several Saturdays at the studio in the rehearsal hall. He gave a christmas party at the studio for us and the cast and crew.

I also went up to Lyndhurst when the second Dark Shadows movie was being filmed and I still have some 8mm loops that I took of the filming. Such great memories that this post has brought back to me!

[AdamSmith]

All of this brings back many memories. I used to hang outside the ABC studio on West 53rd St where Dark Shadows was taped. I sold many of the photos I took of the cast on Ebay several years ago. The cast members were always accomodating in signing autographs and posing for pictures for the group of anywhere from 10 to 25 fans that were there everyday. Sometimes Jonathon Frid or David Selby would come out in costume and makeup and pose with fans. Kate Jackson, Lara Parker, Frid, Selby, Grayson Hall were incredibly sweet. Frid recruited a bunch of us to help sort and answer his fan mail using pre printed cards and we did this once at a hotel and several Saturdays at the studio in the rehearsal hall. He gave a christmas party at the studio for us and the cast and crew.

I also went up to Lyndhurst when the second Dark Shadows movie was being filmed and I still have some 8mm loops that I took of the filming. Such great memories that this post has brought back to me!

I love you.

[+ Gar1eth]

All of this brings back many memories. I used to hang outside the ABC studio on West 53rd St where Dark Shadows was taped. I sold many of the photos I took of the cast on Ebay several years ago. The cast members were always accomodating in signing autographs and posing for pictures for the group of anywhere from 10 to 25 fans that were there everyday. Sometimes Jonathon Frid or David Selby would come out in costume and makeup and pose with fans. Kate Jackson, Lara Parker, Frid, Selby, Grayson Hall were incredibly sweet. Frid recruited a bunch of us to help sort and answer his fan mail using pre printed cards and we did this once at a hotel and several Saturdays at the studio in the rehearsal hall. He gave a christmas party at the studio for us and the cast and crew.

I also went up to Lyndhurst when the second Dark Shadows movie was being filmed and I still have some 8mm loops that I took of the filming. Such great memories that this post has brought back to me!

 

I love you.

 

I love him more!!!

 

Gman

[AdamSmith]

This love is so much the feeling at the in-person annual Festivals. And the cast who attend feel it and participate in it and give so much of it back too.

 

With the sole exception of Frid. He finally accepted that Barnabas would always and ever be his career signature. But he never came to an entire equanimity with it, unlike all the other actors. (Proving maybe his authenticity as a real artist.)

 

But he did finally come to accept the geniuneness of the fan base's love, and to participate happily at the Festivals.

 

(Although supported by the habitual consumption of quarts of vodka beforehand, and throughout.

 

In service of which Your Umble Narrator earned brownie points one time for introducing him to, & buying many rounds of, a particular brand he had not known before. )

[AdamSmith]

I also went up to Lyndhurst when the second Dark Shadows movie was being filmed and I still have some 8mm loops that I took of the filming. Such great memories that this post has brought back to me!

Incredible stories! Thank you.

 

Your last part reminded me that one of my friends who is today in the inner sanctum of fandom -- involved in production of the DS Festivals; provided acoustic-guitar background for Frid in a number of his (non-DS-related) dramatic readings from Shakespeare, Maugham and others; conducted in fact the last published interview with Frid before he passed away -- grew up in Dobbs Ferry, close to Tarrytown. Already an avid (rabid , even, as many of us were) fan of the show at early age, he was with his family one weekend day when they drove up to have a picnic lunch on the Lyndhurst grounds.

 

Well. You can imagine his reaction when they are setting out their lunch bits, he happens to glance back at the mansion, and he sees, over the roofline, behind the building -- Angelique, dressed in her 1700s garb, hanged dead by the neck from a tall tree.

 

They had chanced on the filming of 'Night.'

 

http://cdn3-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/housenight-of-dark-shadows-STYD/cobert6.jpg

 

I bought an original of this promo poster at the '93 Fest. I love the accidental corn poetry from that typeset line-break:

 

Her return from the grave is just

The beginning of their lust

 

[AdamSmith]

Your last part reminded me that one of my friends who is today in the inner sanctum of fandom -- involved in production of the DS Festivals; provided acoustic-guitar background for Frid in a number of his (non-DS-related) dramatic readings from Shakespeare, Maugham and others; conducted in fact the last published interview with Frid before he passed away -- grew up in Dobbs Ferry, close to Tarrytown. Already an avid (rabid , even, as many of us were) fan of the show at early age, he was with his family one weekend day when they drove up to have a picnic lunch on the Lyndhurst grounds.

 

Well. You can imagine his reaction when they are setting out their lunch bits, he happens to glance back at the mansion, and he sees, over the roofline, behind the building -- Angelique, dressed in her 1700s garb, hanged dead by the neck from a tall tree.

 

They had chanced on the filming of 'Night.'

This same friend, age eight, and his brother had the treat of visiting the DS studio with their father, a journalist then doing a story on the show. Here they are with Frid. My friend is on the right, with the plastic fangs. (The pointed-bangs artwork on Frid's hairline is because Frid here is before makeup. Each day, makeup would shape and hairspray Frid's bangs to match the pointed bangs in the oil portrait of Barnabas in the Collinwood entry hall, the model for which was the show's producer, Robert Costello. The portrait prop was painted before Frid had been found and cast in the role, and his face filled in at the last minute.)

 

http://redmp3.su/cover/3408175-460x460/i-wrote-it-down.jpg

 

That's the cover of one of his band's CDs.

 

This is the title song he wrote, much later, about that visit.