Tag: malcolm marmorstein

Episode 113: I’ve got another contemplation

The writers didn’t always put a lot of effort into Dark Shadows’ opening voiceovers, but today’s is exceptionally dire:

My name is Victoria Winters. 

Collinwood is still living up to its name as a ghost-ridden house where deaths have gone unsolved. Except that in this case, the murderer is known. Only his whereabouts are unknown. But much like a wounded animal at bay, he has taken refuge in the one place where he thinks he will be safe. The Old House has already been searched thoroughly, so Matthew Morgan feels this is one place the police will not look again.

“Collinwood is still living up to its name”- it is still in the woods and is still occupied by people called Collins? No, “its name as a ghost-ridden house.” So, it is living up to its reputation, not to its name.

Then we get three short sentences beginning with “Except,” “But,” and “Only.” If the narrator has to issue three retractions in fifteen words, it’s difficult to be optimistic about what will happen when people start exchanging dialogue.

“But much like a wounded animal at bay, he has taken refuge in the one place where he thinks he will be safe.” How does that make him more like a wounded animal at bay than like any other creature who is aware of only “one place where he thinks he will be safe”?

“The Old House has already been searched thoroughly”- that sounds OK, until about 30 seconds into the episode, when Matthew lets himself into a secret chamber of the Old House that only he knows about. When you say a house has been searched “thoroughly,” I for one assume you mean that the searchers figured out how many rooms were in it.

This is the final script credited to Francis Swann. That sloppy, confused narration doesn’t sound like his writing. Maybe he was in such a rush to be done with Dark Shadows that he didn’t bother to take a second look at the opening voiceover once he’d pounded it out of his typewriter.

Or maybe he didn’t write it at all. Malcolm Marmorstein’s name will appear in the credits soon, and Marmorstein was eminently capable of writing something that lousy. The actors have an unusually hard time with their lines today, as if the teleplay got to them later than usual. Swann hasn’t written an episode since #106, and that one felt very much like his farewell. So it could be that Marmorstein was supposed to write this one, got stuck, and Swann came in to bail him out.

Further supporting that theory is a change of texture between the first half of the episode and the second half. After the prologue showing the fugitive Matthew hiding in the Old House, we go to the room in the Collinsport Inn occupied by dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Mrs Johnson, housekeeper at Collinwood and spy for Burke, visits him there. She recaps the last couple of episodes for him. The scene is listless and disjointed, in part because of the actors going up- at one point Clarice Blackburn actually prompts Mitch Ryan with Burke’s next line- but also because they have so little to work with when they do remember what they’re supposed to say.

After Mrs Johnson leaves Burke’s room, strange and troubled boy David Collins drops in on him. Mitch Ryan and David Henesy were always fun to watch together, and they manage to get a good deal of interest out of an opening exchange in which David tries to get Burke to admit that Mrs Johnson is his agent inside the Collins home. They then go into Burke’s kitchen, where they talk about their respective grudges against David’s father, high-born ne’er do-well Roger Collins. That’s an emotionally charged topic, and the kitchen is an intimate space. But the conversation is dull. The actors don’t look at each other very much- even when they aren’t reading off the teleprompter, they keep casting their eyes to the floor, as if they’re having trouble staying awake. You can’t blame them if they are sleepy- there’s nothing new in their lines.

The second half of the episode takes us back to Collinwood, and all of a sudden it comes to life. In the foyer, an authoritative-sounding Mrs Johnson scolds David for not hanging his coat up properly. He then puts her on the spot with his ideas about her and Burke. Once he has her good and nervous, he tells her he’s going to the Old House to talk to the ghosts. Mrs Johnson takes the supernatural very seriously, and responds to that idea with some words spoken in a deeply hushed tone. She finally dismisses him with a brusque command to be back for dinner. After the door closes behind him, she looks about for a moment, pensive. Taking Mrs Johnson through these moods, Clarice Blackburn traces a clear line of emotional development that gives the scene a healthy dose of dramatic interest.

We are then treated to a previously unseen location insert in which David is skipping along the path to the Old House. It’s a lovely little scene, dreamlike and eerie:

David skipping on his way to the Old House

David stands before the portrait of Josette Collins and asks for information about Matthew. The portrait isn’t talking, but Matthew himself appears. David tells Matthew that he doesn’t believe he is a murderer, and that the two of them can investigate and prove his innocence. When David tells Matthew he has no choice but to trust him, Matthew asks “Ain’t I?” Returning viewers remember that in the previous two episodes, well-meaning governess Vicki and reclusive matriarch Liz both asked Matthew to trust them. In response, he tried to kill Vicki, and only his fanatical devotion to Liz kept him from doing the same to her. David’s blithe self-assurance stops Matthew this time, and he agrees to stay in the Old House and let David take care of him.

This episode is the first time we see the secret chamber off the parlor of the Old House. Much will happen there. Another first comes when Matthew is deciding whether to trust David or to kill him. He goes to the window of the parlor. We cut to the outside, and see him in the window thinking murderous thoughts. Many, many times next year and the year after we will see another character, one not yet introduced, in that window, vowing to kill someone or other.

The Old House isn’t the only place where today brings firsts. Up to this point the proper way for people to dispose of their coats when entering the great house of Collinwood has been to fold them and place them on a polished table in the foyer. But this time, David responds to Mrs Johnson’s reproof by taking his coat to a space next to the door where he mimes placing it on a hanger. In later years, we will actually see a set dressing there that can pass for a closet, but for now we just have to imagine one exists.

Episode 63: The world around it

Each episode of Dark Shadows begins with a voiceover. In this phase of the show, the voiceovers are all narrated by Alexandra Moltke Isles in character as Victoria Winters, well-meaning governess, and are brief passages of almost purely decorative prose, meant only to set a mood and to vanish from the audience’s memory as soon as the action starts. Art Wallace and Francis Swann, the writers credited for the first 97 episodes, were old pros who had been turning out scripts for decades, and were good at staying out of their own way. That’s why I haven’t yet said anything about any of the opening voiceovers- when Wallace or Swann set out to write something forgettable, they succeeded. By the time I started writing, I had no recollection of them whatever.

Today’s opening voiceover is unusually substantive, so much so that it threatens to leave a trace in the audience’s mind:

My name is Victoria Winters. Once again it is quiet in Collinwood. There is no sound but the ticking of the great clock in the entrance hall. And the lonely footsteps of a woman who hasn’t left its grounds in eighteen years. A woman whose life is limited to musty corridors and the endless beat of a grandfather clock. A beat that seems to ignore the vitality of the world around it.

Vicki names herself, names the estate where she lives, talks about how quiet it is, mentions the clock, tells the audience that the lady of the house is a recluse who hasn’t left home in eighteen years, complains about the air quality in the house, brings the clock up again, and assures us that interesting things are happening everywhere except here. It leaves us wondering why Vicki is so hung up on the clock, why she doesn’t run the vacuum cleaner herself, and why, if the entire world surrounding Collinwood is chock full of vitality, they don’t turn the camera in some other direction.

That’s the sort of thing we’re going to get from Wallace and Swann’s immediate successors, Ron Sproat and Malcolm Marmorstein. In writing their opening voiceovers, Sproat and Marmorstein fell between two stools. They didn’t write brief, deliberately forgettable passages as Wallace and Swann had done; nor did they integrate the opening voiceovers into the action of the show, as would happen in later years when the story is moving very fast and the episodes start with detailed recaps of events so far. Instead, Sproat and Marmorstein saw the voiceovers as vehicles for long passages of flowery, over-developed imagery. Those are certainly no more effective at setting a mood than were Wallace and Swann’s brief remarks, but they do both try the patience of the audience and linger as distractions. That’s one of the things that prejudices viewers against the character of Vicki- since so many episodes from the Sproat/ Marmorstein era start with Vicki rambling on about the weather or making vague remarks about “one small boy” or whatever, the first impression she leaves on viewers who start watching with episodes from that period is that of a prattling fool.

While Wallace and Swann are the only writers whose names have appeared in the credits thus far, it is very possible that others not credited contributed additional bits. I may be wrong, but my nose catches a whiff of Marmorstein in these six strange, distracting sentences. The description of the clock while we’re looking at it, the specified number of years since reclusive matriarch Liz has left the estate, the evocation of the “musty corridors,” the yearning glance at the eventful world outside, are all typical of Marmorstein’s attempts to turn the voiceovers into freestanding dramatic monologues, but without identifiable characters or plot development.

Today’s episode doesn’t shed much light on Vicki’s relationship to the clock or on the standards of cleanliness in the great house of Collinwood. Instead, it’s a kaleidoscope episode, in which each change of scene varies the combination of characters who interact on each set. The action plays out on two sets this time, the foyer/ drawing room representing the downstairs of the great house, and the Blue Whale tavern, representing the low and bustling life of the village. Because the sets typify the “musty corridors” inside the house and the “vitality of the world around it,” the episode is also a diptych of sorts- not Art Wallace’s usual diptych contrasting two pairs of people, but a diptych contrasting two places and the attitudes those places inspire in the people who spend time in them.

The five pieces tumbling about in today’s kaleidoscope are reclusive matriarch Liz, tightly-wound handyman Matthew, flighty heiress Carolyn, hardworking young fisherman Joe, and Maggie, the nicest girl in town. The regular bartender at the Blue Whale gets a fair bit of screen time as well. In the first 63 episodes, he’s answered to names including “Joe,” Andy,” “Mike,” and “Punchy.” Today, Joe the fisherman calls the bartender “Punchy,” a name he called him most recently in episode 56, the same episode where drunken artist Sam calls him “Mike.” Maybe we’re supposed to think that the young men know the bartender as “Punchy,” the older men as “Mike.” Eventually the show settles on the name “Bob” for him, perhaps because the performer’s name was Bob O’Connell. In one episode (#319,) Sam calls him “Ba-ba-roony,” giving rise to the idea that his name is Bob Rooney.

Liz appears only at Collinwood, of course; Joe and the bartender appear only in the bar. The others migrate back and forth between the two sets. We first see Carolyn with Joe in the bar, talking about what a flop their date has been and how pointless their whole relationship is. Maggie interrupts this thrilling conversation, looking for her father, Sam the drunken artist. After puzzling Carolyn and Joe with a number of cryptic remarks, Maggie gives up looking for her father and goes to Collinwood to look for high-born ne’er-do-well Roger. Roger isn’t home, so she winds up talking to Liz. This is the 63rd episode, and it’s the first time we’ve seen these two major characters together.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

We first see Matthew in Collinwood, telling Liz how much he wants to help her. He then goes to the bar, where Carolyn and Joe see him. Matthew is looking for dashing action hero Burke Devlin, whom he hates. He implies to Carolyn and Joe that Burke is to blame for the death of beloved local man Bill Malloy. Joe doesn’t like Burke any more than Matthew does. The instant he hears Matthew’s idea, he is all in on it. Carolyn resists the suggestion.

Carolyn goes home to Collinwood. Maggie has explained to Liz that Burke has been saying terrible things about her father, that she can’t find her father to ask him about Burke’s allegations, and that Roger might know something about them. Liz urges Maggie to believe in her father, and to regard Burke as a dangerous, unscrupulous man capable of many dark deeds. Hearing the last part of this, Carolyn asks her mother if she believes that Burke is capable of murder. Yes, Liz says, she does believe that he is capable of that.

Episode 49: Where are we all heading?

Maggie Evans is working the counter in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn. We open with her on the telephone, explaining to her father Sam that she hasn’t seen Bill Malloy. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin comes in, orders breakfast, and asks Maggie if she’s seen Bill Malloy. Hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell comes in, scowls at his bête noire Devlin, and asks Maggie if she’s seen Bill Malloy. Flighty heiress Carolyn Stoddard comes in. Carolyn already knows that Maggie hasn’t seen Bill Malloy, so she talks about her car.

Maggie and Carolyn are both cheerful when the episode opens, and by the end the men have dragged them down into gloom. Joe is in a sour mood, not only because shares the universal worry about where Bill Malloy is, but also because of the steadily mounting evidence that Carolyn doesn’t have any intention of getting married. Burke is in a towering rage because of his suspicion that either the dastardly Roger Collins or the drunken Sam Evans did away with Bill Malloy to prevent Bill from clearing Burke of the manslaughter charge that long ago sent Burke to prison. Sam is wallowing in despair, as per usual.

Maggie goes home to the Evans cottage to find that Burke is there, confronting Sam. The two men have been yelling at each other about not knowing where Bill Malloy is. After Burke leaves, Maggie tries to get Sam to tell her what’s going on. He refuses to do so. Downcast, she turns to go back to work. Before she leaves she asks her father “Where are we all heading?” After she’s gone, Sam looks at the closed door and says “Towards death, Maggie darling. We’re all heading towards death.”

Carolyn goes home to the mansion at Collinwood with Joe. They start to hug and kiss when there’s a knock at the door. Carolyn answers. It’s Burke, demanding to speak to Roger. He wants some answers, mainly about where Bill Malloy is. Joe and Burke wait in the foyer while Carolyn searches the house for Roger.

Burke gives an angry and not very coherent speech denouncing the Collinses. Some commentators think the evident difficulty Mitch Ryan has with this speech is a sign that he was drunk during taping. Ryan did have a drinking problem, and admitted that in the 1960s he sometimes showed up to work drunk. But the speech itself is so awkward and weird that I suspect there is another culprit aside from alcohol- uncredited additional dialogue by Malcolm Marmorstein. Be that as it may, the speech rubs Joe the wrong way, and by the time Carolyn comes back and tells Burke that Roger isn’t home, Joe is in a worse mood than ever.

Episode 46: Collinwood, with all its dark shadows

Bill Malloy’s investigation into the manslaughter case that sent Burke Devlin to prison ten years ago is coming to a head. Bill tells Burke, Sam Evans and Roger Collins to meet him to discuss the case in Roger’s office at 11 PM. When Bill leaves the Evans cottage, Sam mutters something about stopping him and looks directly into the camera.

Sam looks directly into the camera

Roger is no happier at the idea of the meeting. Louis Edmonds’ performance ever so subtly hints at Roger’s reluctance to attend:

Roger contemplating unwelcome news
Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Roger gives a speech to Vicki about how David is better off than he was at nine, since he already knows that the world is a horrible place. The speech is vague, rambling, and high-flown. That’s suitable for the occasion, since Vicki isn’t supposed to know what the hell he’s talking about, but Louis Edmonds struggles with it. In a future period such speeches will become a hallmark of the show. Malcolm Marmorstein is credited as the writer of 82 episodes in all, from 115 (broadcast 2 December 1966) to 309 (broadcast 31 August 1967,) and often as not speeches just like that crop up in them. Marmorstein’s flowery gibberish will defeat actor after actor, until Jonathan Frid joins the cast as Barnabas Collins. In Frid’s voice, the speeches sound so gorgeous you barely notice that they don’t make a lick of sense. After a while, Marmorstein stops giving them to other actors, and they become the way Barnabas talks. I wonder if Marmorstein did some uncredited work on this episode. Art Wallace, sole credited writer of episodes 1-40, is listed on screen again as the author of this teleplay, but at many points it sounds more like Marmorstein than it does like Wallace.

This one also has a key moment in one of the aspects of the show that most saddens me, the decline and fall of Vicki. In the drawing room, Roger is in a panic about Bill’s investigation. Vicki sees this and asks if the investigation has something to do with her quest to learn her origins. Roger laughs in her face. Of course it doesn’t have anything to do with that story-line- nothing happening on the show does. As long as she’s chained to that rotting corpse of a narrative element, Vicki is going to be of limited relevance.