Tag: olivia corey

Episode 922: The beginning was another ending

For most of 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the year 1897. In that year, we got to know rakish libertine Quentin Collins, who brought upon himself and his male descendants the curse of the werewolf. For reasons of his own, sorcerer Count Petofi ordered one of his underlings, a repellent little man named Charles Delaware Tate, to paint a portrait of Quentin. As long as the portrait is intact, Quentin is immune from the effects both of the curse and of aging.

Now the show has returned to a contemporary setting. Quentin has come back to the village of Collinsport, still alive, still youthful, still human on nights of the full moon. However, he suffers from total amnesia, and is unwilling to listen to anyone who tells him that he is 99 years old and is enmeshed in a long line of supernatural occurrences.

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD, knows all about Quentin, in part because she traveled back in time from September 1969 to September 1897 and befriended him then. Julia has been trying to help Quentin’s great-grandson Chris Jennings to overcome his own lycanthropy, and when a couple of weeks ago she learned that Tate was still alive she hoped he would be able to paint a portrait that would do for Chris what Quentin’s portrait did for him. Tate refused. Chris subsequently went to Tate’s house on a day when the moon was full enough to turn him into the wolf. He locked himself in a room with Tate and ordered him to start painting. If he finished the painting before sunset, perhaps Chris would not become the animal and Tate would escape the murder he is threatening to commit.

When the 1897 segment ended in #884, Petofi appeared to have died. It was unclear what this meant for the spells he had cast. That his portrait has continued to protect Quentin would suggest that at least some of his powers have lived after him. Perhaps Tate, too, will prove to have kept the ability Petofi gave him to work magic by painting portraits.

But this turned out not to have been so. At the end of yesterday’s episode, Tate had completed a picture of Chris, but come nightfall Chris turned into the wolf and slashed him. Today, Quentin comes into Tate’s studio, finding the artist bleeding to death and the beast still in the room. Looking for a weapon, he turns from a heavy bronze statue to a small silver candlestick. The wolf runs away.

Tate calls Quentin by name and pleads with him for help. Tate doesn’t want him to leave, but Quentin points out that he cannot do anything for him himself. Since Tate has no telephone, he will have to go to a neighbor and call a doctor from there.

Quentin was not the only beneficiary of Tate’s magical paintings whom we met in 1897. Tate had painted many pictures of his ideal woman. Unknown to him, these paintings had caused the woman to pop into existence one day in 1895. The woman took the name Amanda Harris and found her way to Collinsport shortly after Tate took up residence there. When he met Amanda, Tate became obsessed with her and kept shouting in her face that she was his property and must come away with him. Amanda also met Quentin, who is not all that great a person but who is a lot easier to take than Tate, and she fell in love with him. The two of them were going to run off together to New York City, but when Quentin could not find his portrait he had to stay in Collinsport. In #884, we saw a brief encounter between Quentin and Amanda in NYC, during which he told them they could not be together until he found the portrait.

Now Amanda, too, has come back to Collinsport. She has been using the name Olivia Corey, and has become a big star on Broadway. Amusingly, she is played by Donna McKechnie, who would a few years later actually become a big star on Broadway. One wonders if Miss McKechnie felt she had to model herself on Amanda/ Olivia when she achieved that success.

Julia and Amanda met because they have both been collecting paintings by Tate in hopes that they will lead them to Quentin. Julia recognized Olivia as Amanda right off when she met her, rather oddly since they never met when they were both in 1897. We see Julia visiting Amanda in her suite at the Collinsport Inn, getting impatient with her continued refusal to admit her identity, when the phone rings. It is Quentin, asking Julia to come to Tate’s. Amanda volunteers to go along with her, which Julia says is a very good idea. Julia pauses to tell Amanda the alias Tate has been using in recent years, Harrison Monroe.

When Julia and Amanda arrive at Tate’s, Julia takes Quentin aside and very ostentatiously whispers in his ear. He replies that he does not understand what she has in mind, but that he will follow her directions anyway.

Julia goes to Tate. She asks him to tell her where Quentin’s portrait is; he says he will do so only if she saves his life. She looks sad, and he says that if she cannot do that, she has nothing to offer him in exchange for what she wants. She then calls Amanda in, and tells her to address “Harrison Monroe” by his first name- Charles. When he hears her voice and sees her face, he calls her Amanda, and says that she has come back to him. Before he can turn his attention back to Julia, he loses consciousness.

Julia pronounces Tate dead. Julia is in some ways the ablest doctor who ever lived- she has built Frankenstein’s monsters, cured vampirism, etc. But her death pronouncements are so often inaccurate that longtime viewers will expect Tate to spring up and contradict her. Only the fact that the opening voiceover said in so many words that Tate “has no future” allows us to believe that we really won’t be seeing him again.

Overwhelmed by emotion, Amanda bolts out Tate’s door and wanders into the woods. The werewolf comes at her; for some reason that is apparently none of the audience’s business, he decides not to attack her.

Back in Amanda’s suite, Quentin tells Julia that he reached for the small silver candlestick rather than the heavy piece of metal when confronted with the wolf. Julia declares that this proves his identity. Somewhere in his mind, beneath the amnesia, he knows that werewolves are averse to silver. He can’t disagree.

Later, Amanda returns to the suite and gives a soliloquy. Julia emerges from the bedroom where she has been eavesdropping. Amanda briefly protests at the invasion of her privacy, then admits her identity. She tells Julia a story about the last time she and Quentin saw each other in the nineteenth century.

When Amanda gets to the meat of her story, we zoom in on her face for an extreme closeup. An iris wipe starts from her left eyelid, growing into a stage set representing a bridge in New York City. She and Quentin have a conversation that covers the same ground as the one we saw in #884, and he leaves her alone on the bridge.

A man we have not seen before enters and tells Amanda that she ought not to jump from the bridge. He says that she is very beautiful, and that other men will love her. He says that “If I were… different… I’d love you myself.” The words of this kindly confirmed bachelor mean nothing to Amanda, who throws herself off the bridge.

The wipe does not fill the entire screen; the edges of the main image are covered with flickering little blue squares, and we can make out an image of Amanda’s suite on the right-hand side of the screen. This effect becomes distracting while the confirmed bachelor is talking to Amanda, when they are adjusting the camera for the shot that will follow the end of the insert. Not only does the image of the suite wobble jerkily, but it continues as we cut from the two shot to a closeup on the man, taking our attention away from his face at a crucial moment.

Amanda tells Julia that after she jumped off the bridge, she found herself in a hotel lobby. The confirmed bachelor, whom she calls “Mr Best,” met her there and explained that he wants her to live out the long life that she was originally destined to have. He says that she will have all of those years, and will remain young throughout them. If she can find Quentin again before she reaches the time she was meant to die, the two of them will go on living forever. If not, he will return for her at the appointed time. Julia leaves, determined to cure Quentin of his amnesia and return him to Amanda. A moment later, a knock comes at the door. It is Mr Best, telling Amanda her time is up.

A few days ago, Julia brought Amanda one of Tate’s portraits of her. She made no effort to buy it, saying it was of no interest to her. The story of Mr Best explains this indifference. Amanda believes that her supernatural youth is due to his intervention, not to the portrait. She does not know why Quentin has remained young, and has no reason to connect her situation with Tate’s works.

Mr Best is played by Emory Bass, who was at this time playing James Wilson in the original Broadway production of 1776. That cast, to be reunited in the 1972 film version of the musical, also featured Dark Shadows alums David Ford (Sam Evans #2, Andre DuPrés) as John Hancock, Daniel F. Keyes (Cemetery Caretaker) as Josiah Bartlett, Peter Lombard (Oberon) as a stage manager and understudy for the parts of Thomas Jefferson and Stephen Hopkins, and Virginia Vestoff (whom we will see several months from now as Samantha Collins) in the major role of Abigail Adams. With all that overlap, I tend to think of the whole cast of 1776 as having been available for parts on Dark Shadows, and vice versa. Whenever I get unhappy with a cast member, I wonder who from 1776 could have done a better job. Bass was great in 1776, and his arrestingly deliberate phrasing is perfectly suited to an angel of death, especially one like Mr Best who has far more discretion and a more idiosyncratic personality than do the angels described in the orthodox theological statements of the great monotheistic traditions.

Episode 916: Julia Hoffman has had her dream

Certain People

Six weeks ago, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins was absorbed into a group serving supernatural beings known as the Leviathans. Also in the group is matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Barnabas and Liz are worried that mad scientist Julia Hoffman, Barnabas’ sometime best friend and Liz’ permanent houseguest, is catching on to the truth about their group. They decide Julia must be absorbed into it.

Barnabas finds Julia on a couch in the drawing room, reading a book about lycanthropy. He strikes up a conversation about Chris Jennings, a young man who suffers from that condition. Julia replies bitterly that she still cares about Chris, unlike Barnabas. He tells her that he does care, and they quarrel a bit. He then strokes Julia’s cheek. He did the same thing with Chris’ little sister Amy in #912, at which point Amy fell asleep. Shortly after Amy woke up, she had become part of the Leviathan group. Julia gets a headache and goes to her room, where she does fall asleep.

We didn’t see a dream sequence when Amy fell asleep, but do see one for Julia today. The visuals alternate between two stock clips of lightning flashes as we hear Jonathan Frid give a dramatic reading of some portentous nonsense, then give way to Julia finding Barnabas in the drawing room inviting her to open a wooden box. We saw a dream of Liz’ in #904; she woke from it already transformed into a faithful devotee of the Leviathans. But when Julia wakes up, she just has a worse headache.

They’ve shown us this clip more times than I can count…
… but I don’t think we’ve seen this one before. It’s fascinating to me, like an image David Lynch would have used in Eraserhead or the third season of Twin Peaks.

Julia goes downstairs and find Liz holding the box from her dream. She is urging her to open it. Julia is confused by the situation. A knock comes at the door, and she rushes to answer it. It is Chris, saying that it is time for Julia to drive him to the institution where he is locked up on nights of the full moon. Julia calls back to Liz that she will be back later in the evening.

Barnabas enters and says that Julia will never be absorbed into the cult. If she were suited for absorption, the knock at the door would not have distracted her. He explains that “There are certain people, Elizabeth, whom we are not able to absorb. It has to do with their genetic structure. And Julia Hoffman is one of them.” As a former vampire who is now leading a cult that is trying to bring a race of Elder Gods back into the world where they will destroy and replace humankind, Barnabas is supposed to be strange and unnerving, but hearing him talk about “certain people” and their “genetic structure” is off-putting in a whole other way. Why not just say that she’s Jewish, we know you mean that she’s Jewish.

Barnabas then tells Liz that it is now up to her to handle Julia. So far as we know, Liz does not have any special powers like those Barnabas uses when he fondles people’s faces. Liz doesn’t even know what the cult is all about- today, she asks Barnabas what the goal is they are working for, and he tells her he isn’t at liberty to say. So when Barnabas tells her to deal with Julia, we can only remember the last time we saw Joan Bennett playing a character under the control of an uncanny force, when Judith Collins shot and killed neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond on the orders of vampire Dirk Wilkins in #776.

In #915, one Leviathan ordered Barnabas to kill Julia. When he refused, another caused him to have nightmares, then told him it was OK to leave Julia alive if he could find another way to keep her under control. That episode was written hurriedly and rushed into production at the last minute, three full weeks after this one was in the can, in response to complaints from fans dissatisfied with the Leviathan story in general and Barnabas’ coldness to Julia in particular. It’s anybody’s guess what they were originally planning to do with #915, but today’s episode makes it clear that it did not include the reset of Barnabas’ character that we saw yesterday. He is still leading the Leviathans, and when he delegates the problem to Liz murdering Julia is pretty obviously the likeliest solution.

Not a Portrait of Quentin Collins

Julia’s plan for Chris is to persuade an artist named Charles Delaware Tate to paint a portrait of him. Tate painted a portrait of Chris’ great-grandfather, Quentin Collins, in 1897. That portrait had magical powers. Once it was painted, Quentin’s own werewolf curse went into abeyance. It was the portrait that transformed on nights of the full moon, while Quentin himself remained human. Indeed, the portrait also caused Quentin to remain young and healthy. He returned to Collinsport a couple of weeks ago, and though he is 99 years old he still looks just like he did when he was 28. In #913/ 914, Julia found that Tate, also, is alive, and still looks like he did in 1897.

Quentin and Tate are not the only emigrés from 1897 currently sheltering in Collinsport. Another of Tate’s magical portraits, a concept piece depicting his ideal woman, caused its subject to pop into existence. In 1897, she went by the name Amanda Harris, met Quentin, and fell in love with him. She, too, is unchanged in 1969, though she now calls herself Olivia Corey.

Amanda/ Olivia and Julia are both hunting for paintings by Tate, and met each other through that pursuit. They have also met Quentin, and vied with each other to decide which would be the one to keep him. He has amnesia and knows only that he was carrying papers identifying him as Grant Douglas. He is open to the idea that this is not his real name, but he finds Julia’s attempt to convince him that he is a 99 year old man ludicrous and is frustrated with Amanda/ Olivia’s unwillingness to tell him when and where they first met.

Amanda/ Olivia comes back to her suite at the Collinsport Inn and finds Quentin there, swilling her booze and enormously drunk. He tells her that he finds his room depressing, because it doesn’t have a bar. He says he can’t stand not knowing who he is. She points out that he has taken this in his stride up to now, and asks why today is different. He says he doesn’t know why it is different, but it very much is. When the show was a costume drama set in 1897 and we saw Amanda, she did not know about Quentin’s lycanthropy, and now that she calls herself Olivia she still does not think of the full moon when she sees him in anguish.

Later, Julia shows up at Amanda/ Olivia’s door. She has brought one of Tate’s portraits of Amanda Harris. Amanda/ Olivia staggers back at the sight of it. She composes herself and says that it is of no interest to her, since she already has several of Tate’s paintings of her “grandmother.” Julia tells Amanda/ Olivia that the real reason she is not interested in it is that it is not a portrait of Quentin Collins. She replies that Julia is the one who is fascinated by Quentin, not she. Julia says that she wants to show the portrait to Quentin. Amanda/ Olivia does not bother pretending that his name is “Grant Douglas” or that it might be something other than “Quentin Collins”; she simply tells Julia that he is in his room sleeping off an alcoholic binge. Julia adopts her most unmistakably Mad Scientist manner when she responds “Then this is definitely the right time to see him!” She marches out, and Amanda/ Olivia follows her.

Julia had told Chris that if Quentin’s portrait has been destroyed, his lycanthropy will be back in force. If that is so, she wants to be with him when he transforms. This was a doubly confusing thing to say. First, if the portrait had been destroyed, Quentin would not only be a werewolf, he would also look his age. She therefore knows it is not so. Second, she does not have anything with her to protect her against werewolves. If she is with Quentin when he transforms, he will kill her immediately.

When Julia and Amanda/ Olivia let themselves into Quentin’s room, they find that it is a shambles and he is gone. As a closing cliffhanger, this is supposed to leave us with the fear that a werewolf is stalking Collinsport. But since we know what the portrait does for Quentin, it only leaves us wondering if Amanda/ Olivia will have to pay an extra housekeeping charge because he trashed the room she was renting for him.

When Julia met Tate in #913/914, she could not get him to engage her in any kind of conversation, much less agree to paint a portrait of Chris. She did not mention Amanda/ Olivia. Since Tate was maniacally obsessed with Amanda in 1897, Julia should have known that her acquaintance with her was the strongest card she had to play. So when she goes to Amanda/ Olivia’s suite today, returning viewers were hoping that she was going to propose they team up to persuade Tate to paint Chris. Perhaps that will still happen. If it does, it might be a lot more interesting than is the revelation that Quentin doesn’t keep his hotel room clean.

Episode 910: Know or suspect

For eight months in 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the year 1897. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman traveled back in time from the 1960s to keep us company in that year. It was nice to have them around, but we didn’t really need them. Rakish Quentin Collins was the star then, and now that the show has returned to 1969 we are unsurprised that he has turned up, alive, well, and 28 years old.

Quentin has amnesia, which Julia is determined to cure. He spends all day today listing the things he doesn’t know about himself, such as his name, which of his hands is dominant, and why Julia and Broadway star Olivia Corey are fighting each other to see which one will keep him in the style to which he might like to become accustomed. He’s such a good-looking guy that this latter really can’t be all that mysterious to him, but maybe he’s just being tactful when he claims not to understand that part.

Quentin and Olivia go to her hotel room, which she has decorated with framed copies of her professional headshot and a bit of folded stage dressing that could be used to suggest windows. Apparently that’s just how actresses make themselves feel at home.

Quentin asks Olivia why she is interested in him. She tells him that they met a long time ago, but that she can’t tell him any more than that. This angers him; he knows nothing at all about his past, so it strikes him she is being cruel by withholding the information she has.

Regular viewers know that Olivia and Quentin were lovers in 1897, when she was known as Amanda Harris. Both of them owe their youth to magical paintings done by an artist named Charles Delaware Tate. Julia knows all about this, and has come into possession of a landscape Tate painted in the 1940s. Amanda/ Olivia came to Collinsport in hopes of getting the painting from her. The other day Amanda/ Olivia managed to have it x-rayed, and found that there was a portrait on the canvas underneath it. The x-ray could not show whose portrait it was. Later today, Julia will have the same examination made. When she gets the results, Julia arranges to have the landscape removed. It turns out that the underpainting is a portrait of Amanda Harris herself.

The expert who exposes the underpainting also brings bad news. He tells Julia’s sidekick Chris Jennings that Tate died about ten years before. Julia knows that Quentin’s portrait not only keeps him alive and youthful, but also prevents him turning into a werewolf. Since Chris is Quentin’s great-grandson and has inherited the werewolf curse, he and Julia were hoping that Tate was still alive and still empowered to paint magical portraits.

Closing Miscellany

Nowadays, Donna McKechnie says that, while she had been on Broadway as a singer and dancer before appearing on Dark Shadows, she was only a beginner in acting. It’s true that she is noticeably uncomfortable delivering her lines, but her scene partners- David Selby, Grayson Hall, and Don Briscoe- all give her such good support that she gets through it quite smoothly. Besides, she is so charming that the audience is willing to forgive her anything.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day is one of his occasional tours de force, a spoof of the postmodernist literary terminology that he learned in graduate school. I learned the same terminology when I was in graduate school, and I think his spoof of it is hilarious. But in the course of it, he has some really good insights. For example:

Chris:  Olivia Corey… I don’t get it! Why is she so interested in him?

Julia:  She must either know — or suspect! — that he is really Quentin Collins.

It’s telling that she puts the dramatic stress on the phrase “or suspect!” rather than the knowledge itself. To Dr. Hoffman, it’s the existence of suspicion! that is itself suspicious. Anybody can know something. It’s the act of suspecting! that reveals a new range of discursive positions.

Danny Horn, “Episode 910: Epistemology of the Portrait,” posted 8 August 2016 on Dark Shadows Every Day

Which is a great point! When the characters know facts about each other, those facts don’t move the story an inch unless they are clues that they can use to build on the suspicions they have about them or tools they can use to manipulate them into doing what they want. So Julia knows that Quentin lived in a particular room in the long-deserted west wing of Collinwood and that he obsessively listened to a particular sickly little waltz on his record player. Those facts are nothing in themselves, but when she takes him to the room and plays the waltz on the record player at the end of today’s episode, we have hope that Quentin might become himself again soon.

Towards the end of the 1897 segment, Judith Collins Trask and Tim Shaw bricked the evil Gregory Trask up in Quentin’s room. In #884, we heard her telephone Tim and instruct him to remove the bricks. When Julia takes Quentin into the room today, there is no trace of bricks. Evidently Tim did a good job clearing them out.

By the time Julia became best friends with Barnabas in 1968, she was in the habit of addressing him as “Barnabas, Barnabas.” In the 1897 segment, she addressed Quentin as “Quentin, Quentin.” Now she and Barnabas are on the outs, and Quentin isn’t answering to his name no matter how often you repeat it. So she addresses her henchman Chris as “Chris, Chris.” Don Briscoe was a likable actor and Chris has his points, but the character has some weaknesses that tightly circumscribe his future on the show. I suppose the point is that Julia has a higher opinion of Chris’ potential than the other characters do, but she so frequently represents the audience’s state of knowledge that it is a bit odd she thinks he belongs in a category with those breakout stars.

I believe this episode also marks the first time Julia addresses matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard as “Liz.” She has been living in Liz’ house since the summer of 1967, so I guess it’s time she stop calling her “Mrs Stoddard.”

Episode 903: Rhinoceros

For eight months, from March through November of 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the year 1897. Among the characters we got to know during that period were Amanda Harris (Donna McKechnie,) who came to life when an artist named Charles Delaware Tate used magical powers he didn’t know he had and painted a portrait of an imaginary woman. As long as the portrait exists, Amanda will live, remaining young and beautiful. Tate also painted a portrait of the rakish Quentin Collins. As Amanda’s story is a retelling of the ancient Greek tale of Pygmalion and Galatea, so Quentin’s portrait is a version of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. Quentin had been a werewolf when Tate painted him, but as long as the portrait is intact it will change on moonlit nights, while Quentin remains human. Like Amanda, Quentin is immune from aging while his portrait lasts.

These two conditionally immortal beings found each other towards the end of the 1897 storyline and fell in love. They were going to run off together, but Tate had stolen Quentin’s portrait and Quentin couldn’t leave without it. Shortly before the show came back to contemporary dress, it seemed that the portrait had been destroyed when Tate’s cottage burned down, though we did not see this happen.

In September, mad scientist Julia Hoffman managed to travel back in time and spend a few weeks in 1897. She befriended Quentin and saw Amanda’s portrait. After returning to 1969, Julia found a mediocre landscape Tate painted in 1949 at an antique shop in the village of Collinsport and shelled out a ridiculous sum for it, hoping that it would help her find out whether Quentin is alive, where his portrait is, and whether Tate himself might be alive and able to help Quentin’s great-grandson Chris Jennings, who has inherited the werewolf curse.

Another woman is interested in the portrait. She is Olivia Corey (Donna McKechnie,) a famous Broadway actress. Olivia has come to Collinsport to try to persuade Julia to sell her the painting. Julia sees Olivia’s resemblance to Tate’s paintings of Amanda and suspects that the women are one and the same, but since she did not meet Amanda when she was in 1897 she cannot disprove Olivia’s story that she is Amanda’s granddaughter.

We fade in on Julia today, sitting with Olivia on a couch in Olivia’s suite in the Collinsport Inn. We can tell Olivia is staying there, because she has decorated it with a copy of her professional headshot, among other things.

What, don’t you set your headshot on a table when you stay in a hotel room? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The two are having a conversation in which they declare themselves to be devoted admirers of Tate’s works. We saw many of Tate’s works in the 1897 segment, and few of them were any better than the crummy landscape that has brought them together. When Julia found the painting, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard expressed amazement she would pay a hefty sum for such an undistinguished piece, and later today Olivia will say in so many words that it is of little interest to anyone but a Tate completist, so the show is not pretending that Tate’s pictures had great aesthetic value. We can therefore be sure that Olivia, like Julia, has an ulterior motive.

Olivia claims to be working with a figure in the fine art business in New York City who wants to stage an exhibition of Tate’s works. She refers to this figure as “he,” disappointing our hopes that she might be in league with the show’s most interesting character, NYC art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons, whom we met in #193. Then again, Olivia represented herself as “Mr Corey” in the telegrams she sent to the antique shop inquiring after the painting in an attempt to conceal her identity, so maybe she is doing the same thing on behalf of Mrs Fitzsimmons.

Olivia asks to be allowed to photograph the painting, and under the circumstances Julia can hardly refuse that request. Olivia asks when she can call at the great house on the estate of Collinwood, where Julia has been in residence since 1967. Julia says that she will have the chauffeur bring the painting to the hotel later that evening.

This is only the second time we have heard anything about a chauffeur at Collinwood. The first time was in #543, when Carolyn hired unsightly ex-convict Harry Johnson to help her manage Frankenstein’s monster Adam and covered up his true responsibilities by putting him on the payroll as chauffeur. We haven’t seen or heard of Harry since #669, which was also the only episode in which he was played by Edward Marshall. In previous episodes Harry had been played by Craig Slocum, usually pretty badly, but Mr Marshall did such a good job with the character we would be glad to see him again.

We have little hope this will happen, however. Not only is Harry generally forgotten after his long absence, he and Julia never had much to do with each other when he was on the show. Since her activities concerning the painting are a big secret, she would choose only an assistant whom she could trust. That means Chris.

Carolyn hired Chris as groundskeeper at Collinwood in #677, by which time he was already living in the cottage on the estate that goes with the job. By the time the show went to 1897, his lycanthropy had surpassed all bounds and he was a wolf at all times, even during the day. In #889, set in 1969, we saw that he had regained his human form and spent the eight months of the 1897 flashback confined to a mental hospital Julia controls. We also saw that Carolyn had no idea where he had been or what his problem was. That made it rather a surprise in #897, when we saw that he still lived in the cottage. Presumably he still has the job, as well. You’d think an unexplained absence of eight months, followed by a confrontation in which he told Carolyn that he was a monster who would kill her if she didn’t watch out, would lead to a firing, but evidently the Collinses have a relaxed attitude towards their staff.

When we cut to Julia after her scene with Olivia, we see her in the drawing room of the great house with Chris. She shows him a handwritten note from Amanda to Quentin, written in 1897, that she dug up someplace. He tells Chris that he is to take the painting to Olivia’s room and get a sample of her handwriting to compare to that standard. He is to present himself as the chauffeur at Collinwood. Since he is in fact the groundskeeper at Collinwood and he will give Olivia his right name, it’s hard to see what the point is of claiming to have a different position in the household. Chris is skeptical that Olivia and Amanda can be the same person, but Julia tells him that he of all people should be willing to accept the apparently impossible.

Chris is nervous in Olivia’s room, especially when she introduces him to a Mr Nakamura. She gives the painting to Mr Nakamura, who takes it to another room. She explains that Mr Nakamura is a professional photographer and will be taking the picture. She says she will call Chris when Mr Nakamura is finished. Chris says that Julia explicitly told him to wait for the painting. This is odd- if the goal is to get a sample of Olivia’s handwriting, why not insist on leaving it with her? Then she would have to write out a receipt.

Mr Nakamura takes a long time. Olivia takes out her silver tea service and keeps offering Chris more tea. It’s for just such situations that I take my silver tea service with me every time I check into a hotel, it really is a pity more people don’t think ahead like that. Eventually Chris gets restless and barges into the room where Mr Nakamura took the painting. He finds a fancy camera there, but no person and no painting. We don’t see much of the room, but from what we can see of the layout of the suite, there doesn’t appear to be any way Mr Nakamura could have exited except the way he went in. Chris is upset, but eventually Mr Nakamura comes back with the painting. He says that he had to go to a local shop to have it done, and shows Olivia a large photograph of the painting. She says that it is acceptable, and tells him that Chris is ready to call the police if they don’t return the painting to him at once.

Chris takes on a sheepish manner and apologizes for his nervousness. He tells Olivia he is an admirer of hers and asks for an autograph. She writes a little note for him. He takes it and the painting and goes.

Back at the great house, Chris delivers the painting and the autograph to Julia. She can see that Olivia’s handwriting is similar enough to Amanda’s to warrant an expert analysis. She thinks of her friend, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes is an expert on the occult, an expertise which typically arises in fields like history or classics that involve the study of manuscripts, so it makes sense that he would be trained in recognizing hands. Chris marvels at Olivia’s attractiveness.

Alone with Olivia, Mr Nakamura says that he found the best radiographer in Collinsport. He paid him to x-ray the painting and to keep quiet about it. Since Collinsport is supposed to be a very small town, one wonders how many radiographers Mr Nakamura had to choose from. At any rate, the x-ray confirms that there is another painting underneath the landscape. Olivia looks at the x-ray exposure, and says that it looks like a portrait.

Chris’ attraction to Olivia recalls the 1897 segment. Amanda came to Collinsport in the company of miserable schoolteacher-turned-unscrupulous adventurer Tim Shaw, who like Chris was played by Don Briscoe. Amanda and Tim stayed in the Collinsport Inn together, perhaps in this suite. We don’t know if Tim and Chris are supposed to resemble each other, and Olivia doesn’t show any signs of recognition. But regular viewers will enjoy seeing Briscoe and Donna McKechnie together in a situation so different from those they explored before.

Olivia’s conversation with Julia, like her headshot on the table, emphasizes that she is A Big Broadway Star. A few years after this episode, Miss McKechnie originated the role of Cassie in A Chorus Line, and actually became A Big Broadway Star. Watching this episode, I wonder if she found herself imitating Olivia when that happened to her.

Mr Nakamura is played by Sho Onodera. Onodera was born in Seattle in 1915 and died in New York in 1974. According to his obituary in The New York Times, Onodera served in US military intelligence during the Second World War, and was the court’s chief interpreter at the Tokyo war crimes trials after the war ended. In later years he.worked as a reporter for both American and Japanese news services. The Times does not mention that Onodera, like 120,000 other Americans of Japanese extraction, spent part of the period of US involvement in the war as an internee, in his case at the Manzanar camp. That fact is recorded in his IMDb biography. As an actor, he appeared in several television shows and a couple of movies, most notably the 1974 film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, in which he took the role of Mr Matsumoto.

This episode marks Onodera’s only appearance on Dark Shadows. He was one of only three visibly non-white actors to appear in the series. The others were Beverly Hope Atkinson, who had a speaking role as an unnamed nurse in #563, and Henry Judd Baker (also known as Judd Henry Baker,) who was visually prominent but silent as Rroma tough guy Istvan in #821, #825, #826, and #827. From now on, the cast will be all-white. Granted, fishing villages in central Maine in the late 1960s and early 1970s didn’t tend to have a lot of racial diversity, but enough visitors come to town that you might think they could have found more opportunities than that to use the talents of the nonwhite actors who were working in New York in 1966-1971.

Episode 896: Those who have been hidden shall show themselves

David and the Book

Strange and troubled boy David Collins has stolen an old book from an antique shop. He didn’t want the book, but had damaged it slightly and was terrified that he would be punished if this was discovered and his father had to pay for the rare volume.

David’s friend and fellow resident of the great house of Collinwood, Amy Jennings, catches him with the book in the drawing room. He tells her he is going to burn it in order to conceal his crime. She points out that this will make a bad situation much worse. As a creature of Soap Opera Land, David can have no higher calling than to make bad situations worse, so this does not deter him.

While Amy offers to take the book to the nearest grownup and to claim that she was the one who stole it, David opens it to a page depicting a group of intertwined snakes, a symbol the show refers to simply as “the Naga.” He is transfixed by the symbol. His whole manner changes. His posture becomes more rigid, his voice grave and authoritative. He tells Amy he no longer wants to burn the book. Instead, he will read it. Since the book is written in a script neither of them has seen before, Amy tells David he cannot read it, but he assures her he can. She asks him to read it to her, and he says that it is forbidden for her to hear any of it. She says that she doesn’t like the game David is playing and would rather turn to another; he says it is no game. She leaves him alone with the book.

The book was not in fact part of the antique shop’s merchandise, though it was on a display table there. The owners of the shop, Megan and Philip Todd, have been inducted into a mysterious cult led by David’s distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, and the book is one of that cult’s most sacred objects. The Todds flew into a panic when they realized the book was missing, and Barnabas told Philip that he faced a severe penalty for losing it. Those reactions make it hard to understand why Philip and Megan left the book on the table in the first place.

Longtime viewers know that many of the major plot-lines on Dark Shadows start with David. So we may suspect that the supernatural forces behind the cult, unknown to Barnabas or the Todds, caused the book to be left on the table and led David to take it so that he could become part of the story. Indeed, once he is alone with the book David intones a statement from it: “And then those who have been hidden so long shall rise and show themselves, and the others will know their time is ended and the time of the people of the Leviathan will begin.” Later, he goes to the mysterious cairn in the woods that is the center of the Leviathan cult’s ceremonial activity, and announces that he is one of them now. The stones at the bottom of the cairn part, revealing a small opening. David crawls into it. The words are solemn, the music melodramatic, the action of the boy stuffing himself into the little hole preposterous. It is the perfect Dark Shadows sequence.

David Henesy was nine years old when the show started, and was thirteen by this time. It would seem no one told the carpenters he had grown in the interval. That gap is such a tight fit for him that he has to wiggle his rear end at the camera for quite a while as he tries to wedge himself into it. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We Actresses are Vain

As David is leaving to go to the cairn, he has to refuse a request from permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman. Julia wants him to go to the Old House on the estate and give a note to Barnabas. She keeps telling him that it is urgent, but he tells her he is already on his way to do something urgent.

Julia does not know about the Leviathan cult, much less about Barnabas’ connection with it. All she knows is that Barnabas has been her best friend for a year and a half, and when last they had a chance to spend time together they were concerned with the rakish Quentin Collins, whose whereabouts they do not know. Now it is 4:45 PM, and Julia is expecting a Mr Corey to come to the house at 5:00 and look at a painting she bought from the Todds a little while ago. She thinks this Mr Corey might be Quentin, and is keen for Barnabas to meet him.

When David cannot help her, Julia decides to take the note to the Old House herself. The show is usually fairly vague and inconsistent about the geography of Collinwood, but several times they have said that it takes about fifteen minutes to walk between the great house and the Old House. They stick with this today. Julia leaves at 4:45, and returns as the clock is striking 5:15. Barnabas was not at home, so she just turned right around.

Julia hears voices in the drawing room. They are heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard and another woman. Julia gathers that Mr Corey is actually Ms Olivia Corey. When she enters the room, she sees that Olivia is a dead ringer for Amanda Harris, a woman who lived in 1897. Julia became aware of Amanda in September, when she and Barnabas were traveling in time and met each other in that year. Julia did not meet Amanda, but evidently must have seen at least one of the many portraits of her that magical artist/ dreary goon Charles Delaware Tate painted. She mentions these portraits to Olivia, who claims that Amanda was her grandmother. Amanda was in love with Quentin, and Julia takes an excited breath when she asks Olivia who her grandfather was. Olivia gives his name as Langley. Quentin may well have used an alias, so that doesn’t rule out the possibility that Olivia may be his granddaughter, though Dark Shadows fans looking back in these later days will think of another member of the Collins family when they hear that name.

Olivia is a famous New York actress. Julia tells her that she has seen her on stage and has seen her photograph in the newspapers, but that she never noticed her resemblance to Amanda. Olivia asks where Julia heard about Amanda; she says that she must have read about her somewhere in connection with one of the portraits. She also tells Olivia that she isn’t likely to want the painting, since it is not a portrait. Olivia says that she wants any painting of Tate’s she can get. Julia tells her there is no portrait of Quentin Collins in the house; Olivia pauses for a fraction of a second, then blandly asks if she is supposed to know who that is.

Some of Tate’s paintings had supernatural effects. When Tate painted pictures of his ideal woman, Amanda came into being as their embodiment, like Galatea emerging from Pygmalion’s statue. And when he painted Quentin’s portrait, Quentin was freed of the effects of the werewolf curse. Like a Halloween version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the portrait turned into a wolf on the nights of the full moon, while Quentin remained human.

As long as the portraits of Amanda and Quentin are intact, they themselves will remain alive and well and youthful. So Julia’s hope that Quentin might still be traveling the world and using false names 72 years after the period when she and Barnabas knew him is not ill-founded, and her surmise that Olivia might be, not Amanda’s granddaughter, but Amanda herself, is also plausible.