Joan Bennett - Why?

[quote] She beats them both in the looks department

Not "by my eyes". Both were more beautiful than her especially Leigh.

Why she married into the fabulously wealthy Collins family of Collinsport, Maine.

While somewhat remote, their estate Collingwood was stunning, situated on a rocky cliff overlooking the sea.

She even had her own doctor/fag hag who attended/sedated her and her family.

She wore beautiful gowns and jewels and was very glamorous.

Can't agree R1. Joan Bennett is a gorgeous woman and she aged beautifully, unlike Leigh.

She was certainly prettier than that dykey Constance Bennett.

She was a shitty actress. But she seems like she was a hoot off-camera.

She was no Constance!

She had a 1960s bouffant hairstyle to die for.

(Apparently she flew to New York every week or had Mr. Kenneth fly to Maine.)

Bad nose and she wouldn’t give up the snatch.

[quote] Bad nose and she wouldn’t give up the snatch.

I beg to differ.

[quote]Bad nose and she wouldn’t give up the snatch.

I don't remember smelling her snatch, although I am not a connoisseur of snatch.

I much prefer dick.

I was somewhat annoyed by her rich hippie/slutty daughter Carolyn, but I found Elizabeth (or Joan as you call her) perfectly charming.

[quote]She was a shitty actress. But she seems like she was a hoot off-camera.

You try performing live with no real rehearsals or retakes for 5 days a week.

Listen, Joan- I managed to, to, to....

[quote]Apparently she flew to New York every week or had Mr. Kenneth fly to Maine.

So the Collins family had their own private plan, but they made me take the shitty train?

^ plane....that Dr. Hoffman gave me way too many Seconals

Joan's grandson is a DataLounger

[quote]Listen, Joan- I managed to, to, to....

Are you trying to say that you did it, Barnabas?

Well, you did it quite badly and often drunkenly. Now I think it's time for Dr. Hoffman to take you back to the Old House and sedate you.

"Oh why couldn't Dr. Hoffman have been a plastic surgeon who could liposuction my fat knees, so I could wear really short skits like Carolyn and Maggie did!"

[quote] Well, you did it quite badly and often drunkenly. Now I think it's time for Dr. Hoffman to take you back to the Old House and sedate you.

Hold on, Barnabas. First I need to make a face like I just smelled a fart.

^ but it's really just a repressed desire for your dick...you see, I'm quite horny and in the prime of my sexuality

She was no Clarice Blackburn, that's for certain.

Oh Vicky, you are in luck!

I have a cream, you might say a "magical cream" that you just rub into you knees and legs and it makes all that ugly fat and cellulite just disappear.

It's an old formula I brough with me from the island Martinique.

Keep Clarice Blackburn's name out of your mouth.

Remember that time Elizabeth and Carolyn had a huge fight in the Drawing Room...and after Carolyn stomped out and slammed the door (shaking the entire house and making it look as if the set would fall)...

Elizabeth calmly pulled a blunt out of one of her bouffant curls and fired it up with the table lighter...

then she just stood staring out the terrace window as she got blissfully wasted...

I remember reading that one of the only times they ever had to retape a scene was when Joan referred to Collingwood as Hollywood.

I thought Liz was divine. Both my wives, on the other hand, detested her with a passion.

Imagine, if Vicky Winter/Alexandra Moltke had had really good legs...maybe she wouldn't have become Claus von Bulow's mistress

[quote]Keep Clarice Blackburn's name out of your mouth.

An angry Will Smith has wander into Collinwood.

Roger Davis, who was pretty universally loathed on set, tried to get his then-wife Jaclyn Smith to replace Moltke. Joan mentioned him in her autobiography and didn't have nice things to say about him, and I read that Kathryn Leigh Scott threatened to quit when she got wind of the fact that the writers were planning to hook up Maggie and Jeff Clark romantically. Apparently he was an arrogant ass and major diva.

Aggressive heterosexual?

That Roger Collins couldn't keep his mouth off my dick.

[quote]Roger Davis, who was pretty universally loathed on set, tried to get his then-wife Jaclyn Smith to replace Moltke.

Jaclyn, with her heavy Southern accent and lack of acting skills, would have been best suited to play a mute ghost

"You simply must dismiss that new Governess - I'm not sure what language she's speaking, but I can't understand a word she's saying!"

"Hey y'all I think I done found a way into the olden days through a secret panel in this here wall."

I may not speak real fancy like y'all do

but I can wear the hell outta of a mini-skirt

and if The Blue Whale in Collinsport has karaoke, I can sing the hell outta "Harper Valley PTA"!

She has lucked out because compared to many of her contemporaries she is still seen regularly because Dark Shadows is still a huge cult phenomenon. As long as that is a thing she will not be forgotten.

Where's the love for me? I went really heavy on the brogue whenever I would fuck Liz. Despite her protest, she loved it!

She didn't have the "IT" factor.

Ah Jason, you were only after her jewelry.

She also got lucky with Suspiria. The original film from 1977 is also a beloved classic.

[quote]I remember reading that one of the only times they ever had to retape a scene was when Joan referred to Collingwood as Hollywood.

Both full of gays, glamorous women, and vampires

"Let's speak of Lamarr, that Hedy so fair / Why does she let Joan Bennett wear all her old hair?" -- Cole Porter, [italic]Let's Not Talk About Love[/italic]

I didn't find Joan as attactive as Hedy or Vivien. Joan had a round face that veered towards chubby when she wasn't careful with her diet. Vivien and Hedy had high cheekbones that gave them sleeker, sculpted, otherworldly beauty.

Joan is tops in my book if only for her leading roles in two terrific noirs, "The Woman in the Window" and "Scarlet Street." Do check them out.

[quote]r5 She was a shitty actress.

No, she’s good in Father of the Bride, and Scarlet Street. One a comedy and one a drama

Meh

Bennet was attractive, but she was not nearly as attractive as Leigh and possessed a fraction of her acting talent. Rethink your proposition, OP.

OP, both of the women you mentioned were more beautiful than her but Collins was warmer than either one of them on screen.

My bad, I meant to say "Bennett", not Collins.

The husband's surname is so ugly; does it rhyme with wanker? or do I pronounce it like 'mange'?

The other thread says—

[quote] Walter Wanger discovered that his wife, actress Joan Bennett, was having an affair with her agent. He confronted them and shot the agent twice. He spent a few months in jail and then resumed his career as a producer culminating in the movie Cleopatra. It seems that after this incident, Bennett’s career saw a sharp decline in movies. Was adultery more damaging to a career than shooting someone.

Joan Bennett. Why not?

R50, Walter Wanger pronounced his surname to rhyme with stranger.

I love that 2/3 of this thread is pure Dark Shadows.

For a brief moment in the 1930s, Constance Bennett was Hollywood's highest paid actress, and her great rivalry was with Gloria Swanson, whose six marriages bested Connie's five. Standing at 5'4" and underweight, Connie looked demure but was said to be ruthless, earning her the nickname "Polyanna Borgia," given to her by Mary Pickford.

Little sister Joan, lived in Connie's shadow, steadily making her mark as pretty blonde ingenue in negligible pictures. Perhaps her most popular role during this period was as Amy in RKO's "Little Women" with Katharine Hepburn. When Joan went brunette for Trade Winds (1938), this somehow changed her movie persona to that of sultry, seductive femme fatale, which Fritz Lang used to great effect in "Man Hunt," "The Woman in the Window" and "Scarlett Street." These films made Joan a film noir legend, and her popularity eclipsed that of sister Constance.

I think the father killed her and staged the ransom note

Love her. She's fun as a blonde in some of her 30s films, such as Raoul Walsh's Me and My Gal and George Cukor's Little Women (where she plays Amy).

But she really came into her own as an actress when, in the 1940s, she reinvented herself as a brunette femme fatale. She had a smokin' hot sexiness combined with a warm, down-to-earth quality that is very appealing. I especially like all four of the noirs she made with Fritz Lang (Scarlet Street, Woman in the Window, Man Hunt, Secret Beyond the Door), especially those first two which are classics.

But perhaps my favorite Joan Bennett performance is in a noir called Hollow Triumph, where she plays a smart, cynical secretary having an affair with her psychiatrist boss. Paul Henried is her co-star. There's a classic bit of dialogue where she expresses her disllusionment about romance and Henried remarks, "You're a bitter little lady." Bennett replies, "It's a bitter little world."

Indeed.

I saw her once at the Carnegie Hall cinema. A great revival house with a new double bill every day. I was going in to see one movie and the one before was a Joan Bennett movie and she had made a personal appearance which I didn't know about. In the lobby after her film she was crowded around by fans and photographers and she looked very small, frail and frightened. I thought this poor woman.

Vanity Fair produced a good podcast about the scandal involving Bennett's husband, producer Walter Wanger, shooting Jennings Lang, Bennett's agent with whom she was having an affair. The podcast hosts are Karina Longworth and Bennett's granddaughter Vanessa Hope. The differing narrations/perspectives of Longworth and Hope are sometimes awkwardly mixed. Hope doesn't really add much and Longworth has much smarter things to say. Overall I think it would have worked better as a season on Longworth's podcast You Must Remember This, with Longworth as the sole narrator.

But it's still extremely interesting and well-done--and certainly well worth a listen if you have any interest at all in Bennett.

It's true that after the shooting Bennett's career was seriously damaged, while Wanger's career thrived, and that reflected a harsh sexual double standard. At the same time, Bennett was by then in her early 40s, and because of her age her career would probably have declined anyway, because at that time there were very few good parts for older women, and many other actresses of her generation also faced career troubles after age 40.

Wanger and Bennett finally divorced in 1965, after 25 years of marriage, and after that Bennett took up with a man named David Wilde, whom she eventually married and stayed married to until her death. Their relationship was . . . strange. Wilde was a cross-dresser and may well have been transgender.

I find it odd and sad that only a couple of years after being the femme fatale in Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir films she was playing the small and thankless role of Elizabeth Taylor's straitlaced mother in Father of the Bride.

[quote] Joan Bennett - Why?

Yes, why?

Why another Joan Bennett thread when we have had at least ten over Joan Bennett threads over the last 20 years.

[quote]Joan Bennett - Why?

Jon Benet - Why?

[quote]Why another Joan Bennett thread when we have had at least ten over Joan Bennett threads over the last 20 years.

A goddess can never have too many threads.

We need another Jezebel thread. We haven't had one in a few hours.

[quote]Why another Joan Bennett thread when we have had at least ten over Joan Bennett threads over the last 20 years.

Yes, but what do we really know about the woman, Elizabeth Stoddard Collins?

^ Who were the Stoddards and how did she afford to see Mr. Kenneth every week?

Why did Constance die suddenly in July 1965 only weeks after she completed her "comeback" role in "Madame X" after decades away from motion pictures?

Is it true that Constance got into a argument with a mysterious British relative while visiting her sister's estate in Collinsport, Maine, and she was overheard calling him "that fag in the cape"?

They called it a "cerebral hemorrhage", but the attending physician looked skeptical (and as if she had just smelled a fart).

I think Joan's career-making comeback in "Dark Shadows" would make a wonderful movie.

Joan wore all her own jewelry on the set of "Dark Shadows".

Look at the fabulous earrings she's wearing in this scene...

Joan wasn't the first former Hollywood star to turn to soaps when the film parts started drying up. However she seems to have been a class act about the whole thing. No one on that show had a negative word to say about her.

This "tribute" to Joan is unintentionally hilarious

and I didn't remember "Dark Shadows" employed so many drag queens

It's so clear that Roger Collins was a raging heterosexulist!

His testosterone-fueled toxicity would never be tolerated today!

[quote] Joan wasn't the first former Hollywood star to turn to soaps when the film parts started drying up. However she seems to have been a class act about the whole thing. No one on that show had a negative word to say about her.

Outside of Roger Davis, who most of the women hated (but Lara Parker did not), the cast seems to have truly loved each other and gotten along splendidly. Maybe there were a handful of short-timers who didn't mix in and who were weeded out quickly, but that cast really stayed tight over the years.

Lara and Roger Davis are still great friends to this day. She must've been the only woman on the cast he didn't hit in. He was handsome as hell with a super-athletic body back then. I would have definitely been vulnerable to his advances.

R58, Joan hit her career stride when she was well into her 30s, and turned 40 when "Father of the Bride" came out. In those days, attractive leading ladies at 40 either retired, went into television, or gravitated towards character roles, usually in motherly parts or eccentric spinster aunts, so Joan was pretty much reduced to the type of roles that were expected of her. The only actress I know of who broke this golden rule was Joan Crawford, who continued to play sexually alluring leading lady roles into her 50s, and she got a lot of flack for it from critics and moviegoers who thought it distasteful that a middle aged woman would behave like that.

R73, Vivien Leigh never played a mother after starring in Anna Karenina in 1948.

Vivien Leigh was too busy showing her snatch to third graders on the street.

Bennett fucked a lot of the DS cast.

Bennett wore a wig and bad mascara on DS.

^ They were called "wiglets" in those days

and they were styled by Mr. Kenneth of New York

^ Oh David's lessons, my foot!

David needs a grandmother who is impeccably coifed at all times!

I'm surprised that with all the influences at Collinswood, David wasn't hanging round the Blue Whale at age 13 looking to blow sailors for nickels.

[quote] Bennett fucked a lot of the DS cast.

So did I. With my line readings.

R74 Don't bring your vulgar, fetid imagination to this thread devoted to a rather ordinary, frau-faced American woman.

Bennett fucked half the DS cast? Considering that well over 75% of her male cast members over the show's run were gay, that would have been impossible.

^ Maybe she pegged 'em

She was a badass from way back.

This chick was having an affair with her agent while married to film producer Walter Wanger back in the day. Walter found out about it, went to the agent's house, and shot his dick off. YES. SHOT.HIS.DICK.OFF! Only served three months. Ain't that some shit....

In 1956 Joan had a good supporting part as an oblivious suburban housewife more absorbed with her children and taking her husband Fred MacMurray for granted in There's Always Tomorrow. Barbara Stanwyck stars as an old flame of Fred's who comes into LA to visit Fred and Fred is tempted to leave his family. The movie was produced by Ross Hunter and directed by Douglas Sirk. Not as melodramatic as Written on the Wind or Imitation of Life, but the movie offers another opportunity for Sirk to critique conformist mid 20th century American middle class values. Well worth watching.

The agent was Jennings Lang who would go on to become a producer himself in the 70s with such films as Earthquake and Airport 1977. He was married to the amazing Monica Lewis, his answer to Irwin Allen's wife Sheila Matthews Allen.

R85, um, no. Jennings Lang was shot in the inner thigh, recovered and went on to sire three sons. The incident happened at the MCA offices parking lot.

I was only repeating what was stated in a documentary about the incident. I am, nevertheless, glad to be wrong about it. 😀

- R85

Is Jennings Lang sort sort of smash-up couple for Chris Jennings and Dr. Eric Lang?

The memoir that Joan Bennett wrote while she was on Dark Shadows. I wish I could get a copy of it!!

R91 Let's try again.

...... about sister Constance / Part of Agent Sue Mengers’ attraction was her smarts, her flouting of social conventions and her wit. She’d been Constance Bennett’s agent in the 60s when the 30s Diva was finding it hard to get a job and, after much hard work, landed her a choice part as Lana Turner’s mother in Madame X, only to have Bennett hound her for star billing or at least her name in a box. She died of a cerebral haemorrhage shortly after making the film and Mengers couldn’t resist quipping, ‘Well, at least she’s got her box now."

Did Dr. Hoffman every hypnotize Liz with her multi-color medallion?

[quote] The agent was Jennings Lang who would go on to become a producer himself in the 70s with such films as Earthquake and Airport 1977. He was married to the amazing Monica Lewis, his answer to Irwin Allen's wife Sheila Matthews Allen.

Please- Monica Lewis was much more glamorous than that chubby frump Sheila Matthews.

R91 here's a signed copy for $57.50, if that's affordable.

How do I know that's actually Joan's signature and not that whore Kate Jackson making a few bucks on the side from Miss Bennett in the green room?

Joan Bennett was great as the West Village, NYC streetwalker in "Scarlett Street" opposite Edward G. Robinson.

Thanks R98, because Scarlet Street hasn't been mentioned 57 times before on this thread.

I wonder if Joan was threatened by Grayson, a recent Oscar nominee, not only joining the series, but also effectively eclipsing Joan as the female lead, even if Joan continued to get top billing?

Joan Bennett made about six more films between playing a hooker in Scarlett Street (1945), and a suburban wife and mother in "Father of the Bride". Her remaining films mostly saw in wife/mother roles, with some more spicy than others. By "spicy" one means Joan Bennett played married women who strayed, but things worked out in end.

Joan Bennett worked steadily after the shooting scandal, but mostly on stage and television. Though her marriage survived shooting incident, Joan Bennett's Hollywood career did not, she was largely passed over by studios.

"She made only five movies in the decade that followed the 1951 shooting incident, and only two films in the 1970s, for the incident was a stain on her career and she became virtually blacklisted. Blaming the scandal that occurred for destroying her career in the motion picture industry, Bennett once said, "I might as well have pulled the trigger myself." Although Humphrey Bogart, a longtime friend, pleaded with Paramount Pictures on her behalf to keep her after her role as Amelie Ducotel in We're No Angels (1955), the studio refused."

It also didn't help Ms. Bennett was getting on, and as we know Hollywood had then very little use for "older" women. As the lyrics to famous song go "first your another sloe eyed vamp, then someone's mother, then your camp"...

I highly doubt Joan was threatened by anyone on DS. Elizabeth was the star of the series, but she was never really the main focus - except for the Jason McGuire story and that sort of played as "B" story.

All the residents of Collingwood--Liz, Roger, David, Carolyn, Vicki--basically became glorified day players once Barnabas and Julia began eating the show alive. Those actors really only got to strut their stuff during the time travel storylines. I thought Louis Edmonds was serviceable as Roger, but he was a revelation as Joshua in the 1795 storyline.

[quote] I wonder if Joan was threatened by Grayson, a recent Oscar nominee, not only joining the series, but also effectively eclipsing Joan as the female lead, even if Joan continued to get top billing?

I watched an interview with Bennett with someone from the DS convention circuit, conducted at her home about 2 years before she died. She said she did not want to work as rigorously as she had the first year and liked being able to take time off from the show. My guess is they kept Grayson around to function as the defacto mistress of the house in order to give Bennett that time off (though it's also entirely possible that audiences weren't as interested in her). There was absolutely no reason for Julia to stick around, and she basically lived off the Collins' for 4 years.

I always found it hilarious that Bennett would disappear sometimes for 2 dozen episodes or more. Where the fuck would she go? She never left the grounds of Collinwood. One episode midway through the run of the series, after Maggie became the governess, someone asked her who was home and she said, I've been the only one here all night (with the children). Where the hell were Elizabeth, Roger, Carolyn, the housekeeper and her son? That house was supposedly always filled with freeloaders yet no one was ever around.

R73

Did she ever!

Joan Crawford did Berserk in 1967 where among other things she strutted around in a ringmaster costume which was basically leotards, stockings, a jacket, and hat. Then went on to seduce (or try) Ty Hardin.

I thought it was comical that Julia became a permanent guest at Collingwood for absolutely no reason. After her cover as historian was blown, you'd think she would've gotten her own place in town if she wanted to be eternally within sniffing distance of Barnabas.

Julia invented concierge medicine. She stuck around because the Collins were always in need of discreet medical care or some type of sedative.

Plus everyone was always going off to either Bangor or Boston, so someone needed to be around to watch the house.

Joan looked matronly early on. Plus the scandal, plus she was playing a grandmother in in 1951!

Women were often grandmothers before they hit 40 in 1951.

Joan made up for the casting with a lot of non-grandmotherly behavior offscreen.

Maybe it’s the writing, but in the few episodes of Dark Shadows I’ve seen, performance wise, Bennet seems like someone’s Aunt Mabel who got the job as a favor. She’s not embarrassingly bad, but she’s not good.

She just walks around and talks without any excitement, any determination, any charm. On that show she seems so pedestrian.

R111, I know what you mean but I think she may have been trying to do an upper class archWASP—slow and measured in all situations. Or she was just cashing a check, less charitably.

I think it's the absolute cheapness of the production, R111. I am in the middle of watching the entire series right now. I'm on episode 700, actually, the middle of the storyline where Quentin possesses David and Amy, so I've seen a lot in a short amount of time. The show was absolutely rushed in terms of writing, rehearsing and shooting. All of those actors were lucky to even be able to have the time to get the lines out of their mouths- forget about giving a performance. If Dan Curtis was going to shoot at such a breakneck speed and not allow for time to rehearse or even memorize lines, then he should have cast actors who were quick studies. If you don't have your lines down, it's nearly impossible to give a performance. Bennett was in the (larger) camp of those who were at sea with breakneck speed, which is one of the reasons I think she was glad to get so much time off.

But she was far from the worst offender, who was Frid, hands down. Frid was such a fucking joke on that show, it was maddening. I am having a real hard time trying to comprehend how he was such an idol because of that show. He was not attractive, he was a terrible actor, he never knew his lines and he went up and stuttered and wound up needing his scene partner to cover for him nearly every scene. And when you're playing a menacing vampire and you're mincing about, searching for your next word, the effect is somewhat lost. When they finally decided he wasn't cutting it as a villain and they took away his "curse" and made him a living human being again, he was completely useless.

At least Bennett didn't have to be anything other than regal. And Louis Edmonds was about as bad as Bennett was in terms of fluffing his lines, and Grayson Hall was even worse (though no one could touch Frid), but Edmonds was a good actor who had a very campy spirit and a great sense of humor, and Hall was just a dreadful overactor whose inability to learn dialogue just fed into her hamminess. Frid is the weakest link on Dark Shadows and I wish they would have jammed a stake through his heart after a year and found another villain.

Joan Bennett’s grandson used to pot on DL, but I haven’t seen him in three or four years.

R109

That's exactly what happens with Joan Bennett's character "Ellie" in "Father's Little Dividend".

When Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Banks return from their daughter's apartment after learning Kay's big news (Ellie already knew), Mrs. Banks begins calling her friends "I'm going to be a Grandma!".

Joan Bennett did not look then like anyone's grandmother... We learn how young Mrs. Banks is when her husband, not to thrilled about his wife going on and on about the new baby, is told off by his wife. She reminds him that she missed her college graduation because she was in hospital having Kay (their eldest child).

Assuming Mrs. Banks was around 21 or 22 when she graduated college, and Kay married at around 18, that puts Ellie at just about 40 or so.

I think Frid's constant line flubbing and obvious nervousness unintentionally gave Barnabas some vulnerability and layers, rather than the one-dimensional villain he could've been, which is probably part of the reason he became so popular. Frid was no great actor or much in the looks department.

[quote]The memoir that Joan Bennett wrote while she was on Dark Shadows. I wish I could get a copy of it!!

Co-written with none other than DL fave Lois Kibbee, Geraldine Whitney on "The Edge of Night."

I can understand the (aging) Ms. Bennett being thrown by the fast pace of early daytime TV compared to Old Hollywood movie making. But most performers have a sense of exhibitionism - everything else aside, they need to want to be looked at. Basically they’re show ponies. If they don’t have that desire to seduce, even if it’s subtle, they’re not going to be very interesting to watch. And maybe the weaker the material the more important this is.

Miss Bennett seems quite… stolid as Elizabeth Collins.

[quote] I think Frid's constant line flubbing and obvious nervousness unintentionally gave Barnabas some vulnerability and layers, rather than the one-dimensional villain he could've been, which is probably part of the reason he became so popular. Frid was no great actor or much in the looks department.

See, to me, it just comes off as unprepared. He isn't able to fold it into the character the way Grayson Hall did. Hall was not a great actress by any stretch, but she knew how to take her unpreparedness and make it part of the character. She played Hoffman as always nervous and high strung, and a little bit pre-menopausally horny. This was a woman who so badly wanted to get fucked by Barnabas but was too frigid a schoolmarm to actually do anything about it. And she somehow made it work. She completely had no validity as a doctor. There was one scene where she was checking a character's blood pressure and put the cuff on, squeezed the ball and never bothered to put the stethoscope in her ears, then proudly proclaimed the BP as normal. But it worked. You believed she was the most incompetent doctor who ever lived and pretty much glommed onto the Collins family before the AMA took her license away from her.

I think it was a different time, with audiences not used to more polished performances and better production values on the soaps. All soaps were still live or live to tape in 1966/67, and many actors went up on their lines. I love The Doctors, but dammit, James Pritchett was always flubbing his lines and glancing at the teleprompter, to the point that it played havoc with a scene, but he was very popular.

Joan Bennett's second husband, Gene Markey, was not much on looks, but, after Joan (1932-37), he went on to marry Hedy Lamarr (1939-41), then Myrna Loy (1946-50).

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Dark Shadows "bloopers" were legendary. Jonathan Frid and other actors in interviews said there wasn't much that could be done; live to tape meant just that, and budget didn't allow for retakes.

Watching a PBS documentary about early days of television Ben Gazzara speaking about his experiences said it is sad young or new actors today don't get to experience live to tape as it was back then. While obviously nerve wracking at times, it did hone skills and force actors to know their stuff.

Those are only a sliver of the number of times Frid fucked up his lines.

From Louis Edmonds' biography, "Big Lou," by Craig Hamrick:

[quote] Louis' lover, Bryce Holman, never visited the set of Dark Shadows, however, he did get to know some of Louis' castmates, including Joan Bennett and Joel Crothers. "Bryce met Joan because she would very sweetly invite both of us to her house in Scarsdale, New York, where we would be given a very delicious dinner and we would play bridge," Louis said. "Bryce loved to play bridge."

[quote] Louis appreciated Joan's acceptance of his off-screen companion as his domestic partner. "Joan was absolutely dear," he said. "She was real. And when she said, 'Hello, Bryce, it's so nice to see you,' she meant it. I think she was one of those people who had a little twinkle of love in her eyes that ignites it in other people's eyes." Joan often visited Louis and Bryce at the Rookery.

I'm not saying that Joan Bennett was the best actress ever or anything, but she was playing the part of a woman who had not left her house for 18 years and who was haunted by the lie that she had murdered her husband. Plus she was New England aristocracy and trying to be the keeper of the family legacy and name. Her performance, at least to me, makes sense. It wasn't a showy role. I think Elizabeth, in the beginning, saw her key role as ensuring that troubled David, as he was the only male Collins, made it to adulthood to carry on the family name.

The only thing I can say about Jonathan Frid is that it was the 60s, a different time. Did anyone take a good hard look at the Beatles, not exactly Instagram thirst traps. Tastes were different. Plus Frid was playing a vampire, which probably helped his popularity. They went the hottie route with Adam, Chris/Tom Jennings, and Quentin.

It's odd they only had that one maid, Mrs. Johnson, to clean that huge mansion, and she didn't even arrive until a few months into the show when Burke placed her there to spy on the family.

Vivien Leigh is known for only one controversial movie at this point, and for playing an extremely unlikable character in it. Hedy Lamarr? Now known only for a joke based on her name in a Mel Brooks movie. Vivien aged horribly even for a Brit, Hedy and Joan both aged gracefully. Dark Shadows had over 1200 episodes, Joan appeared in 391 of them. The show is still being viewed now in some format or other, and will have conventions until the last background actor who appeared briefly in one episode dies.

Who's left? KLS, Lara, Roger Davis, Nancy?

Besides them there is David Henesy still alive, Jerry Lacy, Marie Wallace, Sharon Smyth, Lisa Blake Richards, fake Victoria Winters #1, and several others from smaller roles are still kicking. And of course Kate Jackson and Donna McKechnie, neither of whom participate in the reunions.

And up until last year, we still had Mitch Ryan, John Karlen and Diana Millay.

Oh and Selby is still with us. Bob Rodan died last year too, and Chris Pennock.

Oh gosh, I misread Roger Davis for Roger, David (thinking Selby) because everyone else was just initials or first name. Sorry!

Lara Parker and Kathryn Leigh Scott still look pretty good.

Christopher Pennock

Geoffrey Scott died last year too.

That's right. And I knew about Robert Rodan and forgot to include him. Boy he was a terrible actor. He played Adam like a petulant 14 years old girl. I was thrilled to see him finally go.

The Adam storyline went on forever, and the writers had a really difficult time incorporating the Collingwood residents into the story. Until they had Adan kidnap Vicki and fall for Carolyn, those actors disappeared for several weeks as that story played out. Frid, Hall, Rodan, Wallace, and Astredo ate the show alive during that time.

Astredo also got on my nerves. I'm not gonna say he was a bad actor, but he was unpleasant to watch, his character was annoying and I believed he wanted to fuck a woman about as much as I did Frid's desire for it.

The sad fact was that most of the decent actors they did have (Edmonds, Barrett, Crothers, Blackburn, and even Bennett when they gave her something to do) were wasted in favor of some really shitty characters and actors.

Frankly, I would have made the show entirely about Carolyn, Vicki, Joe and Maggie, with a dollop of David and Mrs. Johnson, as they were the only ones who consistently performed without fucking up their lines.

I thought Thayer David was an excellent actor too. Very versatile.

He was good. I thought he was much more successful in his later roles than he was in his first, as the caretaker for Collinwood. He was kind of annoying there. But he was a good Ben Stokes/Professor Stokes. And he learned his lines!

Who wins for worst actor? For me it's a toss up between Addison Powell (Eric Lang), Sharon Smyth (Sarah Collins), and Craig Slocum (Noah Gifford/Harry Johnson). Just horrendous, even by DS standards.

Sharon Smyth was really terrible. I haven't made it through the whole series yet, but I have seen those three and they are all awful, but I might also throw in the first Willie Loomis. And goddamn, David Ford was terrible, too.

[quote]Vivien Leigh is known for only one controversial movie at this point, and for playing an extremely unlikable character in it.

It's always helpful when a post proclaims its ignorance in the first sentence, so we know to stop reading. I didn't realize that "A Streetcar Named Desire," for which Leigh won her second Oscar as best actress, is a forgotten film today.

Joan getting her hair fluffed during a Dark Shadows table read.

OMG, I had forgotten how really gorgeous Don Briscoe was. He was very sexy.

Don Briscoe was a terrible actor.

Who were the best male actors on the show? I thought Louis Edmonds, Thayer David, Joel Crothers, David Selby, John Karlen and Mitch Ryan could be very good. Crothers didn't have much to do as Joel Haskell, but he was terrific as Nathan Forbes.

I only remember her for her overdrawn lips.

[quote] Who were the best male actors on the show? I thought Louis Edmonds, Thayer David, Joel Crothers, David Selby, John Karlen and Mitch Ryan could be very good. Crothers didn't have much to do as Joel Haskell, but he was terrific as Nathan Forbes.

I think you about hit it, though I would disagree about Karlen. I happen to think Karlen is a very good actor, but he became beyond annoying on DS after the first six months. His character was whiny and simpering, and thanks to always having to work with Frid, that incompetence wiped off on his performance, too. But Karlen was beyond solid on Cagney and Lacey and plenty of other things.

Clarice Blackburn was a big-time lesbian. Did Dan Curtis only hire straight actors as an exception?

All that VPL in the period costumes!

Bennett's overdrawn lips weren't as silly as Marlene's.

[quote] Clarice Blackburn was a big-time lesbian.

I feel like Clarice Blackburn was a dyke in the way Agnes Moorehead was a dyke. By inference.

Keith Prentice must've been fucking every male hole in NYC when he was doing DS.

Early Maggie, tough talking with that butch hairdo, gave off a baby dyke vibe.

Kate Jackson and Jim Storm were fucking, I believe.

This thread has peaked my curiosity, where can I watch DS?

Pluto has it for free.

For my money, the best era is the onset of the Phoenix plot and all the way thru the 1795 storyline. About a year or so worth of episodes. I know people love the Quentin storyline, but I can't stand Selby's tic-ish acting, and the 1897 time travel goes on way too long and becomes overly convoluted.

1795 is the MVP for Dark Shadows for sure.

I loved Clarice Blackburn. She was such a hoot as Mrs. Johnson, Abigail Collins, and Minerva Trask. She was really a fine actress. Alexandra Moltke, in an interview, singled her out as someone she used to watch and study in order to try and make her own performance better. Unfortunately, or fortunately, for Clarice, she had a face made for behind the scenes, which is exactly where she wound up, as a long-time writer for All My Children.

[quote]r148 I only remember her for her overdrawn lips.

[quote]I thought Louis Edmonds was serviceable as Roger, but he was a revelation as Joshua in the 1795 storyline.

Ah yes 1795, .when Men were Men and unafraid to show their passion for each other!

[quote]I feel like Clarice Blackburn was a dyke in the way Agnes Moorehead was a dyke. By inference.

By inference? Oh no honey, it was very literal - we scissored and kept cats and everything!

From R162's photo, it looks as if Joan overlined her lips exactly the way Lucille Ball did.

I wonder if it was something they were trained to do by the MGM Makeup department? Before thinning lips could be easily plumped by injectables, it was an effective illusions for movies and TV.

Many of the women under contract at MGM, reported having their eyebrows shaved by the Makeup Dept so often that they never grew back - at least Joan has a more natural browline than Lucy, Debbie Reynolds, and some other MGM contract players who had to start drawing in their brows at a very young age.

R157 - the whole series is also on Tubi.

[quote]r165 Many of the women under contract at MGM reported having their eyebrows shaved by the Makeup Dept so often that they never grew back

Hi.

I prefer overdrawn lips to those monstrous injected things many call lips today.

R156 No, it was Kate Jackson and David Selby who were having an affair.

^Are you sure? I thought it was Kate Jackson/Jim Storm, and Selby was fucking Donna McKechnie.

With all due respect to her nephew, glug glug glug.

Holy shit, I JUST started the 1897 storyline with Thayer David and Grayson Hall playing dark skinned gypsies. I'm already dying.

You could tell that Grayson was having a great time playing Magda. She and Thayer were great together. And Quentin was always choking Magda.

I always thought she looked a bit like Lucille Ball. If she had red hair...

I loved those flowing gowns she wore for the present day scenes. It looked like she was wearing silk/satin sheets and I approve that.

^^ Caftan Queen

Okay, best actor on the show- Isabella Hoopes who played the much too brief role of Edith Collins in the 1897 storyline. She was fantastic AND she knew her lines. And she was in her 70s.

Jim Storm said in an interview: "Kate Jackson was just beautiful, you know. And just beautiful, I mean she was lovely. And uh, I enjoyed working with Kate. Even though... she knocked me out. But you know that was the all time thing."

People forget how close she came to playing Scarlett after she she died her hair brunette in 1938. Only the four finalists were tested in Technicolor: Jean Arthur, Bennett, Paulette Goddard and Vivien. Arthur was never really in the running. Selznick just kept giving her tests to keep her happy because he was fucking her at the time. Selznick and Cukor both preferred Goddard to Bennett but Selznick had serious concerns about casting her because she had been living publicly with Charles Chaplin for several years but they couldn't produce a marriage license (they claimed they had been married on an ocean liner on a trip to Asia). That was a very big deal back then.

Of course, Selznick's dark horse Vivien solved everything a few days later when she showed up in LA with Larry and her tests blew everyone else's out of the water.

Comparing the fat-faced Bennett to the goddess Vivien is just silly.

Re: R180

Miss Bennett with friends.

R183 I guess that picture's 1951 in La La Land.

Claricw Blackburn played Mrs Johnson as a character always right for parody, reminding me a bit of Frau Brucher in Young Frankenstein.Her performance reminds me a lot of Andrea Martin.

The season long Father of the Bride series had Ruth Warrick in Joan's role. Elizabeth certainly wasn't stuffy or snobby like Phoebe Tyler Wallingford oh, but she ruled the town. Interesting that her TV brother and the lawyer played by Hugh Franklin were Phoebe's husbands.

Who is the person on this thread who is so freaking concerned about actors going up? All actors go up, the actors from DS were no different. They just happened to be on a show where you couldn't go back and do a retake or fix something in post. Those actors did not have it easy. Soap dialogue is already difficult because it's all recap and exposition.

Jonathan Frid may not have been an oil painting from neck up, but his body wasn't that bad apparently.

Since he was a member of the clan, wonder if there are any stories lurking about....

Louis Edmonds OTOH could have used a few Weight-On shakes or maybe few extra sandwiches...

Men of Dark Shadows....

Stand corrected, as a young man Jonathan Frid wasn't that bad looking.

Not bad looking at all.

1968! That's going back a bit.

R144

Could be wrong but it seems to my eyes Joan Bennet is getting a fall (hair piece) fluffed.

Plenty of women wore hair back in 1960's; falls, wiglets, and various other hair pieces were all the rage.

Bennett absolutely wore pieces on the show. Her hair was very expertly coiffed and the character most of the time wore something between a bouffant and a three layer cake atop her head. Just for expedience sake I would imagine that was a plop and go.

[quote] r180 Selznick just kept giving her tests to keep her happy because he was fucking her at the time.

I think Selznick had had an affair with Jean Arthur years before Gone with the Wind went into production, and still had genuine affection for her. They had both previously been under contract to Paramount when they were starting out, but had left by 1930.

i don’t think they were still sexually involved when he agreed to test her for Scarlett.

I love Nancy Barrett, but she was painful on The Doctors and Ryan's Hope. There are some episodes on YT with her as Faith Coleridge, and she was dreadful. The highly theatrical/stylized acting that DS called for and that she continued to employ did not translate well to those shows.

Vicky wore falls, too.

Did Mitch Ryan hook up with any of the young ladies? He was walking sex back in those days. Just an incredibly beautiful man with big intoxicating dick energy.

[quote] He was walking sex back in those days.

Ryan was also a walking drunk, which is why he was replaced.

R199, it's no wonder after he physically assaulted that substitute teacher in Miami, while dating her roommate!

Frid's credits on IMDB are incredibly small, he barely worked before or after DS, was he able to live off of DS royalties after that?

He did a lot of Canadian theater, I believe, and toured.

You can watch the 2021 documentary about Frid on Amazon. The site gave me the option to watch it for free with ads (but the ads didn't even run, since my adblocker prevented them). Anyway, I read somewhere that it's also available on Tubi.

Frid developed a one-man show that it did and toured around Canada with it.

The Frid film is on Tubi, as is (I believe) the Dan Curtis doc which is primarily about Dark Shadows. Both are fun watches (the Frid one a little less so because it felt stretched a bit thin) and Frid comes off well.

As much as I bitch about how bad an actor Frid is, I would like to recommend a film he did in the early 1970s called Seizure, which was Oliver Stone's first film, and also stars Herve Villechaize, Christina Pickles, Mary Woronov and Troy Donahue. It's a very odd horror movie, but in a good, eerie way. For years it was OOP, and was finally reissued on DVD about a decade ago, and then blu-ray a few years later.

Frid's Wikipedia entry has nothing about his personal life. Was he family?

[quote]R186 Who is the person on this thread who is so freaking concerned about actors going up? All actors go up, the actors from DS were no different.

In short, it’s unprofessional. Yes, it can happen to any actor, but the skill is in how you cover it up and get back on track. The Dark Shadows performers generally failed at that.

Diana Millay said that although she loved Louis Edmonds personally (she was with him at his death bed, I believe), he was awful to work with because he was constantly going up on his lines.

She was excellent as Elizabeth Taylor's mother in "Father of the Bride".

Good bio on Jonathan Frid...

Do people on here read the posts ever?

Why was Mitchell Ryan let go and replaced with the inferior Anthony George?

R205

You'll find very little if anything solid about Jonathan Frid's personal life from his own mouth or whatever. However after his death several media sources "outed" JF in their own way.

Fans of Jonathan Frid and indeed those of Dark Shadows won't have a word said against the actor, and or even tolerate that line of questioning. Many DS groups will cast out or shut down anyone who even attempts to go there.

How different would DS have been with Lucille Ball as Julia, Gale Gordon as Barnabas, and Mary Jane Croft as Angelique?

I'll tell you one thing- Lucy wouldn't have put up with any of this going up on one's lines bullshit!

Lucy didn't do five episodes per week, every week.

Then she could have played Elizabeth, who didn't either.

R184, 1950, Laurence Olivier, Clifton Webb, Vivien Leigh, Joan Bennett, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Charles Feldman, Reggie Gardiner, Nadia Gardiner, Mabelle Webb at one of Clifton Webb's famous Sunday luncheons. Photo by Jean Howard.

R201

Jonathan Frid like number of other actors then, before and since got incredibly lucky with Dark Shadows. However lightening doesn't always strike twice, and more often than not said actors aren't able to ride that initial success onto a long lasting career.

Think at some point Jonathan Frid became so well known as Barnabas Collins he was forever typecast, thus those casting productions looked elsewhere or otherwise passed him over.

Young Joan Bennett as a blonde...

Loved her in Father of the Bride.

Joan Bennett wearing hair, tons of slap and looking rather tired and worn in this DS picture.

Her lipstick application certainly is old school "Lucy Ball". My grandmothers, teachers at school and many other older women one knew as a child or teen applied their lipstick in similar way.

More hair and heavy make-up.

Can understand why DS began filming in color, but it didn't do some actors many favors.

R218 Since he lived until 2012 I'm surprised that none of the soaps ever used him when they did supernatural stories.

R223

Read bio in R209.

Jonathan Frid was hugely famous in America at least for being Barnabas Collins on DS. Usually television productions would want something new and fresh instead of the old and familiar.

This and by 1980's or so supernatural as plot lines virtually faded out from American daytime soap operas. It was all about sex, money, more sex, more money, who was plotting or actually killed who, those sort of things.

Dark Shadows had heyday about same time as Bewitched and other programs featuring supernatural were all over television (1960's through about early to middle 1970's). By late 1970's they were all largely gone.

Daytime soaps like evening television dramas by 1970's and certainly into 1980's began to go with more gritty plot lines to entice audiences. Abortion, adultery, unwed mothers, murder, theft, etc... were in; witches, warlocks, ghosts and vampires were out.

Evening television soap drama "SOAP" did go there with a child supposedly fathered by the devil. But that was in keeping (IIRC) with taking a page from then highly rated film "The Omen", and of course "Rosemary's Baby".

[quote] This and by 1980's or so supernatural as plot lines virtually faded out from American daytime soap operas. It was all about sex, money, more sex, more money, who was plotting or actually killed who, those sort of things.

But, they were back by the 90s. Marlana was possessed, and there was Passions and then PC went supernatural.

What about ME?

Another catalog of DS flubs...

Joan had the benefit of a high powered producer as her husband. He made her career starting with the dye job.

Re: pic @ r222

Why didn’t Bennett invest in a facelift? She seems like the rich, stylish type who would.

(Or did she have one and it didn’t help??)

While Frid and Edmonds became fast friends immediately upon meeting, in his bio, Edmonds tells the story where he and Frid went to a dance club once, and Edmonds went out on the floor and started dancing by himself. He says he got so into the music that he "danced right out of his clothes" and ended up completely naked. "Jonathan was just furious," he laughed. "He stormed out of the club and wouldn't speak to me for weeks."

R201

Jonathan Frid despite his success with DS just wasn't a very good actor for film apparently.

From beginning to finish with Dark Shadows he had same problems remembering lines, hitting marks, even locating teleprompters seemed beyond his skills. Camp fest that DS became with a huge devoted fan base willing to overlook Mr. Frid's flubs among sea of others on that show was one thing, what another director would put up with is another.

How ghastly for Frid! Just ghastly!

^^ re: nude dance off

Watch some of the old soap back from that time period, especially the NYC ones. A lot of theatre people and the style of acting wasn't what many of us are now used to.

Louis Edmonds book "Big Lou" is an interesting read if nothing for insight to the man's life, but also that of a closeted gay man at the time.

I loved Louis Edmond's Langley on AMC. If I saw he and Phoebe were going to be on, I made sure to watch. And, Carol Burnett played his daughter!

[quote] Arthur was never really in the running. Selznick just kept giving her tests to keep her happy because he was fucking her at the time.

R180 Are you making the claim that Davis O. Selznick was fornicating with Jean Arthur in 1938?

I've been googling and can only find references to a 'brief', 'on-again off-again affair' between 1928 and 1930.

(I'm only bothered with this because I keep on thinking that no one other than Vivien could have held the audience's interest over this big, long movie)

It's funny how lead actors/characters would disappear for weeks, even months at a time. I think that Frid and Hall were the only two that worked consistently. I remember Kathryn Leigh Scott being gone for nearly two months between Josette dying in 1795 and Maggie's first appearance when they switched back to the present. They barely used Louis Edmonds after Roger became irrelevant after the swift conclusion of the Burke revenge story, and he really didn't appear very much until they went back to 1795, where he seemed to be on almost every day as Joshua. Then there were people who seemed to come and go, disappearing for an eternity, like John Karlen, Jerry Lacy, Diana Millay, Clarice Blackburn, etc.

Face lift wouldn't have made much difference to Joan Bennett's career during or after Dark Shadows.

Clip from Joan Bennett appearing in a 1982 episode of Guiding Light playing herself.

This would be Ms. Bennet's final television appearance as an actress IIRC. Her last film was in 1977, and JB died in 1990.

Joan Bennett as "Madame Blanc" in her final film " Suspiria".

To Tell The Truth - 29 April 1958

PANEL: Polly Bergen, Don Ameche, Joan Bennett, and Hy Gardner

Oh god, she’s just as stilted in that 1982 Guiding Light clip @ t239 as she was on Dark Shadows.

“Gracie, do you think the shop where… you work would… give you a leave of absence?”

Looked like Madonna

Joan Bennett settled into "mother" roles quite well. As Mrs. Stanley Banks in both "Father of the Bride" and "Father's Little Dividend", she played Ellie Banks perfectly.

The Banks weren't wealthy, but sort of solid middle to upper middle class making their way post WWII. Nice house in in the suburbs, Stanley Banks a steady attorney who makes partner at his firm..

Ellie Banks is pure cool Yankee patrician sort; not unlike Myrna Loy's Muriel Blanding (Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House. These were college educated women who were practical, level headed (most of the time), and saw keeping up the home front as their part of the team that allowed their husbands to get on professionally.

Joan Bennet was still rather young and an attractive woman in both Father of the Bride films. When Stanley Banks feels his wife on way out of door in clip below, Ellie's reaction is priceless.

Ellie Banks had a strong moral steak of what was right and wrong, and when certain things were appropriate or not. In "Father of the Bride" when Banks sit down to eat dinner Mr. Banks and his sons begin discussing something, and Ellie instantly disapproves and tells them to pipe down. She motions to "her in there" (nodding towards kitchen where their black maid was) and warning about "her" over hearing.

Many actresses of Joan Bennett's generation detested being kicked down to "mother roles", but JB seems to have made most of what was on offer.

Why wouldn’t Bennett take a mother role? Directed by Minnelli and starring with Spencer Tracy? They’d last appeared together in a 1932 Fox Film, “She Wanted a Millionaire.” The movie was supposed to make Bennett a star but it bombed. When they appeared together in”Father of the Bride,” Tracy pointed to Taylor as the result of their earlier pairing.

Gene Markey must have had something going on for him to have married Joan Bennett, Hedy Lamarr and Myrna Loy.

He bore a resemblance to Bob Hope.

Well, now this thread has me watching "Dark Shadows" for the first time. (Years ago, I remember watching the first episode--Victoria on the train?) But Freevee and one of the other sites only have so-called collections of episodes, and the first one available is from Season Two. Frid has just been released from his crypt. Where can I see it from the beginning?

Joan Bennett - Why not?

R248, meet R50.

R248 is properly formatted.

R247 they have it on many services but I think if they have collections they usually have a collection of the early ones called Dark Shadows the Beginning or something similar.

Tubi has both collections. I would go with Tubi, only because their commercials are less invasive. They have 1 commercial before the show begins, then a single pack of commercials in the middle that run anywhere from 3-5 ads.

I should also add that if you are going to start from the beginning and you have Prime, go there first. They have the entire Beginning collection for free (and commercial free), with maybe a half dozen episodes that are not available. It's faster to go through them without commercials.

[quote]It's odd they only had that one maid, Mrs. Johnson, to clean that huge mansion, and she didn't even arrive until a few months into the show when Burke placed her there to spy on the family.

That's why we had to close down the East Wing of the mansion...and eventually the West Wing too...

and then...well, we were all forced to live in the Foyer, the Drawing Room, and that little room under the stairs.

Mrs. Johnson was actually the laziest cleaning woman I've ever encountered in all my life - she single-handedly drove one of the great mansion of New England into ruin.

She's the reason I often slept in the family mausoleum!

Dark Shadows and Speed Racer everyday after school. I had no idea I was watching anime.

I'd like to pitch a prequel to the 1960s Dark Shadows - a world in which the beautiful young debutante Elizabeth Collins is one of the most sought-after young women in New England - even having a serious romance with one of the Kennedy boys during her years at Middlebury College.

Her younger brother Roger, equally handsome and sought-after, styled himself as a carefree-young tennis player who had no time for romance, (but plenty of time for sex with hot men, much to the disappointment of his parents).

Elizabeth eventually married a most handsome, elegant man who reminded her of a Collins relative whose portrait hung in the front hallway of Collingwood, Barnabas Collins.

Mr. Stoddard, of course, turned out to be a flaming homosexual (like her cousin Barnabas). But he left her with some beautiful jewels and designer clothing before his untimely demise. (Contrary to Elizabeth's face-saving stories, Mr. Stoddard actually left Collinsport with his young twink lover and with whom he opened a operated a very successful Fire Island Gay B & B for many years)

Elizabeth's daughter Carolyn was the product of a drunken night at the Blue Whale...was her real father Jason McGuire, Sam Evans, or some handsome unknown sailor?

^ only if Sarah's lover Holland Taylor can play Dr. Julia Hoffman!

^ Her college roommate will be Little Edie Beall

R257 OMG that would be perfect.

Would it be stunt casting to have Johnny Depp play Barnabas again (as he did in the 2012 "Dark Shadows" movie)

and have Amber Turd play Angelique the witch from Martinique?

I'd prefer they burn the Johnny Depp DS movie and never mention it again.

Joan as a WML? mystery guest in 1972 @ 18:12.

One of the reasons characters would disappear for long stretches of time is because DS could only afford 5 (maybe) 6 characters a day. Also, unlike other soaps, DS typically didn't do ABC stories. There was usually just one A story and the beats within that story.

I may be wrong on this, but I think I read that DS only had a few contract players. Everyone else was recurring, which also could explain why characters would cycle in and out.

Besides Constance, Joan had another sister, Barbara Bennett.

Included within this recap of The Bennett sisters:

[quote] Things seemed to have turned in Barbara's favor when she married singer Morton Downey in 1929. They had 5 children (one of them talk-show host Morton Downey, Jr.) and their marriage seemed to be a happy one.

[quote] However, things were apparently not what they seemed. Around 1940, Louise introduced Barbara to Addison Randall, a B Cowboy star she had been dating. Barbara apparently went gaga over Randall and left her family. Downey crucified her in court and Barbara lost custody of her 5 children. She and Randall married in 1941, but life was never easy for Barbara Bennett. As a result of an accident while filming a western, Randall suffered an injury and died in 1945. Barara married again, but, in 1958, committed suicide. Said friend Louise Brooks: "Only her death, in 1958, achieved in her fifth suicide attempt, could be termed a success."

If true, r263, it’s funny to consider that modern soaps Days and General Hospital both are now running their shows with dramatically reduced regular casts and a large number of recurring characters in order to control costs. The more things change…

You would think for something that was so popular and did so well in the ratings, they would give it a little more money. How many soap operas ever got made into a feature film, let alone two? (And I don't mean the Depp film, I mean the original two.)

In those days soaps were nothing but profit. They were quick and cheap to produce. Soaps didn't get big budgets until the 80s.

[quote]Besides Constance, Joan had another sister, Barbara Bennett.

She once interviewed me for Redbook magazine, That was a day I won't soon forget.

I'm guessing the main actors (Bennett, Frid, Edmonds, Hall, etc.) had some sort of contract. John Karlen said he never had a contract, and Roger Davis also hinted that he never worked under contract. I'm assuming people who were used sparingly or came in for specific story cycles like David Ford, Clarice Blackburn, Diana Millay, Marie Wallace, and Jerry Lacy never had contracts either.

When you look back at the soaps on abc at the time, it really depended who was producing it. Early OLTL and AMC looked positively primetime, GH looked better than The Doctors, and Never Too Young was groundbreaking and from what I've seen on youtube, they did a better job shooting a soap on location than GL 40-50 years later. The permanent sets on DS were fine, but it was like they forgot they were a supernatural show and didn't budget for it.

It's very interesting that they used so many actors for multiple roles. And I don't even mean the parallel time frames where they had a reason to do that. But for instance, someone like Roger Davis- he played a character who started in the 1795 timeline. Then he played a character in the 1968 timeline, but hw was supposed to be a reincarnation of the 1795 character, so it made sense. But then they brought him back months later as a 3rd character in 1969 who had zero ties to those other characters or their stories. Yet they had to for some reason acknowledge it was the same actor by saying- My god, you look just like so-and-so when it had nothing to do with anything. It was very odd. But I'm guessing if they found someone who could handle the schedule, they stuck with them.

R271 ABC's last remaining soap GH, keeps that tradition alive.

R266

Dark Shadows got off to an uneven start, critics weren't impressed largely due to heavy use of unknown actors and weak story lines/plots. Things didn't begin to take off until show focused more on supernatural including introduction of Barnabas Collins.

Above not withstanding DS never ranked in top ten of USA daytime soaps. Best ever season was 1968-1969 season where it ranked 11th in ratings. For rest of its original broadcast history DS ranked 12th or 13th, ranking 16th in final 1970-1971 season.

Joan Bennett in a great photo in TV Guide to promote Dark Shadows.

^ Vaseline-on-Lens.

That's interesting about its ratings. It was a pop culture phenomenon. But then The Brady Bunch was also one and it never did all that well in the ratings, either.

R276

It's almost as if Dark Shadows became a hit (far as some fans are concerned) in spit of itself.

Dan Curtis learned a few things by time Kolchak: The Night Stalker television series and film "The Night Stalker"

Dark Shadows OTOH was often a hot mess. It wasn't just the flubs, but choice of actors (and quality thereof) and other quibbles.

Dan Curtis tended to cast actors he knew for Dark Shadows, which was a plus as well as minus.

Daytime soaps then and now long gave spots to new actors fresh out of school or whatever, but many clearly were better than others. In end ensemble cast along with DC became sort of a tight group which worked well one supposes in certain ways, but stunk in others.

Barnabas Collins helped put Dark Shadows on the map, but Johnathan Frid simply was not a great or even that good of an actor. One might forgive his mistakes and flubs early on, as usually it takes a season before even best actor finds his or her character, but Johnathan Frid never really improved. But again since he by then was "Barnabas Collins", replacing him was not likely to happen, and the vampire storyline was a huge draw for DS audiences.

Daytime soaps of 1960's and 1970's often did range from cringeworthy to quite good. However many had so much in common that they invoked well meant parody.

Best was Carol Burnett Show's "As The Stomach Turned".

One more....

IMO, good performances come from good directing and lots of rehearsal. Some actors are better suited for daytime work than others. However, just because those actors are better suited for soap acting doesn't mean they're good actors. You guys can make fun of Jonathan Frid, but the truth is the vast majority of people who are so-called "great" soap actors are just that - great soap actors. That great acting on soaps doesn't translate anywhere else.

I have Amazon Prime and started watched Dark Shadows there, but I found the way they organized it confusing. After I got about halfway through I switched to Tubi. I’ll put up with a few commercials because it’s just one episode after the other without that collections nonsense.

"That great acting on soaps doesn't translate anywhere else."

Tell me about it!

This thread has 281 posts so far.

I estimate 100 of these posts refer to Joan Bennett when she had some box office clout.

All the rest are campy posts enjoying her sad appearance in that sad, lousy, campy TV soap.

There was no need for Joan Bennett to have a facelift, she aged beautifully.

OTOH R283 one could say Joan Bennett did well landing role in that "campy" soap, Dark Shadows.

Plenty of actresses and actors from golden era of Hollywood were scrambling around for work in from 1960's through 1980's onward. Television was a lifesaver for many be it occsional starring or "also starring) roles or something more steady.

Joan Bennett's film career of course was hampered by that shooting scandal which made her virtually blacklisted far as major film studios were concerned. Aside from "Father of the Bride" and "Father's Little Dividend", her work on Dark Shadows probably is what most remember Joan Bennett.

"Aside from "Father of the Bride" and "Father's Little Dividend", her work on Dark Shadows probably is what most remember Joan Bennett."

And for her husband shooting her lover in the groin.

R285, For instance . . .

Let's compare Joan Bennett and her sister Constance. When they were younger, Constance was always the more successful, more highly regarded sister. And if Dark Shadows had never happened, then she would likely be the more remembered one simply by reputation.

But Dark Shadows did happen and Joan was introduced to entire new generation of fans. What's more because of that show, her fandom has lasted another two generations beyond that.

So I don't believe anyone on here considers her time on Dark Shadows "sad," R283. On the contrary, I think we're all fans who are celebrating it, despite the fact that we understand it was a somewhat silly show.

I love that we're having a conversation about who was the better remembered Bennett sister: Joan or Constance, when the only people who remember either of them are posting on this thead. It reminds me of my favorite moment in Christine Pedi's Liza Minnelli youtube videos, when she says, 'Who doesn't know who Hermione Gingold is?'

R176 No, caftans are too constrictive. If I am home alone I strip naked and wrap a satin sheet loosely around my body, kinda toga like.

R289, you would be surprised at how big the Dark Shadows fan base is. I was really shocked when I took a look.

Every young woman or girl I watch "Father of the Bride" with has same comment; why did the Banks family spend all that money sending Kay to college, only for her to marry and retire from world barely a year after graduating.

God damnit, I keep reading the name in the thread title as "JonBenet".

R292, Buckley had BDE and BDF.