Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard thinks that her recently returned father, Paul Stoddard, is mentally ill. She knows that her mother Liz and Liz’ brother Roger are deeply hostile to Paul, and thinks that her distant cousin Barnabas is friendly to him.
We open in the Blue Whale tavern, where Carolyn has been pleased to discover Paul and Barnabas sitting together at a table. Barnabas says that Carolyn is her father’s most precious possession, and she happily agrees. Paul angrily denies that this is the case, and jumps up. He asks Carolyn to go away with him, and leaves the tavern.
Carolyn is bewildered by this reaction, and annoyed when Roger enters. She exits to follow Paul, and Roger goes to the table to warn Barnabas that friendship with Paul would mean trouble with Liz. Barnabas assures him they are not friends.
In Paul’s hotel room, Carolyn tells her father that his troubles are all in his head. She says that she will try to help him, and mentions Julia Hoffman, a psychiatrist who is permanently in residence at the great house of Collinwood. Paul insists that he really does have enemies, and pleads with Carolyn to join him in running far away. She refuses, and insists that he must solve his problems where he is.
Carolyn goes home to the great house. She and Roger have a confrontation. He gives her a check for $5000, payable to Paul. He tells her that the only reason Paul has come back is that he wants to get money out of the Collinses, and that if she gives him that check, he will leave again.
Carolyn goes to the antique shop where she has been working for her friends Megan and Philip Todd. Megan is holding a baby, whom she identified to Carolyn as her nephew Joseph, her sister’s son. Barnabas is with Megan and the baby. Carolyn apologizes to Megan for being late to work, and tells Barnabas she has been late many times. Megan says that it isn’t a problem, that she couldn’t have got away from the shop any earlier even if Carolyn had been there. Barnabas exits.
Carolyn tells Megan that is strange to be reunited with a father who left when she was a newborn. Megan says that she was close to her own father growing up, and that she was an only child. Carolyn furrows her brow, looks at the baby, and asks if he isn’t her sister’s son. Megan scrambles for a second, then claims that Joseph’s mother is her stepsister, one of two daughters of the widow her father married.
Megan takes the baby to his bedroom upstairs. Carolyn answers the telephone, and tells Philip that she will have Megan call him right back. She waits a moment, then goes upstairs. She hears a loud breathing sound coming from the baby’s room, as if a gigantic obscene telephone call were in progress.
Unknown to Carolyn, her father’s troubles are not imaginary, and Barnabas is not his friend. Between her two scenes in the antique shop, we saw Paul in his room. A true Collinsporter, he was in bed fully clothed, wearing even his tie and his shoes, but still he had difficulty sleeping. Barnabas entered the room and told him it was odd to sleep on such a sunny day. To demonstrate the day’s sunniness, he turns a light on. He also ruffles the window-shades, but does not open them. Evidently that would be a little too on-the-nose.
Paul aims a revolver at Barnabas and says that he will kill him if he doesn’t leave him alone. Barnabas says that if he kills him, someone else will be sent in his place. Paul says that he will also kill that person, and he squeezes the trigger several times. That only makes a clicking sound. Barnabas tells him that “we” knew about the gun, as “we” know about everything Paul might do before he does it, and that the ammunition was therefore removed. He also tells Paul that if he leaves Collinsport without permission from whomever it is Barnabas represents, Carolyn will suffer.
The telephone rings, and Barnabas orders Paul to answer it. It is Carolyn. He tells her that he is feeling better, and that he does not want to go away. Barnabas praises him for beginning to see things “our way.”
Paul telling Carolyn that everything is just great with him. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Today’s closing credits are the first headed by “Starring Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins.” From now on, Frid will get the “Starring” designation unless Joan Bennett is in the day’s cast, in which case she gets “Starring” and he follows with “Also Starring.”
When Dark Shadows debuted in June 1966, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett) had not left the estate of Collinwood in eighteen years. We soon gathered that Liz was afraid that if she strayed far from the house someone might open the locked room in the basement and discover that her husband Paul was buried there, dead of a blow she dealt him when he was trying to run off with a chunk of her patrimony.
Liz’ reclusiveness was a major theme of Dark Shadows‘ first 55 weeks. After the show committed itself to becoming a supernatural thriller with the story of Laura the humanoid Phoenix, which ran from December 1966 to March 1967, they brought in Paul’s old friend and partner in crime Jason McGuire (Dennis Patrick) as an in-betweener to sweep away the few miscellaneous this-worldly narrative threads not already subsumed in the Laura story and to help introduce the next uncanny Big Bad, vampire Barnabas Collins.
It turned out Jason was the one who agreed to bury Paul for Liz, in return for the money Paul had been trying to steal from her. Upon his return to Collinwood, Jason blackmailed Liz with this information. Time and again she caved in to his demands. Liz let him stay in the great house, gave him money, hired him for a lucrative non-job in the family business, let his rapey sidekick Willie Loomis stay in a room just down the hall from those occupied by her daughter Carolyn Stoddard and her all-but-acknowledged daughter, well-meaning governess Victoria Winters, and was in the middle of a wedding ceremony meant to unite her with Jason when she finally burst out with the truth. When she did that, Carolyn dropped the loaded pistol with which she had planned to prevent Jason becoming her stepfather. For his part, Jason said that Paul wasn’t dead, and that he hadn’t buried him. Perhaps the whole thing started when Jason said “cranberry sauce,” and Liz misheard it as “I buried Paul.” With that, the wedding was off, and a few days later Barnabas killed Jason. Since Jason was on his way out of town and had no friends left, no one missed him. He has barely been mentioned since.
Now, Paul himself has come back. Like Jason, he is played by Dennis Patrick. He has charmed Carolyn into thinking he had nothing to do with faking his own death, and she is falling over herself in her eagerness to establish a relationship with the father who left the family when she was an infant. Carolyn and Liz are on their way out the front door of the great house, heading to a committee in charge of raising funds for the hospital, when the phone rings. It is Paul, asking Carolyn to come to his hotel room at once. She agrees. She gives her mother a vague excuse, irking her, and the women leave the house separately.
In the hotel room, Paul tells Carolyn that he is in some kind of trouble that he can’t explain. Someone is trying to do something terrible to him, but he does not know who or what. Carolyn takes a firm tone when she urges him to tell her what he does know, and when she tells him that whatever is happening she will help him.
Father and daughter embrace, and Liz enters. She is furious to see Paul. She demands Carolyn leave the room. Only when Paul says that he and Liz need a moment together does Carolyn comply. The ex-spouses have a confrontation in which Liz gets to voice her righteous indignation with Paul. She tells him that she expects him to be on the next train out of town. She lists some of the people she will call if he isn’t. Among these is the proprietor of the hotel, who will presumably throw him out in the street at her behest.
In its first months, Dark Shadows tended to attract an aging audience, largely composed of people who still thought of Joan Bennett as the star she was in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Now, with its cast of vampires and werewolves and witches and ghosts and zombies and mad scientists and heaven knows what, it is more of a kid’s show. By the end of the costume drama segment set in the year 1897 that ran from March to November of 1969, viewers over the age of twelve would find themselves reacting to more and more episodes with little more than an indulgent chuckle.
Now that they have returned to contemporary dress, they have swung sharply back towards an adult audience. Carolyn was supposed to be a teenager when the show started; Nancy Barrett was significantly older than the character, and they let Carolyn catch up to her age after a while. But having her spend her evenings serving alongside her mother on the hospital’s fundraising board suggests that they’ve aged her up quite a bit further than that, foreclosing any youth-oriented stories. The conventionally soapy situation the Stoddards find themselves in today is of course something that will be of little interest to the elementary school students who are running home to see the show at this period. And while the main overall story is supernatural, about a cult controlled by unseen beings called the Leviathans that assimilates to itself one character after another, it is understated in tone, allegorical in development, and densely allusive in its relation to its literary antecedents. However many older viewers the show may have lost in the second half of the 1897 segment, they are in danger of shaking off an even larger number of their very young fans if they continue down this road.
In Art Wallace’s original story bible for Dark Shadows, titled “Shadows on the Wall,” the blackmail story was to be followed immediately by Paul’s return. Wallace called for Paul to be a man pursued by dark forces from his past. They made major changes to “Shadows on the Wall” long before they taped the first episode, and it has been almost entirely forgotten for years now. Indeed writer Ron Sproat, who was with the show from October 1966 to January 1969, said that executive producer Dan Curtis told him when he joined the staff that they were going to be leaving “Shadows on the Wall” behind and never let him see it. But they did dip into it in the case of Paul’s return- he is indeed being pursued by dark forces from his past. The Leviathan cult is after him.
After his confrontation with Liz, we see Paul sitting at the bar in the Blue Whale tavern. The jukebox plays a tune familiar from the early days of the show, when the Blue Whale was a frequent set and there were usually extras dancing in the background. Today the only people we see there are Paul and a middle aged sailor sitting next to him.
The sailor keeps looking at Paul. We hear Paul’s thoughts as he wonders if the sailor is “one of them.” Paul irritably asks him why he is looking at him. The sailor says that he wants to buy Paul a drink. Paul angrily snaps back that “I buy my own drinks!” After some sharp words, the two men warm to each other. They wind up getting handsy with each other and disappear for some private time together.
This scene turns out to be motivated by the two men’s mutual awareness of the Leviathan cult. Over the years, I’ve seen lots of guys in bars interact with each other in exactly this way. I don’t know what that’s all about, maybe the Leviathans are real.
Since I mentioned “Shadows on the Wall” above, I should say that the tavern figures in there as well. Only it isn’t called “The Blue Whale,” but “The Rainbow Bar.” I don’t know, somehow I think Paul and the sailor might not have got off to such a rocky start if the show had gone with that name. Sounds friendlier, somehow, at least to lonesome sailors and the mature men for whom they want to buy drinks.
Paul’s new buddy, unnamed in the dialogue, is identified in the closing credits as “Jack Long.” He is played by Kenneth McMillan, in his first screen credit. In the 1970s and 1980s, McMillan was one of the busiest television actors in the USA. I always mixed him up with Dolph Sweet, who was a similar physical type. Sweet appeared on Dark Shadows once, in #99. He played Ezra Hearne, the most loyal employee at Liz’ cannery. Sweet was a tremendous actor, McMillan a very good one, and they occasionally worked together. So long as they are doing normal soap opera stuff, it would have been nice if they could have had a little story about Ezra’s reunion with his long-lost cousin Jack. Maybe Jack could have introduced Paul to Ezra, we could have seen how he’d fit in with the family.
A cult devoted to the service of supernatural beings known as “the Leviathan people” is secretly establishing itself in and around Collinsport, Maine. Antique shop owners Megan and Philip Todd are members of the cult. Its acting leader, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, has entrusted them with several items sacred to the cult. The Todds are responsible for a scroll, a box, a book, and a baby. Now the book has gone missing, and the baby is sick. Yesterday, Barnabas responded to this situation by brainwashing Philip into killing Megan. Today, we open with Philip entering the antique shop and choking Megan.
Megan is Marie Wallace’s third character on Dark Shadows. Her first, fiancée of Frankenstein Eve, was strangled by her intended spouse Adam in #626. Her second, madwoman Jenny Collins, was strangled by her estranged husband Quentin in #748. The murder of Eve came at the end of the Monster Mash period of the show that stretched throughout most of 1968, while the murder of Jenny marked a turning point in the eight-month costume drama segment set in the year 1897. The Leviathan arc is just beginning, and Miss Wallace’s character is already being strangled by her husband. If we were hoping for fresh new story ideas, we couldn’t be more disappointed.
Until, that is, the strangulation is called off. Philip is holding Megan by the neck, reiterating that “There is no margin for error! Punishment is necessary!,” when strange and troubled boy David Collins appears on the staircase and announces “punishment is no longer necessary.” Philip releases Megan, and David informs them that he is now “the keeper of the book, and the protector of the baby.” He gives Megan and Philip medicine that will cure the baby of his illness. He tells them that if they need him, he will know and will appear.
Barnabas was a vampire when he joined the cast of characters in April 1967. As a villain he was unrivaled at giving everyone else things to do, whether as his victims, his accomplices, or his would-be destroyers. In March 1968, his curse was put into abeyance and he became human. He set out to be the good guy, but still had the personality of a metaphor for extreme selfishness. As a result, Barnabas the would-be hero created at least as many disasters as Barnabas the monster ever did. He thus remained the driving force of the show, as well as its star attraction.
While Barnabas can keep things going from day to day, Philip’s attack on Megan suggests that he cannot take the story in new directions. From episode #1, that has been David’s forte. The series began when well-meaning governess Vicki was called to Collinwood to take charge of David’s education, took its first turn towards grisly tales when David tried to murder his father, became a supernatural thriller when David’s mother the undead blonde fire witch came back for him, began its first time travel story when Barnabas was planning to kill David in November 1967, and was launched into both the “Haunting of Collinwood” that dominated the show from December 1968 through February 1969 and the 1897 segment that followed it by David’s involvement with the ghost of Quentin Collins. David was not always a highly active participant in the stories that began with him; indeed, he sometimes disappeared altogether for months at a time. But even from the outside, he is the instrument by which the basic architecture of the show is reshaped. Now that he is, apparently, the leader of the Leviathans, we can renew our hopes that something we haven’t seen before is still in store for us.
David is still in the shop when a gray-haired man enters. David greets him as “Mr Prescott,” the name by which he heard his cousin Carolyn address the man when he met her in the shop the other day. David has a smug look on his face that suggests he knows this is an alias. Indeed, we already know that the man is connected with the Leviathan cult, so the leader of the cult may well recognize him as Paul Stoddard, Carolyn’s long-missing father.
Paul asks the Todds to give a note to Carolyn. David says that he will be going home to the great house of Collinwood in a few minutes, and volunteers to take the note to her there. Paul gladly hands it to him.
At Collinwood, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman is conferring with mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. Yesterday, Jenny’s ghost appeared to Chris and told him that Quentin could help him with his big problem, which is that he is a werewolf. Jenny did not identify herself, and Chris had no clue who she was.
Julia shows him a Collins family photo album. She shows him a picture of maidservant Beth Chavez and asks if that is who he saw. He says it wasn’t, and they keep turning pages. It is interesting for regular viewers that they take a moment to put Beth’s picture on the screen and to make some remarks about her. Beth appeared several times during the “Haunting of Collinwood” segment, and was a major character during the 1897 flashback. The sight of her picture is the first reason we have had to suspect that either she or actress Terrayne Crawford will be back.
Chris and Julia look through a Collins family photo album. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
When Chris recognizes Jenny’s picture, Julia breaks the news to him that Jenny and Quentin were his great-grandparents, and that Quentin was the first to be afflicted with the werewolf curse. We know that Quentin and Jenny’s daughter was named Lenore, and that she was raised by a Mrs Fillmore. Chris confirms that his grandmother’s maiden name was Lenore Fillmore. Wondering how Quentin could help Chris, Julia decides they will hold a séance and contact Quentin’s spirit.
David enters, looking for Carolyn. Julia asks him to participate in the séance. He agrees, with the blandness appropriate in a house where séances have become almost routine. When Julia tells him that the spirit they are trying to reach is that of Quentin Collins, David becomes alarmed. As well he might- we left 1969 at the beginning of March, but in #839, broadcast and set in September, we saw that the haunting continued in the absence of the audience, and that Quentin’s ghost had killed David. That episode took place on the anniversary of an event in 1897 that was changed by time travelers from the 1960s, and so David came back to life and the haunting ended. But everyone at Collinwood still remembers the ten months that Quentin exercised his reign of terror, and David does not want to return to it.
Julia assures David he has nothing to be afraid of. She says that the past was changed as of September 1897/ September 1969, and that Quentin’s ghost was laid to rest forever. This doesn’t fit very well with her plan to disturb that rest, but David is still ready to go along with the plan.
When they have the séance, David goes into the trance. He speaks, not with Quentin’s voice, but with that of Jamison Collins, his own grandfather and Quentin’s favorite nephew. Jamison says that Quentin’s spirit is no longer available for personal appearances. He doesn’t know more than that, and excuses himself. When David comes to and asks what happened, Julia says she will tell him later and sends him to bed. Once he is gone, she tells Chris that she thinks Quentin may still be alive.
Quentin was a big hit when he was on the show as an unspeaking ghost during the “Haunting of Collinwood,” and became a breakout star to rival Barnabas when he was a living being during the 1897 segment. So the audience is not at all surprised that he will be coming back. But David’s behavior before, during, and after the séance is quite intriguing. He is not simply possessed by some spirit that is part of whatever it is the Leviathan cult serves. He is still David, is still afraid of Quentin’s ghost, and is still fascinated by séances. During the 1897 segment, Jamison was a living being; like David Collins, he was played by David Henesy. That Jamison can speak through his grandson and not express discomfort at the unfamiliarity of the atmosphere suggests that there are sizable expanses inside David which are still recognizably him.
There is a similar moment between Philip and Megan. She smiles at him and in a relaxed voice says she understands why he had to do what he did. Philip has no idea what she is talking about. She reminds him that he tried to strangle her earlier in the evening, and he suddenly becomes highly apologetic. She tells him he has nothing to apologize for, that it was his duty as a servant of their cause. He is still anguished about it. They share a tender embrace. Again, while the force that animates the Leviathan cult may have the final say over what Megan and Philip do, their personalities are still there, and the loving couple we met a not so long ago still exists. There is still something for us to care about concerning them.*
Paul also has a lot of activity today. He goes to the cairn in the woods that is the ceremonial center of the Leviathan cult and that only people associated with it can see. He wonders why he keeps being drawn to it. When he first returned to Collinwood in #887, he was watching when the cairn materialized in its place out of thin air. He didn’t react at all, but merely turned and continued on his stroll. That led us to believe he knew a great deal about the cult, enough that he not only expected to see this extraordinary sight, but knew he need take no action regarding it. But evidently his connection is more subtle, and he does not understand it himself.
In his hotel room, Paul goes into a trance and circles the date 4 December 1969 on his calendar. That was when the episode was first broadcast, so the original audience would have assumed he was merely circling the current date. But when it was taped, the makers of Dark Shadows had expected the episode to be shown on 3 December. In between, there had been a pre-emption when the ABC television network gave its news department the 4:00 PM timeslot to cover the end of the Apollo 12 lunar landing mission. So the intention had been that we would share Paul’s puzzlement as to what was so special about the next day.
Paul is already worked up because some unknown person left him a note at the antique shop reading “Payment Due, 4 December 1969.” By the end of the episode, he notices that a tattoo has appeared on his wrist. It is a symbol that the show refers to simply as “the Naga,” a group of intertwined snakes that represent the Leviathan cult. All of this combines to get him into quite a state.
* I should mention that Danny Horn made the same point in his post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day: “And then they kiss, and the creepy thing is that I think they’re actually in there… So far, I’ve been critical of Chris Bernau, but he’s the one who pulls this moment together. As far as he’s concerned, the unpleasant incident is entirely forgotten — but when Megan brings up the fact that he was seconds away from killing her, his apology is entirely sincere.” Danny Horn, “Episode 989: Executive Child,” on Dark Shadows Every Day, 12 July 2016.
Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard is sitting at a table in the Blue Whale, a tavern. A man who refused to give his name when she caught him trespassing on her property invites himself to sit down with her. She objects to this. He identifies himself as her father, the long-missing Paul Stoddard. She objects far more strenuously to that. Not only did Paul leave the family when Carolyn was an infant, he and his friend Jason McGuire faked his death. Jason convinced Carolyn’s mother, Liz, that she had killed Paul and he had buried the corpse in the basement. In response, Liz immured herself in the house for nineteen years. Only after Jason came back and was blackmailing Liz into marrying him did the truth come out and Liz break free of her reclusive ways.
Paul tells Carolyn that he didn’t know Jason told Liz that she had killed him. Longtime viewers may suspect this is a lie, not least because Paul and Jason are both played by Dennis Patrick. Nonetheless, Carolyn falls for it. Soon she is agreeing to sound Liz out to see how she might react were she to hear that Paul had returned. He walks her home to the great house on the estate of Collinwood. He can’t go in, but gives her a goodnight kiss on the forehead.
Carolyn’s young cousin, strange and troubled boy David Collins, sees Paul kissing her. When she goes inside, he asks who her new boyfriend is. Carolyn is vexed. She refuses to tell David anything, and sends him to bed.
Carolyn’s friend Philip Todd comes to the door. He tells her that he and his wife Megan want Carolyn to work at their antique shop in the village. It may seem rather odd for the keeper of a little shop to go to a vast mansion and ask the daughter of its proprietor to take a job as his assistant, but Carolyn loves the shop and was volunteering there yesterday. She agrees happily, and mentions that a man might be leaving messages for her there.
In the shop the next morning, Carolyn sees that Megan has a baby. Megan says it is her sister’s son. Carolyn asks his name. Megan thinks for quite a while before coming up with “Joseph!”
Carolyn is alone in the shop when David comes in with his friend and fellow resident of Collinwood, Amy Jennings. We haven’t seen Amy since #835; that in turn was her first appearance since #700. For eight months, from #701 to #884, Dark Shadows was set in the year 1897, with only a few brief glimpses of the 1960s. In the 1897 segment, Denise Nickerson played Nora Collins, whose own final appearance was in #859. Both Nora and Amy had long absences from the cast, and were usually unmentioned while they were away. So we’ve been afraid that we wouldn’t see Amy or any other Nickerson character again. It’s good to have her back. She even pulls her signature move and gives a meaningful look directly into the camera at one point.
A Nickerson special.
Amy and David see a doll that longtime viewers will recognize as Samantha, favorite plaything of the late Sarah Collins both when we saw her as a living being in the 1790s from November 1967 to March 1968 and before that, when she was a ghost haunting Collinwood and its environs in 1967. There are also a couple of toy soldiers from “The Regiment,” which Sarah’s brother Barnabas played with when he was a young boy and which Sarah gave to people in 1967 as protection against Barnabas, who was at that time a vampire. Barnabas did sell a bunch of things to Megan and Philip the other day, but neither Samantha nor the members of The Regiment were in Barnabas’ possession when last we saw them. Presumably the camera lingers on the toys, not because we are supposed to know how Philip and Megan got them, but because we are supposed to be pleased with ourselves for recognizing them.
Paul comes into the shop. David recognizes him as the man he saw kissing Carolyn. Carolyn addresses Paul as “Mr Prescott,” sends him into a back room, and hustles the children out of the shop. She tells Paul who David is, and explains that he saw them together, complicating their plans.
When Carolyn was minding the shop yesterday, her friend Maggie noticed an old book on a table. Neither of them knew what it was, but viewers knew it was an object of great importance to a cult into which Philip and Megan have been inducted. It seemed inexplicable that they would leave it on a table in their shop, as if it were for sale. We get a hint today as to what they may have been thinking. In his room at Collinwood, David shows Amy that he has stolen the book. She asks why he would want it. He explains that Carolyn said that if they damaged anything in the shop, his father, Roger, would have to pay for it, and he creased a page in the book. David’s fear that his father would punish him drove several stories in the early months of the show. Roger has mellowed enormously since then, but evidently David is still so afraid of him that he will make a bad situation worse rather than face his wrath.
Indeed, many major storylines have begun with David. The 1897 flashback started because Barnabas was trying to keep a ghost from killing David, as the 1790s segment started when David’s governess Vicki participated in a séance meant to solve a mystery concerning him. For that matter, the whole show started when Vicki was summoned to Collinwood to take charge of David’s education. David doesn’t always have a lot to do in the stories, and when they are over it is often as not forgotten that he was in peril when they began. But he is so often the catalyst that we can suppose that David was supposed to find the book so that the current story could move into its major phase.
If that was the intention, Megan and Philip didn’t know about it. When they discover that the book is gone from the shop, they fly into a panic and declare that whoever took it must be killed. It may turn out that the mysterious forces behind the cult want David to become involved and that they created a situation in which he would find the book and take it with him, but if so, those forces are operating outside the cognizance of anyone in today’s episode.
Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins has given a present to antique shop owners Megan and Philip Todd. It is a wooden box. This box has a strange effect on the Todds, filling them with a mixture of irresistible fascination and nameless dread.
When the Todds go to open the box, it makes a whistling noise. They find a book inside it. The book is noticeably larger than the box. It is written in a script they do not recognize. There is also a scroll. That is in English, but may as well not be- neither Philip nor Megan can understand it, though Megan does say that she feels as if she almost can.
Later, Megan has a dream. It is the sort of dream people had in the first year of the show, before there were special effects. Like the dreams in ancient Greek literature, it takes the form of someone standing by the bed and making a speech. The speaker is Barnabas, and he tells Megan to empty the bedroom of furniture, board up its windows, and let no outsiders enter it. She calls him “master,” and he tells her she will not recognize him as such when she is awake. When she does wake up, she finds that Philip is already following the instructions, and realizes they had the same dream.
Downstairs, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard is minding the antique shop. She receives a telephone call from someone wanting to buy a cradle that is on the shop floor. At the end of the call, we hear Carolyn’s thoughts as she congratulates herself on making a sale. She is shocked when Megan comes down and tells her the cradle is not for sale. Philip comes afterward, and with a blank expression on his face carries the cradle upstairs. Carolyn is left to call the buyer back and apologize.
Philip and Megan set the cradle in the special room. They are apparently in awe. They look like any new parents stunned by the fact that they have brought a new life into the world, but the cradle is empty. After they leave the room, it starts rocking by itself.
The cradle is an interesting choice of prop. It was important early in 1969 in the “Haunting of Collinwood” story, when it was associated with the ghosts and rocked by itself. We then saw it a couple of months later in the 1897 flashback, when we learned why it was haunted. Those stories have been resolved in such a way that it won’t occur to us that the consequences of the same tragic events are animating it this time. The cradle seems to have become a generic symbol of spookiness. Considering that its back is coffin-shaped, that’s an understandable association.
Meanwhile, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, has come into the shop. Maggie is the governess in Carolyn’s home, the great house on the estate of Collinwood, and they are friends. Maggie notices the sacred book on a table and asks Carolyn what it is. Carolyn doesn’t know anything about it. Why the Todds would leave such a thing on a table in their shop, a placement that implies it is for sale, is not explained.
Maggie tries on a feather boa. Like the cradle, this prop was significant in the 1897 segment. In that part of the show, Nancy Barrett, who plays Carolyn, was introduced as a woman named Charity Trask. Charity’s body was eventually taken over by late Cockney showgirl/ mentalist Pansy Faye. She wore the boa to indicate that she was Pansy. We last saw Charity/ Pansy, boa and all, in #883, and heard her voice in #887, so when we see it in the shop regular viewers will have fresh memories of her. We may well hope Carolyn will put it on and start singing Pansy’s song. But Maggie is the only one who is interested in the boa, and she doesn’t seem possessed at all. She wants to buy it, but Megan comes in and prevents her doing even that. She declares she is going to be closing the shop early.
Maggie leans very heavily on Carolyn to join her for a drink at the local tavern, The Blue Whale. Even after she drags Carolyn there, Maggie keeps pressuring her to stay for another drink. This is not at all typical of Maggie. When we find out her reason, it turns out to be even less characteristic. A mysterious gray-haired man who has been lurking around Collinwood lately wants to sit with Carolyn. When he comes to the table, Maggie gets up and leaves Carolyn alone with him. She has a self-satisfied smirk on her face as she does so, not a look we have ever seen her give before.
The man introduces himself to Carolyn as Paul Stoddard, her father. Paul abandoned the family when Carolyn was an infant, in the process faking his own death and prompting Carolyn’s mother Liz to believe that she had killed him. That belief led Liz to confine herself in her home for nineteen years, terrified that she would be caught. So it is simply inexplicable that Maggie would think Carolyn would be happy about having this bomb dropped on her.
Paul’s introduction of himself to Carolyn is the first time he is identified in a scene, but it is not the first time viewers have been told who he is. His name appeared in the closing credits for #887 and #891, ruining the surprise that is supposed to give a punch to the ending of today’s episode.
Dark Shadows committed itself to supernatural stories in late 1966 and early 1967, when the chief villain was undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Since the usual laws of nature weren’t going to restrain Laura, they needed another set of rules that could predict her behavior sufficiently to create suspense. One of the things they settled on was that the barrier between past and present grows thin on the anniversaries of deadly events. So when well-meaning governess Vicki and the team she had assembled to fight Laura discovered that, in a previous iteration, she had taken a young son of hers to his fiery death “exactly one hundred years ago,” they knew that the crisis was at hand.
Anniversaries continued to have this effect in subsequent periods. So when in January 1969 recovering vampire Barnabas Collins wanted to take a day trip to the 1790s, he stood in a graveyard and shouted at a man who had died exactly 172 years previously to ask for a ride. It worked.
Barnabas was using a different form of mumbo-jumbo at the end of February, trying to contact the ghost that had made the great house of Collinwood uninhabitable, when he came unstuck in time and found himself in the year 1897.
In the middle of Barnabas’ long stay in 1897, the show decided to take its conceit that two events occurring on the same date in different years were mystically connected and show us both sides of the link. In #835, Barnabas was locked up in a cell with a secretary cabinet that he knew would be in the front parlor of his home, the Old House at Collinwood, in 1969. He wrote a letter to his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, and hid it in a secret compartment of the secretary. We cut to the front parlor in 1969, exactly 172 years later, where a series of events leads Julia to discover the letter, travel back in time, and precipitate Barnabas’ rescue.
By #839, the events of 1897 had played out differently enough from whatever happened the first time through that year that the ghosts found peace. As we cut back and forth between that year and 1969, we saw that the 1960s characters remembered the haunting and the disasters that accompanied it and were relieved that they were over.
That gives us the present as the result, not of any one series of events in the past, but of a composite of many separate and mutually incompatible pasts. This idea is the logical culmination of substituting anniversaries for natural laws. In the first part of Barnabas’ trip to 1897, he had not yet done enough to lay the ghosts to rest. So the haunting continued, because it was happening on the anniversaries of events that were much the same as those that took place originally. By the time the living people of 1897 who would become the ghosts of 1969 had changed enough that they were no longer doomed to haunt the house, the date was one that would fall almost ten months into the haunting. In #836, Julia had a conversation in which one of the ghosts tells her about events in 1897 that could not have happened in the original timeline without Barnabas’ intervention, and which do not happen in #838 after Julia herself travels to that year. So each anniversary creates another past that becomes another ingredient in the stew that makes up the present.
This conception of the relationship between past and present shows the difference between a set of fantastic tales like Dark Shadows and a science fiction story exploring more-or-less plausible consequences of open questions in science. The “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum mechanics posits that the cosmos is made up of countless parallel universes, and that everything that could ever have happened did happen in at least one of those universes. Since that is a defensible position within science, an author can incorporate as much fact and reality as s/he likes in a story based on it. But since the idea that one period of history is the result of a confluence of many conflicting pasts is not only not a live option in science, but does not really make any practical sense except as a metaphor, the logic that really matters is dream logic. As dreams seem perfectly convincing to us when the only connections that lead from one moment to another are random similarities in names or shapes, so all that matters in a fantastic tale is that there is a pattern the audience can follow, whether or not that pattern corresponds to anything in the world where we spend our waking hours.
Now Barnabas has returned to 1969, brought back by a mysterious cult that has brainwashed him and adopted him as its leader. The characters he knew before he left are delighted to see him again. Today, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard comes to the Old House and is overjoyed that the haunting is over and that she and her family have been able to return to the great house. She is grateful to Barnabas for undertaking his harrowing journey back in time.
Liz and Barnabas talk about Chris Jennings, a young man in whom Liz’ daughter Carolyn is interested. Barnabas gives it as his firm opinion that Carolyn should avoid Chris, and he urges Liz to encourage her to do this. Barnabas knows that Chris is a werewolf, and we saw last week that the cult that has co-opted him has plans for Carolyn which do not include her death as one of Chris’ victims, so this will not surprise returning viewers.
Chris himself is another example of the weird metaphysics the show has stumbled upon. When Barnabas left 1969 for 1897, Chris was in his wolfish form all the time, apparently never to become human again. We learned during the 1897 segment that his lycanthropy is a curse inherited from his forebear, Quentin Collins. The version of 1897 we saw was changed sufficiently from the original that Quentin avoided his own death and was for a time relieved of the effects of the werewolf curse, though at the end of the segment it looked like they might be on their way back. That he is now human part of the time but still subject to transformation suggests that the difference in Quentin’s experiences in the later part of the 1897 stories had some effect on him. It’s unclear whether Chris’ condition fluctuated every time the date marked the 72nd anniversary of something happening to Quentin that hadn’t happened when he was living in a Barnabas-free zone, but it wouldn’t contradict anything we’ve seen if it did.
The Time to Come
Barnabas brought one object back with him from the past, a wooden box. The box must be opened only at a certain time, by certain people, for the cult’s plan to take effect. Today, Barnabas receives a visit from the people. They are Megan and Philip Todd, owners of the new antique shop in the village of Collinsport. Carolyn sent them, thinking that Barnabas would likely have some things they could add to their inventory. He sees that Megan is wearing a necklace with a symbol representing intertwined snakes, which Barnabas calls a “Naga.” When Megan is unable to explain just how she came into possession of the necklace, he shows them the box, which is topped with an oval in which the same symbol is carved. They are both thrilled at the prospect of buying the old furniture he has in the upstairs rooms of his house, but Megan is particularly fascinated by the box.
Later, Philip and Megan are back in their shop. They are confident they can buy a great deal of furniture from Barnabas, but are also sure that they wouldn’t be able to afford the box, even if he were willing to part from it. This is a bit odd- we get a good look at the box, and it is absolutely nothing special. The actors manage to sell the scene, but it would be better if they had either invested in a showier prop or been more sparing about putting it on camera.
Barnabas comes to the shop and gives Megan and Philip the box as a present. After he goes, Megan is overwhelmed by an urge to open the box, which is locked. She is so consumed by this urge that she actually says “Let’s force it!” Since they had just minutes before been talking about it as if it were more expensive than anything they have for sale in their shop, this is a startling line. But when Philip opens the envelope Barnabas left to look at the list of furniture he is willing to sell them, he finds a key.
Philip is reluctant to open the box, having a strange feeling that if they do, nothing will ever be the same for them again. The other day it was Megan who had a strange feeling of impending doom. She wanted to sell the shop and flee Collinsport forever, lest they suffer an irretrievable disaster. That time it was Philip’s turn to urge her to set her misgivings aside. We’ve seen this kind of back and forth before. At the end of 1968, the great house of Collinwood was coming under the control of ghosts. Children Amy Jennings and David Collins kept trading the roles of possessed agent of the ghosts and unwilling sidekick. That alternation showed that the ghosts were not yet powerful enough to possess both children at once, and it faded as the haunting became more intense. It built suspense by suggesting that possible avenues of escape were gradually but inexorably closing.
As Philip and Megan begin to open the box, there is a whistling sound. They are unsettled, but decide they have to finish opening it anyway. They do, and we see their reaction to whatever is inside. Longtime viewers have seen similar reactions as cliffhangers many times; always before, they have indicated amazement that the container is empty.
New People
One of the less appealing villains of the 1897 segment was magically gifted artist/ surly criminal lowlife Charles Delaware Tate. Tate lived in a house that in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s was known as “the Evans Cottage,” home to drunken artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. The cottage burned down in #883, leading us to wonder if it would still be there when the show returned to 1969.
Sam died last year, and Maggie now lives at Collinwood, where she is David and Amy’s governess. Today she goes to the cottage to prepare it for some tenants to whom she will be renting it. Evidently it must have been rebuilt before the Evanses moved in.
The only movable property in the cottage is a portrait of Maggie’s mother which her father painted. That portrait also appeared in the cottage a few times when Tate was living there; that was just carelessness on the part of the production staff, but it is kind of reassuring to see it again.
A man who has been in a couple of episodes knocks on the door. He identified himself as a friend of Sam’s and is saddened to hear of his death. He enters and asks Maggie to do him a favor. He keeps refusing to give her his name. We haven’t heard his name at all; evidently his identity is supposed to be a mystery to us. Word of that apparently did not reach the department responsible for making up the credits; they’ve been billing actor Dennis Patrick as Paul Stoddard, whom regular viewers know as the long-missing husband of matriarch Liz and father of Carolyn. They do that again today.
This is the last time we will see the Evans Cottage. In 1966 and 1967, the set was a symbol of the village of Collinsport, and scenes there showed the consequences that the doings of the rich people in the big house on the hill had for the working class who live in its shadow. By the time Maggie moved into Collinwood, they had long since given up on those kinds of stories. Dark Shadows is sometimes called “Star Trek for agoraphobes”; as we go, less and less of the action takes place anywhere other than Collinwood, and eventually they won’t even let us outside.
Liz agreed to let Barnabas live in the Old House in #218; by #223, she was talking about it, not only as his home, but as if he owned it and its contents. For while they went back and forth on the question of Barnabas’ legal status regarding the property, but when, at the suggestion of Liz’ daughter Carolyn, he gives the Todds a list of its furnishings that he is prepared to sell to them, I think we can take it for granted that Liz no longer has any claim on it.
Yesterday, we spent a lot of time watching an unidentifiable man wandering around the estate of Collinwood. We only saw him from the back; he was wearing a dark coat and hat, and had silver-gray hair. Evidently we were supposed to expect his face would mean something to us when it was finally revealed.
At the end of yesterday’s episode, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman caught the prowler coming out of the Old House on the grounds of the estate, home of her friend, missing person Barnabas Collins. She did not recognize the man, and he refused to identify himself. We see him in today’s opening reprise. His face would not be familiar to her, but it is instantly recognizable to longtime viewers. It is that of actor Dennis Patrick, who from March to July 1967 played seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Jason blackmailed reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard to the point of marriage. When Liz finally stood up to Jason, his scheme collapsed. On his way out of town, Jason went to the Old House hoping to steal jewels from Barnabas. That attempt also failed, and Barnabas strangled Jason.
We spend most of the episode wondering how Jason managed to rise from the dead. Near the end, Liz’ daughter Carolyn runs into the prowler. She gets a good look at him and talks to him for a few minutes, but does not recognize him. Carolyn would certainly recognize Jason, whom she was ready to shoot if Liz had gone through with the wedding. So Patrick must be playing another character. He does not give Carolyn his name, but his strong emotional reaction when she gives hers tells us that he has some kind of connection to her. We are again supposed to leave the episode wondering who he might be.
Unfortunately, word of that did not get to the people who make up the closing credits. Patrick is billed today as “Paul Stoddard.” Paul is Carolyn’s long-missing father, Liz’ ex-husband, and a close friend and partner in crime of the late Jason McGuire. This is not the first time on Dark Shadows the closing credits have identified a character whose identity was supposed to keep us guessing. For example, at the end of #124 we are supposed to be in suspense as to which of a few people a mysterious woman is, but the closing credits identify her as “Laura Collins,” a name which blows the secret completely for attentive longtime viewers. A mysterious little girl turns up in #255 and for a few episodes we are supposed to be in the dark as to who she is. But at her first appearance the character was billed as “Sarah Collins.”
It’s interesting to cast Patrick as Paul. Jason’s scheme was based on Liz’ belief that she had killed Paul, when in fact Paul and Jason had worked together to fake his death and swindle her of some money. Since Paul and Jason committed the two halves of the same crime, they merge together in the disastrous effects they have had on Liz’ life. So they may as well look and sound exactly alike.
Waiting for Barnabas
Barnabas vanished from his basement some time ago while he was involved with some supernatural doings. Julia has been hanging around the house for over a month, waiting for him to rematerialize. She explains to Carolyn that because he disappeared from the basement, it is the only place where he can reappear. They go into the house and Julia almost immediately suggests they leave. She is sure he isn’t there, because she locked the basement door. Evidently Julia has spent all this time waiting to hear Barnabas banging on that door demanding to be let out.
Carolyn points out that Barnabas might be unconscious, and if he is he would not be banging on the door even if he has come back. Julia exclaims “I hadn’t even thought of that! He- he could be down there now!” At this, my wife, Mrs Acilius, laughed and said “He could have been down there for a month!” By profession, Julia is a mad scientist. She knows how to cure vampirism, bring Frankenstein’s monsters to life, rewrite people’s memories at will, and travel back in time, but she has her blind spots.
Be that as it may, Julia checks the basement and finds Barnabas is not there.
The Antique Shop
Carolyn takes Julia to an antique shop that has just opened in the village of Colllinsport. Carolyn called the shop “divine” yesterday, and is still thrilled about it today. I suppose it reminds her of home- like all the unoccupied spaces in the great house of Collinwood, it is crammed with a lot of miscellaneous junk.
Carolyn may have a soft spot for the place, but she hasn’t lost all capacity for judgment. The proprietors, a young couple named Philip and Megan Todd, have just unpacked a painting they bought that morning. Philip says that when it came up for auction he couldn’t resist it. Carolyn widens her eyes, tilts her head back, and says in an incredulous voice, “Hmm, your taste must be quite different from mine, Philip. I could have resisted that.”
The painting Philip couldn’t resist.
Philip mentions that the artist’s name is Charles Delaware Tate. At that, Julia perks up. She asks Philip if he is certain that it is an authentic Tate; he assures her that he is. He astonishes her by saying that it was painted only about twenty years ago. Julia says that Tate would have been in his 80s then. Seeing that the painting is about as good as anything Tate ever did, she says that he was still at the height of his powers despite his advanced age. She wonders if, having been in such good shape so recently, he could still be alive. Philip doesn’t know about that.
Julia asks for the price. When Philip says he will part with the painting for $300, Julia takes out her checkbook. Carolyn looks on, amazed to see her shell out so much money so quickly for a mediocre picture. When it is time to go, Julia asks her if she is ready. Still agape, Carolyn replies “Yes.. for practically anything!”
For eight months, from #701 at the beginning of March to #884 last week, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the year 1897. In the second half of that segment, Tate was one of the minor villains. He had made a bargain with evil sorcerer Count Petofi. Petofi made him a nationally famous painter whose works were very much in demand. Many of his paintings also had magical powers. The magical powers were the result of Petofi’s spell, but it was never made entirely clear whether Tate’s fame was the result of a talent Petofi gave him to paint well or if Petofi’s intervention was more direct and he simply bewitched people into admiring Tate’s paintings and wanting to buy them. Indeed, if we had to classify the works of Tate that we saw, the most secure categorization would be “Nothing Special.” They certainly do not stand comparison to the best of the portraits that the ABC Network’s Art Department prepared for the Collinwood sets. Carolyn’s reaction today clearly suggests that once Petofi’s influence receded, the paintings lost their charm.
Julia’s interest in Tate is not aesthetic. Julia traveled back in time for a couple of weeks in September. She knows that Tate’s portrait of Quentin Collins prevented Quentin from turning into a werewolf. The prospect that Tate might still be alive leads her to hope that her friend Chris Jennings, a great-grandson of Quentin’s, might also be cured of lycanthropy.
The audience is unlikely to find much ground for optimism in the thought of more Tate. As is usual for characters played by Roger Davis, Tate is hard to watch. He delivers most of his lines in a shout, and he amplifies his voice by clenching his rectal sphincter muscles. The result is what Pauline Kael used to call an “anal screech.” He also has what we might tactfully call a poor sense of personal space; indeed, two of the tags that most often appear together on posts on this blog are “Roger Davis” and “Abusive Behavior on Camera.” So I would just as soon Julia give up her search for Tate.
The Todds
Megan and Philip exult over Julia’s purchase. They are in the middle of talking about how it is a good sign for their new business, when Megan is suddenly seized with a fit of foreboding. She wants to close the shop early; Philip protests that they still have time to make a few more sales. Megan then says she has a premonition that if they stay in Collinsport something terrible will happen to them. She says she wants to sell the shop and move away. Philip tries to soothe her. He puts his head against hers and kisses her. She just looks straight on, her eyes full of dread.
Philip working his way to Megan’s neck while it dawns on her that they are now characters on Dark Shadows.
Megan is the third role Marie Wallace played on Dark Shadows. Her first two were Eve, the Fiancée of Frankenstein, and Crazy Jenny Collins, Quentin’s estranged and deranged wife. Miss Wallace had a lot of fun with those parts, but neither of them gave her much opportunity to interact meaningfully with her scene partners. Eve was unyieldingly nasty to everyone, whatever they might say or do, and Jenny was just one long mad scene. As Megan, she gets to listen to Philip and react to what he says. That ends when she ignores his kissing her neck, but while it lasts it’s good to see.
Philip is played by Christopher Bernau. Some fans say that Bernau and Miss Wallace lacked “chemistry,” but their last shot today shows how misguided that criticism is. The key to chemistry is for one character to initiate a kiss and the other to kiss back. Megan is supposed to be too preoccupied with her premonition to notice anything in her environment, even her beloved husband kissing her. If she had responded to him at all, the whole point of the scene would have been lost.
It is true that Bernau does not perfectly embody a romantic lead in Philip’s scenes with Megan. As a happy couple, Philip and Megan constantly make little jokes with each other. The jokes in the script aren’t very good, and Bernau tries to put some life into them by imitating Jack Benny. In the 1920s and 1930s, Benny’s persona struck people as a spoiled rich kid, and in later years he was so famous that it just meant Jack Benny. But by the 1960s, any man other than Jack Benny would send a very different message if he were to speak with that drawl and walk with that mincing gait. When the man in question is an antique dealer wearing a belted sweater that looks suspiciously like a dress, it does not seem especially likely that he will passionately in love with his wife.
I think Philip borrowed this from Maggie Evans…
Several times in his career Bernau proved he could be effective in love scenes with women, most famously as ladies’ man Alan Spaulding on The Guiding Light. I mentioned that role in a comment on Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day:
I was a kid when Bernau joined GUIDING LIGHT. My mother watched that show, and I had several times attempted to watch it with her, but it always defeated me after 5 or 10 minutes. It just seemed like a window into the deepest level of Hell, the frozen cavern where absolutely nothing happens. But Bernau caught my imagination. I could watch entire episodes if he was in them.
Years later, when I watched DARK SHADOWS on the Sci-Fi Channel, I realized what made Bernau so compelling on GUIDING LIGHT. He was doing a Jonathan Frid imitation. Within moments of first seeing Barnabas, I exclaimed “Alan Spaulding!” It was only years later that I learned Bernau had been on DARK SHADOWS.
Comment left 10 December 2020 by Acilius, on Danny Horn, “Episode 888: Little Shop,” 26 June 2016, Dark Shadows Every Day.
I’m very fond of John Gielgud’s story that from the time he first saw Claude Rains give a performance, his acting style consisted of imitating Claude Rains. Gielgud went on to say that this represented a great improvement over his previous style, which consisted of imitating Noël Coward. I doubt Bernau’s style ever depended entirely on either Jack Benny or Jonathan Frid, but he certainly learned a great deal by watching each of them.
No episode of Dark Shadows premiered 56 years ago today. That was Thanksgiving, and ABC was showing football at 4 PM.
At this point, Alexandra Moltke Isles had left the part of well-meaning governess Victoria Winters, marking the last step in the character’s long decline from her original position as the show’s chief protagonist. Vicki spent her childhood in a foundling home where she was left as a newborn with a note reading “Her name is Victoria. I cannot take care of her.” During Dark Shadows‘ first months, Vicki was on a quest to find out who her parents were. The show hinted pretty heavily that her mother was reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her father was someone other than Liz’ long-missing husband, the scoundrelly Paul Stoddard, but the whole thing was dropped without any real resolution long ago.
In yesterday’s episode, Frankenstein’s monster Adam was on his way to Vicki’s room, apparently meaning to kill her. We understand Adam’s violence too well to regard him as a very cold villain. Most of the harm he has done is the result of his not knowing his own strength, and the rest is the predictable consequence of the abominable education he has received from his creators, mad scientist Julia Hoffman and recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, and from suave warlock Nicholas Blair. To longtime viewers, Vicki has been important enough for long enough that we do not see any prospect that a character as sympathetic as he is will become her murderer. On the other hand, Nicholas has now left the show, and there is nowhere for Adam to go within any of the ongoing storylines. If he simply disappears, he will be another significant loose end.
In September 2023, I left a long comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day describing a fanfic idea that would at one stroke answer the questions of Vicki’s origin and of Adam’s fate. Below is a lightly edited version of that comment:
Here’s an idea I had today for a story that would save Vicki.
It would be a TV movie airing late in 1969. Start with a prologue set in Collinwood at that time. Adam returns, looking for Barnabas and Julia. He’s very well-spoken and accomplished now, but still socially awkward, still prone to fits of anger, and in need of help to get papers that he needs to establish a legal identity.
He finds that Barnabas and Julia are gone. He also happens upon some mumbo-jumbo that dislocates him in time and space.
It plops him down in NYC in 1945. With his facial scars, everyone assumes he’s a returning GI injured in the war. He meets a young woman, supporting herself working at a magazine about handheld machines, trying to establish independence from her wealthy family back in Maine. This woman, played by Alexandra Moltke Isles, is Elizabeth Collins.
Adam and Elizabeth slide into a love affair. She has another boyfriend, a dashing young naval officer named Paul Stoddard (Ed Nelson.)
Ed Nelson as the Paul Stoddard of 1945 Dennis Patrick as the Paul Stoddard of 1969
Elizabeth is frustrated with both Adam and Paul; Adam refuses to talk about his background, and while Paul says many words when asked about himself, he doesn’t really give significantly more information than Adam does. Paul is slick, charming, and familiar with all the most fashionable night spots, but he does show signs of a nasty side. Besides, he rooms with a disreputable young sailor named Jason McGuire (John Connell) who keeps turning up at the most disconcerting moments.
From #143, John Connell, suggesting the Jason McGuire of 1945Dennis Patrick as the Jason McGuire of 1967
For his part, Adam is sincere, passionate, and attentive, but given to quick flashes of anger. He’s just as quick to apologize and sometimes blubbers like a giant baby with remorse for his harsh words, but he’s so big and so strong that when he is carried away in his fits of anger Elizabeth can’t help but be afraid of him. Besides, he’s not a lot of fun on a Saturday night. He doesn’t have a nickel to his name, and his idea of an exciting weekend is an impromptu seminar on Freud’s TOTEM AND TABOO, followed by a couple of games of chess.
Elizabeth’s mother (Joan Bennett) comes to town. Mrs Collins is appalled by Adam’s scars, impatient with his refusal to discuss his background, and contemptuous of his obvious poverty. Paul’s effortless charm and sparkling wit, packaged in the naval dress uniform he makes sure he’s wearing when she first sees him, fit far more tidily into her vision of a son-in-law. Mrs Collins presses her daughter to spurn Adam and pursue Paul, and for a time Elizabeth tries to comply with her wishes.
Yet she cannot forget Adam. Paul realizes this, and sees his chance at an easy life slipping away. We see him in a dive in Greenwich Village telling Jason McGuire that Elizabeth and her inheritance are going to end up with the scar-faced scholar. He and McGuire review Adam’s weaknesses, and decide they can exploit Elizabeth’s concern about his temper. They trick her into believing that Adam is on the run from the law, having beaten his wife to death. They lead her to believe that it’s just a matter of time before his occasional verbal outbursts give way to physical abuse, and that when that happens it will be too late- he will kill her. Believing this, Elizabeth gives Paul another chance, but still cannot break things off with Adam.
Adam does not know what Paul and Jason have led Elizabeth to believe. He knows only that she has become distant from him, and that she is still seeing Paul. He becomes angry and shouts at Elizabeth. He reaches for an object; she believes it is a blunt instrument with which he will kill her. In a moment of panic, she grabs a gun she has been studying for an article the magazine has assigned her to write and shoots him. As he lies motionless on her floor, she discovers that he wasn’t reaching for a weapon at all- he was reaching for a love letter that he had written to her. She realizes that he was no threat to her, that she has shot him for no reason.
She flees to Paul and Jason’s apartment, telling them that she has killed Adam. Paul calms her and promises to take care of matters so that she will not be suspected of any crime. Paul and Jason go to her apartment and find it empty. There are bloodstains on the carpet where Adam fell, and a trail of bloodstains leading down the hallway out the front door. They follow the stains and find Adam nursing a serious, but clearly not fatal, wound. They lead Adam back to Elizabeth’s apartment. They draw on their naval training to remove the bullet, clean and dress the wound. After a conversation. Adam admits that there is no point in his pursuing Elizabeth, and he agrees to leave town. Paul gives Adam some money and promises to tell Elizabeth that he is all right and that he doesn’t hold a grudge. Adam shakes Paul’s hand and leaves.
Paul and Jason clean the bloodstains. They then return to their own apartment. On the way they exchange a look that begins as nervous, and ends with two broad grins. Elizabeth asks why they were away so long. They tell her that it takes quite a while to dispose of a corpse. She sobs. Paul holds her.
Paul and Elizabeth announce their engagement. A few weeks later, the doctor informs Elizabeth that she is pregnant. The child must be Adam’s. Paul is not interested in raising any child, and certainly not interested in splitting the estate with a child not even his own. He orders Elizabeth to give the baby up. She refuses. He points out that she wouldn’t be able to do much mothering if she were in prison for murder. She sobs. In the final scene, we see Elizabeth outside on a snowy day, holding a basket and writing a note. In voiceover, we hear the contents of the note: “Her name is Victoria. I cannot take care of her.”
When gallant gentleman Barnabas discovered that his wife Angelique was a wicked witch who had been casting spells to ruin the lives of everyone he knows, she forbade him to disclose this information. If he did, she would kill his true love, the gracious Josette.
Now, Angelique has turned Barnabas into a vampire. When he found out about this, he killed her. Sadly, that didn’t take. For the last few days Angelique’s disembodied head has been floating around foiling all of Barnabas’ attempts to contain the damage he has been doing.
Today, we open in the Collins family mausoleum. Barnabas’ coffin is hidden in a secret chamber inside the mausoleum. He and Josette are in the publicly-known outer chamber, where she found him yesterday. He pleads with her to leave him and forget she ever knew him, but will not tell her why. Angelique has made it obvious that she is already working to kill Josette, so obvious that Barnabas and his friend Ben were talking about it yesterday. So Barnabas has no reason to withhold any information from Josette, and every reason to tell all. But he continues to keep everything back that might persuade her to flee from him. This does fit with his pattern of behavior- half the reason they are in this situation is that Barnabas wouldn’t tell Josette that he and Angelique had had an affair long ago. But it is still frustrating.
Back in the great house of Collinwood, Josette runs into the two characters who have been keeping the show watchable for the last couple of weeks, fluttery heiress Millicent Collins (Nancy Barrett) and caddish naval officer Nathan Forbes (Joel Crothers.) After a series of delightfully played comedy scenes, Millicent and Nathan have become engaged. They break their happy news to Josette. She is so preoccupied with her encounter with Barnabas that she barely reacts.
Nathan leaves. In the drawing room, Josette tells Millicent that she saw Barnabas tonight. Millicent knows that, according to Barnabas’ parents, Barnabas has gone to England. She is therefore certain that Josette could not have seen Barnabas, and she patiently explains this impossibility to Josette. The difficulties Millicent knows about are nothing to what Josette knows- she saw Barnabas die.
In the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s, Nancy Barrett plays another heiress, Carolyn Collins Stoddard. In those same parts of the series, Joel Crothers plays hardworking young fisherman Joe. In 1966, Carolyn and Joe were dating each other for no reason they could discern, and the audience was afflicted with scene after scene of them out on dates staring at each other in boredom. Millicent and Nathan are as much fun to watch together as Carolyn and Joe were dull. They are pursuing objectives we can understand, and we can also be sure that their plans will not work out as they expect.
Nathan is clever, charming, and unscrupulous. He was uninterested in Millicent until he found out she was rich, then immediately began an assiduous pursuit of her hand and her inheritance. In addition to greed, he has also shown a keen eye for opportunities to bed the women on the household staff. When his naval career is threatened by the villains, he shows no sign of courage. Yet we have also seen him behave admirably, even heroically, in trying to help bewildered time-traveler Vicki. And when Barnabas was alive, Nathan was a trustworthy friend to him. So for all we know, by the time he gets his hands on Millicent’s money, this complex man might have fallen in love with her and made up his mind to be a good husband.
Millicent is not a “smart character” in an IQ-test sense, but her limitations translate into an accidental wisdom. Her ideas of life have been shaped by plays she has seen and novels she has read, leading her to think she is a character in a florid melodrama. But of course that is exactly what she is, and so her behavior is, if anything, more situationally appropriate than are the actions of the more superficially rational people around her. Certainly it is jarring when Josette starts telling Millicent about Barnabas, when she knows that Barnabas wants to keep his presence secret. Considering what will happen to Josette if she keeps approaching Barnabas, Millicent does quite the sensible thing when she insists on leaving the official story alone.
Nathan has gone to the local tavern. In the 1960s, this same set will be a tavern known as The Blue Whale. Joe will be a regular customer, and the man who will preside behind the bar is played by actor Bob O’Connell. In #319, a character pretending to be drunk called the bartender “Bob-a-roonie,” leading fans of the show to call the character “Bob Rooney,” a name never used in the series.
Now, in 1796, the tavern is called The Eagle. Bob O’Connell again plays the man who pours the drinks. His name is Mr Mooney. “Mooney” sounds enough like “Rooney” that I wonder if the “Bob Rooney” gag circulated among the production staff. Mr Mooney gets more lines today than Bob the bartender ever did, and his name is listed in the credits for the first time at the end of his 57th episode.
O’Connell did a lot of very good work in those first 56 appearances. He was especially good with facial expressions that showed he had overheard enough of a conversation to think he ought to be more aggressive about refusing to serve drinks to customers before they lose all sense, but not enough to have anything substantial to report to the police. I’m sorry to say that his delivery of dialogue today is not on that level. Partly that’s because he has to put on some kind of Anglo-Celtic accent that he is none too sure of. But that isn’t the only problem. He delivers his lines much too fast and too loud, and does not modulate his voice in response to anything his scene-mates do. He isn’t interacting with the others at all, just waiting for his cues and making sure the microphone picks up the words. His scene is a major letdown for Bob the bartender fans everywhere. O’Connell’s previous successes as a working guy who knows more than others assume he does leave me wishing they could have done another take of the scene with some fresh guidance from the director.
Fortunately, the same scene introduces one of the most magnificent characters in all of Dark Shadows. She walks in, tells Mr Mooney she’s with Nathan, and gives her name as Suki Forbes. That’s Forbes as in “Mrs Nathan Forbes.”
Nathan tries out a series of lies on Suki, each of which she bats away effortlessly. He offers to pay her to leave town; she lets him go collect his money, while she stays in the tavern and gets all the relevant information from Mr Mooney. Nathan has been away for about ten seconds by the time Suki finds out he plans to marry into the family that owns the town. She is quite pleased by the prospects this introduces.
Suki thinks of how much she might earn by pimping Nathan out. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Our hopes that Nathan would eventually make Millicent happy are thus reduced to a very low order of probability. Regular viewers are again reminded of Carolyn, in this case of Carolyn’s absentee father Paul Stoddard. Paul was a charming, dishonest, and cruel man who married Carolyn’s mother Elizabeth only for her money.
We haven’t seen Paul, and know very little about his background. What we do know is that he was not from the village of Collinsport, had no money of his own, and that his best friend was a merchant seaman named Jason McGuire. We got to know Jason quite well when he showed up and blackmailed Liz for a long dull stretch of the show. Poor men would have few opportunities to meet young women of Liz’ lofty station, and even fewer means of persuading them they were acceptable marriage partners. Since the marriage took place in 1945 or 1946, when a sizable fraction of American men were on active duty in the armed forces, and since Paul was connected to Jason and therefore to the sea, it would seem likely that Paul was a Navy officer. After all, an officer’s uniform can get a man admitted to any social circle, as Nathan illustrates. So the miserable marriage that Liz endured might have echoed a similarly ill-conceived match a collateral ancestor of hers made in the late 18th century.
Hi I am the Jane Draper who played Suki on Dark Shadows! Thought I’d be on it longer but got killed off by Barnabas. I worked on Broadway, film and this soap opera. Now, I play Bluegrass, always my passion, on guitar and upright bass. Born in Illinois, grew up mostly in Southern Indiana and moved to NYC in my teens.
thank you for your kind words.
Jane Draper, comment left 13 August 2020 on “Episode 420: The Stalking Dead,” Dark Shadows Every Day.
For sixteen weeks, starting with the introduction of seagoing con man Jason McGuire in #193 and ending today, Dark Shadows has subjected its viewers to a storyline about Jason blackmailing reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Thirteen times in those sixteen weeks, we saw iterations of the same dreary scene- Jason makes a demand of Liz, Liz resists, he threatens to expose her terrible secret, she capitulates.
Now, Liz has exposed her own terrible secret. She has told everyone that eighteen years ago, she killed her husband Paul Stoddard and Jason buried Stoddard in the basement of the great house of Collinwood. Jason denied that Stoddard’s body could be found there, and as we open Sheriff Patterson and Fake Shemp Burke Devlin are digging up the basement to see who is right.
Liz and her brother Roger are in the drawing room. He asks why she didn’t confide her terrible secret in him. She says that perhaps she was too proud of her role as his older sister and the family’s moral compass. He admits that, if had told him the secret, he probably would have used it to blackmail her himself. This startling admission tells us just how completely isolated Liz is.
It tells regular viewers more than that. When Dark Shadows began, Roger was a deep-dyed villain. He hasn’t been directly connected to an ongoing storyline since his estranged wife, Laura Murdoch Collins, vanished in #191, and in the months since has figured as an immature, ineffectual person, a bratty little brother dependent on Liz’ money and unable to help her against Jason. With this admission he harks back to his first incarnation, and makes us wonder if we will see another side of him. If he has the strength to admit his villainy, perhaps he has the strength to change.
Meanwhile, Burke and the sheriff have turned up a trunk in the floor of the basement. It is empty and clean. There is no sign that there ever was a body in it.
Viewers who have been with the show from the beginning will think of Laura. Laura had died in Phoenix, Arizona shortly before showing up in Collinsport. After the apparently alive Laura had been in Collinsport for some time, her corpse mysteriously vanished from the morgue back in Maricopa County. Upon inspection, the graves of several of her ancestors turned out to be empty and clean. The Laura arc swallowed up most of the non-paranormal story elements left over from Dark Shadows’ early days as a Gothic romance tinged with the suggestion of a noir crime drama, and the blackmail plot is meant to sweep the last of them away and get the show on track as a supernatural thriller/ horror story. So we might think that the empty trunk is a sign that there was something not of this world about Stoddard.
They retreat from that intriguing possibility, as yesterday they retreated from the evidence they had already given us that a ghost haunted the place of Stoddard’s supposed burial. Jason admits to Liz that he and Stoddard cooked up a scheme where Stoddard would pretend to be dead so that he and Jason could help themselves to a big chunk of her wealth, then go away to live the high life. Jason says that he saw Stoddard in Hong Kong a bit over ten years ago, and that so far as he knows he is still alive and well.
Liz doesn’t want to press charges against Jason- she simply wants him to go away. Roger demands that Jason be charged with blackmail. In front of the sheriff, Roger announces that he is outraged at the money Jason took from Liz, including “business money.” This might make us wonder about Liz’ own criminal exposure. In #242, Roger told Liz that the company’s accounts were out of balance. We knew it was because she was slipping money to Jason, and they made a big enough point of her meeting with the accountants and telling them lies so that they would fix the books that for a moment it seemed like they were getting ready for a story about her getting in trouble for falsifying business documents.
That was dropped right away, and it doesn’t seem likely that Liz will be charged for paying hush money to Jason. Not many people in the USA in 1967 had any understanding of the crime of obstruction of justice. It wasn’t until the Senate Committee investigating the Watergate affair broadcast its hearings live in 1973 that the average viewer of daytime television would learn that giving a person money to stay away from the police is a felony. Before then, even many trained lawyers, among them several of the Watergate defendants, did not grasp this. So we can be confident that such matters would not enter Soap Opera Law in the 1960s.
The blackmail arc was dredged up from Art Wallace’s original story bible for Dark Shadows, called Shadows on the Wall. The first time Wallace told the story was in a 1954 installment of an anthology TV series called The Web; that segment was titled “The House,” and he had to pad it a bit to fill out a 30 minute time slot. In 1957, Wallace stretched “The House” to even greater length, into an hour-long entry in another dramatic anthology, Goodyear Playhouse. Wallace left Dark Shadows in October 1966, but the series has been hanging from the old rope he sold Dan Curtis for four full months now. Jason will still be on the show for a couple more days, but we’ve finally seen the last of this drab tale.
Dark Shadows Commentary 