It’s Claus von Bulow…and it is her.
Yet another kid who ran home from school to be able to catch Shadows every day. The next day at school we’d rehash the lastest developments.
And yet another person who watched it as an adult, and couldn’t believe how slow and obvious the narrative momentum looks now.
Watched it every day as a kid. I was fascinated by the ambiguities of Barnabas Collins (in other words, I couldn’t figure out if he was the good guy or the bad guy).
Did they ever have an actual outdoor scene, with sunlight? Even when they were supposed to be outside, it looked like they were filming in somebody’s garage.
Remember the fad for “poison rings” it spawned? My sister and I each had one.
I loved me some Shadows when I was a kid, too. And, like Baldwin I was unsure of Barnabas’s status. I think that he was good in present day Collinsport, but bad in the past. Correct me if I’m wrong.
There were some genuine outdoor scenes in the two absolutely dreadful Dark Shadows movies. The TV show was done entirely on a soundstage.
I am fixing to explain this to all of you guys. It comes down to this: you have no idea what a rich world you inhabit. Surely a bit of compassion is in order?
My dad was in TV production in the 1960s, the era of “Dark Shadows”. Listening to his stories was enough to convince that me, no matter how bad things got, I was never, ever, ever going into that profession. No matter how much money it paid. No matter how much insider gossip you got to hear. No matter how many chances it gave you to meet busty, buxom pinup girls.
“Dark Shadows” was a product of a forgotten era in television, a time in which all soap operas were performed absolutely 100% live by actors who couldn’t get a decent gig. It was as much as a harrassed and overworked production crew could possibly do to fill half an hour of programming per day. Between the need for sixty pages of script a day (enough to kill strong writers), the lack of available rehearsal time, the low budgets for sets and special effects, the vagaries of available broadcast technology, the killer schedule, and the knowledge that every tick of the clock brought you closer to the moment when you’d be performing without a net in front of a potential audience of millions, it’s a wonder any of them survived what was surely a continuing recipe for nervous breakdown. The horror of a screwup in front of the entire housewife-and-teenager population of America! You think “Dark Shadows” is awful? Holy cow, you oughta take a look at some of the older eps of “General Hospital”.
Soaps weren’t considered high-class entertainment (interestingly, when it first got rolling, neither was classic Italian opera). The money and talent went into the prestige projects: the news (believe it or not), Playhouse 90, Hallmark Hall of Fame, the luxurious filmed evening series like “Perry Mason” and “Gunsmoke”. It was virtually impossible, in that era, to shoot a live-video scene outdoors–the cameras weren’t nearly sophisticated enough. So everything got done on a set, usually a fairly downscale one.
However, the only 60s-era soap still widely broadcast, as far as I know, is “Dark Shadows”, and it’s only on Sci-Fi because of the supernatural elements in the plot. Thus, you don’t get to see the show in context, and you don’t see how few soaps of that era were able to marshal the resources to put on a decent show in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles. My dad was particularly impressed with “Search for Tomorrow”; in fact, one of the nicest moments he said he ever saw in television depended on the fact that the show went out live. At one point, during the show broadcast the day John Glenn went into orbit, two of the main characters on “Search for Tomorrow”, Lisa and her husband Bob, were having an argument. During the scene, my dad said, Bob picked up the newspaper, glanced at the headline, then set it down and went to the window, where he gently pulled aside the curtain and looked up.
Now, of course, few soaps are broadcast live–in fact, I can’t think of any at all–and the luxury of time to get things right, plus the increased respect and funding for the shows, makes the productions enviably luxurious. In fact, when they want to brag, modern shows will do a live ep, but this is a rare occurrence–almost a ratings stunt.
Soap operas, though, have never really been about production values. A few years ago, I was watching an anniversary special for… I forget which one. But they talked to the actors, and one of them had some terrific insights. “First of all,” he said, "people will always hack the plots, and it is hard to take a heroine who’s been married seventeen times seriously. But that’s not what’s important: what’s important in a soap is emotion. That’s why they’ve never heard of birth control and have such a problem with alcohol: otherwise you wouldn’t have any mayhem to get upset about.
“Too,” he went on, “a soap opera is the only place in the world of popular entertainment where you can take as long to tell a story as it takes.”
So for all the limitations of the form (and they are readily apparent in the 60s-era recordings that have survived), that’s the luxury of a soap: you can pace a story glacially, and the audience will follow all the way down the line.
Being a product of the 60s, and having winced at my share of on-air flubs, I find live productions intensely uncomfortable. Although it’s a great show, I just can’t bring myself to watch “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?”–it just makes me too nervous.
I did see some 1960s episodes of Search for Tomorrow, used as shorts on MST3K—and you’re right, they really were Dark Shadows-quality.
Begging your pardon, Eve… but the soap they showed on MST3K was General Hospital.
They were doing those shows live?!? No wonder.
I spent some time during an unemployed summer watching Dark Shadows on the SciFi channel (not enough MST to watch!). It was just so bad, I couldn’t quit. So many of the actors were so strange-looking. The story was so stupid. All that stuff. It was great, esp. the day I was watching with my younger sister, and they brought in the covered birdcage. I said “It’s a disembodied heeeaaaad!” --and sure enough, it was a disembodied head! 
Oops. Search for General Hospital might have been a good one, though—“I thought it was a left at this light!”
Dark Shadows was not broadcast live. For its entire run it was shot on network standard 2-inch videotape for broadcast. That can be discerned by the fact that a character wearing a certain costume in one scene will be seen immediately in the next scene wearing an entirely different costume, with no off-screen time in which to change.
Episodes up to #295 were taped in black and white, and from then through ep. #1245 they were taped in color.
Citation here.
I remember rushing home every day from school to catch it, and I was only in 2nd grade when it went off the air. I was upset that I had to miss the very last episode because of a Brownies meeting (kids today, with their TiVo and VHS don’t know how good they have it). I didn’t realize how cheesy it was until much later.
I had a huge crush on that blonde Witch, Angelique.
My mom watched the show religiously when I was a kid. I watched it whenever she let me and loved it! As others have said… it’s harder to watch now. But ah… the memories.
I’ve been known to watch the reruns on SciFi.
I remember mostly about it being set in the 1840s-1860s, judging by the costumes. Kate Jackson of “Charlie’s Angels” and “Scarecrow and Mrs. King” fame was a governess, and sort of having an affair with her boss, Quintin Collins, (David Selby). And Quintin’s wife was a total shrew, and plotting with his wheelchair bound brother, Gabriel, who could walk and wouldn’t tell anyone, and HIS wife was having an affair with some guy named Jerome, who was really messed up.
And it turns out that Quintin had previously had an affair with Kate Jackson’s sister, who died in an accident years ago. (But he had the affair with her while she was alive). Her name was Joanna, I THINK. Or something. And she came back, and everyone thought she was really alive, but she was actually a ghost. And then Kate Jackson and Quintin ran away together. Or something like that.
I LOVED this show when I was a kid. Does anyone else remember:
-
The staircase to the parallel universe?
-
The Hand of Count Petofi?
-
"I wanna dance for you,
Gonna dance the night away,
Under the hoop-de-doo,
And ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay . . . " ? -
The way the murderous mesmerist Aristide would twist his wavy dagger before his victim’s eyes and whisper, “You will do my bidding . . . or else you will marry . . . THE DANCING MAIDENNNNN!” (His pet name for his wavy dagger)
-
How whenever ANYBODY died on that show, they were back the next week with a different name and a new wig?
Yes, I knew it was cheesy and cheaply produced, even at the tender age of eleven. But anyone could see that the actors were having the time of their lives. And out in TV Land, so were we.
They’re not dreams are they? I really do go for those long walks at night don’t I ?
Somehow, I managed to walk from my apartment to the ocean and back, barefoot, in a single night.
Good God! Then I really did dive into the sea and find that cavern! The cavern that contains the Hand of Count Pitoffe!
It’s all so clear now! This world, this world is the delusion! It isn’t 2003 at all. It’s only 1860. And I’m not even in Philadelphia, am I? I’m at Collinwood! All of this, All of THIS, is some kind of madness.
Oh God!
[sub]Oh God in Heaven[/sub]
Eve must have discovered that I was having an affair with Guinastasia and placed me into one of her stories!
No! No! I will NOT despair! There must be some escape from her enchanted pen! Theda may not have found it. Jean may not have found it. But, I will!
I will escape this prison of madness and return to Collinwood. I will march through the gate in triumph! Then, as the sun sets, I shall change from the man you love into the beast you love. I will lift us into the sky on my leathern wings and make love to you one final time. Then, oh then, I shall gaze into your beautiful, dark, eyes as I drop you to your death.
I will escape this prison of words!
I will regain the sky!
And, and, I shall have my vengeance!
DocCathode has a fly on his face.
Theres a Collinwood school in Cleveland.
No record of any “Barnabus”, though…