Thus began one of the greatest adventures of my life.
I remember Kathryn Leigh Scott saying to me on my first day, “You won’t get to perfect your art on this show, but you will sure be able to develop your technique.
She was right. Although I had worked for years in community, college, and summer theatre, this was my first professional job. And it was very different.
Gone was the luxury of a month, or even a week, of rehearsal. We had from 8 o’clock in the morning until taping that same afternoon at 4 PM. Lines and blocking had to be digested fast. Scenes were run with other actors during make-up, “hair,” or lunch. Whatever we rehearsed in the morning, we put on tape in the afternoon.
If you’ve ever seen out-takes of other filmed and edited TV shows, you know what we left on the tape. And anything on the tape—any flub, any missed cue, any forgotten line, any furtive glance to the tele-prompter, whatever it was—went on the air. So we all made terrible mistakes. And Kathryn’s early advice came true. We learned to perform with ice water in our veins, hold on to the mood and stay in character, even if the set fell down around our ears.
Of course we all had our excuses. “I didn’t forget my line! I was waiting for Jonathan to lie down in his casket!” “When I stuck the pin in the doll, I jabbed my own finger! That’s why I was grimacing.” “I wasn’t reading the tele-prompter. I was looking for the stage manager to give me a cue.”
Watching an episode a week later, usually with other cast members, was always an exercise in humility. But at least it was over. It had appeared, blessedly, briefly on the air, and it was gone. Vanished. Never to be seen again. Little did we know, all those mistakes—and memories—would someday come back to haunt us.
As we look at old episodes on videocassette and see ourselves 20 years younger, skinny, wrinkle-free—and so naive—we still cringe at the bloopers and moments of panic when something went wrong. But the present day audience roars with laughter. Laughter is a part of the love they feel. I am now aware that the charm of the show lay, in part, in the tension between the exalted subject matter of the show—Gothic horror—and our less-than-perfect portrayal of it.
For the most part, it was all there. Ravishing costumes, glorious sets, enthralling music, special effects that were amazing for the technology available at the time, and wonderful scripts. But up against this were under-rehearsed actors often working on the edge of improvisation, trying to remember five things at once: Lines (including remembering not to say the ones which had been cut five minutes before taping); finding marks (if you aren’t on your mark, you won’t be on camera); finding the light (or all the emotions flickering across your face won’t be seen); handling props, (when you put the fangs in, be sure the light on your camera has gone off, or the whole world will know you aren’t really a vampire!)... and all the while, playing some very demanding emotional scenes which required passion, rage, hatred, fear, horror, and sexual arousal! Sometimes—no, often—it was very funny. Joanne Woodward sent us a telegraph once. It just said, “Dark Shadows, I love you!” Somehow it sounded like she had been laughing.
Dark Shadows was wonderfully theatrical and romantic. Many of the performances—Jonathan’s Grayson‘s, Thayer’s, Humbert‘s, Louis’—to name just a few, were larger than life. Most of us were stage actors, not soap opera actors. We were trained to make the emotions broad and powerful, rather than internalized and underplayed. And most of our characters were supernatural.
The directors, Lela Swift, and especially Henry Kaplan, would demand passion and verve. In morning rehearsal, when Henry was blocking out the scene, his favorite stage direction was “TRANS-ISH!,” short for transition. This meant your character was to be in one state of mind, only to be plunged into another by some horrifying and devastating realization. This transition was usually punctuated by a “sting,” or three descending chords of orchestral music, and usually occurred when you were in an extreme close up, meaning your face was on the screen, minus your hairline and your chin. When Henry pointed a finger at you and said, “Trans-ish!,” he wanted it to be inspired.
I remember he was very hard on Kate Jackson when she first came on the show. A lovely, natural actress with ease and intelligence, Kate had enough sense not to try to do something she couldn’t do truthfully. Often her reactions would be very subtle. Henry would say, “Kate, there is a ghost coming through the wall, and if you can’t scream, just imagine me coming in your dressing room after the show!”
Henry would come to the dressing rooms after taping and give grades for the performances that day. I can remember him opening my door, glaring at me, taking a long pregnant pause, then delivering a scathing, withering, “B... minus!,” before slamming the door decisively.
We played these amazing characters with total commitment. Once I had to convince the ghost of Jeremiah to stop coming around. I had to say something like, “Jeremiah, stop! Hear me. Listen to me. I command you to return to your grave!” I summoned all the determination I could muster, pointed at the dark hole he was to re-enter, and sternly admonished him to go there. Only later, watching the scene, did I realize how ridiculous that was. Yet we never played these scenes for laughs. If Dark Shadows was ever “camp,” as some have said, it was not because we thought it was funny, or ever took it less than seriously. The more incredible the story was, the more fervently and passionately we portrayed it.
I believe the unique style of Dark Shadows lay in the absurdity of a ludicrous situation performed with complete conviction by the cast. The fascination for Dark Shadows lay in the ability of those in the audience to identify with the characters. You may ask how one can possibly identify with a witch, or a ghost, or a vampire? We have nothing in common with these appalling creatures...or do we?
It was often said the stories on Dark Shadows were based on the classic mystery and horror tales of great literature. But it was years after I had been on the show, when I read Joseph Campbell’s book, The Power of Myth, that I realized why these stories were so potent. We have heard them before, in fairy tales, in the Greek and Roman myths, and in early religious texts, such as the Bible. All the classics revolve around the same truths and reverberate with the same messages on the meaning of life. We recognize them, or remember them from some unconscious source in our souls. And we respond to then with reverence and wonder. They are deeply moral, and at the same time, profoundly in touch with human frailties.
The witch, for instance, was a common character, or archetype, in literature and drama, going back as far as the story of Adam and Eve. She was often seen as a wise old woman or as an angry, righteous goddess in mythology. She was separated from the others by her intelligence. Wasn’t Eve’s sin visiting the tree of knowledge at the advice of the Devil? Perhaps the first woman in creation was also the first witch.
I began to think of Angélique as smarter than the others. She saw through their false protestations of virtue, and knew that even the best were corruptible. She was inpatient with virtue, and saw it as hypocrisy, naivete, or simply weakness. Her irritation with others’ stupidity caused her to use her powers heartlessly, but her contempt for the tiresome and the obtuse kept her from feeling any guilt. She was cynical, and therefore she was always lonely. She was not able to love, as Josette could, who was pure in heart. For this reason, she was jealous of Josette.
I have often been asked whether I studied witchcraft after I got the part of Angélique, or whether I believed in the occult. The answer is no, (although I cannot deny a certain suspicion that there are psychics among us, with powers the rest of us have either not learned or have forgotten how to use.) Archetypal characters reflect tendencies that are in all of us. We have all experienced the exasperation of dealing with those who are dumber than we are and just don’t “get it.” We want to throttle them! Well, Angélique got to do just that. We also know the frustration of a failed love affair, the pangs of jealousy and the secret wish that a certain person could just be hit by a large truck. Well, Angélique could handle t
hat one too. We all know we should keep our angry feelings to ourselves, and be polite, and modest, and kind to others, but Angélique never had to do any of those things.
She was always squeezing a scarf around a doll and causing some unfortunate person to choke. She started fires with nonchalance, often just to prove a point. She turned poor Joshua into a cat. (Talk about a difficult acting partner! That cat was never on his mark.) However, the character of Angélique was not built upon her powers as a witch, but upon this one powerful emotion—jealousy.
Only warlock Nicholas Blair (Humbert Allen Astredo) was able to chastise her. He punished her for falling in love with a mortal. What delicious irony! She was forced to suffer Barnabas’ fate and live as a vampire—to lose her supernatural gifts—and when? At the moment she had become most human! What other TV show ever delved into these intriguing themes?
Some of my best scenes were with Humbert Allen Astredo. He was an interesting and charismatic actor, a cold and handsome devil, but there was always a twinkle in his eye. Humbert relished his role; he enjoyed the fun of it. Scenes with him were always full of fire and energy. We never knew which of us would be in control that week, because a warlock and a witch are pretty evenly matched, and the writers let us take turns. I got to deliver one of my favorite lines after he took a fall from grace. “From warlock to lacky... my, how the mighty are fallen!” I remember saying it with great satisfaction.
Barnabas was also an archetypal character: the tragic hero, caught in the trap of pride and fate, doomed to struggle against his own nature. Examples of this type abound in drama and in literature, from Oedipus and Hamlet, to Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman. He is damned because of one mistake he made in his youth. Driven by egotistical pride, he made love to the wrong woman, tried to leave her, and she would not be discarded. It’s Fatal Attraction long before its time.
I believe the vampire is a metaphor for the destructive side of love. Oscar Wilde wrote in The Ballad of Reading Gael,
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
It goes without saying that the vampire’s bite is sexual. But is the bite a kiss, or the thrust of a sword?
Barnabas is both the irresistible lover and the terrifying monster. He is also insatiable, cursed with a hunger that is never satisfied. Every night he wakes and must be fed. An elegant, sensitive, worldly gentleman who is repulsed by his own needs which are abhorrent to him. He is all that he despises. What a wonderful paradox! Have such thrilling characters ever been seen before on Daytime TV?
This concept, that death is the price of love, lies at the core of romantic literature. It speaks of a love that is dangerous, forbidden, without parallel. No lover is more seductive than the one who requires the greatest sacrifice. And no lover can take you to greater heights. All young girls have longed to know the sweet delirium of falling in love with the wrong kind of guy, the one who will only do them harm. Barnabas fulfills this fantasy.
Barnabas and Angelique are the perfect couple. Only they truly understand one another. They alone know one another’s darkest secrets.
When I first came on the show, I wanted to be the heroine. Jonathan used to admonish me often. “Don’t weep,” he would say, “Don’t snivel and play the victim. You’re not the heroine, you’re the heavy!”
“But I’ve never been jealous! I’ve never hated anyone or wished them ill,” I would answer, in my incredible naivete. And he would smile ruefully, and assure me that rage, hatred, and even jealousy were deep inside of us all. Because of him, I came to realize that the part of the villain is a real plum, and I learned to dig deeper, experience life more fully, and to play Angélique with a vengeance.
I truly appreciated Jonathan’s depth of understanding and the breadth of his stage experience. He had his problems with lines. He even admitted to me that once while performing Shakespeare in Toronto, he had found himself speaking lines from Julius Caesar while he was in the middle of The Merchant of Venice!
I was in many scenes with him, and I can still remember the stricken look in his eyes when he had gone blank. But I was always amazed when I would watch the show a week later. Somehow the stricken look wasn’t there! Jonathan was riveting—powerful, impassioned. His moments of hesitation seemed, well... enigmatic, and as a result, he was more mysterious and debauched than ever.
There was not a character on Dark Shadows without inner turmoil, without something to hide. Even the most virtuous were forced to confront temptation and to explore the nature of goodness. Kathryn Leigh Scott gave the character of Josette innocence and warmth. She was a serious actress who was always inventive and prepared. She had delicacy and reserve, and her skin was like porcelain. But she did her own make-up, which I found amazingly brash, and she had a strong streak of independence.
I remember watching her once before she made an entrance. She had unbuttoned the cuff of her dress in order to be re-buttoning it as she walked in the door. This simple bit of behavior gave her the most natural demeanor, as though she truly lived at Collinwood. Her acting always seemed effortless.
In my thinking about the spectrum of archetypal characters, Josette completes the triangle. She is the virgin princess, the pure and unspoiled maiden who is by her very nature without malevolence. She will always be Angélique’s nemesis, her most formidable rival, because Josette is the quintessential heroine—Beauty, in Beauty and the Beast, the guileless girl who tamed the monster.
But once more there is the irony; Josette will always be unattainable for Barnabas. He wants her desperately, but it is a forlorn desperation, because if he wins her, his love, the vampire’s love, will destroy her.
I believe it was the mythical sources of Dark Shadows that found the show its largest audience. Many dramatic television shows deal with good and evil, but on a superficial, cops-and-robbers level. Some evil person does something wrong, and he is caught and punished. Often he is a punk or a junkie of a murderer, but there is no explanation of his brutal inclinations, other than that some brutality was inflicted on him. Television is often like the newspaper: factual, real-life, merely grim. There is no paradox or mystery to the predicaments portrayed there.
There is a hunger in all of us for something with a deeper meaning, something more poetic and universal. A metaphor is something we understand with our emotions, rather than our reason. Myth is like a social metaphor, which, as Joseph Campbell said, “puts you in touch with the experience of being alive”
I wish I could speak at length about the joy of working with all the actors. John Karlen’s amazing off-the-wall abandon and his locked in sense of truth; Nancy Barrett’s perfectly charming personality, her facility with accents, the ease with which she created new characters, and her ability to cry... at dress rehearsal, and again on tape! Clarice Blackburn’s subtle, modulated performances that made her seem eons ahead of me in her craft; Grayson Hall’s wonderful tilt to her head, her fascinating stories of her life in the theatre, and her delicious raspy voice; Louis Edmonds’ courtly manner, his mellifluous, classic diction, and his thrilling hauteur; Roger Davis’ charm, inventiveness, and his sometimes overwhelming enthusiasm, (he wanted to play all the parts!); David Selby’s brooding sexiness and soft southern accent with manners to match; and Kate Jackson’s impish sense of humor and a certain infectious penchant for impropriety.
I was delighted to work with Thayer David, David Selby and Roger Davis on other projects after the show went off the air. It was always a great joy to see them again. At the 1989 New York Dark Shadows Festival, Roger and I did a skit which he wrote for Peter Bradford and Angélique as a vampire. I had a lovely time biting him, and we even had real fake blood.
The show’s popularity was always amazing to me. Boxes of fan mail showed up in the rehearsal room. I received threatening phone cal
ls when I was being most cruel to Barnabas. Throngs of autograph seekers waited outside the studio door. I would walk out on the subway platform at the hour when school let out, and hundreds of screaming children would run away from me.
When Dark Shadows was at the peak of its notoriety, the fascination with the vampire was such that I was invited to appear on The Tonight Show (and to bring my fangs). Johnny asked me what a vampire was like, and I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to make a bite look convincing without some kind of a rehearsal.
I stood up and reached for him saying, “Come to me. Give me solace. Give me comfort.” He walked over to me, rolling his eyes in anticipation. Once he was in my embrace, I turned my back to the audience so that I could attach the fake incisors. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but the audience was howling. I whispered to him to turn us around so I was on camera. Then I opened my mouth, showing my fangs, and bit down on his neck.
Fortunately, it worked as well as it ever did on our show. The audience roared. Suddenly, Johnny began to sway back and groan. He spun around three times and collapsed—bam! Flat on the floor. I was horrified. For a moment I thought I had really hurt him—I had killed Johnny Carson in front of twenty million people!
The Dark Shadows Companion: 25th Anniversary Collection Page 2