This 40 year old Shakespearean actor became a teen heart throb back in the 60s.



Any thoughs on WHY? Women of all ages were entralled with Jonathan Frid and Barnabas Collins.

OK he wore eyeliner too...lol

That's a hard question, but I seem to be seeing Johnny searing his image onto my screen. ALthough they look very different, Frid seems to also be able to penetrate the screen. Extremely dark eyes, highlighted by eyeliner, vividly stairing into the screen. Yep. That about does it for me.

He cut an amazingly romantic figure. He was fit and wore well-tailored suits, and that awesome coat! The eyeliner didn't hurt, either. Ahead of his time, what? ;)
He wasn't pretty, but he carried himself very well and was well-spoken and polite, then the undead side of him would kick in, and you were just under his mesmerizing spell. It's not like you really had a choice, hehe.

You know, Frid had and still has IT. You know IT when you see IT, but it defies definition. N'est-ce pas?

There was something very hypnotic about Frid as Barnabas, very old worldly, very sophisticated for a vampire. He was older than my own father at the time and this man was someone you wanted to be with. LOL You're right! The amazing thing to me is that when you watch these old shows today, he does still have "it." Whatever "it" is.

I wonder if it may have something to do with the fact that he always treated women with respect..of course he did bite poor Maggy and try to turn her into Josette....lol

I think you got that perfectly Karen. He was very hypnotic in the role. A performance where you couldn't look away when he was on the screen even if you wanted to. That indefinable quality.

I agree with all that has been said about Frid. For me, it's the voice and it's cadence---slow, gentlemanly, and hypnotic. He was so "proper" but then when he was the vampire, he would show his dark side. Maybe it was the mystery about his character, too.

-Donna

Watching the DVDs after all these years...yikes...I stepped back and looked. I looked over the slow stories, (but then, we got more time per episode too) the moving walls and the mucked up dialog and realized that there was a sadness about this man then. This was something that hadn't been seen before in a soap and I don't think has been seen since.

Yes, once you find out what happened to Josette and then how Barnabas is obsessed with having Maggie bcome Josette---some very teary scenes as he tells the story of Josette.

I was too young to think of Barnabus as anything but a boogeyman and he gave me the creepy crawlies, that why I loved him. He scared me but didn't make me cry, he just made me latch onto my mom or my best friend and we'd giggle. When I watched Dark Shadows again on the Sci-Fi channel I realized Johnathan Frid tried to make a believable character out of some really bad dialogue and became an icon for it. I have never forgotten him.

I agree with all the previous posts and also Frid could act and some of the other actors seemed "wooden" or fake to me especially Willie L. :)

He did try to make a vert believeable character out of him. Maybe that's part of his charm?

At ten years of age, I couldn't see what my older friends saw in him. By eleven, I was totally enthralled and have been his slave to this day, LOL! As I age, and everyone around me ages, ol' Barn just keeps looking better. Amazing what being undead can do for your vitality, not to mention your hair. That cracked me up that as someone brought to his true age of 204 (born in 1763), Barn would have such a full head of hair--much nicer than the movie version, which was... none at all. But, then, JF still has his hair at 82.

Yes, the man had..."IT"...and was much too sexy for his cape. He had a way of walking that was slow and deliberate as if he were a stalking lion. And, being fit and trim did help those well-tailored suits. The beautiful voice and gracious manners convinced me that Barnabas Collins really was..."The Cousin From England." I thought his features were aristocratic...he used his face and those wonderful eyes to express a wide range of conflicting emotions. He had a face for the shadows...all hollow eyes and high cheekbones...he was Byronic. Yet, in tender moments of crisis and angst, it could be a romantic, even handsome face. Even his hands--well-manicured--were beautiful and expressive, and much photographed as they bore the signature ring. The man definitely had "IT"--a cultured sensitivity which made the role so believeable, and brought humanity and humility to it. Here I am, just turned 51 and gushing like a schoolgirl with a first crush. It's funny to think that where Barnabas Collins is concerned, I am now the "older woman".

If Jf did that to me then, and now, just think how I'll react to seeing JD in the role. Heavens...vapors...swoon...