Each of the 1225 episodes of Dark Shadows features one name under the credit “Written by.”* A total of nine names rotate in that spot. While we know that some episodes included writing from uncredited contributors, the only such contributors we can identify come from among that tiny group of eight men and one woman. For example, Malcolm Marmorstein, credited with today’s script, wasn’t officially named among the writers until #115, but he may well have written additional dialogue as far back as #46. Joe Caldwell’s name doesn’t appear on-screen until #245, but he will actually be writing some of the scripts attributed to Ron Sproat starting this month, maybe this week.
Opinions will of course vary as to which of the nine identifiable writers was better and which was worse. Few, however, will find a place for Marmorstein on a list of Dark Shadows’ eight best writers. Although he had extensive experience in the theater, Marmorstein had none of the sense of what actors can do that Art Wallace and Francis Swann brought to the first nineteen weeks of the show. Nor did he know how to structure a drama, write crisp dialogue, or invent fresh story points. Directors Lela Swift and John Sedwick collaborate with a uniformly strong cast to put Marmorstein’s scripts on such a strong footing that at moments they seem like they are about to be good. Those brief flashes of hope are invariably, cruelly, disappointed.
There are indeed some bright spots in today’s episode. Reclusive matriarch Liz is in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. Well-meaning governess Vicki and homicidal fugitive Matthew are both missing, and Liz is worried that Vicki may have fallen into Matthew’s hands. Wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson shares her conviction that Matthew has killed Vicki, and won’t stop talking about this belief even after Liz expressly orders her to do so. Clarice Blackburn plays Mrs Johnson as a woman with no self-awareness whatsoever, and no screen actor has ever had a more effective way of showing horror at displays of social maladroitness than did Joan Bennett. In their hands, this scene is laugh-out-loud funny.
A knock at the door rescues Liz from Mrs Johnson’s untrammeled morbidness. The sheriff has come to report to Liz on the state of the searches for Vicki and Matthew. Mrs Johnson answers the door and won’t let the sheriff see Liz until she’s given him a piece of her mind about the incompetence of his department. There aren’t any memorable lines in this exchange, but the contrast between Blackburn’s highly animated movements and Dana Elcar’s cheerful placidity is so obviously suitable for comedy that it feels funny.
Back in the drawing room, the episode starts to fall apart. Liz and the sheriff talk about the searches for Vicki and Matthew. The dialogue is full of repetition and wasted words. Liz asks if the sheriff has an idea where Matthew might be, to which he replies, “He could be anywhere, and everywhere.” Might he hurt Vicki? “He might, but on the other hand he might not.” After all, “he’s very unpredictable.” Then, “you know how unpredictable he is.” Yep, unpredictable, let’s repeat that word five or six more times, that’ll keep us busy until the commercial break.
They could have cut some of that smoke-blowing and replaced it with lines about what the sheriff has done. My wife, Mrs Acilius, wishes the sheriff had mentioned telephoning Vicki’s former residence, the Hammond Foundling Home, and asking people there about where Vicki might have gone and whom she might have tried to contact. That might not have led to any action, but at least it would invite us to imagine that something might be going on somewhere.
The scene between Liz and the sheriff does have an effective ending. She asks him if he holds out much hope for Vicki. He replies, “Frankly, no.” She turns to leave the room. We break for commercial on that downbeat, which lets the bleakness of the situation sink in.
Strange and troubled boy David Collins comes home. David is the one person who knows that Matthew is hiding in the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of the estate. He has been delivering supplies to him. Even David does not know that Matthew is holding Vicki prisoner in a hidden chamber. David sees that the sheriff is in the house, and asks Mrs Johnson if the sheriff has any news about Vicki or Matthew. Mrs Johnson seizes this opportunity to resume denouncing the sheriff’s incompetence, saying that the only clue he can recognize one that tells him it is time to eat and make himself even fatter than he already is.
David is about to move on when Mrs Johnson questions him about the pack of cigarettes he stole from her earlier. She sets some punchlines up for David in this exchange. She mentions that she lit a cigarette while serving David his breakfast, to which David replies by asking if she is supposed to smoke while working. She says she knows that she set her pack of cigarettes on the table when she and David were alone in the kitchen, and that she hasn’t seen it since. He suggests it walked away by itself. She tells him he’s the only one who could have taken them; he says that if he wanted cigarettes, he wouldn’t steal them, he’d buy them. None of these lines is much on the page, but as delivered by Blackburn and David Henesy, they are genuinely funny.
David goes into the drawing room and talks with the sheriff. Picking up on Mrs Johnson’s remark about the sheriff’s vigilant observation of meal-times, David asks him what it means when the whistle blows at the cannery. “Lunch,” says the sheriff. Again, not a world-class piece of comic material, but Henesy and Elcar make it land.
David then asks the sheriff for the details of his search for Matthew. The sheriff happily answers all of David’s questions in detail, as if he were giving a briefing to the state police. He tells David that anyone who might be hiding Matthew will go to jail.
This scene shows the limits of what a good actor can do with bad material. David is going to return to the Old House at the end of the episode. He will be prompted to go back there because he has learned information from the sheriff that Matthew will want to know. While there, he will set up suspense by revealing to Matthew that the sheriff has triggered his intense phobia of jail. That locks the sheriff into playing his scene with David as a babbling oaf.
In Elcar’s first episodes as the sheriff, he had made indiscreet remarks to David, but as we saw him observing the reactions those remarks elicited from David and others he seemed to be using them as ploys to advance his investigations. For example, in #59, he had given David some information that excites him and unnerves his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins.
We can see how he might use similar tactics in this situation. After all, Vicki is David’s governess, and David has spent more time with her than has anyone else. Matthew had been the caretaker in the house where David lives, and David knows him quite well also. In this conversation, when the sheriff refers to Matthew as unlikable, David becomes very excited and exclaims “I like him! Er, I did like him, I mean.” If the sheriff knows his business he might well pay very close attention to everything David says, and keep encouraging David to say more. He will certainly notice David’s terrified reaction to the idea that someone helping Matthew will go to jail, and test his reaction to further comments on related themes. But if he takes any note at all of David’s attitude, the current storyline will end within minutes. So in this scene, Marmorstein leaves Elcar no way to play the sheriff as an intelligent character.
After the sheriff leaves, David and Liz have a scene in the drawing room that builds up to a tremendously frustrating moment. David keeps asking his aunt one question after another about Matthew and Vicki, Vicki and Matthew, does Matthew have Vicki, is Vicki in danger from Matthew, then without taking a breath “Do you know any secrets about the Old House?” Liz responds “I wish that someday you’d ask an important question.”
Granted, we know that Matthew is holding Vicki prisoner in the Old House and Liz does not, but it is hard to imagine anyone failing to see the connection between these two thoughts. Joan Bennett and David Henesy had a fine rapport that made the scenes between Liz and David Collins a delight, and you can see them trying to save this exchange. David is in a panic at the beginning of the scene and gets steadily more worked up as it goes along. We see Liz observing his agitated emotional state, paying such close attention to his facial expressions, tone of voice, and frantic bodily movements that she misses key elements of his words. It’s a valiant attempt on their part to make the scene work.
David wants to go to the Old House to see Matthew. In the foyer, Mrs Johnson again confronts him about the cigarettes. He yells at her to “Get off my back!” and runs out. This might have been an attempt to show that David feels his world closing in on him, but it doesn’t succeed. We’ve already seen those two characters say everything they had to say about that topic on that set. Repeating it just feels like filler.
*There are reference works that draw on the original paperwork produced by the makers of the show; even these list one writer per episode. That’s how the Dark Shadows wiki manages to list a writer for every episode, including those that don’t show writing credits on-screen.
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