What did they have to lose?


Jonathan Frid as their "Cousin" Barnabas Collins, from England
Dan Curtis Productions


By Craig Hamrick
(Excerpted from the book Barnabas & Company, 2003, iUnverse Publishing)

http://www.darkshadowsonline.com/dso-dark-two.html

Part Two:
A Vampire Changes Everything


Forty-two-year-old Canadian stage actor Jonathan Frid (pictured left) was an unlikely choice as a soap opera leading man. In fact, Dan Curtis didn't think Barnabas would stick around long enough to matter. With any luck, the producer hoped, the presence of a vampire would draw some attention, and in a few weeks he could be staked so things could move on, like they would on a "normal" soap opera. In his wildest dreams, Dan didn't imagine just how much attention Barnabas would attract.


Jonathan Frid's career had mostly taken place on stage. Though he'd appeared briefly on TV in As The World Turns, he was uneasy about acting on the daily serial Dark Shadows.

The actor's on-camera fear -- which never totally evaporated -- gave Barnabas a sympathetic edge. Jonathan was uncertain of his lines and where he should be on the set, so Barnabas seemed to wish he didn't have to skulk around Collinwood drinking blood.


Every "Dracula" needs his "Van Helsing," so Grayson Hall (pictured right) was brought on to the show in June 1967, as Julia Hoffman, a doctor whose mission was supposed to be the vampire's destruction. Instead, as her story developed, Julia fell in love with Barnabas, providing an unexpected twist.


"I get jealous as hell because he bites young girls in the neck but refuses to bite me," Grayson told The Saturday Evening Post. "Middle-aged housewives are always sending me letters saying they understand the situation perfectly."


Like all of the actors on the show, Grayson was directed to play her lines to the hilt -- as if she was on stage instead of just a few feet from the camera. This led to a heightened sense of reality, and at times added a camp element to the portrayals.

The vampire story line was enormously popular. Ratings climbed. The actors were deluged with fan mail, and as they left the studio each day, they were mobbed by kids seeking pictures and autographs. Barnabas' staking was postponed, and Jonathan became a permanent part of the cast.

There was never any sense (for me) that he was unsure of his lines, in fact, his acting was so much better than the others, in general.
Would Barnabas have hung around as long if he were protrayed by another, less skilled and charismatic actor?

I never had that sense about him, either. He always seemed so cool and professional, and if he did make a mistake it seemed natural, like the way we speak in conversation...how we all correct ourselves. I will make one exception, however, and forgive him since he's Canadian, and may have been thinking in a British mode which is what his upbringing was.

It was during 1795 when Rev. Trask was on his witch-hunt. Barnabas corners him and in front of Natalie Du Pre and Nathan Forbes says (paraphrasing here) : "Victoria Winters has the right to be regarded as 'innocent until proven innocent', a concept which may have escaped your feeble mind." I just remember that Barnabas was all puffed-up and loaded for bear, and then JF goofs the line. He probably had the British version in mind: "Guilty until proven innocent", instead of the American, "Innocent until proven Guilty". In a weird way, what he says is okay...let them assume she is innocent, then pull out all your stops, and you will see that she really is innocent. Works for me, LOL!

I don't think that Bert Convy, primetime actor and game show host, who favored Frid in looks, would have been as charismatic--he didn't have that suave old-world charm, nor the mellifluous voice--and certainly would have been staked after three weeks, as planned by Curtis.. He was Dan Curtis' first choce for the part but lost it to Frid. Supposedly, Curtis was making a film abroad and when given photos of different actors chose a very small photo of Frid wearing a cape. Instatntly, he said, "Hire the guy in the cape!" And, that, they say, is how it happened. I'm sure that is legend, and perhaps, there's more to it.

I meant to say that JF was probably thinking of Barnabas' upbringing in the Colonial mode whereby the concept of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" was technically on the books in England since the Magna Carta, but was not always enforced, either there, or in the British colonies. It is not 'word for word' on the books, nor was it written as such into our own Constitution--and wasn't really given much credence until around 1800, after the horrors of the French Revolution, when aristocrats and commoners alike were accused and sentenced to prison or death on the merest slight. The Europeans still had it the other way around, and momentum from change did not occur in places elsewhere until mid Nineteenth Century with the various Reform Movements. I did not mean to imply that the Canadians, nor the British, in the Twentieth, and now the Twenty-First Century, do not adhere to the principle of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty." That would be very wrong of me. Sometimes, my words get ahead of my brain.

"Hire the guy in the cape!"


I love it.

I love it too! Hire the guy in the cape!! :lol:

Works for me too!!