Tag: david ford sings

Episode 97: Paint her soul

Dark Shadows tells the story of the great house of Collinwood and its residents, the ancient and esteemed Collins family. From the first episode, some of the most important elements of the house’s visual impact are the portraits of the Collins ancestors that decorate its drawing room and foyer.

The foyer is dominated by a portrait identified as Benjamin Collins. In episode 2, well-meaning governess Vicki feels so intimidated by Benjamin’s portrait that she looks at it, says “Boo!,” and runs away:

Boo to Benjamin. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

The drawing room is home to several portraits. The two that have been most frequently discussed so far on the show are those of Isaac Collins, which moves around a bit but usually hangs by the piano, and of Jeremiah Collins, which has a secure home above the mantle. Reclusive matriarch Liz used the portrait of Isaac as a visual aid in a lecture about family history that she delivered to her nephew, strange and troubled boy David, in episode 17:

Liz lectures David. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

The portrait of Jeremiah features prominently in almost every scene in the drawing room. Since the drawing room is the single most important set in the series, that makes the portrait one of its stars. It’s only appropriate that it looked over this June 1967 publicity photo of the cast:

By November of 1966, we have seen three stories about portraits. The first starts in episode 22 and drags on for quite a while. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin calls on drunken artist Sam Evans and commissions him to paint his portrait, specifying that it is to be the same size and style as the portraits in Collinwood. Burke is scheming to take the house away from the Collinses, and to hang a portrait of himself in one of its most conspicuous spots. For about six weeks, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins frantically tries to bully Sam into canceling the commission. Roger doesn’t care about Burke’s plans for the house. He is just afraid that in the course of the sittings Burke will learn a dark and terrible secret he and Sam share.

Another story takes place within a single episode, episode 70. We get our first look at The Old House and the portrait of Josette Collins that presides over its parlor. After everyone has left, the portrait begins to glow, and the ghost of Josette comes walking out of the portrait:

Josette steps out. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Today’s major theme is a story that began in episode 60. Visiting the Evans cottage, Vicki found a portrait that she herself strongly resembles. Sam told her that he painted it 25 years ago, and that the model was a local woman named Betty Hanscombe. This excited Vicki, who grew up a foundling and is on a quest to find out who her birth parents were. Vicki wondered if Betty Hanscombe might be her long-lost mother, or if some nearby relative of hers might be. Sam disappointed Vicki’s hopes as soon as he had raised them, telling her that Betty died before Vicki was born and that she has no relatives in the area. Since then, Vicki’s interest in the portrait has been revived. She learned that there was once a butler at Collinwood called Hanscombe. She has formed a vague hope that one of her parents was a member of a central Maine family named Hanscombe, and she is trying to track them down.

Today, Vicki goes back to the Evans cottage and asks Sam for another look at the portrait of Betty Hanscombe. Sam is in a good mood; before Vicki shows up, he’s singing, and his baritone voice sounds like he’s ready to appear in musicals on Broadway. Uncharacteristically, he is sober, a fact demonstrated by his almost successful attempt to thread a needle. He gives Vicki a courtly reception, recaps what he told her about Betty Hanscombe and the painting seven and a half weeks ago, and when she persists in showing interest makes a gift of the portrait to her. She’s flabbergasted by his generosity, though considering that he painted it twenty five years ago and hasn’t sold it yet he may as well be generous.

While Vicki is at the Evans cottage, Liz summons her brother Roger to the drawing room. She has deduced that Vicki is not going to forget about Betty Hanscombe or her portrait, and instructs Roger that their goal is to stuff those topics into the deepest possible obscurity.

Vicki returns with the portrait and shows it to Liz and Roger. Roger watches Liz and listens to her declare that it looks nothing like Vicki. Liz then directs Roger to look at the painting, and he dutifully echoes her statement. Since it is in fact a painting of Alexandra Moltke Isles, we can sympathize with Vicki’s disbelief at the position they are taking. She seems to be about to give up when flighty heiress Carolyn walks into the room, looks at the painting, and asks Vicki when she had her portrait done. “It looks exactly like you!” It’s a terrific ending for the episode, and leaves us wondering what will come of the Betty Hanscombe story.*

Vicki shows the portrait of Betty Hanscombe to Liz and Roger. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Episode 85: What do you do with a drunken sailor?

The final episode written by Art Wallace is the first to feature actors singing. It’s also the first to feature a talking ghost.

The song is “What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor?” It is sung first in the tavern, where drunken artist Sam Evans and dashing action hero Burke Devlin are reminiscing about their late friend, beloved local man Bill Malloy. Bill worked on the fishing boats for many years, and sang that old shanty all the time. Sam and Burke croon a few of its more family-friendly lines.

We hear the song again, sung by the ghost of Bill Malloy. Well-meaning governess Vicki is, for reasons far too tedious to repeat, imprisoned in a disused room. Bill’s ghost manifests itself in the doorway, takes a step into the room, and begins singing. Draped in the wet seaweed that covered his body after it washed up on shore, he warns Vicki that she will be killed if she does not escape. He turns back towards the door and vanishes into thin air. Vicki tells herself that the apparition was a dream, but finds wet seaweed on the floor where Bill had stood.

Bill Malloy manifests himself. Screen capture by Dark Shadows Before I Die

As the representative of the business operations that support the ancient and esteemed Collins family in their old dark house on the hill, Bill Malloy had been central to the rational, daylight logic side of the show. He came to the house to keep reclusive matriarch Liz updated on the operations of the cannery and the fishing fleet, and he discussed financial affairs with her. There had been a couple of indications that he once had a crush on Liz, suggesting the possibility that they might fall in love, complicating their business relationship and giving rise to a rather tame soap opera romance. For the last couple of months a mystery story about his death and the investigation into it has kept us mindful of evidence and witnesses and the sheriff and other symbols of explainable, shared reality. When Art Wallace, who wrote the series bible and was credited with the first 40 episodes, moves Bill Malloy into the supernatural back-world of Josette and the Widows, he forecloses any possibility that Dark Shadows will be a conventional soap opera with plots about slightly inconvenient love affairs and struggles over the ownership of a sardine packing concern. We’re going to be seeing “ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night,” to repeat a quote Sam delivers today.

It’s also worth pointing out the type of ghost Bill is. He is mostly spirit, but there is a corporeal side to him as well. He enters the room at the closed door. Since he is insubstantial enough that wooden barriers won’t stop him, he isn’t a revenant or a zombie or any other kind of reanimated corpse. On the other hand, he is substantial enough that he moves from one location- somewhere on the other side of the door, apparently- to another. So he isn’t a pure phantom. Unlike a true revenant, he vanishes into thin air, but unlike a pure phantom he leaves behind clumps of the wet seaweed with which he was festooned. We will see more ghosts in the years ahead, and most of them will be a mixture of the spectral and the bodily.

Art Wallace’s name is on every episode of Dark Shadows under “Story Created and Written by,” but he had nothing to do with it after this episode. He will be missed. He wasn’t perfect- this week has been pretty grim, with the unwelcome story of Vicki’s confinement, and with Wednesday’s episode and Thursday’s having been utter stinkers- but he was usually quite good. He and Francis Swann both had a firm understanding of what actors can do and how writers can enable them to do it. After Swann leaves the show late next month, they won’t have another writer of whom that can be said until Joe Caldwell comes aboard next summer.