conard fowkes – Acilius on Dark Shadows

Episode 180: She’s out there somewhere

Yesterday, we saw four men visiting a crypt. They are parapsychologist Dr Guthrie, hardworking young fisherman Joe, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, and the unnamed Caretaker of the old cemetery. They witnessed an uncanny event when the ghost of Josette Collins opened the coffin of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge, who died (by fire!) in 1767.

The ghostly intervention was disturbing enough in itself, but when the four men saw that the coffin was absolutely empty they had to change their ideas. Before Josette took action, the Caretaker had vowed that he would die rather than let a grave be disturbed. After they have seen the empty interior of the coffin, Guthrie asks him about another grave he wants to dig up and the Caretaker gives him directions. Frank had shouted at Joe and Guthrie that they would go to jail if they didn’t immediately stop disturbing the crypt, but now he agrees to go to the other grave and help dig. Joe had joined Guthrie only with utmost reluctance and had wanted to stop when the Caretaker first showed up, but now he is the one who points out a toolshed from which he volunteers to grab some shovels.

The second grave is that of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. In 1867, just one hundred years after the fire that killed Laura Murdoch Stockbridge, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe died the same way. What’s more, a woman initially identified as Laura Murdoch Collins died (by fire!) in Phoenix, Arizona earlier in 1967 and her body inexplicably disappeared from the morgue some weeks after her death. Evidently Guthrie’s hypothesis is that graves will both be empty, because the body of each Laura Murdoch disappeared after death. He also surmises an otherworldly connection between these three dead and vanished Laura Murdochs and the apparently alive Laura Murdoch Collins who has been hanging around the great estate of Collinwood for a couple of months.

Back in the crypt, the Caretaker is delivering a soliloquy. He thinks Guthrie, Joe, and Frank are wasting their time trying to learn secrets from the dead. He has information he could share if they would stay and listen to him. He remembers that there was something strange about the death of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, and that a book about the Radcliffes is on the shelves in the crypt. He looks through the book and finds the information. “The child!” he exclaims.

Laura Murdoch Collins materializes in a dark corner and strikes up a conversation with the Caretaker. As her talk grows more and more mystifying, the Caretaker looks confused, as if he has never before been the least weird person in any room.

Laura’s appearance gave us (Mrs Acilius and I) two grounds for fear. Our first fear was that Laura might kill the Caretaker. We could easily imagine Guthrie, Joe, and Frank coming back to the crypt to find it in flames, the records kept there in ashes, and the Caretaker dead (by fire!) We like the Caretaker, and want to see him in future episodes.

Our second fear was that Laura would go to the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and interrupt the exhumation. What we dreaded about that prospect was that it would slow the story down. Yesterday’s show moved at a nice clip, and while today does not match it, at least some things are happening to advance the plot. In the last several weeks, the pace has alternated between glacial and dead stop. So the idea of yet another delay is well worth a shudder.

Laura Murdoch Collins examines the coffin of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge

There is a moment when it seems that Laura will go to stop the men. The Caretaker tells her that they have gone to the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, and starts to give her directions. She tells him not to bother explaining where it is. Laura doesn’t speak the line “I’ve been there before,” but Diana Millay’s eyes communicate the thought to the audience. Having already seen her inspecting the inside of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge’s empty coffin, we know that she is on a tour of her old neighborhood.

Laura Murdoch Collins doesn’t need directions to the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe

For whatever reason, Laura does not interfere with Guthrie, Joe, and Frank. They dig up the coffin of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. They open it and look inside. Guthrie asks “What do you see?” Frank replies “What you thought we’d see.” There it is, a bullfrog in a top hat singing “Hello, My Baby.” Oh no wait, I changed the channel there for a second. On Dark Shadows, the answer is “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. An empty box. It’s almost like it’s always been empty.” No wonder we’re still watching the show after all these years, where else can you find thrills like that.

The Caretaker is talking to Laura and looks down for a second. When he looks up, he is baffled. We cut back to the spot where she had been standing, and it is vacant.

Guthrie, Joe, and Frank return to the crypt. They apologize for having been away for so long. The Caretaker tells them they have only been gone for a minute or two. They are puzzled. They find the book about the Radcliffes, and discover that a portion of a newspaper clipping containing an account of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe’s death has been erased, as by an intense light generated by a fire. This leaves us wondering why Laura erased only that section of the clipping, calling attention to it, when she could just as easily have set fire to the book and destroyed the whole thing.

It’s a relief that the Caretaker survives to dodder another day, and a relief that Guthrie, Joe, and Frank complete their business in the cemetery and free us to move on to the next story point. As Guthrie, John Lasell was visibly bored yesterday; today his part is smaller, but he is back on his game, and the others are good too.

Daniel F. Keyes has some particularly good moments as the Caretaker. Yesterday he struck the heroic note when he told Guthrie and Joe that they would have to kill him before they could open the graves, and he made that a powerful moment. Today, he shows us both how lonely the Caretaker is, and why he cannot escape that loneliness. The feeling is painfully raw in his soliloquy about the information he could give if only the others would listen, and his exaggeratedly careful movements and other mimicries of a fragile old age give that rendition of helpless, desperate loneliness an extra punch. His interaction with Laura is even more interesting- while he lives too much in the world of ghosts and taboos to be at home with the living, he is too much a part of the this-world institution of the cemetery and of its rational, bureaucratic routines to know what to do when he encounters an otherworldly being face to face. He is entirely alone, caught in the interstices between the natural and the supernatural, unable to communicate with the denizens of either realm.

Today is the last time we will see actor Conard Fowkes and his character, Frank. I call him “instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank” because, while Fowkes consistently does an excellent job of embodying whatever Frank supposed to be at any given moment, he never gives the feeling that there is anything else under the surface. I keep wishing Frederic Forrest, who danced at the Blue Whale in #137, had been cast as Frank. Forrest could have created a convincing character while also giving a sense of a goofy, engaging personality inside whatever Frank is in any given scene, so that you not only appreciate each turn but also wonder what is coming next. Each time you see Fowkes, you can recognize that he presented exactly what he was supposed to present, but he never drops a hint that anything different might be coming. Still less does he leave you wanting more.

Today, Frank is supposed to be chastened by the sight of what Josette did and willing to join Guthrie and Joe in their exhumation. He is the very image of “Chastened.” Yesterday, he was indignant about Guthrie and Joe’s lawless behavior. A still of him from that episode would have been a fine illustration for a dictionary definition of “Indignant.” In #169, he was haggard and concerned about the mysterious illness gripping reclusive matriarch Liz. Again, he was a faultless model for “Haggard and Concerned.” When we first saw him in the offices of his firm in #92, he was so much the fellow you would expect to meet in a law office in Bangor, Maine in 1966 that you felt like you were reading a writ of replevin.

In a way, Fowkes was an excellent actor. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the way in which a regular member of the cast of a scripted television series ought to excel. The proper medium for him would be something more static, such as filmstrips or View Master reels, in which we could stop and look at him as he demonstrated various moods and personality types. I suppose he might also have been an outstanding mime. Fowkes was always pleasant, and in her scenes with him Alexandra Moltke Isles has a chance to show aspects of the personality of well-meaning governess Vicki that we never see in any other setting. So I’ll miss him, but I’d have missed Forrest a whole lot more.

Episode 179: The dead take their death with them

John Lasell is a tremendous actor, and was electrifying when he first appeared on Dark Shadows as parapsychologist Peter Guthrie in episode 160. But four weeks of endless recapping has taken its toll on him. In today’s pre-credits sequence, recreating yesterday’s final scene, we see what it looks like when John Lasell is bored.

Dr Guthrie and hardworking young fisherman Joe have arrived at the door to a mausoleum which houses a grave they plan to break into. Finding that he cannot turn the knob to the building’s front door, Guthrie says “It’s locked.” More precisely, he whines “It’s laaaakt.” The character has several sides, but this is the first time we’ve seen him as a cranky five-year old. As the two of them fumble about, Guthrie at one point lifts Joe’s tool box, gestures towards the inside of it, and says “Try this.” Try what, all of his tools simultaneously? When the door mysteriously opens, Guthrie takes a beat before he turns to look at it, and he never does get around to looking surprised.

They enter the crypt. Guthrie shines a flashlight directly into the camera. Characters on Dark Shadows do this so often that it must be intentional, at least to the extent that the directors resigned themselves to letting actors get away with it, but it always looks like a mistake. It’s especially jarring here, when John Lasell is himself looking into the camera when he shines the light in our eyes.

Hey Guthrie, are you a doctor of optometry?

Once Guthrie and Joe have found the vault housing the coffin of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge, they quarrel about whether to go through with their plan. They go through the same arguments they used in their scene in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood yesterday. As yesterday, Joel Crothers manages to put enough verve into Joe’s mixed emotions that he is interesting to watch, but Lasell simply cannot bring himself to commit to another tired rehash. The only thought his performance in this scene brings to mind is puzzlement as to what happened to Guthrie’s glasses.

Back at Collinwood, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank charges into the drawing room and demands that flighty heiress Carolyn tell him where Guthrie is. She replies that Guthrie swore her to secrecy. Frank says that Guthrie had called him shortly before to ask about a plan that might get him sent to jail. Frank asks Carolyn if Guthrie has gone to the crypt at the old cemetery. Faced with the prospect that Guthrie and Joe might land in jail, Carolyn admits that they are both there.

Guthrie and Joe try to pry Laura Murdoch Stockbridge’s nameplate off the wall of the crypt. They keep talking about how the whole thing might as well be a single block of stone. The actual wall keeps springing back in a way that only cheap grades of plywood do, undercutting this dialogue and requiring the actors to put more and more effort into keeping it from falling down. By the end of the sequence, both of Joel Crothers’ arms and one of John Lasell’s are holding the wall up, so that Dr Guthrie has to remove the supposedly massive nameplate with one hand. Even the blocking isn’t up to director Lela Swift’s usual standards- most of what we see in this sequence is the back of John Lasell’s coat. Considering what’s going on with the set, that may not be such a bad thing.

After Joe and Guthrie get the nameplate off the wall, Crothers flashes a look at Lasell that shows he is struggling to keep a straight face. Lasell’s boredom saves the take- if he had been intellectually available enough to notice Crothers’ twitching lips, he would have burst out laughing:

The coffin is quite large and apparently very heavy. Guthrie and Joe put all their strength into carrying it a few feet. They then place it on a miniature tea stand.

Guthrie fits a wedge under the lid and holds it while Joe swings a hammer. The elderly Caretaker enters and orders them to stop. If only for the sake of the tea stand, this command comes as a great relief.

The Caretaker tells Guthrie and Joe that they won’t open the coffin unless they kill him first. That doesn’t stop Guthrie’s efforts to win him over, but it is enough for Joe. Frank shows up. He apologizes to the Caretaker and yells at Guthrie.

Guthrie tries to explain himself to Frank. When Frank tells him that a court would likely respond to his hypotheses by committing him to a psych ward, Guthrie responds “Well, doesn’t that prove my point halfway?” When Frank asks how, Guthrie says “Wouldn’t a court… um… would a court be more sympathetic… uh… before the point? My reasons? Than after?” I’m sure that was not how it was phrased in the script, but I can’t imagine that whatever was written there made any more sense. Guthrie’s behavior is so preposterous today that it is understandable John Lasell didn’t bother to put in much of a performance. Still terribly disappointing, and quite unusual to see him as the weakest member of the cast. The rest of them all do very well in this well-paced, if not particularly well-mounted, episode.

The three men are about to leave the crypt when Joe says he detects a flowery scent. Guthrie asks if it is the scent of jasmine- the sign that the ghost of Josette Collins is near. Joe doesn’t know what jasmine smells like. The Caretaker can just about make out the scent of jasmine, far away, as if it were wafting in from the sea. In a reprise of a moment from #154, when the Caretaker told Vicki the same thing, Joe protests that the scent is not far away at all. It is flooding the room, is overpowering, is coming from behind an obstacle in the crypt.

The coffin opens itself, evidently the result of Josette’s action. The men gather round and look inside. It is empty- no bones, no dust, no sign that there ever was a body inside. Guthrie’s hypothesis, that the body of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge vanished after burial, is confirmed.

Episode 159: No absolute values

Strange and troubled boy David has tried to murder his father, is in danger because of his fascination with his mother, and has dreams which, if interpreted correctly, will explain his problems. Today, his mother tells him with coquettish gestures and a purring voice that a man should know how to tend a fire, and tells him he can put a log in her fireplace any time he wants. There is something somehow familiar about this storyline, as if it were making a reference to a theory that was influential among highly literate New Yorkers in 1967.

The episode begins with well-meaning governess Vicki and her boyfriend, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, recapping recent events that suggest to them that David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura, is a creature of the supernatural. Frank thinks of Dr Peter Guthrie, a professor at Dartmouth College who specializes in the paranormal. He identifies Dr Guthrie as a parapsychologist, suggesting that he would be housed in Dartmouth’s Department of Psychology and Brain Science. Evidently that department was known in those days for its faculty members’ adherence to the thought of someone called Sigmund Freud. I suppose I should look that Freud fellow up and see what his ideas were.

As Conard Fowkes plays him, Frank is utterly believable as someone you would meet in a lawyers’ office in central Maine in the mid-1960s. He is so much a citizen of the daylight world of facts and logic and the recognized laws both of nature and of the state that it is surprising that he is willing to acknowledge evidence suggesting that he is in the presence of supernatural forces. Surprising, but not interesting- Fowkes shows us Frank simply accepting the facts once he has seen them and agreeing with Vicki’s interpretations once he has heard them. He does nothing to suggest that any particular emotional process is making it difficult for Frank to take a place in a world with ghosts and witches, still less that there is any unknown side of his personality that has prepared him for this information. In the hands of a livelier actor, the fact that Frank has the name and phone number of a parapsychologist at his fingertips would be a revelation that would leave us wanting to know just what else Frank knows that Vicki might find exciting. As it is, Frank generates all the dramatic interest of a search through the Yellow Pages.

Episode 92: It’s hard to believe there was ever any gaiety at Collinwood

The only episode of the series to take place entirely outside of the town of Collinsport and the great house of Collinwood, this one is set in Bangor, Maine.

Well-meaning governess Vicki has gone to that town in search of information about herself. When she asks her employer, reclusive matriarch Liz, even the most basic questions about why she decided to hire her and how she knew she existed, Liz becomes evasive, then flatly and transparently lies to her. Vicki has found an old document in the house that may shed light not only on the matters Liz has already refused to discuss, but even on her questions about her birth family. Sure that Liz won’t give her any information about the document, she decides to take it to Liz’ lawyers, the firm of Garner and Garner.

Vicki meets Garner and Garner. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Lawyers on soap operas don’t always follow the rules that bind their counterparts in our universe, but at least in this episode Garner and Garner are not going to tell Vicki anything their client does not want her to know. Indeed, the Garners are realistic enough to present a problem. One of them is Frank Garner, a young lawyer who is going to date Vicki for a few months. As played by Conard Fowkes, Frank is very much the sort of fellow you would expect to meet in a law office in Bangor, Maine. In this phase Dark Shadows still has some room for low-key stories and naturalistic acting, but no TV series this side of C-SPAN would be able to accommodate a character like Frank.

It’s a shame Frank isn’t more suited to Dark Shadows. The show urgently needs more young men in the cast. At this point, the only male actors between the ages of 11 and 40 they have who have appeared more than once are Joel Crothers as hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell, Mitch Ryan as dashing action hero Burke Devlin, and Dana Elcar as Sheriff Patterson. Sheriff Patterson is supposed to be older than the 39 year old Elcar, and is coded as an authority figure who is unavailable for dating. So Joe and Burke have to provide the male points on all of the love triangles.

I think Frank could have been saved had he been played by a different actor. However dull the dialogue the writers might give him, he is on screen enough that a sufficiently charismatic performer could have grabbed our attention. And maybe stimulated the imagination of the writers, so that he would have had interesting things to say and do. Harvey Keitel had danced in the background at The Blue Whale in episode 33, and so must have been available for a speaking part on the show. Keitel’s quiet, brooding intensity always convinces an audience that a character who is saying very little is thinking deeply and feeling strongly and planning mighty things. Keitel would have been quite powerful as Frank.

Fowkes brought a light tone to his performance, and that is welcome. Dark Shadows always struggled to maintain a bit of sparkle against the background of a setting so gloomy that in this episode Vicki finds it “hard to believe there was ever any real gaiety at Collinwood.” If that line is meant to raise our hopes that a Vicki-Frank relationship will create a bright new mood, it sets us up for instant disappointment. Frank is cheerful and pleasant enough, but he doesn’t project enough personality to change the feeling even of the shots he is in, let alone of the entire series.

Keitel has never been known for lightness. If you wanted that, you could have turned to another Blue Whale dancer- Frederic Forrest, whom we will see in episode 137. Thinking of the goofy charm that Forrest’s character maintained throughout a movie as heavy as Apocalypse Now it’s easy to imagine a breeze of fresh air running through Dark Shadows. Not only would Forrest himself have been fun to watch as Frank, but he might well have brought out some of the most under-utilized aspects of Vicki’s character. A handful of times in these early months, Vicki is allowed to make jokes, usually in her scenes with strange and troubled boy David. David will not be amused, but the audience can see that Alexandra Moltke Isles is capable of being extremely funny. A relationship between a character played by Forrest and one played by Mrs Isles might have given the writers abundant opportunities to showcase that side of her. A pairing with the earnest, cheerful, but entirely humorless Frank represents a death sentence for Funny Vicki.