Artist Sam Evans is at home with his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Sam is wearing a coat and tie while painting. I suppose that could be called “professional attire,” and Sam is a professional painter.
Professional attire.
Maggie’s main occupation these days is an important one on a soap opera. She is the resident amnesia sufferer. She can’t remember anything about the weeks she was missing and in the custody of a person or persons unknown to the non-villain characters on Dark Shadows. The only clue Sam, Maggie, and Maggie’s fiancé Joe have as to who abducted Maggie is that a mysterious little girl named Sarah has turned up and shared important information at key moments in Maggie’s travails. So they are desperate to find Sarah.
As the three of them talk about how elusive Sarah is, Maggie says that she seems to be able to disappear at will. Joe dismisses this idea out of hand. Regular viewers might find that a bit odd. During the storyline centered on undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, both Joe and Sam had definite encounters with supernatural beings, Joe with the ghost of Josette Collins in #179 and Sam with the same spirit on the several occasions she compelled him to paint pictures explaining the danger Laura represented. Sam has also seen Sarah appear in and disappear from a locked room. So we would expect at least one of the two men to hesitate for a moment before rejecting the idea that Sarah might be a ghost.
Sam and Joe decide that because strange and troubled boy David Collins has seen Sarah more often than anyone else, they should go visit him at the great house of Collinwood and ask him to lead them to Sarah. David is happy to talk about Sarah, but he tells them that he has no idea how to contact her. He also warns them that if they do get in touch with her, they will likely find that nothing she says makes much sense. David and his cousin Carolyn continue with their plans to take a bus trip to the nearby town of Bangor, Maine, while Sam and Joe search the grounds of the estate hoping to find Sarah in one of the spots David mentioned that he had run into her.
They see a swing moving in the breeze and jump to the conclusion that Sarah had been in it moments before. If they could hear the background music, they would know they were right- Sarah’s “London Bridge” cue is playing. Lacking this ability, they conclude that they have found nothing. They decide to go ahead and visit the Old House on the estate, home to courtly gentleman Barnabas Collins and Barnabas’ servant Willie. They hope that one of them will be able to tell them something about Sarah.
They find that neither Barnabas nor Willie is at home, but someone they know is there. Dr Julia Hoffman answers the door. When Sam followed Sarah’s directions and found Maggie at the end of her ordeal, she was in a terrible state, drained of blood and in a state of total mental collapse. Maggie was treated at a hospital overseen by Julia, who is qualified as a specialist in both hematology and psychiatry. Now Julia is settled in at Collinwood, masquerading as an historian writing a book about the old families of New England.
Sam wants to know why Julia is keeping up this imposture. He delivers a speech full of courteous words thanking her for spending so much time on Maggie’s case without remuneration, but his tone and body language prepare us for his angry response when Julia refuses to give him any specifics. He tells Julia that he has decided he doesn’t believe her. He gives her a piece of his mind, then storms off.
Joe stays behind and apologizes for Sam. Julia assures Joe she isn’t upset, and asks him to tell Sam that she is doing everything she can. After the two men are both out of earshot, Julia smiles and repeats “I am doing everything I can!” Without that mustache-twirling line, first time viewers might not have caught on that Julia is a Villain.
Sam and Joe go back to the Evans cottage. It is night time, Maggie isn’t in the parlor, and her bedroom door is closed. Sam goes up to the door and shouts her name repeatedly. When she answers in a groggy voice, he apologizes, saying he didn’t mean to wake her.
Maggie comes out of her bedroom holding a wooden doll in eighteenth century garb. The doll wasn’t there when she went to sleep, and is the sort of thing Sarah would have, so she concludes that Sarah must have been in her room while she slept. Returning viewers will recall that when Sarah visited Maggie in #297 and found that she couldn’t remember her, she became upset and took away the doll she had previously given Maggie. This is a different doll, but it does confirm that Sarah is still watching over Maggie.
Closing Miscellany
This is one of only two episodes in which Nancy Barrett and David Ford share a scene. In #85, Miss Barrett’s Carolyn and Ford’s Sam were in the Blue Whale tavern at the same time; today, Carolyn, Sam, Joe, and David stand in the foyer of the great house talking about Sarah. It’s interesting that the two actors worked together so seldom, because from 1967 to 1969, Miss Barrett was known socially as Mrs David Ford.
At the climax of his scene with Julia, Sam tells her that she “should have been a member of the diplomatic corps…because you’re a master of the evasive answer!” So far as I’m concerned, the Foreign Service is one of the most honorable professions there is, and this is a shameful swipe at one of the most selfless, patriotic, and often heroic groups of people our country is blessed to produce. Writer Malcolm Marmorstein often cranks out mediocre scripts, but this smear marks a new low even for him.
Reclusive matriarch Liz and well-meaning governess Vicki are in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. Liz is depressed because her daughter Carolyn is dating motorcycle enthusiast Buzz. She asks Vicki if she has any idea how to break Carolyn and Buzz up, then answers her own question. Liz knows that Carolyn is protesting her engagement to seagoing con man Jason McGuire, and that only by breaking it off with Jason can she change things with Carolyn.
When Liz claims that she is marrying Jason because she wants to, Vicki says it’s none of her business. Vicki has seen abundant evidence that Jason is blackmailing Liz, and won’t pretend she hasn’t. She manages to be quite respectful to her employer without backing down an inch. Despite herself, Liz is impressed with Vicki’s firmness and diplomacy.
Alexandra Moltke Isles was cast as Vicki because she and Joan Bennett looked so much alike, and this is one of the scenes that uses their resemblance to show Vicki as a reflection of Liz. As Vicki is finding tactful ways to express her suspicions, she says things that we have heard Liz say and that we know she is thinking. Each time she does so, Joan Bennett does a quarter turn one direction from the shoulders and a quarter turn the other direction from the neck, as if she were being twisted open. When Liz tells Vicki to stop, she calls her “Victoria,” a name we haven’t heard her use since 1966, and when Vicki asks permission to leave the room she responds, in a near-whisper, with the usual “Vicki.” This alternation also suggests twisting, and to regular viewers who remember that Liz has a secret connected with the fact that “Her name is Victoria” it is another twisting open.
Meanwhile, Jason is entering the Blue Whale tavern with his former henchman, Willie Loomis. Jason wants to confront Willie with the fact that he saw him in town earlier in the day selling a piece of jewelry. Willie says that he was selling it on behalf of his employer, wealthy eccentric Barnabas Collins. Jason knows of Willie’s obsessive fascination with jewels and his tendency to steal them, and does not believe that Barnabas would entrust him with such a task. What Jason does not know is that Barnabas is a vampire and Willie is his sorely bedraggled blood-thrall. As such, Barnabas has a power over Willie that makes it rational to entrust the most remarkable tasks to him.
Carolyn and Buzz enter. They almost leave when Carolyn sees Jason and Willie. Jason and Willie rise and meet them at the door. Jason assures Carolyn that they were just going. Before they do, he taunts Carolyn with his engagement to Liz.
On Tuesday, Carolyn and Buzz started dancing together in the drawing room. Buzz made a few very graceful moves, saw Carolyn going into the Collinsport Convulsion, and sat down to observe. Today, Buzz sees two background players twitching awkwardly while the jukebox plays and declines Carolyn’s invitation to join her on the dance floor. He wants to stop drinking, saying that he is looking for something that will make him feel like he’s never lived before, while “drinking only makes you feel drunk.” It sounds a little bit like he’s going to offer Carolyn a drug stronger than alcohol, but by the end of the scene he just wants to get back on his bike. Liz’ fears to the contrary, Buzz seems pretty darned wholesome.
While Carolyn and Buzz are on their way out of the tavern, hardworking young fisherman Joe comes in. Carolyn asks Buzz to wait outside while she talks with Joe. Buzz reluctantly agrees to spend a few minutes alone with his bike.
Carolyn and Joe were dating when the show started, and there was a whole storyline about how they were tired of each other and couldn’t get themselves sufficiently organized to break up. Their scenes together reminded us that the 1960s were the decade in which Michelangelo Antonioni used the cinema to explore the nature and significance of boredom.
But they are far from boring today. After he and Carolyn finally called it quits, Joe started seeing Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Maggie is now missing and feared dead. Carolyn sits next to Joe at the bar and expresses her sympathies. When I say that Nancy Barrett’s acting style was to throw herself unreservedly into whatever the script gave her character to do that day, it may sound like I’m saying she was undisciplined or that she lacked subtlety. That is not at all what I mean, and in this scene she does one of the most delicate drunk acts I’ve ever seen. Carolyn sits a fraction of an inch too close to Joe, tilts her head back a fraction of a degree too far, opens her eyes the tiniest bit too wide, and speaks ever so slightly too slowly. No one of those signs would even be noticeable by itself, but together they make it very clear why Buzz was anxious that he and Carolyn should leave their drinks unfinished.
Back in the drawing room, Jason is badgering Liz into setting the date for their wedding. Carolyn and Buzz come back, and Jason tells them he and Liz will be married two weeks from tonight. Carolyn says that she and Buzz ought to get married the same night. Buzz is delighted when she first says this, and is still smiling when she insists she is being serious.
My wife, Mrs Acilius, urged me to call this one “A piece of that action,” something Jason says to Willie. Trekkie that she is, that seemed irresistible to her. But Joe’s line that Buzz seems to be “about as much fun as a bag of spiders” is the funniest of the many witty lines in today’s script, and when you remember that Dark Shadows has, since December of 1966, been basically a horror story, you have to think that in its terms a bag of spiders might be a lot of fun. So that had to be the title.
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!”
The entire episode is taken up with the thirteenth iteration of something that wasn’t especially appealing the first time we saw it: seagoing con man Jason McGuire makes a demand of reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard; Liz resists; Jason threatens to expose her terrible secret; Liz capitulates.
Today, Jason makes the ultimate demand, that Liz marry him. In response, she laughs merrily, the first time we have seen her do this. She takes her resistance to the very point of calling the sheriff’s office and admitting that, eighteen years ago, she killed her husband Paul Stoddard and Jason buried him in the basement.
Jason stops her, telling her that the first person who ought to hear her confession is her daughter Carolyn. Liz agrees to this. Jason goes to summon Carolyn from the study, warning her that her mother is “on edge.”
Carolyn comes in. When Liz tells her that she has something important to discuss, Carolyn tries to lighten the mood by joking that it’s a bit late to break the news to her about the birds & bees. When Liz goes into detail about how Paul was a terrible man who never loved her, Carolyn is so upset that she refuses to listen to any more. She hurries out. This is the first time in months that flighty heiress Carolyn has had an opportunity to behave in a flighty manner.
Carolyn returns to the study. Jason is waiting for her there. She asks Jason how her father felt about her. He spins tales about what a loving father Stoddard was, which Carolyn eats up.
Jason returns to Liz. He stands over her, while she tells him Carolyn wouldn’t listen to her. We can see that her resistance is at an end. She asks him to give her time. He answers that he will give her time, but not much.
Liz, brokenLiz, still examining Jason for vulnerabilities
Over the last several weeks, we’ve seen Jason doing things other than enacting his liturgy with Liz. He and Liz have even shared a few scenes where they don’t perform it. When Dennis Patrick gets to play a charming swindler who has to think on his feet, he is fun to watch. We’ve come to like Jason enough that seeing him twist Carolyn into a fetter binding Liz to his will is a genuinely horrifying moment.
Strange and troubled boy David Collins is sleeping peacefully in his bed. His cousin, flighty heiress Carolyn, comes into his room to check on him. She tucks him in, waking him. He asks what she is doing in his room. When she says that she was making sure he was asleep, he points out that she woke him up. When she keeps showing concern for him, he reminds her that she has called him “a spoiled monster” and a “menace to the civilized world” among other endearments, and that if he showed up in her room there would be no end of hollering.
Carolyn goes on talking to David in a gentle voice about how important he is to her, and says that maybe she’s the one who is a spoiled monster and a menace to the civilized world. After Carolyn maintains an affectionate attitude towards him for a few unbroken minutes, David asks her if she is OK. She assures him that she is. As David Collins, David Henesy’s bewildered response to Carolyn’s friendliness brings the house down.
While we are still laughing, David presses Carolyn to explain why she is being nice to him. A look of fear comes over him, and he asks if something terrible has happened. Carolyn assures him that nothing has, but he just looks more and more alarmed. By the time she leaves him, his expression is little short of heartbreaking.
David alarmed
The next morning, well-meaning governess Vicki is sitting with David in the drawing room, going over his homework. He has written an essay about what it might be like to have an older sister. He wonders if such a sister would love him. Vicki says that she might, and that it is a waste when you don’t love the people who love you. When Vicki asks David where he got the idea of writing about an imaginary older sister who loves him, he doesn’t give a direct answer. He does start talking about Carolyn, making it clear that he is thinking of her.
Vicki leaves David alone in the drawing room for a short while. He looks into the fireplace and sees his own face wearing a placid expression and immersed in the flames. He flees the room in terror, bumping into visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie. Vicki comes running, and David holds onto her for dear life.
ReflectionsSafe with Vicki
David’s vision reminds me of a post of Wallace McBride’s on The Collinsport Historical Society from April of 2020. His point is summarized in his title, “In Dark Shadows, Your Reflection Always Tells the Truth.” David lives in 1967, so he doesn’t have access to that article. But he already knows the truth it tells- his terrified reaction shows that he knows it means there is an imminent danger that he will die by fire.
We see hardworking young fisherman Joe poring over old newspapers in the Collinsport Public Library. He finds something that alarms him, and rushes to a public telephone to call Vicki. He tells her he is coming to the house to show something important to her and Guthrie.
Joe on the phone
When Vicki tells Joe and Guthrie that David had a vision of himself in flames, she connects it with a recurring nightmare that had plagued him several weeks ago. David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, had come back into his life after an absence of several years, and he kept dreaming that she was beckoning him to join her in flames. While he was suffering from this nightmare, drunken artist Sam Evans, miles away in town, inexplicably painted a couple of canvases depicting exactly the image that kept appearing in David’s dreams.
Joe and Guthrie become very animated when Vicki tells them what David saw and how he reacted. Joe declares that what David has seen is a vision of the past. Joe has already shown Guthrie what he found in the library, a newspaper article from one hundred years before. The article is about someone named Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. That Laura Murdoch died in 1867 in a fire along with her young son. His name was David.
Visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie is organizing a séance. Well-meaning governess Vicki is strongly in favor of this. Flighty heiress Carolyn has mixed feelings about it. High-born ne’er-do-well Roger is contemptuous of the notion. Instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank shows up and says that he trusts Guthrie.
Nancy Barrett throws herself completely into whatever her character is supposed to be doing at any given moment. At one point, Carolyn throws a big fit because she is afraid her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, might die before she can see her again. Mrs Acilius recently lost a close family member, and says that it was therapeutic to watch this scene.
Frank and Roger have a scene in Roger’s study. It’s the first time we’ve seen that set. That favorite prop of Dark Shadows’ hardcore fans, the “Ralston-Purina lamp,” is there.
This episode consists entirely of conversations in which the characters recap events we have already seen. To the extent that it has a point, it is that while flighty heiress Carolyn seems to be in charge of the house, well-meaning governess Vicki actually is. Vicki made her boyfriend, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, take the idea of the supernatural seriously enough to call in an expert on the subject, Dr Peter Guthrie of Dartmouth College. Vicki then made Dr Guthrie agree to conceal from everyone else information he would normally share freely. She has made Carolyn go along with Dr Guthrie’s activities. Today, Carolyn’s uncle, high-born ne’er-do-well, Roger, asks Carolyn about Dr Guthrie. Carolyn tells Roger that it was her idea to call Dr Guthrie in. She directs Roger to cooperate with Dr Guthrie, not mentioning Vicki, but invoking the authority her ailing mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, has entrusted to her.
To explain how the performances and the visual composition keep it from being excruciatingly dull, you’d have to go over the whole thing frame by frame and analyze each of hundreds of decisions the actors and director made that held the episode together. Impressive as their efforts were, the result is far from exciting. So even if I had the expertise to provide that kind of commentary, I would not for a moment consider doing it.
One thing I will mention is that we see a lot of the kitchen at Collinwood in this episode. Usually this set is one where the characters exchange story-productive information. No such information is exchanged today. The scenes play out in a way to soften that disappointment for us.
The kitchen is typically a small space where the characters share a meal, giving rise to a natural intimacy. There’s no meal today- Vicki and Carolyn are sitting in front of the coffee things, but it isn’t until Dr Guthrie enters that it becomes clear that there is any coffee. There certainly isn’t any food to be had. Nor does the space seem particularly small. The plants are as extravagant as we ever see them, creating a sense of luxuriant growth. In the course of her conversation with Vicki, Carolyn manages to move around the room so much that she gives us the feeling of a large space. Even for someone as short as Nancy Barrett, there are very few patterns of movement that can leave us with that impression. She and the director* worked out one such pattern, and she executes it flawlessly.
Carolyn among the plantsVicki and Carolyn in the jungleBy the pantryLong shot
*There seems to be some question as to who directed this episode. John Sedwick has the credit on screen, but the Dark Shadows wiki says it was Lela Swift. Sometimes the wiki is edited by people who have seen the original paperwork from the making of the show, so occasionally it is right and the credits are wrong.
Writer Ron Sproat stayed with Dark Shadows too long, and fans of Danny Horn’s great blog Dark Shadows Every Day will have fond memories of his frequent denunciations of Sproat. It is true Sproat had many glaring weaknesses. For example, he was pretty bad at inventing stories to tell, which you might think would get in the way of building a career as a fiction writer. But one strength Sproat undoubtedly had was a sense of structure. There might not be anything happening in one of his episodes, but you can count on him to make it clear why it isn’t happening, where it isn’t happening, to whom it isn’t happening, and who isn’t making it happen. Today there are some events, and between Sproat’s script and the work of the actors, it is plain to see what purpose each of those events serves in keeping the story on track.
As the episode opens, Lieutenant Dan Riley of the Maine State Police is visiting instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank Garner in an office. Regular viewers will be confused; we’ve seen this set several times, with exactly these decorations, as high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins’ office at the headquarters of Collins Enterprises. We haven’t seen the set since #69, and Roger wasn’t there at that time. So apparently Frank has moved in.
Frank hasn’t even moved the portrait of the Mustache Man from the spot where Roger had it when he was in the office. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die
Lieutenant Riley wants to pass along to Frank the information that the Phoenix, Arizona police have given him about a fire in Laura Collins’ apartment in that city. Laura is Roger’s estranged wife, and Frank is representing Roger in their upcoming divorce. It isn’t clear why Riley wants to tell Roger’s lawyer what he has heard about Laura. Later in the episode, Frank will tell well-meaning governess Vicki that Riley came to him because he is a “lawyer for the Collins family.” Perhaps that means he believed that Frank represented Laura. Throughout their conversation, Frank repeatedly protests that no one has any grounds for accusing Laura of anything, encouraging Riley in such a belief. I suppose it’s a lawyer’s job to collect damaging information about the opposition, but Frank does seem to be pushing an ethical boundary here.
The charred body of a woman was found in what was left of Laura’s apartment. Since the woman appeared to be the same age, height, and build as Laura, the room was locked from the inside, and everyone associated with the building other than Laura was accounted for, the body was initially identified as hers. Riley now tells us that the police have determined that the fire started in Laura’s apartment, and that a witness claims to have seen Laura in the building the day of the fire.
Laura checked into the Collinsport Inn the day of the fire and has been in and around town ever since, as many witnesses can testify. Riley says that there is no indication that Laura has been on an airplane recently, and it would seem impossible to travel from Phoenix, Arizona to central Maine in a few hours any other way.
The lieutenant goes on to say that because the room was locked from the inside and the woman who died in the fire made no attempt to escape, the police suspect murder. This is nonsense. An attempt to escape might have been evidence of murder, not the lack of such an attempt. And if the room was locked from the inside, how did the murderer get out?
Frank doesn’t raise these objections, but just blusters through a lot of verbiage as he protests against any suggestion that Laura should be suspected of murder. The lieutenant keeps pointing out that Arizona isn’t his jurisdiction, so he doesn’t have anything to do with it. He’s just a messenger.
Some scholar of acting really ought to make a frame-by-frame study of Conard Fowkes portrayal of Frank in this scene. He has plenty of dialogue, he’s challenging statements made by a policeman, he raises his voice, makes gestures, moves around the room, looks down moodily and up excitedly. Yet he is still so bland that it is difficult to remember a word he says. It is far beyond my understanding of the actor’s craft to explain how Fowkes manages to be so consistently dull no matter what the character is doing.
When Frank is a small part of an episode, I think of his blandness as a note of pure realism. He is just the sort of person you would expect to meet in a small-town law office in 1967, and indeed it is reassuring to think that someone who has obviously never thought of putting himself in the spotlight would handle your sensitive legal affairs. The last person anyone should want as a lawyer is some guy who habitually makes himself interesting to watch on television.
Today, Frank is the leading man of the first half of the episode, and comes back with a key part in the second half. Giving that much time to a performer with such a bland screen presence does serve a purpose. None of the characters has really committed to the notion that they have to worry about crimes and physical danger, much less that they are facing a challenge from the realm of the supernatural. As far as they know, the whole story today is about a couple of romances and a child custody matter. That’s the right speed for dull, amiable Frank Garner.
That the characters don’t yet know the true dimensions of what they are facing in the storyline is one of the points this scene has to make. The other is that we will be hearing more about the investigation in Phoenix, and that it will advance the plot.
I think an acting problem muddies this second point. Today Vince O’Brien takes over the part of Lieutenant Dan Riley from John Connell, who played him in #143 and #144. As Connell played him, Riley was an out-of-town cop, not the least bit awed by the Collinses of Collinsport. His matter-of-fact speaking and impatient listening made it clear that the family’s connection to the case in Phoenix was not going to result in the discreet, abbreviated treatment that the local authorities have given them. But O’Brien’s version of the character is noticeably quick to agree when Frank makes a statement. When Frank does a TV lawyer “may I remind you” about the elements of a murder charge (elements which he gets wrong, but hey, it’s TV, not law school,) O’Brien’s Riley is agitated. He shows defiance by declaring “You don’t have to remind me” in a harrumphing voice, but his wide eyes and trembling legs show that he is intimidated to be in a discussion with the representative of the mighty Collinses. There’s no point in bringing in an out-of-town character if that’s what you’re going for- the residents of Collinsport can show you what it’s like to live under the thumb of the people in the big house on the hill. And it introduces a doubt as to whether anything will come of the investigation, a doubt which leaves us wondering why we just spent so much time watching these two guys talk to each other.
Meanwhile, Vicki is visiting dashing action hero Burke Devlin in his hotel suite. Burke has asked her to come. Yesterday, she told him that she was suspicious there was something sinister about Laura, and he had listened attentively. Later, he met with Laura and the love he once felt for her had flared back into life. So today, he wants to tell Vicki that Laura is A-OK and she should do everything she can to help her.
Like the scene with Frank and Lieutenant Riley in Roger’s office, this scene has two points to make. First is to establish Vicki as a credible protagonist for the rest of the storyline about the danger Laura presents to her son, strange and troubled boy David. Second is to show that Burke is so smitten with Laura that he won’t be much help in protecting David.
Burke guides Vicki into his kitchen, a cozy space where people can confide in each other. Last time they were in this space, she made coffee for him; this time, he makes coffee for her. He’s remarkably dainty about it, sifting cream and sugar in separate cups. He makes a pitch about how remarkable Laura is, how he’s rethought everything they said yesterday, and how a fine woman like her deserves Vicki’s trust and support.
Vicki is unimpressed. She was in the room when Laura telephoned Burke yesterday, and heard him agree to meet her at one of their old places. She presses him to explain what has changed his mind, and he won’t give a clear answer. She asks how well he really knows Laura, and he looks dreamily off into space and says that he knows her better than anyone else. She asks if his feelings for Laura might be clouding his judgment, and he demands she change the subject. When Burke urges her to persuade David to grow closer to his mother Laura, Vicki replies “I’ll do what I can for David.” Burke says “You’re hedging.” Vicki replies coolly, “I can’t help it.” When he repeats his urging, he tells her she doesn’t look convinced. She replies, “I can’t help how I look, either.”
Vicki’s strength and intelligence and Burke’s dreamy infatuation should impress anyone watching this scene, but especially viewers who just saw yesterday’s episode. When Vicki is asking Burke what happened between yesterday and today to change his mind, she is waiting for him to talk about the meeting he arranged with Laura while she was right next to him. He never mentions it, and his repeated statements that all he has done is think more deeply implies that he does not remember that Vicki heard him talking to Laura. He is so captivated with Laura that the sound of her voice erases his awareness of everyone else, even of someone he is trying hard to persuade of an important idea.
Shortly after Vicki leaves, Burke receives another visitor from the great house of Collinwood. Flighty heiress Carolyn shows up. Carolyn is pouting because Burke hasn’t been paying attention to her since her Aunt Laura showed up.
This scene has one major point to make, which is that the budding Burke/ Carolyn romance is not going to be blooming this winter. Nancy Barrett’s Carolyn bursts off the screen as she bounces from one extreme to another, trying to attract Burke by pushing her breasts at him, trying to anger him by suggesting that her mother Liz and her Uncle Roger were right when they said he was just using her to get at them, trying to embarrass him by bringing up the obstacles between him and Laura, trying to break through his reserve by flinging her arms around his neck and pleading with him to love her.
Burke tries to let Carolyn down easy, smiling at her, caressing her face, hugging her, kissing her on the forehead. But signs of boredom and irritation keep slipping out. He tells her that the time has come for them not to see each other any more, and there can be no doubt he means it.
Burke, bored with Carolyn
Vicki goes to visit Frank. Frank blabs everything to her that the lieutenant had told him.
Vicki is deeply concerned about the idea that Laura might be a murderer. Frank keeps telling her that there’s probably nothing to that idea, but Vicki resolves at the end of the episode to do whatever she can to keep Laura away from David. Having established Vicki as a character strong enough and smart enough to square off with Laura in her previous scene, this scene shows us her decision to do just that.
The authorities in Phoenix, Arizona have asked the sheriff in Collinsport, Maine to inform high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins that they have identified the charred body of a woman as that of Roger’s wife, mysterious and long-absent Laura. The body was found in what was left of Laura’s apartment in Phoenix after a fire destroyed the building, and the woman was Laura’s age, height, and build. Since Laura was the only person associated with the building whose whereabouts were unknown, the identification of the remains as hers seemed secure to the Arizona authorities.
It seems less so in Collinsport, as Laura is no longer absent. She’s been back in town for days. She has been staying at the Collinsport Inn, where she met several old acquaintances. They recognized each other and engaged in conversation. She has come to the great house of Collinwood, where she talked with Roger and other members of the family, and will be staying in the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of the estate. Only her son, strange and troubled boy David, has expressed any doubt as to her identity, and no one takes that doubt literally.
If the sheriff knew that he was living in a soap opera, he might suspect that the woman who has come to town is a previously unknown evil twin posing as Laura. If he knew that his particular soap is loaded with supernatural storylines, he might try to figure out what sort of uncanny being she could be. But he seems to be under the impression that he lives in the world. When at one point Roger tells him to “Stop being melodramatic,” it doesn’t occur to him that he has no choice but to be melodramatic. So, all he can do is ask Laura if she knows who the dead woman might have been. When tells him she doesn’t, he leaves.
Roger is eager to divorce Laura and send her away with their son, David. After the sheriff goes, Roger expresses his consternation at the news of the fire. Laura has nowhere to take David. When she tells him that she never planned to take David to that apartment, but that she had “made a commitment to another place,” he is instantly relieved. He does not ask where that other place is. His interest in where Laura or David will be or what they will be doing is exhausted the moment he learns they will be far away from him.
Someone else is visiting Collinwood tonight who wants more from Laura than Roger does. That is Roger’s nemesis and Laura’s ex-boyfriend, dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Flighty heiress Carolyn has gone to get Laura’s bag from the Collinsport Inn and bring it to her aunt. While in town, she met Burke. When she told him of her errand, Burke volunteered to help her carry the bag. Now she and Burke are in the drawing room at Collinwood. They kiss, and he persuades her to let him carry the bag to the cottage. When Carolyn says that she is jealous of his interest in her aunt, he assures her it’s “all business.” She tells him he can’t fool her, to which he replies “Yes I can.”
As Carolyn, Nancy Barrett plays, first, excitement as Burke moves in to kiss her; then, a mixture of frustration and confusion, as she begins to suspect that he is only using her to get to Laura. Regular viewers have seen Burke several times after a flirtatious scene with Carolyn, and each time he has switched immediately into hard-driving businessman mode the moment she wasn’t looking. With her performance in this scene, we start to wonder if she is about to catch on that he doesn’t have any feelings for her.
Roger finds Burke and Carolyn in the drawing room. He is furious with Burke for coming to the house, and with Carolyn for inviting him in. He and Burke rage at each other. As Roger, Louis Edmonds does a superb job of simultaneously conveying white-hot rage at Burke and a much colder anger towards his niece. Up to now, Carolyn has responded to her uncle’s prohibitions against seeing Burke flippantly, but this time she seems to accept that she has gone too far. After Burke leaves, she kisses Roger on the cheek and whispers “Goodnight, uncle,” sounding genuinely chastened. Roger is usually a difficult man to take seriously, but Edmonds’ tremendous performance in this scene leaves her with no choice but to give a hushed reaction.
Placing this scene after Roger’s blasé reaction to his wife and Burke’s cynical toying with Carolyn makes the point that Roger and Burke are more excited about each other than either ever is about anyone else. The show embeds their emotions in the “Revenge of Burke Devlin” storyline. Burke is trying to send Roger to prison, and is scheming to enlist Laura in his efforts. Ten years ago, Burke was imprisoned because Roger and Laura testified that he was driving his car, with them as passengers, when he ran down a pedestrian and left him to die. Before the accident, Burke and Laura had been a couple; the day Burke was sentenced, Laura and Roger were married. Now Burke hopes Laura will say that she perjured herself, and that Roger was driving.
Burke’s plans never quite make logical sense. Were Laura to confess to perjury, she would be in as much legal trouble as Roger. Even if she struck a bargain to keep herself out of prison, she would certainly not advance her goal of taking David by alienating Roger and branding herself a criminal. It is difficult to see what incentive Burke imagines that she has to join him.
At the cottage, Laura is sitting by the fire, staring off into space. When Burke knocks on her door, she continues staring. In Laura’s scenes by fireplaces, the spooky music, the slowly panning camera, and Diana Millay’s rigid posture all combine to create the impression that what we see when we look at Laura is only a fragment of a human being.
Once Laura lets Burke in, he talks her into closing the door, pushes himself close to her, and insists on telling her about the demands he will be making on her. He wants her to testify against Roger, to restore the years he spent behind bars, and to love him. When she tells him that the things he wants are not in her power to give, he refuses to take no for an answer. Over her objections, he takes her in his arms and forces a kiss on her. As Burke kisses Laura, the door opens and Roger appears with a gun.
Burke’s demand that the past be undone and his attempt to force Laura to feel love for him show the unreality of his ambitions. He claims to represent “Honesty and the Truth,” but everything he clamors for is an empty fantasy. So much so that we wonder if what he really wants might be something quite different from what he keeps saying he wants.
There never was an episode #131 of Dark Shadows. They made a point of giving numbers divisible by 5 to episodes that aired on Fridays, so on days when the show was not broadcast-as it was not broadcast on 26 December 1966- they just skipped the number that would have been used had it run that day.
Since that preemption was the result of Christmas-related programming,* this seems like the place to promote 2021’s big Dark Shadows Christmas event, a dramatic reading of the Orson Welles version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by ten surviving members of the original cast. Surviving at that time- it turned out to be Mitchell Ryan’s last performance before his death on 4 March 2022; Christopher Pennock had been involved in the early stages of the production, but he would die in February of 2021.
It is irresistible viewing for Dark Shadows fans. It makes extensive use of music from the show- rather too extensive for my taste, but Mrs Acilius liked it, and from what I gather she appears to be in the majority.
The acting is quite good. I was especially impressed by James Storm’s portrayal of Bob Cratchit. I had never seen Mr Storm in anything but Dark Shadows, where he was cast in the preposterously unplayable role of Gerard Stiles, so it was amazing to me to see what he could do when he had something to work with.
Another pleasant surprise was Alexandra Moltke Isles as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Readers of this blog know that I have a high opinion of Mrs Isles’ abilities, but this was her first part in 53 years. I held my breath to see how many steps she had lost in that interval. As it became clear that she could go as deep into her character as ever and pull up a treasure trove of dramatic insight, I was thrilled.
Mrs Isles appeared at one or two Dark Shadows conventions early in the 1980s. During the unpleasantness, she couldn’t very well make herself available for any event where she would be expected to take questions from the floor, but from time to time she sent greetings on video that would be played at conventions. And she sat for several interviews about Dark Shadows over the years. So you can’t say she made herself a complete stranger, but it is still quite a novelty to see her in this setting.
Many longtime fans describe Mrs Isles as the cast member who was least friendly to them when the show was in production, and there may be a reason for that. In the Q & A, she responds to the question about her first encounter with fandom by telling a story about a girl jumping her on the street and trying to rip her hair out of her head. After that introduction, it is remarkable that she’s been around as much as she has.
The person who had been absolutely disconnected from fandom the longest was David Henesy. He stuck with acting for a few years into the 1970s, but never attended a convention or had any connection with any Dark Shadows themed public events until a cast reunion on Zoom in October 2020. His performances as the child characters (he’s by far the youngest member of the cast, a mere 65 years old at the time of taping) are as letter-perfect as was his work in the series.
*A football match, but a football match usually held at Christmas-time.
Dark Shadows Commentary 