Anybody remember actor Joel Crothers? (Dark Shadows, Edge Of Night)

I'm just watching Dark Shadows for the first time. Saw him in the 1795 storyline with a nice vpl showing.

Scat, man.

[quote] REALLY handsome guy, educated, ended up dying from AIDS-related lymphoma in his 40s. I've caught a few episodes of DS on the DECADES channel lately, and I'd forgotten totally about this guy. He played the dual role of good guy Joe Haskell/bad guy Nathan Forbes. He was also on the soap opera Edge

Oh good, ramblings from the Disingenuous Troll.

I had a huge crush on him

He looked a bit like Tom Selleck with the 'stache.

Really liked him on Edge of Night. Supposedly died of stomach cancer but I always figured it was AIDS.

R3 What is your fucking problem exactly? Go screw off.

R6 I don't even remember hearing about his death-- but I was a teen in the 80s so I probably just wasn't paying attention. Supposedly he was planning on marrying an actress friend of his.

R1 In addition to the period costume, looks like he may have been wearing period undergarments as well.

R9 Lieutenant Nathan Forbes in his breeches is why "I ran home to watch Dark Shadows."

Joel in Rome ca. 1968

R10 NICE pic!

[quote] I don't even remember hearing about his death-- but I was a teen in the 80s so I probably just wasn't paying attention. Supposedly he was planning on marrying an actress friend of his.

Joel Crothers was gay. Died of AIDS. Former cast members have confirmed it.

Back in those days, many shows had morals clauses in the actor contracts. The Proctor & Gamble soaps definitely included that. Homosexuality would have been grounds for termination under the morals clause.

Joel may have been "engaged" to Veleka Gray as a pretense of heterosexuality, but the man was gay. If they had gone through with the wedding, it would have been a lavender marriage.

R12 I know he was gay, that's why I said he planned on marrying a "female friend". She obviously volunteered to be his beard, in those days, an actor couldn't risk the scandal.

I sometimes wonder about Veleka herself. First marriage annulled, and she never married after Joel's death. Perhaps it was going to be just as beneficial for her? And she can refer to him as her past fiancée forever.

Gay gay gay .. Joel and Keith as weekend guests at Big Lou's Long Island retreat called The Rookery.

Wears a BIG vest.

A large percentage of the male cast of Dark Shadows was gay. I always wondered in the number related that gay men are often actors or because gay actors were attracted to the high camp style of the show.

I do remember him. Gorgeous.

^ A lot of soap actors in general seem to be gay

I was a teen walking down the street in NYC when I saw Joel. At first I thought it was Tom Selleck . He was very striking and had the perfect look for that time. It seemed everyone on the street noticed him too. Glad he took advantage of it as an actor before he died.

Here, I fixed that:

"A lot of actors in general seem to be gay!"

They always talk about him and the other one who did porn but I don't know much about Irving Allen Lee (Calvin) who died in 92 from AIDS.

The gay guys must've had fun walking around in those 1795 pants.

Sharon Gabet (who was a Registered Nurse prior to joining "Edge") REFUSED to do any scenes with Joel when he became HIV positive.

That wasn't Joel, R24. That was Wade Nichols. The show was planning to pair Raven and Derek Mallory and Sharon was pregnant at the time. This was also the early days of AIDS and there were a lot of unknowns and misinformation out there.

R25 she is a Registered Nurse, she of all people would know you don't catch HIV through casual contact

In 2020 Veleka Gray talked about her TORRID & hot n heavy romance with Joel Crothers - saying

"Joel and I started dating and our friendship began to develop into a romance. I left New York and went out to Los Angeles and not long after, Joel came out to work on and called me and our relationship got serious then until after we were engaged to be married. Then, he suddenly disappeared for a month and I couldn't find him and was finally told that he was in the hospital with lymphoma. It was a very heartbreaking and excruciatingly painful time because we had made plans to have a child and I knew then that it would never happen. "

[quote][R25] she is a Registered Nurse, she of all people would know you don't catch HIV through casual contact

I am not sure that was the case in the early days of AIDS. While I was young, I do remember there was confusion and misinformation all around, even in the medical community.

Joel was on Santa Barbara during the Spring & Summer of 1985.

You can see him shirtless and in snug white boxer type shorts even in this episode that aired in September of that year. (Relevant scenes around 9:45 and 11:45.)

It's hard to imagine he'd be dead by November.

He would've been one hot daddy. RIP.

[quote]Sharon Gabet (who was a Registered Nurse prior to joining "Edge") REFUSED to do any scenes with Joel when he became HIV positive.

Edge of Night filmed its final scenes in December 1984.

The first test for detecting HIV antibodies in the blood stream -- the ELISA test -- was approved for use in March 1985. Until the ELISA test came along, there was no definitive way to determine if a person was HIV positive until he started showing symptoms.

[quote] I was a teen walking down the street in NYC when I saw Joel.

R2 Did he look like this? ;-)

btw - Those jeans look like button-fly, Levi's 501s, which were standard-operating gear for gay men back then.

Joel also starred in the original off-Broadway production of Torch Song Trilogy.

In fact, at the time, Joel was the biggest name in the cast -- far bigger than unknowns Harvey Fierstein, Matthew Broderick and Estelle Getty.

It was Joel's name that helped sell the original production and his name was displayed prominently on the posters and in the playbill. A photo of the playbill is in the article linked below.

When Torch Song transferred to Broadway, Joel dropped out of the cast.

Hot man

Going back to that '85 episode of SANTA BARBARA: Joel had a hot, hot ass.

Hmmm .. When he was a kid, he looked quite the gayling.

Very late '70s-early '80s I knew him, knew he was a working tv actor but never saw his soap. He was up om the west side, small very plain apartmenr. Nice guy, no pretense, not "actory" at all. Just another guy I knew, a good one. Yes he was gay, an yes, AIDS got him. a. }tporu} t ;.

oop..."AIDS got him. a. }tporu} t ;." was supposed to be AIDS got him. Sad.

R36 did you ever meet his fiancee Veleka Gray?

I remember him from the ‘70s soap opera Somerset.

R35 he definately got better looking with age.

Joel with Dennis Parker

R26 R28 Back in the early 80s, my aunt and her good friend were roomies while they were doing their residencies after graduating from medical school.

She told me a story about how a mutual friend of theirs, who was HIV-positive, came to visit one day and they all had a cup of coffee or tea. When he left, her roomie took his cup and threw it in the trash. She asked him why he did that, and he replied with something like "what else can I do with it? It's not like we can ever use it again". So, he obviously didn't think the HIV was something that could be sterilized off the cup.

I think we forget sometimes how little people knew about the disease back then.

R35 He looked a bit like Howdy Doody as a kid. No indication at all of how good-looking he would be as an adult.

He sucked Dennis Parker’s cock often.

How do you know?

Oh yeah. My first man crush as a gayling

He wasn’t a very good actor on DS.

He was very hot on Dark Shadows, but complained that there wasn't much acting to do -- it was mostly about the special effects. So he left the show and went on to more traditional soaps.

R47 He hammed it up as Nathan Forbes (but they all did, the directors encouraged that). He was more subdued as Joe Haskell. I never saw him on Edge Of Night or Santa Barbara.

He was the basic soap good guy as Joe Haskell. But the interesting guys were first Mitch Ryan's Burke and then Barnabus ate the show.

Hot AND Smart .. Graduated Harvard University, Phi Beta Kappa, Class of '62.

Edge of Night was another gay fest. Wasn't convict Lori Loughlin scared because she worked with so many actors who died of AIDs?

R25 is correct. Sharon Gabet's character, Raven, was emotionally involved with the character played by Dennis Parker, aka Wade Nichols. He had been a gay porn actor and did die of AIDS early on. You can't really hold it against her because that was so soon in the process that no one knew anything about anything. Also, Dennis Parker/Wade Nichols was the really hot one on the show.

With Valene in the production of "Barefoot in the Park" at The Biltmore, 1966

R32 R54 Wow, I had no idea he'd been in so many theatrical productions.

I often wondered what Joan Van Ark looked like before the nose job...

That Velekka Gray sounds batshit crazy. I don’t believe the story about her and Joel falling in love and wanting kids. lolololololol. Then he disappeared. What a loon. Joel was gay gay gay.

The Snyder Farm thread is Murieled.

When is Alan Locher going to interview Eileen Fulton?

How is Margaret McLarty doing these days?

Joel swallowed cum.

That was a nice scene R60.

I know Joel used to joke in interviews about Tom Selleck "stealing his look."

When I was a young one in school, there was a photo article about Joel in a Soap Opera magazine. It included pictures taken in his apartment. He was lying in bed in his underwear.......HOT.

Back in the early days of the internet, I purchases a VHS of the last week of EDGE OF NIGHT episodes......Joel's character was getting married and on the Friday episode he was in bed on his honeymoon.....it was most interesting........

I liked him best as Nathan Forbes. But as Kathryn Leigh Scott always says......"Joe was a great boyfriend for Maggie.....I always wished I had one like him in real life......"

If Julia hadn't been in the scene, they could have done an episode of "Gay Creep" with Barnabas having his way with a passed-out Joe, laying there on display like a big hunk of meat.

Then again, Julia could have stood in the corner and hammed it up, "Barnabas! No, NOOOOOO!, what are you doing?!"

How big was his dick?

R66, huge

R66 is Veleka, who never actually saw it.

There is a 1983 episode of "Edge" where Joel treats the mother of a crazy teenager. This was a brief "Edge" role for Lois Smith who had played his psychotic wife on "Somerset". She is nominated for a Tony Award for "The Inheritance", and is considered a stage legend.

Too bad Joel didn't make films. He wasn't in either of the 2 "Dark Shadows" spinoff movies from the 70s, even though several original cast members were. Not that they were great films, but there's just so little of him available on video.

[quote] but there's just so little of him available on video.

Here's an old episode of "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" sit-com that Joel has a small part in. It was done in 1959 when he was only 18!

His first scene is around 9:25 mark. He has another one in a group scene after the 21:25 mark.

^^^ Link for above post ^^^

God, he was so hot.

Here's an episode of "Have Gun Will Travel" with Joel done a couple years later when he was around 20. (HGWT was one of CBS's top shows in the ratings.)

He's seen here and there within; the camera really likes him at 6:12.

But his significant scene with Richard Boone's "Paladin" comes after the 14:25 mark.

"You're a loyal boy."

At IMDb, Joel is the icon for "Somerset."

I always like the name "Julian Cannell."

Veleka Gray needs to write her memoirs to detail her torrid passionate affair with Joel Crothers. I bet they ripped off their clothes every night as the passion of each other overwhelmed them.

R76 Right .. lol. .. That's why she hadn't heard from him for a month, and she didn't even know where he was. Love those long distance relationships!

And it would appear that no one in Joel's family or the friend who notified the press of his death knew of the supposed fiancee when providing information about his demise, since his affianced is not mentioned in any of the obituaries of the day -- not even the one in Soap Opera Digest, where such information would more than likely have been included, because she was not only known to readers of the magazine, but something like that would have pulled at the heartstrings of fraus.

R77 Joel & Veleka were so hot together, I'm sure they burned up the sheets

Funny how married EON co-star, Sharon Gabet, knew he was gay, but Veleka didn't? .. And Gabet also said Joel called her when he was in the hospital, but poor Veleka didn't have a clue where he was.

Veleka was the Julianne Hough of yesteryear

I'm watching Dark Shadows during the pandemic. It's fun and wild. I just got to the last episode of Barnabas and Julia returning to 1971 from 1840. (The remaining 47 episodes take place in Parallel Time 1841, with the actors playing all new characters.) I will miss our Junior Detectives, Barnabas and Julia, the handsome lothario Quentin, and the rest of the Collins family. I wish Joel Crothers had stayed on the show longer. He was great as Lieutenant Nathan Forbes (who dressed left, by the way), not just as the dreamboat Joe Haskell. And think -- he was a dreamboat having only one shirtless scene! Whereas current soap hunks take off their shirts every third scene, it seems.

R79 Why do you think Veleka didn't know he was gay? It seems logical that she was his beard and she's going to play the role right until the bitter end.

R82 Note the question mark at the end of my sentence. It's meant to be disbelief, since as you suggest, she could have been playing the role until the bitter end -- and apparently still is, if what R27 posted (from 2020) is correct. Now that everyone knows about him, it seems rather pathetic for her to keep yakking about it without addressing the elephant in the room.

April 2nd was the 50th anniversary of the last episode.

R50 I never thought the role of Burke was ever properly cast. Both Ryan, and then Anthony George, seemed too old for Vicky. He should have been younger and more dashing.

SPOILER ALERT:

I didn't care when he died in the plane crash, lol.