Out Of The Shadows Kathryn Leigh Scott Recalls her days as the reincarnated love of the guilt ridden daytime vamp Barnabas Collins ~ By Terry and Tiffany DuFoe ~ I was once told I misspent my youth. Perhaps this was true. I was 10 years old on June 27th, 1966 when the cult soap Dark Shadows made television history with its debut and later boldly introduced ghosts, witches and vampires to a soap opera genre that once consisted of TV adulterers and shirtless hunks. I am part of a generation that ditched school shamelessly watching the ABC TV pioneer that involved the ever suffering Collins family and their foreboding home Collinwood. In a time before video recorders, my mother dedicated herself to writing down every gothic detail hoping she could persuade me to attend classes. It seldom worked as my GED certificate attest to today. As I meet other Dark Shadows fans I find I am not alone. We gladly misspent our youth as we ignored our establishment dictated lives to hide in the Dark Shadows of our television fantasies. In a sort of surreal TV reality Collinwood actually became our home. The Dan Curtis series now haunts a new generation with 1,225 episodes in B&W and color on the Sci-Fi channel while two MGM films, House and Night Of Dark Shadows appears on TCM. The series celebrates its 36th anniversary this year with the release of a 4-disc box set from MPI in a 40-episode collection featuring cast interviews. This marks the first time a soap opera has appeared on DVD & the first soap to spawn two theatrical films. A NBC revival series was short lived but luckily for original fans like me MPI offers their Dark Shadows Special Edition , a DVD crypt of rarities including movie trailers, a B&W commercial for the 60's Dark Shadows board game, a PBS spot where Jonathan Frid hawks t-shirts for donations, a tour of east coast shooting locations with Nancy Barrett (Carolyn Stoddard) and a entire episode in Spanish. The digital restoration was a painstaking task for MPI Video. The show aired live with 5 days a week from 1966 to 1971. While most TV episodes were preserved on tape other episodes remain only in grainy kinescopes & some were lost entirely. It is rumored a lost episode recreation will air near the end of the Sic-FI run with only still images, some remaining audio & newly recorded narration by cast member Lara Parker who played the evil witch, Angelique. Kathryn Leigh Scott played the daughter of painter Sam Evans & the undying love of vampire Barnabas Collins. She was an original cast member & recreated her roles for House Of Dark Shadows. Ironically she now lives in the secluded area where Charles Manson ordered followers to murder The Fearless Vampire Killers star Sharon Tate. I approached her castle like residence for our at home interview only to have her comment she swore she knew me from somewhere before. I thought that perhaps she might have in a parallel time as one Dark Shadows story line suggested. In the upscale neighborhood haunted with tragedy Kathryn Leigh Scott runs a home business releasing books with her Dark Shadows memories. The actress pointed out that she lives across the street from the home of George "Superman" Reeves where he committed suicide in the 60's. She made reference to how the portrayal of Barnabas Collins haunted actor Jonathan Frid & why he, like George Reeves fought type casting as he too shuns the very show that made him a star. She speaks about playing both a ghost & a vampire, her views on her characters Maggie Evans & Josette Dupres, the yearly fan gathering at the Dark Shadows Festival, being a former Playboy Bunny and her current incarnation as a writer and a publisher. Terry: Why don't we start by you telling me about your publishing company? Kathryn: I started the company 17 years ago really because Joel Crothers and Grayson Hall both died and a magazine editor asked me if I would come up with a memorial and I just started writing. So many memories... they poured out me and I had all these photographs. Some of them weren't even printed, they were just negatives and contact sheets and it was when I started writing that article that it occurred to me that I had enough for a book. So I figured maybe the audience wants to see this stuff but can't find it, so that was that. Terry: When you were on the show, did you keep any kind of a diary? Kathryn: I did. One of my companies' Dark Shadows books is really all of my diary from that. Terry: Now you were talking about forming your company? Kathryn: Yeah I started it... I guess I started it actually in 1985, that's when I got that assignment to write that article. And I really didn't talk to anybody when I first started writing because I had a lot of notes from that time and my parents had kept a trunk for me back in Minnesota, and it was up in the attic. It had been there for fifteen years because I had been living in Paris and then London. When I got to California my mother decided that I should have that trunk shipped to me. It was full of all of these scripts and all of this memorabilia from Dark Shadows and so I used that. Terry: So you pretty much kept everything? Kathryn: Mmmhmmm. You DO! It was my first job, you know, and everything was new and fresh. So anyway, I really wrote from that and then from memory. And then Lara Parker came by one day and I showed her what I was doing and then she started remembering a few things and I showed her what I had already written, and she added a few more things and then I slowly started to talk to people. But it's really a memory book. It's not a book that I really went out and did a lot of research things on, which I think the fans got a little... let's see, how should I say it? Well, when they felt a little more comfortable with me, they started reprimanding me for telling stories that weren't necessarily true. But again, you always remember the good things and you tend to... it's not just remembering the good things, but you tend to kind of gloss over things, and pretty them up and so on. So it wasn't until Jim Pierson came into all our lives with Dark Shadows... he works with Dan Curtis and knows everything there is to know about everything Dark Shadows related and he went through what I was writing on the second book and corrected a lot of those things. You can't remember nothing! You're acting. You get a script and you learn your lines and you're living within the moment, and to remember when parallel time started and who was on that particular show that you did. In some cases in that book I was talking about three different shows, but they were all part of the same, you know, memory, so that's really how I started with that book. Terry: Do you find that fans expect you to remember everything? Do they come up to and say 'do you remember with this happened and that happened?' Kathryn: Oh I think we've done a good job at educating them now. They're beginning to realize that no, we don't remember those things. There's the famous story... I think it was Sam Hall and Gordon Russell who were working with Dan Curtis one day and they couldn't remember the name of this character that they were wanting to bring back and Dan said, "We must have some old scripts around here." and Dan said, "No, just go down and ask the fans." There were fans at the front door of the studio and so Gordon Russell went down to the front door and he said, "Does anybody remember...?" and they knew the answer and they went right back up to the studio. Terry: That's great. Kathryn: So the fans remember because they're watching it in sequence and they're watching it in a different way then we were living through it. Terry: Now you went to the New York School of Dramatic Arts, right? Kathryn: American Academy of Dramatic Arts... mmmhmmm. Terry: And Dark Shadows came about when you were actually enrolled in school? Kathryn: I had just graduated and I was doing a play called "The Contracts", which was the first American play. It was like a restoration comedy and it was the first year of the Waterford Festival, in Waterford, Connecticut. And I had been cast by the son of the woman who ran the school, Francis Fuller, she was an actress, and her son was Peter Miner. The father was Worthington Miner... oh, excuse me, it was Worthington Miner who was directing the play and casting because he knew me from the school and spoke about me to Peter Miner who was working with Dan Curtis. And I came into to audition for Maggie Evans and I got the job and then it was Peter Miner going to his father Worthington Miner and saying, "You have to recast the role because we're going to use her in the series." So it was a real coincidence. Terry: Now you had said you came in and auditioned for Maggie Evans. I also heard that you auditioned for Victoria Winters? Kathryn: All of us were. It happens often when they're casting like that. They'll bring in a lot of actresses for a key role but as time went on I think it became evident that they were leaning towards the role of Maggie Evans for me just as they were leaning towards Carolyn Stoddard for Nancy Barrett. Terry: Why do you think they envisioned you as Maggie more than the others? Kathryn: Oh, well I don't think the envisioning went very far considering that I ended up playing the governess after about a year when Alexandra left the show. It was just a quality in the reading that occurred to Dan Curtis that I might be better suited for the role of Maggie and yet it wasn't to his mind ideal casting because he had me wear a wig in the beginning and it was, the role, was a little bit more of a stretch for me. Terry: Yeah, we had noticed on the reruns of Dark Shadows now that you're hair had changed! Kathryn: Yeah, I started out wearing a wig because they wanted me to look very contemporary 1966, and you know, that little kind of Goldie Hawn kind of hair do and they didn't want me to look too much like Alexandra who was playing Victoria. And then one day Dan was at the studio very early and he saw me rehearsing with my own hair which was long and dark and he said, "Why in the hell are you wearing a wig?" Anyways, the director really fought him on it and said, "You can't do that. The audience with get confused." Well within months, we were all playing different roles. I was the first one to play Josette. It was the first time that an actor within the same story line was playing different characters. And then they worried that the audience would get confused and the audience never got confused, I think, until they started doing that Leviathan story. Terry: I remember that. Kathryn: I don't. I wasn't around for that. We were shooting a movie then. Terry: I was there watching everyday. In fact it was because of Dark Shadows, that I had to go back and get a GED because I flunked out of high school because I was like home, watching the show everyday. Kathryn: Oh no! Terry: In using the same actors for different characters, is this basically something that he did because of budget, or he thought it would be a great thing to do, or why was this done? Kathryn: Uh, you know, it's probably a combination of those factors because we got paid very little. We were on the sliding scale. Literally the more shows we did per week, the less we got paid per episode. Terry: Really? Kathryn: Mmmhmm. Let's just say that, for the first episode, and this is NOT the case, let's say for the first episode you got paid $150. If you did two episodes, you got paid $150 plus $100. If you did three episodes, you got paid $150 plus $100 plus $75. So the more shows... I've never heard of a sliding scale going down, but that's the way it worked. Terry: Was everyone union? Kathryn: Oh yes. And we were guaranteed a certain number of episodes a week and I think that I was guaranteed three a week. Sometimes if the storyline was going your way, you were working five days a week, but if the storyline didn't get to you, then maybe they were only using you one time, which meant that at the end of that 13 week cycle, they owed you a lot of shows. So it always occurred to Dan to say, "Well I haven't been using Clarice Blackburn very much. Maybe I'll make her into this character." Terry: Did you ever witness any, without necessarily using names, any actor or actress who went to Dan and said, "Hey, you're not using me enough?" Kathryn: Oh yes! I mean we all did that! Mmmhmm. And I mean, if you saw something that was coming up like you were in an accident or something, you immediately wondered if you were being killed off. Of course. It was our lively hood. You immediately asked and you'd wonder if you were going to get a new boyfriend or you know... what was going to happen to your character. Terry: Now at the time that you were doing Dark Shadows, you were also working at the Playboy Club? Kathryn: Only for a month. I had been working as a Playboy Bunny when the New York club opened and so I worked there for a good two years while I was going to school at the American Academy and then I started auditioning for Dark Shadows just about the time that I was... a little bit before I graduated, and then I did Summer Stock and then I went out for a Universal screen test, all kinds of things, and I kept leaving the Playboy Club whenever I went off to do all these other jobs. And then I got Dark Shadows and my mother said, when I called to tell her I got the job, she said, "Well you never know how long these jobs can last, so you better not give up the bunny job completely." So for a month I was working as a bunny. Terry: And I understand somebody in the club recognized you one time? Kathryn: Yeah, on a Saturday night two couples came in. I was working the party room and both of the women recognized me. And one of them said, "You look so familiar... Aren't you Maggie Evans? What are you working as a Playboy bunny for?" I was a waitress in the Collinwood Diner! I started laughing and of course I realized then that it wasn't going to work. The show was becoming a success already and it was time to... because that was just a bread and butter job, you know? It's like Bruce Willis worked as a bartender and oh I don't know how many actors that I know worked as taxi cab drivers and all of the actresses were working as Kelly girls and temp secretaries. Terry: You didn't have any shyness or apprehension about putting on the Playboy costume? Kathryn: Oh none! No! Susan Sullivan talks about all of this. Of course Susan was on the mini-series "Rich Man Poor Man", and she talks about this. And P.J. Ward, I just saw her on Sunday. She's an opera singer. All of us were bunnies together... Lauren Hutton! And we were actresses, so it was the idea of putting on a costume. We were young and you know, there's always that feeling of "am I pretty enough?" Terry: Do you think Maggie Evans would've ever worked at the Playboy Club? Kathryn: (Laughs.) Without a doubt! Without a doubt! I mean, think of her character. Oh she... she would've jumped at being a Playboy bunny faster than I did! Terry: You think so? Kathryn: Oh yeah. Terry: Because I always got the impression that Maggie was rather shy. Kathryn: Really? Terry: Yeah. Kathryn: Oh, well if you think about her in the beginning, sort of. Oh, I think that she was vulnerable and I think that she was very protective and I think that Dan casting me that way probably saw something in my manner that he wanted in my character. In other words, something that was revealed in, you know, the baggage that you bring as and actress over and above what's on the page for the character. Terry: Now from your experience with the Playboy Club you wrote "The Bunny Years". Kathryn: Yeah. Terry: Can you tell us about that book? And I understand that's it's been made into an A&E special. Kathryn: Yeah. Terry: And I hear there's a rumor that it might be a movie? Kathryn: Yeah, all of those are true. First of all, I'm surprised that I would've been the one to have written that book. I mean there are a lot of Playboy bunnies around and why, after a 25 year history? I was there when the clubs had been opened for only three years. They've been closed now since 1985. 17 years and nobody wrote a book about it? I was amazed. They wrote about Playboy Clubs and there was a funny little coffee table book and somebody else wrote kind of an expose. You know, a silly kind of little paperback book, but it's such a fascinating subject, why wouldn't somebody else think? Playboy Clubs were opened 25 years. They started essentially when people were still in that kind of 50s mode. Playboy Clubs were there through the early staples of the women's movement, and flower power, and Vietnam, and sex drugs and rock n' roll. Why didn't somebody write about the changes in our society and that kind of Playboy history? It's fascinating to me! And I started again with my own experiences and then I started interviewing women, and I interviewed over 300. The book took several years, because it wasn't a linear story. It was... I started with the idea at ground zero with the very first bunny ever hired in Chicago and then her story led to the next one and the next one and the next one, and then I found the very last ones hired in the last three clubs in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. So that became it. Terry: When you auditioned for Dark Shadows did you tell them that you were working at the Playboy Club? Kathryn: No. Nope. No, no. No actor would ever do that. Terry: Really? Do you think that would've hindered your possibilities? Kathryn: Yeah. Anymore than I think that I would've mentioned that I was, you know, a waitress at Jo Allen's or something. Or I doubt very much that Bruce Willis would've mentioned that he was a bartender. It's because as an actor you go in presenting yourself as close to that character as possible that you're auditioning for. You don't want to say you're a Playboy bunny because they're going start envisioning you in that little satin costume, instead of in a waitressing uniform, so no. Terry: Dark Shadows now, was filmed in New York. Exactly where was it filmed? Was it at a TV Studio? Kathryn: Well, it was a studio that was converted for us. It was a little two story... what was it before? It was a small brick building. It had two floors. Upstairs we had the offices, the dressing rooms, the make-up room and hairstyling, and then the rehearsal room was the largest of the rooms. Terry: So you folks had the whole building? Kathryn: We had the whole building. And then there was an elevator that ran down the stairs. The studio... you know, the studio was not any bigger than this house. Terry: Really? Kathryn: Yeah. As a matter of fact, this house is bigger than that studio. So you can imagine Sy Tomashoff trying to get those sets, Hollywood sets and everything. I mean, this is a two story living room, so this is the kind of space they had to work with. Terry: And when you did the show, they called it live on tape. You did it from beginning to end and didn't stop? Kathryn: Beginning to end with the commercials and the costume changes. Everything! Terry: You may not like to hear this, but one of the things I get a kick out of is the occasional mistake. Do you have a lot of people talk about those? Kathryn: Oh, but I think that's everyone's favorite part of the show! Terry: I love it! Kathryn: Well, because you never see them any other place! Terry: Yeah. Kathryn: I mean you don't even see them in the old Playhouse 90. I mean, obviously it's full of mistakes but you don't see the kinds of things that would happen to us. I mean, it happened on a daily basis. I think the blooper tape is probably the most popular of all of the videos, don't you think? Terry: I think so. What is some of your favorite bloopers that have happened? Mistakes or planned? Kathryn: Oh... hmmm. God, I can't even think of... Well first of all, there were the things that we did to each other, the pranks. So you'd open a drawer and you'd find a note in there that made you giggle or you know, when I was in bed a lot, somebody short sheeted me! I think it might have been Don Briscoe so... So you were doing an entire scene with your legs curled up! So there were a lot of things like that... Terry: So there were a lot of pranks that went on? Kathryn: A LOT of pranks, right. Oh, let's see. I think there was a time when I was wearing a cape and I knocked over a styrofoam grave stone. And I think... oh, there was... I remember, and I didn't write about this in the book, but I remember as Maggie Evans, being in the cottage by the sea, you know or whatever the Evans house was, and Joe had come over to visit and we were talking about sails on a ship and I remember picking up a pencil and starting to write, and of course the led snapped! It's like Summer Stock. You're writing as though there's led in that pencil! (Laughs) And then instead of it being down like this, you hold it like this so the camera can't see that there's nothing coming out. Oh, and there's another one! Haven't you seen this one? It's where I'm in the Evans cottage and Roger Davis comes to visit and I open the door for him. He walks in, he slams the door, and the window falls! Haven't you seen that one? Terry: I think we did see that one, yeah! (Laughs) That's fantastic. Kathryn: No, but these things happened all the time. And dear Louis of course died not that long ago, but I tell a story about him in the book that he had forgotten about. Everybody had forgotten about it! I told that story and at every Dark Shadows festival for the last 15 years he's been telling that story, about going upstairs before the end of the show and taking off his wardrobe. And he was in his dressing room in his, you know, in his underwear. He was in his socks and shorts and a t-shirt and all of a sudden we all remembered... we were downstairs and we realized that he had gone upstairs forgetting he had one more scene! So we all ran upstairs to get him during the commercial break and I'll never forget seeing him flying down the stairs and Jim putting a smoking jacket on him. And you see him like this in front of the mantle and the they were filming very close because he was in his underwear with a smoking jacket on! (Laughs) Terry: Which would've been totally against the character because Roger Collins was so refined! (Laughs) Kathryn: It was very funny! Terry: What kind of a man was he in real life? Kathryn: He was very arch, very funny. I think he would've loved to have been a musical comedy star. He loved to sing. He was very, very theatrical, warm hearted, man! And I think that with that manner that he had... he loved for people to think that he was, you know, the Louisiana southern gentleman. He loved to play that New Orleans... you know, he was just a dear dear man. He was great fun. All of us over the years have become even closer. We were close then! We always, you know, partied together. After the show or after rehearsal, we'd have a drink together. Some of us would go out to dinner together. We were very very close then. A tight knit group! And some of us are even closer now. Terry: That's fantastic. Kathryn: Yeah. And, I mean, I see Lara all the time! I saw Lara on Sunday and her husband, and David Selby and his wife, and my husband, we all went to see, what's his name?... Jim Storm who's doing a play. And so, three or four weeks ago we all went to see the play together and had dinner together, you know, so there we were, the five of us together! Terry: Before you were on the show, did you watch soap operas and were you a fan? Kathryn: No. Terry: You wouldn't call yourself a fan of soap operas? Kathryn: No. I haven't watched one since either. I couldn't tell you one from another. Terry: How many people had apprehensions that this thing was going to work because this was totally new ground! Nobody had ever done anything like this in soap operas before. Kathryn: No, well it started off as a gothic romance, you know in the great tradition of "Wuthering Heights" and I think that when they started infusing some of the macabre and supernatural elements only about a month into the show, it was fun, but we were also apprehensive, particularly the director of the script because I think that he saw the direction in which Dan was going. Most of us were not really aware of it. And it was fun. I'm not from the east coast, but I loved the idea of it being this sort of barren, forsaken corner of Maine, with waves crashing against the rocky shore, where life is quirky, fierce, and tousled. I mean, I just loved it! That whole idea of the seafaring condition and so on. And then the sea captain came back dripping sea weed as a ghost, and the little girl appeared, an then the day that Jonathan Frid appeared as a vampire, I think that some of us started getting very nervous that we were going into a world of paranormal. Terry: And all of a sudden you were going to be Elsa Lanchester in "The Bride of Frankenstein"! Kathryn: And THAT wasn't popular then. And all of us, the young actors, you know, were worried about the direction it was going in. Terry: Did anyone ever say anything to Dan Curtis about this, along the lines of "Are you crazy?" Kathryn: Oh, Lela did. Lela was really Dan's mentor so she when she saw things going in this direction she talked to him about it and said, "Oh, alright. If that's the way you want to go!" And I think the network was apprehensive. Nothing like this had ever been done before with special effects, you know? I mean, special effects such as they were. It was a bat dangling from fishing line, you know. (Laughs) Terry: (Laughs) Really? I never noticed! (Jokingly) Kathryn: (Laughs) Yeah, and they'd stand there and you know, and dry ice and all that kind of stuff. And I think we were closed to being cancelled. The ratings were really not wonderful and we didn't know that! We didn't know that the show was on the skids! We had no idea. We were young actors, and you know, this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life! And I think Dan went in because his daughters love ghost stories, and their dad does too, and he went in and pitched the story for the vampire and he figured, what the heck. If I fail, so what? It was going to go out anyway. Terry: So he probably felt, 'we're going to do or die', it's the last day of the show? Kathryn: That's when he brought on the vampire. And Dan had ambitions that went beyond the show, so he... I think he was off doing "Jekyll and Hyde" with Polance, Jack Polance when Jonathan was cast. Dan had a real affinity for those...that kind of literature. I mean he really loved those kinds of stories. So here he was off doing "Jekyll and Hyde" and bringing a vampire onto Dark Shadows. Terry: What about you? Are you a horror fan? Kathryn: No. Nah. I'm not a horror fan at all. I don't think I've ever watched a horror film. Terry: Does it scare you? Kathryn: Ummm, no I don't really think it scares me. Even though my husband was channel flipping and we happen to come across an old movie like that... have I ever watched? I've never watched a horror film! I can't think of one I've watched all the way through. Terry: Really? Kathryn: It's just not my cup of tea. Terry: I take it you've watched "House of Dark Shadows"? Kathryn: I did but I have never seen "Night of Dark Shadows". But I watched "House of Dark Shadows" and I had a very strange reaction to it! Terry: I hear there's reason for it, but "House of Dark Shadows" was better. Kathryn: Oh no! (Laughs) It's interesting because I've never really had the opportunity to see it. Oh, I think Jim probably gave me a video, but I never put it in. I went to the opening night of "House of Dark Shadows" and even though I knew about the... they call it a blood bladder that was used so that when Jonathan is struck with the arrow blood squirts out, and they actually are back there pumping so that the blood goes pouring from the wound; and even though I had watched this happen and had been amazed at how that technique works and fascinated, and you know, did the acting and everything, when I actually saw the movie, I had to turn away! Terry: Really? Kathryn: Mmmhmm. Yeah, you see, you watch things, and it's so subjective, and you get so emotional! Terry: And they showed so much more in the movie than on TV. Kathryn: And I had to turn around. I had to look away. Terry: What about lying in a coffin? How did you feel about that? Kathryn: I hated that! I didn't like that at all. I think that was more claustrophobia. But, anyway, you're going to be disappointed now! You probably thought I was a horror fan... (Chuckles) Terry: No actually it's quite common! Kathryn: Really? Terry: Yeah, I've interviewed a lot of people that have been in these type of movies and it's very common! Kathryn: Yeah. Had I been in a western... I watch westerns! Terry: About the fangs... now there was a time when you were a vampire too. Vampire Josette right? Kathryn: Yes, and everybody kept been saying, "once bitten always a vampire". They used to be able to see this far enough ahead in a script and they'd send you out to the dentist to get the, you know, the fang bridge made. Lara has hers... Terry: Really? Kathryn: Or maybe she auctioned it off. I can't remember. She might have done that for charity, I don't recall, but anyway, she had the proper teeth. And when I became a vampire, it wasn't until the day before that they had realized what had happened. So David Scalzo came to the rescue. He had false fingernails, little ones. So when I was on camera and Jonathan went into bite me, if you remember right, I turned my head like this because he can only bite from one angle... here are the tricks. You can't talk with those things in so I had to be the one on camera talking and so on while he got the fangs in and bared his teeth. Then he came into camera and went into my neck, and pushed me off camera. Then Vinnie was down on his hands and knees and he'd just dried off my eye teeth. He had eyelash glue stuck to the false fingernails and he tapped them into place, and pulled my lip down over it. That was it! Terry: So it's like they have now where it was just the points? Kathryn: It was just the points. Yeah. It was just little fingernails. Terry: So you said that you never talked with them in, but I swore I had seen Jonathan talk with them in and as I remember it, he was the only one that did it well. Kathryn: Well, he had formal practice, and he also had the proper teeth. But he used to complain all the time. He'd say, "I've got to be off camera when I put those in." In other words, you saw him do a dialogue scene, and then he would put them in, and then he might talk. But you never saw him do a long dialogue scene with the fangs in. I don't think. Did you? Terry: Not a real long scene. No. There's always a spot when he was off camera. Kathryn: Yeah. It's very difficult. Terry: Especially, you're very lucky that Dark Shadows isn't out today because they're coming out with these double top and bottom fang sets, as opposed to the fang points from back then. What's Jonathan like? Kathryn: Jonathan was amazing. Very, very interesting. I love him. First of all, he's a comedian. He considers himself to be a stage actor, a Shakespearian actor, classically trained. He comes from a very wealthy family. He is very down to earth and he doesn't go in for a lot of... how can I say it. He's so down to earth and real, yet he too is theatrical. And he doesn't put up with a lot of nonsense. He used to come to the festivals all the time, but after a while he just started thinking, "WHY does everyone want my autograph?!?" Terry: Really? Kathryn: He didn't want to play the same character all the time. He created a character that is so vulnerable, that vampire character is a classic. It's wonderful and yet he despised his creation. He really didn't want to play Barnabus anymore and Dan Curtis in the end relented and let him play Bramwell but how often is it?!? I mean it's like... here's an analogy. Chester Gould who wrote Sherlock Holmes came to despise Sherlock Holmes because everyone loved him for that but he wanted to write real adventure. But what lives on in everybody's memory? Sherlock Holmes. Soon you suddenly start despising your creature because it's made you so popular, and you can't throw it off. By the way, you probably don't know this but they guy who played Superman lived across the street. George Reeves. Terry: Really? Kathryn: He committed suicide right over there. A perfect example. He hated the creature he created because he had a starring role in "From Here to Eternity" and he went to the premiere and when he came on camera everyone started laughing and said, "There's Superman"! Terry: I heard a rumor that Jonathan was really upset about the blooper reel. Did you hear anything about that? Kathryn: Oh, he's been upset about a lot of things. I think he feels that he was taken advantage of and he considers himself a very serious actor. So to have this reel going around with all of these mistakes that shouldn't have happened in the first place, that he wanted to redo the shows so that they could be fixed, and that couldn't happen. Then to take all of these mistakes and put them up there and make a lot of money off of them. Terry: I don't blame him. So how did everyone feel about the announcement of doing "House of Dark Shadows"? Kathryn: Well we were all excited because none of us had ever done a feature before except for Joan Bennett and Grayson Hall and Thayer David. For the rest of us it was a brand new experience, even for Jonathan Frid. So we were all very excited about it and it took a couple of days for us to realize that it didn't have to be all in one take. It's a different kind of acting from that that we had done. Terry: Why didn't you just keep going? (Laughs) Kathryn: (Laughs) Yeah. So we were excited. That's right. We were very excited and in my case very naive. Very naive. By the time the second film was done Lara Parker, and of course Nance Barrett had one our film. The actors in that film, they were... now they knew about movies, but for us, we were much more innocent. Much more rough around the edges. Terry: Why weren't you in the second film? Kathryn: Because I had left the show by then. I was living in Europe. I left in November of 1970 and I think that film, that was filmed in the summer of '71? Terry: Yeah, 1971. Kathryn: I was living in France and I moved to get married in '71, and I moved to London in '72 or '73 and started working there until '79 on a television series with CBS with Brian Denahue. Terry: Why did you leave the show, Dark Shadows? Kathryn: Because my contract was up and I worked for about six months without a contract because I wanted to do the feature and because Dan didn't want me to leave. And I said that I would agree to stay for a little bit. And I was ready to go. I had on the show for four years. I was on the very first day! Terry: Yeah you sure were. What was it like working with Joan Bennett? Kathryn: Oh it was wonderful. I really loved her and she became a close girlfriend. I mean there was a vast difference in our ages. I mean she had daughters a lot older than me and then one daughter younger so there was a big age difference but as I got older, Joan and I became very close friends. The last few years of her life I used to always go and visit her. I just loved her. Terry: Coming from classic Hollywood, "Little Women" and all of that, how did she feel about being in a gothic soap opera? Kathryn: Well, she loved it. I mean, if you think about it, she did... not "Rear Window" but... "The Woman in the Window" and she did some of those film noir. Some of those real, you know, simmery, chilling kinds of melodramas so I don't think that this was different from her in terms of what we were doing. It was just the idea of learning that many words in one night and speaking them all at once. I mean, I later did a film with Lana Turner and I don't know if you want to get into this, but this is interesting... Terry: Sure. Kathryn: Well we were... there was a scene and we were shooting this late at night, this scene. And Terri Garr and I were in it and anyway, we were at a banquet dining table and she's (Turner's) sitting in this chair with arms at the head of the table and we were sort of her ingénues. We were witches in training. I remember she would barely know her lines and the director would call action and she would just fill up and she would say eight or nine words and stop! And then she would recompose herself and find out what the next lines were and then do those. It was insane! She would do a sentence at a time. And then at one time she was supposed to push back her chair but she realized that she was wearing a sleeveless dress so she sat like this (sits up in her chair) and she did not want her arms to flex because you would she, you know, flesh giggle. So she was like this and she would just stand up and it looked like she was pushing her chair back but there was a prop man lying of the floor behind her chair and he would pull it back so she wasn't pushing it. And you're working with somebody like this! I later met Artie Shaw who was married to Lana Turner and he said, "These gals are amazing!" He was married to Eva Gardner as well. He said, "These gals are amazing. They know just which button to go down as far as. They know just where the light hits." They are amazing and Joan came out of that school! Terry: In going to the school that you went to and experiencing being on sets with people like Lana Turner, you really get a lot from that too. Kathryn: A tremendous amount! I learned so much from Lana Turner. I learned so much from Joan Bennett. Joan said, "You move your face around too much. You don't need to move your face around so much." The tricks that I learned from Lana Turner... I've worked with Jimmy Stewart and the tricks that I learned form him... it's just amazing! Terry: I have to ask you this. The latest reincarnation of Dark Shadows was on NBC. The character or the actress that portrayed Maggie Evans... they kind of portrayed her as being, shall I say, rather loose. She was pretty wild. What do you think about that? Kathryn: You know, I never saw the show. Terry: She had an affair with Roger. Kathryn: Oh! Terry: Yeah. It had her in bed like every other episode. It was pretty adult. Kathryn: You know, I never saw an episode. Terry: Really? Kathryn: No. I was out of the country when it was running. In fact I was in England when the Six Day War broke out and that was the premiere episode. I think it was on only a few times. I never saw it and really I have no interest in it so I don't know. I mean, it's appropriate. An updating of this waitress who works in a road side diner to be... yeah. (Laughs) Terry: That's the nice way of saying it. (Laughs) Kathryn: Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Terry: Was any of the original cast approached to be in the new series? Kathryn: No. I think Lara auditioned for the role of... Grayson Hall's role... Dr. whatever it was.... Terry: Hoffman. Kathryn: Hoffman and it was played by Barbara Steele. Terry: Would you have liked to have been in the new show? Kathryn: I think I would've, but it would've been interesting to figure out what kind of a role. I always thought that it would be really funny as an inside joke, to make... and I've mentioned this to Dan Curtis, I said, "What could be better than having Angelique and Maggie running a bed and breakfast together and just having the two always at each other's throats?" You know, just like in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" I mean I think that would be hysterically funny. Terry: I heard a rumor they were trying to get Dark Shadows on the air again. Fox was looking at it and now said no. Is that right? Kathryn: That's right. Yes. That's all I know. Terry: Too bad. Kathryn: That's all I know, but yes that is correct. Terry: Do you think it will ever be on again in some reincarnation? Kathryn: Don't know. I don't think with us anymore because now that golden time has passed. If Dan had done this ten years ago and he could've had Louis Edmonds, and Jonathan, and Dennis Patrick, and even Joan Bennett come on. You know, she could've done that 12 years ago. Terry: What was it like working with Grayson Hall? Kathryn: Oh it was wonderful. She was a real... mercurial would describe her. Acid comic. Sharp. Funny. She loved calamity and chaos so whenever you were working with her you knew you were in for a wild ride. Whenever you worked with Johnny Carlen you knew you were in for a wild ride. Johnny Carlen was the first actor on the show. Terry: He was? Kathryn: Yes, without any question, Johnny Carlen was the best actor. And we had a lot of good people on there too. Mitch Ryan, great actor. But there were always a people that were really special. You know, really did a good job. I think Nancy Barrett was one of the better actors on the show and Joel Cruethers was really special. Terry: Any romance between you and Joel? Kathryn: In real life?!? Terry: In real life? Kathryn: Oh no. Oh no. No. Terry: You two looked so good together. You really did. Kathryn: Oh no, no. We went out a few times. We went out, you know, for dinner and drinks and to celebrate. We even spent a weekend staying as house guests with friends up in Scarsdale but no romance. Terry: Was he pretty much like his TV character? Easy going? Kathryn: No. Terry: Really? Kathryn: Joel wasn't easy going, no. You know, he was a child actor, and he was very very smart. I think he graduated magna cume ladi from Harvard. He was a very smart man and he had a real sense of... he was very interested in literature and lots of different things. I wouldn't call him easy going though, no. Lovely man! I just adored him! He was like my big brother. Terry: What about Nancy? Nancy Barrett? Kathryn: Nancy? Again, very mercurial. More like Grayson Hall in temperament. Very agitated and high-strung. High-strung is the word! High-strung. Terry: Are there any stories that you can tell where somebody lost their temper on the set, without having someone hate you? Kathryn: No... I mean, I say this in the book. I think there was only one time when there was a moment where people were... I remember one time. One time out of three years. I was in the Blue Whale and I was supposed to be on a date with Joe and the wardrobe people had forgotten to get me a dress to wear. And I'm five foot seven and Nancy's about five foot three but I was very thin and so was she. They took one of Nancy's dresses and they took the hem out because on camera you couldn't tell that it wasn't hemmed and they pressed it out so that it was smooth. Well, they forget to tell Nancy that I was wearing that dress and it happened to be one of her favorites and she hadn't worn it yet. And there I was. She saw me during dress rehearsal in the Blue Whale, getting up to dance with Joe wearing that dress. She was livid! Not at me, but at the fact that that had happened. But can you imagine going four years without having any kind of strife among the actresses or any kind of bad feelings among the actors? Terry: So what did you say to each other afterwards? How did you smooth things over? Kathryn: Oh, I just said, if I remember right, to Lance, one of the designers, "Why don't I just wear one of my old dresses and I can pretend that Maggie just came straight from work or something?" In the end, I did end up wearing that dress and it was just Nancy was very high-strung that day. Terry: You made some of your own costumes for Maggie, is that right? Kathryn: A couple of times. I made a raincoat once and there was a dress. Terry: Was that by choice? Kathryn: Oh yes, because I LOVED designing. It was sort of a hobby. Terry: Now you were in "Harvey" with Jimmy Stewart, correct? Kathryn: I was in "Harvey" with Jimmy Stewart in the West End. Terry: So you did a lot of TV shows too? "Space 1999" and others? Kathryn: I did a lot of work when I was living in England but really there's no way I can say that anything else was the high point in my career that working with Jimmy Stewart was. I mean, every night in the last act I got to put my arms around him and say "Mr. Dowd, you're wonderful!" And I just loved him. Terry: I had a chance to meet him. He was a great guy. Kathryn: And we were very close. We had a very close relationship. W had lunch at Wednesday and Saturday and we would always sit in the very same spot, same table, and order the same meal. Then on Wednesdays I'd pay and on Saturdays he paid. Yeah, it was wonderful. And all these people came to visit him of course so I met all these people from his films. Terry: You have to be a fan of old Hollywood with some of the books you've put out. Kathryn: And it was just a wonderful treat, because here are all of these people coming up, and he was hard of hearing, but he could always read my lips. Terry: Jimmy? Kathryn: Mmmhmm. Terry: Oh wow, I didn't know that. Kathryn: Yeah, extremely deaf. Terry: Really? Kathryn: And he would mouth words to me on stage, but no one knew that he was deaf. Terry: Did his deafness occur as a result of him being in the war? Kathryn: Actually yeah. It was a war injury, and he was extremely uncomfortable about it so a couple of times on stage when things weren't going well, something would happen and he'd get disoriented, and he'd look at my lips and I could get us back on track. Terry: Son of a gun! I didn't know that. Kathryn: Yes, very hard of hearing. Terry: And you were in "The Great Gatsby"? Kathryn: Yes. Terry: Yeah I interviewed Bruce Dern. Kathryn: Oh yeah? Terry: Yeah. I don't know what he was like back then but he was a card when I interviewed him. (Laughs) So what was that like? Kathryn: Oh, it was fun! I mean, to work with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow... Terry: That's a major movie there. That's a big movie. Kathryn: Yeah, that was real nice. Terry: And you worked with Dan again in "Turn of the Screw"? Kathryn: Yeah with Lynn Redgrave. Again we worked in this old manor house up in England. See, those are the kinds of things... I love that sort of thing. Even though that's a horror film, to some extent, "Turn of the Screw" is, I love those. It's just great literature. Terry: Even though "House of Dark Shadows" definitely had blood and effects, do you think that horror is better when it's left to the imagination like in Hitchcock films, or do you think it's better to see all the blood and gore? Kathryn: I don't think that there's any question about the answer! Terry: Especially since you don't like horror right? Kathryn: (Laughs) No. I mean isn't it much more fascinating to let your imagination go? Otherwise you're simply... it's like the car chase movies. You're assaulted by all of this happening but one car chase beautifully done that lasts for a few minutes, and that car chase was fabulous. It becomes sort of this... you know, it's breath taking! But if you're watching two and a half hours of that kind of stuff going on, then it kind of loses it's impact. Terry: Was there any reason that you did basically night time type soap operas, rather than day time? You didn't do any more day time soaps did you? Kathryn: No. I got suckered into doing an episode or two of one day time show and I made it very clear that I didn't want to do it. I don't like day time. I think that the scripting is very indulgent, not that the actors aren't wonderful. It's just not something that I... I just don't want to go and say those words every day. To me, it's all about teeth and hair and it just doesn't appeal. Terry: Do you remember much about doing the "Hammer House of Horror"? Kathryn: Yes, a good friend directed it, or a man who has since become a good friend. I think that's it... what do you remember about it? Terry: Well, the episode was titled "Children of the Full Moon". Kathryn: Did you seen the show? Terry: Actually, I have it on tape. I've seen a few episodes but not all of them. Kathryn: Yeah? Well once again we were working in this old manor house up in Northern England. It was said to be haunted. I think it was a taken over girl's school. It was just a wonderful location and an atmosphere when half the time you're screaming and running down corridors and being chased, and you know, I love that stuff! Terry: Now Dark Shadows was filmed in a studio, but when you did the films, it was done more on location with a real mansion correct? Kathryn: That's right. It was shot at Lyndhurst, up in Territown, NY. Well, you can read about it in one of my books. That was really fun. That was great. And my favorite scene in that movie was the scene in the stable with Willie. Johnny Carlen and I did that in one long excerpt. Terry: Do you think it helped your acting being in an actual mansion instead of on a set? Kathryn: Always. Absolutely! Always! Terry: Did you get to stay in the mansion while you were filming? Kathryn: No. Terry: Oh, that's too bad. Kathryn: No. First of all, we filmed in three different houses and the Lyndhurst estate is now a museum. It was then and it was consumed in preservation. Another location was derelict... really derelict when we got there, and Jim Pierson could tell you the names of the other locations and stuff. Terry: Now the original exteriors for the series, those were in the east coast area as well? Kathryn: Oh yeah. Again... no that was... I actually went to that location and wrote about it. Again you can read about that in one of my books. Terry: What was your very favorite memory of doing Dark Shadows, and that's envisioning a lot of memories here. Kathryn: Oh that's a hard one... Terry: A very hard one. Kathryn: If I had to chose a time period, that was really fun, that whole romantic period when I was the bride of the vampire. That was really wonderful because of the costumes and working with Jonathan because it was sooooo romantic and I loved that. Wow, that's a tough question! I don't know. I really do have a lot of memories! Terry: Do you have anything left over from the show other than scripts? Do you have Josette's music box? Kathryn: No I don't have that. Terry: Oh that's too bad. Kathryn: I've got the scar that Dick Smith made for me. I've still got that. Terry: Yeah he's an excellent make-up artist. Kathryn: Oh yeah. He's wonderful and he wrote something for one of the books that I published but I still have the scar and I... I wonder where that stuff is? Let me see if I can find it. (Leaves momentarily and comes back with a box of memorabilia.) Terry: I love the poster for "House of Dark Shadows". I used to have one but it got burned up in a fire. Kathryn: Oh yeah? (Looking through box.) Here's the cast and credits list for "House of Dark Shadows". Here's the scar. Terry: Oh neat! Kathryn: It's decomposing now. Oh dear, I shouldn't... (puts scar up to neck). Terry: There you go! Kathryn: Yeah that was the real... that was the one I wore in the film. Terry: It's nice that you've kept a few things. A lot of people don't keep hardly anything. Now if I was in this biz I'd keep everything! Kathryn: And then one day, I don't know if you know about this but, one day I was... this is Jonathan's hair. He was getting a hair cut one day... (Laughs) Terry: (Laughs) Kathryn: And I picked this up and I said, "You know, someday this will be really valuable." But yeah, that's his hair. That really IS his hair! Terry: Let me guess, he thought you were crazy right? Kathryn: Oh sure. (Laughs) And then, this was the very first work schedule. The very very first one. And I worked one... two days the first week. One the second week. One the third. And two days the fourth week. Terry: What time did you start in the morning? Pretty early? Kathryn: 8 o'clock was the first rehearsal. And Nancy Barrett was on almost every day. She did four the first week, four the second, three the third. Joan Bennett, she had it in her contact for more than three a week. Alexandra worked three and four shows. Alexandra worked all five days the first week. Yeah, that's the first work schedule. Oh, here's script number one. This is script number one. This is June 6th, 1966 and I hadn't been cast yet so they printed me in. Anyways, that was my first script. I can't remember what I've got in here... Oh and here are the movie scripts. And I kept all of my notes and I kept a daily diary when I was doing the movie so that's the one of the basis of one my books. Terry: Do they pretty much tell you how you should be as far as conforming to you character or do they leave that up to you? Kathryn: Pretty much. Terry: Well it's really great that you're rather proud of Dark Shadows. Kathryn: Oh I am. I think if I hadn't written that first book, I think all of us would've just kind of... Somehow the books and the videos kept us all together and kept us kind of contemporary. It's not just us looking back, it's that we're still doing things and staying together and making new memories. It's not as though we're just thinking back on the old show. Terry: What was David Henesey like as a child? Kathryn: He was wonderful! He was the same age and had the same energy as other boys. So it was like, you couldn't go wrong with him. Yeah, we really loved him. He was terrific. Terry: So he wasn't the studio brat? Kathryn: And I think it's already been six or seven years since I've seen him... Terry: He's in South America right? Kathryn: He is. Columbia, yeah, he is. Terry: Was he your favorite kid from the show or would you say that you loved them all? Kathryn: Oh David was special. Well, actually all of the kids were fabulous. They were all wonderful, wonderful kids, but David was special because he was one of the original players. He was there that first day. There's a real feeling among all of us that were there that first day, that first year. We really did become family. Terry: What about Sharon that played Sarah Collins on the show? Whatever happened to her? Is she still an actress? Kathryn: Sharon, no she's not an actress anymore. I think she's a nurse. I think she's a nurse or maybe she's in real estate now, but I've seen her within the last year. Terry: Really? Kathryn: Yeah. Terry: Does everyone go to the conventions then? (www.darkshadowsfestival.com) Kathryn: Yeah, they all go to the festivals. Terry: The festival this year is going to be in Anaheim right? And what's the dates again? Kathryn: Yeah. The date is the 26 and 27... or 27 and 28 or whatever it is of June. Terry: So as far as everybody else, the ones that are still in acting will be there? Kathryn: They'll be there! Terry: Too bad Jonathan won't be there... Kathryn: No, Jonathan doesn't... no. He's retired. Terry: He's about 76 now right? Kathryn: Probably. I think he and Louis were about the same age so probably 76 or 77 which isn't all that old in the scheme of things. Terry: No it's not. Not to me. Kathryn: But no, it's not that old. It's just that he's retired and he's living a different kind of life. Terry: What did your mom think of you doing all these gory types of films? Kathryn: Oh I think they were all amused. -END-