Tag: michael hadge

Preemption Day: Dark Shadows actors on N.Y.P.D. (1967-1969)

On 23 October 1970, the ABC network preempted its afternoon lineup to cover President Richard Nixon’s address to the General Assembly of the United Nations. As a result no episode of Dark Shadows premiered 56 years ago today.

A few months ago, I was looking for something to watch on TV. My eye fell on a show from the 1960s I’d never heard of, titled NYPD. I flipped over to it, expecting it would hold my attention for a few seconds at most. But I saw that the guest star was John Karlen, Willie Loomis himself, playing a television reporter. Like Willie, Karlen’s character thought he had found a path to fortune and success, only to end up hopelessly entangled with a homicidal maniac. Karlen was great of course, and the show was way above average for cop shows of any period. Also, the opening title sequence, shot from a perspective immediately behind a flashing light on top of a car speeding through the city streets, was obviously the inspiration for the same image in the opening of Police Squad! So I watched it again the next time it was on, and soon found myself watching it as a matter of habit.

NYPD was produced in New York City for ABC from 1967 to 1969, and Karlen was one of a great many Dark Shadows cast members who had parts on it. Their appearances are fun for Dark Shadows fans, and in more than a few cases, they played remarkably similar roles. There were other connections between the shows as well- Ohrbach’s even provided the wardrobe.

Here are some of the casting overlaps. The first season was 26 episodes long, the second 23:

Season 1, Episode 1, “Shakedown”: Opens in a hotel room where a man appears to have committed suicide. The hotel manager is played by Conrad Bain; as when he played Mr Wells, manager of the Collinsport Inn, we don’t get to see nearly enough of him. The hotel detective is played by Dana Elcar, Sheriff Patterson #1. The heroes from the 27th Squad of the New York Police Department are exasperated at having to deal with Elcar’s character, since he is notorious throughout the city as an utterly incompetent investigator. Good to see that he didn’t lose his Collinsport ways when he moved to the big city! And John Harkins, who appeared in four roles on Dark Shadows, always as a mysterious man from another place, plays a nameless character who is the secret leader of all the gays in NYC (I don’t know if the gays all share a secret leader now. Maybe things were different in the sixties.)

Season 1, Episode 2, “Fingerman”: Joel Fabiani was heard but not seen as Paul Stoddard in #271, when we flashed back to the night when Liz learned Paul’s secret and tried to beat him to death. In this episode, Fabiani plays a man who is frantic because his secrets have caught up with him and now someone wants to beat him to death.

Season 1,Episode 8, “To Catch a Hero”: Michael Currie was Dark Shadows first law enforcement officer, the hapless Constable Jonas Carter. In this episode, Currie plays an army officer assigned to assist the detectives with the case of a psychotic war veteran. He fails to provide appropriate security to keep the veteran from getting loose and the police are forced to shoot him. That’s exactly the result we’d expect if Constable Carter were in his position.

Season 1, Episode 9, “Murder for Infinity”: John Karlen’s episode. Other familiar faces in the cast are Ralph Waite, the future Pa Walton, as the homicidal maniac and Sam Waterston as a beatnik who uses “hetero” as a pejorative term to describe Karlen’s character. There’s no word on whether the Sam Waterston character is satisfied with John Harkins’ secret leadership, but I do wish the young Sam Waterston had been on Dark Shadows as a militant sexual liberationist who sneered at straight people.

Season 1, Episode 10, “The Pink Gumdrop”: Nancy Barrett is glimpsed for about three seconds sitting at a table in a cafe where people plan car thefts.

Season 1, Episode 11, “The Witness”: about 20 minutes into it there was Bob O’Connell, a.k.a. Bob the Bartender, as laboratory technician Gerardi. He has several lines, but is uncredited. He isn’t even listed on IMDb, so I took this screenshot to prove that it is him:

Criminalist Gerardi is supposed to analyze the ink on a document and determine when it was signed.

Season 1, Episode 12, “Boy Witness”: A 13 year old sees a woman shot to death and claims to have seen the gunman. A fingerprint on the cartridge of the fatal bullet leads the detectives to a man who matches the boy’s description and who was dating the woman. The man is played by Mitch Ryan. Ryan’s character breaks into the boy’s bedroom, and when the police catch up to him he assaults them and attempts suicide. It turns out the boy didn’t really get such a good look at the guy, so the detectives say that now they have to start all over. Since they could prove that he loaded the murder weapon, that would seem to be an overreaction! That overreaction reminds me of Burke Devlin’s belief that he was somehow proved innocent of vehicular manslaughter because he wasn’t driving his car when it hit the victim, he was just passed out drunk in the back seat after he had given the keys to an equally drunk guy. Still guilty!

Season 1, Episode 16, “Cruise to Oblivion”: Hugh Franklin played Richard Garner, grey eminence of the Collins’ family’s legal team on Dark Shadows. In this one, he plays the grey eminence of a drug ring. James Hall was Willie Loomis #1, a young mariner who seems to have lost his sea papers and who is a subordinate in some kind of unsavory scheme. Here, Hall is a subordinate in the scheme Franklin’s character oversees, and is connected with a ship carrying heroin.

Season 1, Episode 20, “Cry Brute”: Clarice Blackburn played three characters on Dark Shadows whose function was to introduce false allegations. Housekeeper Mrs Johnson was originally supposed to accuse Roger Collins of killing Bill Malloy; repressed spinster Abigail Collins brought in the Rev’d Mr Trask to accuse well-meaning governess Victoria Winters of witchcraft; and hateful biddy Minerva Trask accused neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond of all sorts of things. In this episode, Blackburn plays a wife who backs her husband up when he falsely accuses one of Our Heroes of assault.

Season 1, Episode 24, “The Private Eye Puzzle”: Donna McKechnie as a young woman with a secret, over a year before she appeared on Dark Shadows as Amanda Harris.

Season 1, Episodes 25 & 26, “Nothing is Real But the Dead” Parts One and Two: Michael Hadge, who attained immortality as motorcycle enthusiast Buzz on Dark Shadows, plays a man the detectives meet in a pool hall. In Part One, he’s on camera for about a minute, enough to make a strong impression. He complains angrily about the damn dirty hippies who have moved into the neighborhood and are ruining it for all the hardworking, clean-living old-time residents such as himself and his family.

In Part Two, he gets another minute. The detectives remember his vociferousness against the hippies, and suspects he may have killed one of them. He denies it. Hadge has a very fine needle to thread here. The character is pretending not to be afraid of the police, and he is not as good an actor as Hadge is. We notice his insincerity, and are left wondering if he might be guilty. But it takes more time than Hadge has to really deliver on this, so we wind up attributing the character’s shrill awkwardness to his limitations and bumping ourselves out of the story for a little bit.

Season 2, Episode 1, “Naked in the Streets”: Vince O’Brien played a couple of forgettable roles as senior law enforcement officers on Dark Shadows. He has an equally forgettable role in this one as the New York Police Department’s Commander for the borough of Manhattan.

Season 2, Episode 2, “Encounter on a Rooftop”: Alfred Hinckley had a bit part in the first episode of Dark Shadows as a train conductor, and a more substantial part later as a doctor who is initially courageous when confronted by the monsters, but who ends up letting them have their way. He has a small part in this one as a man who reports a prowler and sets off the action.

Season 2, Episode 5, “Deadly Circle of Violence”: Gene Lindsey has a great scene as a man who catches up to a racist mass murderer played by some guy called Al Pacino. He doesn’t share any scenes with the murderer’s girlfriend, played by a actress named Jill Clayburgh. I wonder if those two ever called Lindsey for career help when he made it big as Randall Drew in the 1840 segment of Dark Shadows.

Season 2, Episode 6, “Case of the Shady Lady”: Harvey Keitel danced at the Blue Whale in #33; within two years, he played the manager of a dance club in NYC in this episode.

Season 2, Episode 7, “The Golden Fleece”: John Harkins has a major part as a man who gives the police an incomplete report of a a robbery of which he was the victim. Erica Fitz is credited as a waitress, but we didn’t notice her.

Season 2, Episode 9, “Walk the Long Pier”: Hugh Franklin reprises his role as the drug kingpin, but doesn’t have much to say. Dolph Sweet, a forceful Collins family loyalist in #99, is a forceful police official. Frederic Forrest, who danced at the Blue Whale in #137, appears briefly and is credited as “Customs Official.”

Season 2, Episode 12, “The Love Hustle”: The episode opens with Lara Parker walking into the squad room, raving that her mother is in danger, and dropping dead. Most of the time she is on screen she is photographed in an extreme closeup focused on her eyes. She’s only on for a minute, but the rest of the episode is an investigation of what happened to her, so she makes an impression.

Season 2, Episode 13, “The Body in the Trunk”: Mitch Ryan is the angry father of a girl who died under unsavory circumstances. House Jameson, who appeared in #270 as the useless Judge Crathorne in #270 and #271, here plays the even more useless doctor who is responsible for the girl’s death.

Season 2, Episode 14, “Night Watch”: Daniel Keyes plays a locksmith, which I suppose might be a joke about his name. Come to think of it, as the Caretaker at the old cemetery north of town he played a character whose chief responsibility was locking and unlocking gates and doorways, so perhaps he was cast on Dark Shadows for the same reason.

Season 2, Episode 15, “Three Fifty Two”: Frederic Forrest, wearing a wig that appears to be made of an old truck tire, is the second most prominent member of a gang of robbers who beat up two of the three main characters.

Season 2, Episode 21, “Boys’ Night Out”: David Ford, Sam Evans #2 and Andre DuPrés, is a detective who advises Our Heroes on his specialty, extortion rackets. He just sits across a table from them and gives a brief lecture in a reassuring tone. He appears to be reading off a teleprompter.

Season 2, Episode 22, “Everybody Loved Him”: Alfred Hinckley has another small part as a witness.

Season 2, Episode 23, “No Day-Trippers Need Apply”: Lee Beery and Gaye Edmond play women who are more or less prostitutes, which their characters on Dark Shadows were not. Philip R. Allen plays a policeman, which his was.

Episode 262: Hand the world over to madmen and murderers

On Thursday, reclusive matriarch Liz admitted to well-meaning governess Vicki that she is being blackmailed. Eighteen years ago, Liz killed her husband, Paul Stoddard. Seagoing con man Jason McGuire then buried Stoddard in the basement. Now, Jason is threatening to expose this secret unless Liz marries him.

Today, Liz asks Vicki to be the legal witness at her wedding to Jason. Vicki demurs, saying that she might be compelled to speak up when the officiant asks if there is anyone who present who knows why these two people should not be joined in matrimony. The conversation then shades off into Vicki urging Liz to share her secret with her daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn. Liz won’t look directly at Vicki when Carolyn’s name is mentioned.

Word is spreading that Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is dead. Vicki had just received that news when Liz brought up the wedding. Alexandra Moltke Isles does a fine job of expressing Vicki’s emotional tumult as she reels from one kind of shock to another. When Vicki breaks the news of Maggie’s death to Carolyn and then quarrels with Carolyn about her plan to marry motorcycle enthusiast Buzz, Mrs Isles reprises this transition from fresh bereavement to festering conflict, again quite effectively.

Carolyn goes out with Buzz, and Vicki goes for a walk on the beach with her boyfriend, Burke Devlin. Each episode begins with a voiceover which Mrs Isles delivers in character as Vicki. Typically, these consist of remarks about the sea and the weather which have some vaguely metaphorical connection to what’s happening on the show. While Vicki sits with Burke and stares out at the water, she launches into one of these monologues. In response, my wife, Mrs Acilius, started laughing so hard we had to pause the streaming. When Burke joins in with the observation that it is getting dark and “may get darker”- sometimes that happens as the evening goes on, seems to be some kind of pattern there- we both burst out laughing and had to pause it again. Before we restarted it that second time, Mrs Acilius asked “What does it say about us that we are sitting here watching this? That we choose to watch it when we’ve seen it before?” I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that one.

Vicki and Fake Shemp. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Vicki gets home shortly before Carolyn. Carolyn tells Vicki and Liz that after she saw Maggie’s boyfriend Joe walking down the street looking sad, she just wanted to go home and mourn. After Carolyn leaves them alone together, Vicki again urges Liz to tell her the truth. Vicki judges that Carolyn would listen to her sympathetically in the mood she is in now. Liz says she might tell Carolyn tomorrow, Vicki says that Carolyn might not be in the same frame of mind tomorrow, Liz says she can’t do it now.

In fact, Maggie is alive- her doctor decided to promote the story that she is dead as a lamebrained scheme to keep the person who tried to kill her from trying again. The blackmail plot, on the other hand, has barely shown a sign of life since it first arrived on the show ten weeks ago.

Jason is supposed to sweep away the last non-paranormal story elements left over from the period before Dark Shadows became a supernatural thriller/ horror story in December 1966. So far he has managed to disclose to the audience, but not to the other characters, why Liz hasn’t left home since the night Stoddard was last seen. That wasn’t an especially interesting question, as they have never shown us anyplace she would want to go, and it’s the only thing he has cleared up.

Another unanswered question is the one that led Vicki to come to Collinwood in the first place. She grew up in a foundling home, with no idea of who her parents were. The show has been hinting heavily that Liz is Vicki’s mother. Indeed, when Jason was brought on the show, the plan was that the grand finale of his storyline would confirm this. If that is still the plan, then the relationships among Vicki, Liz, and Carolyn are due for a drastic upheaval. That prospect lends a certain interest to the scenes among these characters today.

Closing Miscellany

This episode originally aired on 27 June 1967, the first anniversary of the broadcast of #1.

From #1 until #248, dashing action hero Burke Devlin was played by Mitchell Ryan. Ryan showed up at the set too drunk to work when they were supposed to tape #254 and was fired off the show. Today announcer Bob Lloyd tells us that “The part of Burke Devlin will be played by Anthony George.” There was never very much on Dark Shadows for a dashing action hero to do, and now that the most popular character on it is a vampire there isn’t going to be. It was only Ryan’s star quality that kept the character on the show so long.

Anthony George had appeared in feature films in the 1950s, had guest-starred in several prime-time shows, had been a regular cast member on the hit series The Untouchables, and had played one of the leads on a series called Checkmate. When the original audience saw him, many of them would have recognized him as a famous actor and would have expected the character to go on to do something important. Evidently they haven’t given up on Burke yet. But they had better come up with a story for him- George may have had a terrific resume, but he doesn’t have any fraction of Ryan’s charisma.

Unfortunately, they have given up on Buzz. He is on screen only briefly today, and we don’t see him again. Worst of all, while his first three episodes left us with the impression that he could not fail to be hilarious, he manages not to be even a little bit funny in this final appearance. He is just nasty and inconsiderate, demanding that Carolyn forget about whatever it is that’s bothering her and come to the loud party he’s planned.

Getting Buzz off the show the day Anthony George comes on as Burke does solve one problem. As of this episode, the three young women on Dark Shadows all have boyfriends. Maggie has Joe, played by Joel Crothers; Vicki has Burke, played by Anthony George; and Carolyn has Buzz, played by Michael Hadge. Those three actors were all gay. That wasn’t widely known at the time (except perhaps in the case of Mr Hadge, who really does not seem to be making an effort to keep the closet door shut while playing Buzz,) but now that everyone knows all about it, it does seem to be a sign that the show was spending a lot of energy on things that aren’t going anywhere.

Episode 257: If you feel it, sit it

For almost 13 weeks, seagoing con man Jason McGuire (Dennis Patrick) has been blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz (Joan Bennett.) Time and again, Liz has capitulated to Jason’s demands lest he reveal that she murdered her husband Paul Stoddard 18 years ago and he buried Stoddard in the basement. When Liz gave in to Jason’s demand that she marry him, her daughter Carolyn (Nancy Barrett) vowed to prevent the marriage.

Today, it looks like Carolyn may have found a way to fulfill that vow. She has announced her engagement to motorcycle enthusiast Buzz (Michael Hadge,) whom Liz cannot stand. Liz considers going to the police to keep from gaining Buzz as a son-in-law.

We spend the first half of the episode in the great house of Collinwood. Buzz has come to see Carolyn. The opening sets up a charge of comic energy that raises our hopes for another installment as funny as Buzz’ first star turn in #254. Buzz knocks on the front door, Liz opens it, and greets him with a disgusted “Oh.” She closes the door in his face, then goes inside to tell Carolyn that he is there. Carolyn goes out to meet Buzz, who is smoking a large cigar.* They kiss, and Carolyn lets Buzz in. He takes a seat on the staircase.

Buzz on the stairs

Instead of building on the comic potential Buzz brings with him, we then grind to a halt with a Buzzless scene in the drawing room. Carolyn recites teen-rebel cliches at Liz, punctuating her dreary lines with a few random pokes at the piano. Nancy Barrett’s all-in style of acting often exposes values that another performer might have left buried in the script, but when the writing is as tired as this not even she can dig up anything interesting.

Carolyn chose Buzz to mock her mother’s relationship with Jason. She defies Liz to find a reason for regarding Buzz as an unsuitable partner for her that would not cut at least as strongly against Jason. Buzz mirrors Jason in another way so far as the audience is concerned. Dennis Patrick was a gifted comic actor, and Jason is appealing when he gets to be a comedy villain. But most of the time he is stuck repeating the same deadly dull threat to Liz time and again.

Buzz is a villain only in Liz’ imagination, but he is funny all the time. His incongruity with everything else on Dark Shadows automatically produces a laugh whenever he is on screen. Michael Hadge’s near-total incompetence as an actor limits Buzz’ future on the show sharply, but within those limits he’s irresistible.

Jason comes down the stairs and finds Buzz blocking his way. They have a little confrontation which Jason wins by threatening to break Buzz’ shin. Not even Dennis Patrick can make that funny.

We are subjected to a second Buzzless scene in the drawing room. Liz tells Jason that she has yielded to his demands because she was afraid the truth would ruin Carolyn’s life. If Carolyn’s life is going to be ruined anyway, there is no point- she will just go to the sheriff and have done with it. Joan Bennett does have a couple of moments in this scene when she seems like she is about to get some comedy going, but the somber Dark Shadows musical cues ring out and darken the mood before Patrick has a chance to respond.

Jason goes to Carolyn’s room to try to talk her out of marrying Buzz. Since Carolyn’s whole motivation is her hatred for Jason, we may wonder what influence he has that will enable him to do this. It quickly becomes clear that he has none. This is followed by another scene between Liz and Jason in the drawing room. Liz tells Jason that it was obvious to her all along that his talk with Carolyn would produce no results. That is to say, we have a scene the point of which is to explicitly acknowledge that the preceding scene was a waste of time.

The second half is set in the Blue Whale tavern. Buzz and Carolyn are there on a date, and Jason comes to try to bribe Buzz into leaving her. The musical score behind this part comes from the jukebox. That music is much more suitable for comedy than is the heavily melodramatic stuff we hear when the action is taking place at Collinwood.

When we get to the tavern, Carolyn and Buzz are dancing. As a true Collinsporter, Carolyn’s style of dance consists of thrashing about as if she’d had a brain injury. Buzz, by contrast, moves quite gracefully. He must be from out of town.

Carolyn does the Collinsport Convulsion, while Buzz executes a fine Beer Stein Shuffle

Carolyn is in the ladies’ room when Jason shows up. He asks to join Buzz at their table. Buzz replies with that rallying cry of the 60s counterculture, “If you feel it… sit it!” I can only wish that had been the title of a spinoff of Dark Shadows featuring Buzz, it would have been great.

Buzz’ back is to the camera while he delivers his immortal line

Buzz tells Jason that Carolyn is from a family that “makes a lot of noise,” while he is from a family that “makes a lot of money.” Then he laughs. Buzz was credited as “Buzz Hackett” in his first appearance in #252, and is credited that way again today; in #254, he was credited simply as “Buzz.” We never hear him called “Hackett.” In #223, we’d heard about an unscrupulous local businessman called Hackett, but Buzz made a laughing reference to his lifelong poverty in #252, so I don’t think we can suppose he really is from a family that makes a lot of money. In view of Buzz’ laugh, the likeliest explanation is that this is a joke of some kind. A confusing joke, poorly told, but considering that it is a line written by Malcolm Marmorstein and delivered by Michael Hadge, that is to be expected.

Jason tells Buzz that Carolyn is using him to get back at her mother. Buzz blandly replies that Carolyn has told him all about that, and he’s having a great time with her whatever her intentions. This is reminiscent of the relationship between Carolyn and dashing action hero Burke Devlin in the early months of the show. Carolyn continued seeing Burke even after he tacitly admitted that he was using her to pursue revenge on her family. After Burke renounced his revenge, they met at this same table and had a soulful conversation about what they had been to each other (#213.)

Jason offers to buy Buzz a new motorcycle if he will stop seeing Carolyn. Buzz flatly refuses the offer, declaring “I like the bike I got, and the chick I got!” Carolyn returns to the table, and Buzz tells her about Jason’s attempt to bribe him. They laugh at Jason and leave the tavern. He staggers into a corner, looking bitter.

Laughing at Jason

This also harks back to an incident involving Burke in the early days of the show. In #3, Burke met hardworking young fisherman Joe in the tavern. Joe was at that point dating Carolyn. Burke offered to buy a fishing boat for Joe if he would spy on her family. Joe refused, and reported the contact to Liz. While Buzz is Joe’s opposite in many ways, regular viewers will see that the two men are equally honest.

*It appears to be a robusto, though it could be a corona gorda.

Buzz and his stogie

Episode 252: I know we swing, and that’s all I have to know

Frustrated that her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, has decided to marry seagoing con man Jason McGuire, flighty heiress Carolyn spends the day and night with motorcycle enthusiast Buzz Hackett.

Buzz is modeled on the biker dude villains of Beach Blanket Bingo. Some of his mannerisms, such as speaking in a Beatnik slang that was a decade and a half out of date by 1967 and wearing sunglasses when he rides his motorcycle at night, would have been a little too broadly comic even for that movie, and are ludicrously out of place on the rather solemn Dark Shadows. The very sight of Buzz therefore raises a laugh.

I mean really

Nancy Barrett’s acting style was to throw herself unreservedly into whatever the script had her character doing that day, and seeing her present Carolyn as a newly minted biker mama is hilarious from beginning to end. When Carolyn and Buzz show up at the Blue Whale tavern, she’s already sloppily drunk. They see well-meaning governess Vicki and hardworking young fisherman Joe at a table, and Carolyn insists they go over and greet them. Vicki and Joe give Buzz and Carolyn frosty stares, which are of course the main ingredients of drawing room comedy.

If Vicki put on a police uniform, Carolyn wore a big feathered headdress, and Joe were a construction worker, they could make beautiful music together

As Danny Horn points out in his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Buzz is actually pretty nice. That’s a good comic move- the obvious outsider is the one who knows enough to be uncomfortable, while the one who has been a central member of the cast from the first week is oblivious to the social awkwardness surrounding her. If it were the other way around, we might feel sorry for Buzz or be angry with him, but since we know that Carolyn’s place is essentially secure we can laugh at her uninhibited behavior, no matter how much it may make others squirm.

Buzz takes Carolyn home to the great house of Collinwood, parking his motorcycle a few feet from the front door. That isn’t a sign of inconsideration- there only are a few feet in front of the door, they’d be off the set if he parked any further away. It’s still pretty funny to see.

Buzz and Carolyn

Inside the house, Buzz jokes about riding his bike up the main staircase. Carolyn laughs, then urges him actually to do it. He refuses, clearly appalled that she would want such a thing.

Carolyn shocks Buzz

They go into the drawing room. Carolyn picks up a transistor radio and finds some dance music. Buzz is ready to dance, but takes a seat when Carolyn goes into the violent, rhythm-less jerks people in Collinsport do when music is playing. Buzz watches her, apparently ready to provide first aid.

As Carolyn’s performance of the Collinsport Convulsion ends with her falling face first, Liz comes downstairs. She protests against Carolyn and Buzz making so much noise at 3 AM. For the first time, Buzz is rude. He does not stand up when Liz comes into the room, and when Carolyn introduces her as “Mommy,” he greets her with “Hiya, Mommy!” Liz orders him to go.

Before Buzz has a chance to comply, Carolyn starts taunting her mother, yelling at her that her name will soon be “Mrs McGuire!” Liz retreats up the stairs as Carolyn taunts her with repetitions of this name. When Liz is on the landing, Carolyn and Buzz clench and kiss passionately. While they kiss, we see Liz above and behind them, trying to exit the scene. As it happens, the door she is supposed to go out is stuck, so she has to struggle with the knob until she’s out of the frame. Thus, the longest period of intentional comedy on the show ends, not with a break into angry melodrama, but with a huge unintended laugh. It is one of the few truly perfect things ever seen on television.

Door’s stuck

As Buzz, Michael Hadge really isn’t much of an actor- he shouts his lines and goes slack whenever he isn’t speaking. That doesn’t matter so much today. Nancy Barrett’s high-energy performance, the other cast members’ skill at comedy of manners, and the mere sight of Buzz combine to keep the audience in stitches throughout.

Still, I can’t help but wonder what might have been. Yesterday, vampire Barnabas Collins threatened to murder his blood thrall, the sorely bedraggled Willie Loomis. Viewers watching on first run might have wondered if Buzz was going to be his replacement. They might have, that is, if Buzz were played by an actor in the same league as John Karlen. With Mr Hadge in the role, that suspense never gets off the ground.

One of the little games I play in my head when the show gets boring is to ask who else might have taken a part and to imagine how it would have changed with that other actor in the cast. So, if Harvey Keitel was available to dance in the background at the Blue Whale in #33, then surely Mr Keitel’s friend Robert De Niro would have taken a speaking part in #252. Actors inspire screenwriters, and if Mr De Niro had played Buzz I would have wanted to write this line for him to speak to Liz: “Mrs Stoddard, you got me all wrong. You think I want to hurt you, or take something from you, but that’s not the way it is. Me and Carolyn, we’re just trying to have a good time.” Mr Hadge’s shouting wouldn’t have made much of a line like that, but delivered by Mr De Niro to Joan Bennett it could have started a scene between Buzz and Liz that would have expanded his role beyond comic relief and earned him a permanent place in the cast.

It may be for the best that it didn’t work out that way. A De Niro-Buzz might have been such a hit that Dark Shadows never would have got round to becoming the excursion into sheer lunacy that we know and love. And Martin Scorsese might never have been able to get soap opera star/ teen idol Robert De Niro to answer his phone calls.

Closing Miscellany

There are some other notable moments today. We might wonder why Vicki and Joe are sitting together in the Blue Whale, when Vicki has been dating dashing action hero Burke. In fact, the script originally called for Vicki to be out with Burke, but actor Mitch Ryan showed up too drunk to work the day they taped this one and was fired off the show. Burke gave up on his big storyline over ten weeks ago and there hasn’t been a reason for him to be on the show since. Besides, the same cast of characters cannot indefinitely include one whose type is “dashing action hero” and another whose type is “vampire.” The vampire is already pulling in bigger audiences than anything else they’ve done, so Burke has to go. Still, Ryan was such a charismatic screen presence that he was a high point in every episode he appeared in, so it’s sad we’ve seen him for the last time.

The bartender brings drinks to Vicki and Joe’s table and Joe calls him “Bob.” They have settled on this name by now. The same performer, Bob O’Connell, has been playing the bartender since the first week, but in the opening months of the show he had a long list of names. My favorite was “Punchy.”

There is some new music in the jukebox at the tavern and more new music while Carolyn and Buzz are outside the front doors of Collinwood. In the tavern we hear something with brass, and at the doors we hear a low-key saxophone solo.

The closing credits give Buzz’ last name as “Hackett.” We heard about a businessman named Hackett in #223, but Buzz doesn’t seem to be related to him. In the Blue Whale, Carolyn says that her mother has more money than Buzz will ever see, to which Buzz laughingly replies “That isn’t much!”

Patrick McCray’s post about this episode on his Dark Shadows Daybook is fun. I especially enjoyed his description of Michael Hadge’s performance as a merger of “Russ Tamblyn with Truman Capote.”