Sam Hall's "Dark Shadows" postmortem, 1971

One of the great things about used books are the occasional prizes you find stashed between their pages.

Above is a copy of the famous essay written by Sam Hall — head writer for DARK SHADOWS during its final years — and published six months after the show aired its final episode. I found photocopies of this article in the pages of a DARK SHADOWS fanzine purchased off Ebay a few years ago, which was terrific luck. In the essay, Hall outlines where the series might have gone had it not been cancelled. Granted, there were other writers on the show to contend with (as well as producer Dan Curtis and the demands of its cast) but it makes for interesting reading.

Below is a transcript of the article.

From left, Grayson Hall, Sam Hall and Jonathan Frid.

In Case You're Curious ...
Here's What Really Happened to Barnabas & Co.
By Sam Hall
TV Guide,October 9, 1971

When Dark Shadows recently went off the air, the audience was left with all of the troubled characters — and many questions as to their fate. We had certain long-range plans for most of them — but what the characters would do with the rest of their lives can only be fantasy. However, after three years of living with them, I feel I know moments of their future.

Elizabeth Collins Stoddard remained the matriarch of Collinwood. After the sudden death of her brother Roger, she was determined to hold the Collins' family empire together until Roger's son David was old enough to take over and she did with the help of an elegant, very bright man from Boston to help her and with him she finally found some personal happiness.

Roger Collins, just before this death, discovered the secret that his cousin Barnabas was a vampire, but he told no one, and vowed to end Barnabas's unhappy existence. Armed with a stake and a hammer, he discovered Barnabas's coffin during the daytime, but Angelique appeared and killed Roger. She forced Willie Loomis to carry Roger's body to the woods, where it was found. Death was attributed to a heart attack.

Shortly after the funeral, Mrs. Johnson was cleaning out Roger's room. She swore later that a cold hand had touched her. At first everyone felt she was simply hysterical. But one night, Carolyn saw Roger's ghost standing in the great hall. The ghost pointed a spectral finger at the portrait of Barnabas Collins. When Carolyn implored the spirit to speak, it disappeared.

Carolyn, with the aid of T. Eliot Stokes and Julia Hoffman, attempted a seance to find out why Roger's spirit could not rest. But the seance was unsuccessful. It is known that on certain stormy nights Roger's ghost can be seen coming down the stairs, staring at the portrait of the man who caused his death.

Carolyn Stoddard found herself more and more interested in the world of the occult. She knew that with the death of her husband Jeb Hawkes one part of her life was finished and she was determined to understand the unknown forces which had taken him from her. She began studying with T. Eliot Stokes and then went to a large university which had a department of psychic research. While there she discovered that she herself was the reincarnation of Leticia Faye, a woman who had lived at Collinwood during the 19th century.

Working with various mediums she became a psychic-research investigator. She published many books on the supernatural and established a foundation to examine the existing evidence of the world beyond. She continued to regard Collinwood as her home and established a mother-daughter relationship with Amy Jennings which contributed greatly to the stability of that confused and very scared young child.

Years later Carolyn re-met Adam who had loved her so deeply. He had become a successful and sophisticated man, and he wanted to marry her. But she knew she could not go back in time. They parted warm friends.

As time went on Quentin Collins found living at Collinwood more and more difficult. He was unable to forget his love for Daphne, though both she and Gerard were finally at peace. And he was afraid to love again — afraid that his own secret would be discovered. For, as long as Charles Delaware Tate's portrait existed, Quentin would not age. And he well knew that if he destroyed the picture, he would suffer the awful curse of the werewolf.

Finally, he left the town of Collinsport to roam the world — Athens, Alexandria, India ... always hunting some solution for his existence. And with each country, he became more and more withdrawn. He became more aware that he could never become close to another human being.

Often he was tempted to return to Collinwood, destroy the portrait and kill himself before the full moon could cause him to change into the wolf man. But some slight hope stopped him from doing that. For, at the beginning of his travels, he had heard rumors that there existed a man — a man with a wooden hand and miraculous powers. A man who had transcended time — a Count Petofi. And so Quentin kept on, looking for the Count, knowing that if he could find him again perhaps the Count could take pity on him and help him find peace at last.

Maggie Evans, who left Collinwood with Phillip [sic] returned a year later a divorced woman. She moved into her father's cottage and began working at Wyndcliff, the private sanitarium. There she remet her former fiancee, Joe Haskell. With her help, Joe managed to regain his sanity. He left the sanitarium with no memory of Angelique and the circumstances which had caused him to lose his mind. Joe and Maggie married. He returned to the Collins' fishing fleet. They lived happily in Collinsport.

But Chris Jennings and Sabrina Stuart did not have Maggie and Joe's luck. For they found they could not run from the curse that afflicted him. Though they had a few days of happiness when they left Collinsport they were both aware that time was their enemy. For soon the moon would be full and Chris would become the werewolf again. They constructed a cell to lock him in. But when he became the wolf man, he broke out of it and killed Sabrina. Her brother found her body that same night. The following morning, Chris returned to their home. When he discovered what he had done, he committed suicide.

Barnabas was deeply affected by Chris's death. He and Julia Hoffman had tried desperately to help Chris. Barnabas identified with him very much. He began to feel that it was only a matter of time until he too would become a victim of his curse. When he learned from Angelique that Roger had discovered his secret, his depression deepened. Again, Barnabas felt that he had brought new tragedy to those he loved at Collinwood. He knew that his vampirism would be discovered.

Julia and Willie Loomis decided they must get Barnabas to leave Collinsport. They were both willing to sacrifice their lives and travel with him. He finally agreed to go, but just before they were to start, Barnabas became very ill. Julia was astonished. She knew that Barnabas could not, because of his vampirism, have human ailments. Yet the mysterious fever so ravaged him that Julia feared for his very existence.

She suddenly realized that there could be only one explanation for Barnabas's illness. Adam. She remembered the mysterious link which began to exist when Barnabas helped bring Adam to life. At the time Adam disappeared from Collinwood, they knew that if he died, Barnabas would, too. Julia knew she must find Adam, wherever he was. Adam must have the same fever. He had to be cured if Barnabas were to be saved.

Enlisting the aid of T. Eliot Stokes, she did find Adam — in the Far East. She managed to cure him, but in the course of the treatment, she contracted the illness herself. She was near death when Barnabas — well now — came to her. He realized how he loved her, and promised her that if she lived, they would marry.

They were married in Singapore. Barnabas felt they must never return to Collinsport. Angelique must not find them — for she would never allow Julia to live. So they stayed on. Julia began working with an Asian doctor and experimented with a new treatment which she was positive would take away the curse of Barnabas's vampirism. They began the treatments. They were successful. Barnabas Collins at last could walk in the light of day — walk with the woman he loved, but walk with an ever present fear — a fear that Angelique would find them, and destroy the only happiness he had had in his life.

No audience will see these stories playing out. But for those for whom the characters were real, these are merely signposts pointing the direction the characters might have gone.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 5

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 469

Julia and Lang square off when she learns that he may not only have the cure for Barnabas, but his loyalty, as well. Julia: Grayson Hall. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Jeff, Julia, and Vicki open the coffin in the secret room after Jeff reveals that he somehow knew the latch was there. The coffin is empty. In the hospital, Barnabas has excruciating blood pangs, and Lang explains that he may have a permanent cure. Later, Julia visits Lang, who brags that he can care for Barnabas far better than she. As she leaves, Julia passes Jeff Clark. Lang is furious that he is being associated with Clark. Jeff explains that he saw Julia at Eagle Hill. Lang says the bodies there are far too old for his purposes. It’s clear that Jeff is being blackmailed to work for him.

With more than a week of revolutionary plot advancement under the show’s belt, the staff now settles back into a standard pace. In an interview with Violet Welles, I read that she, Sam Hall, and Gordon Russell would plot out the show months in advance, finally getting down to week by week, episode by episode, and scene by scene. The process was surprisingly meticulous. I think the formula breaks down a bit like this:

10% Last scene of the prior episode.
30% Covering prior plot points.
10% Review and advance secondary plot.
30% Revelation of one new plot point in prime storyline.
10% Foreshadowing future plot point.
5% Debate about prior decision or confession.
5% Major new decision or confession.

In this case, we spend a lot of time in the mausoleum as Vicki and Jeff sort of remember segments of 1795. The major new ground we cover is that Jeff is going to graveyards for Dr. Lang… and that the bodies in Eagle Hill are too old for the job. Hint hint. The discoveries, of course, are that the coffin is empty inside the secret room and that Lang may be able to permanently prevent Barnabas from having any relapses.

But is that really a revelation? No. Lang never said that Barnabas is permanently cured. This is the trick that Dark Shadows does. It doesn’t reliably deliver new information. Instead, it reiterates old information with slightly more context. The characters sometimes act like it’s the first time they’ve heard things, but in the case of Barnabas and his blood pangs, he has no reason to be surprised. Barnabas may have “seen” the recent episodes, but not all viewers have. And for more seasoned viewers, the show still entertains by covering old ground in new enough circumstances that it feels like the first time. Usually.

The hot scene in this one is the conversation that Julia has with Lang. This may be Julia’s real turning point. Up to this moment, Barnabas has been a thorn in her side that she’s niggled about to their mutual masochism. She’s poisoned him. Blackmailed him. Lang seems to sense this. He revels in pointing out the legitimate truth that he can care for Barnabas better than Julia. After all, he cured him in less than a day. It feels like two pimps arguing over an, um, employee. They both pretend to have his best interests at heart. They both pretend not to be engaged in vicious combat. One pretends not to be weaker. One pretends not to be gloating over it.

Julia’s loved Barnabas, but not exactly lost him. He was close enough for her to bully, torture, and be tortured by. He was a problem, yes, but he was all hers. Seeing her contemplate losing him to someone who can pull off what she only claims she MIGHT be able to do? Not only that, but someone who offers none of the minuses of romantic jealousy? She’s suddenly behind an eight ball the size of Collinwood. If she gets out from it, her relationship with Barnabas will never be the same. She’ll have to tap into her humanity, not her guile. They might even wind up equals.

On this day in 2063, Dr. Zephram Cochrane and the town of Bozeman, Montana will welcome the Vulcan surveyor T’Plana-Hath on what will be appreciated as First Contact Day. The T’Plana-Hath

This episode hit the airwaves April 10, 1968.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: NOVEMBER 3

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1967: Episode 357

The arrival of harassing attorney, Anthony Peterson, gives Julia the opportunity to liberate and relocate the journal -- now in Peterson’s office. Carolyn follows up with a bid to retrieve the manuscript, but Peterson, while intrigued, has the strength to stand up to her. For now.

Although Gordon Russell is credited as the author of this episode, this marks Sam Hall’s debut on the show as writer. Hall, a Yale-trained, seasoned playwright, would go on to become DARK SHADOWS' most prolific scribe. When teamed with the urbane wit, Gordon Russell, he helped to give the show its eventual and most definitive voice. He has a punchy, immediate, high-stakes sense of intensity and literate, dramatic grit that gives the show a sense of lofty purpose mixed with realistic and human urgency. His authorship would run through the last episode, two films, and the 1991 revival. Beyond creating Angelique, he penned a follow-up article for TV Guide after the show had been canceled, detailing what happened to the characters beyond the program’s end. Is it canon? Strong arguments can be made on both sides.

Coincidentally, it’s Jerry Lacy’s first episode as attorney, Anthony Peterson. Peterson takes up where Burke left off… another once-impoverished Collinsporter/self-made man with a desire to see Roger knocked down a peg. Peterson has a greater dash of realism to him, however. He’s less Ayn Rand and more Arthur Miller. We can see him wanting greater things and -- compared with Burke -- just falling short of the ring. There’s a humanity to that with more nuance than was found in the lantern-jawed Olympian played by Mitch Ryan and Anthony George. Burke is DC. Anthony Peterson is Marvel. And that’s the Sam Hall touch. Just as tough, but with a slightly more fragile sense of humanity. That would also be the balance Barnabas would demonstrate on his roads to redemption, rise, fall, and rise.

Hall’s theatrical chops are especially on display in the two hander he has for his wife, Grayson, and Jerry Lacy in Tony’s office. We get exposition that flows naturally, as well as  strength, vulnerability, adjustments, surprises, and astounding emotional range, all within terse, captivating dialogue. And Grayson really goes for that range. Perhaps too much so. It’s a scene worthy of the stage, and her laughter and tears are of a size that may be too grand for the small screen. Nevertheless, she knew this was Sam’s audition, and thus, really went to town.

On this day in 1967, the Battle of Dak To begins, becoming one of the bloodiest of the Vietnam War. 

Sam & Grayson Hall prop up Night of Dark Shadows, 1971

The troubled post-production of NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS has been well documented since its release in 1971. Unhappy with the sprawling, dour epic presented to them by director Dan Curtis, MGM demanded the film be drastically reduced in length. More than 30 minutes were excised during a marathon editing session, bringing the film down to a drive-in theater friendly 94 minutes. Not many people — least of all the creative minds behind NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS — were satisfied by what was eventually shown to audiences that year.

But the movie still had to be promoted. In 1971, screenwriter Sam Hall and actress Grayson Hall made the usual press rounds, desperately trying not to let the words "MGM can go fuck itself" come flying from their mouths. And the neutered version of NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS was not the only issue they had to address. The absence of Barnabas Collins was also an obstacle that needed to be cleared with grace and, in this interview with the St. Louis Dispatch that year, I think they presented the bravest possible front. They've also got some interesting things to say about DARK SHADOWS' reputation as violent camp, even if the reporter can't keep track of her facts.

You can read a transcript of the interview below.

Out of the Shadows for Friday The 13th 
By Mimi Teichman 
The Post-Dispatch Staff 

Aug. 13, 1971

HERE'S A BUMPY-NOSED, red-haired, bony-handed scary-type witch, slinking and cackling around in the middle of summer. Her high cheekbones threaten to break through the skin. Her enormous brown eyes struggle under an overdose of black eyeliner. No doubt about it. It's a witch, stranded in Missouri, where the forces of darkness wage a never-ending battle against the incorrigible goodness of Middle America.

Skeptics might say she's an actress who plays witches, and they might be right, since she travels under the name of Grayson Hall, an actressy name if there ever was one. Where's all the imagination in the Netherworld? If Grayson Hall is all they can come up with for an actresses name, no wonder hanging, drowning, jumping off towers, being pushed off railroad bridges and trampled by horses are the most exciting, inventive ways the spirits can think of to rid the earth of a few more souls. Not that they are bad murder methods — lots of good scream potential there — but they've all been done before.

The witch thinks horror is better than ever. People die in the above ways in "Night of Dark Shadows," a movie that opens in St. Louis, today, Friday, the thirteenth. The witch is in it and she thinks it's terrific. She plays a sinister housekeeper named Carlotta, who remembers the lives of all her prior selves.

IN PREVIOUS theatrical reincarnations, Grayson Hall was Dr. Julia Hoffman, a hematologist-psychiatrist-hypnotist hopelessly in love with Barnabas Collins, the reluctant vampire; Magda, a gypsy witch, and Mrs. Danvers, another 'housekeeper, also sinister. These characters, and actress Grayson Hall, have existed in the demi-monde of "Dark Shadows" for the last three years. "Dark Shadows" was the phenomenally successful television soap opera that added the supernatural to the usual round of pregnancies and auto accidents, thereby creating a following that has developed cult proportions.

When the program was cancelled by the network in March, its fans contented themselves with the knowledge that a second feature film was following the first, “House of Dark Shadows.”

With the serial doomed to the purgatory of cancelled television programs, “Night of Dark Shadows" is the only way the fans can keep track of how things are going with Barnabas, the vampire, Angelique, the mean but beautiful witch, and the others. Except that Barnabas isn't in the new movie.

"There's just so much you can do with a vampire," said Grayson's husband, Sam Hall, who wrote the screenplay and co-authored the daily episodes for the last two years of the series. "He bites. He needs blood. The only thing that made Barnabas interesting was that being a vampire to him was like an awful disease he couldn't control. He felt bad about it. He'd bite a girl whom he loved and then sulk about it for a week. “

SAM HALL has received help in plotting “Dark Shadows" from his 13-year-old son Matthew, who, like many others in his age group, is a devoted fan.

“He used to bring his friends to the studio and say, 'Let me show you where the coffins are,’” Grayson said. Children are ardent fans of horror because they respond well to fantasy, the Halls believe. And when the couple thinks about it, they admit that what they like about horror is the fantasy as well.

"Of course I have to take it deadly seriously when I write it," Hall said. "It may become camp later, but I can't approach it that way or it won't work.

Grayson Hall, who also takes the horror seriously while working, likes the scale of the macabre. "I worked with Tyrone Guthrie, the great British director, and he said something that I thought was very good. 'I don't understand you Americans,' he said. 'You're always trying so hard to recreate reality. If you really want reality go watch a street accident. This is the theater.’”

SAM HALL AGREES. "Somehow you get relief from seeing monsters that you know can't exist," he said. "Our gore is artificial, and not within your life experience. Removing it from the realm of possibility diminishes real fear. Our violence is fundamentally romantic violence. It's all based on oversized passion. Revenge or love or the supernatural motivates the violence, not the fact that someone needs heroin. I was mugged in New York. That's a real, scary experience. Seeing that on the screen would terrify me. The human being overcome by the mechanical, like when a car runs a man down, I find that scary."

But being hanged as a witch? Being trampled by horses? It's no big deal, sir.

"For a horror film to make an impact, it has to be more violent than the things around us. With all the killing and mugging around, that's pretty hard," Hall said.

“When the show was on the air," Grayson said, "people said it was bad for children. I think it was good because it denied death, one of the greatest fears children have. Characters would die and then come back later. I don't think there's anything wrong with postponing the reality of death for children.”

In the world of “Dark Shadows," characters die and return, sometimes in different reincarnations. The show (and the movies) were written using the literary device "parallel time," a kind of world of if, in which all an individual's possibilities are carrying on at one time. That is, if Carlotta hadn't become sinister house-keeper of Collinwood, she might have been a gypsy or a French doctor. All those possibilities are going on somewhere, as well as possibilities in other centuries, which lets the “Dark Shadows” plots travel in time.

IF GRAYSON HALL hadn't liked working on “Dark Shadows" with her husband, and if her husband and son hadn't cared about living in New York as much as they did, she might have moved to California after her performance as a lesbian schoolteacher in John Huston's movie of
Tennessee Williams' "Night of the Iguana" won an Oscar nomination. But she didn't. Not one to be typecast, she followed the part in the Richard Burton, Ava Gardner movie with a role in a Walt Disney feature.  She has also worked in the theater and been in numerous television dramas.

Sam Hall was born in Carrollton, (Ohio), attended Dartmouth and was studying playwriting at Yale Drama School when Grayson was a guest actress there. He has written novels and for other television programs, and was the chief plot strategist for the prime time "Peyton Place" series.

"Doing a movie that has an end is a relief,” Hall said.

“Don't tell the ending," Grayson said, fixing the defenseless mortal screenwriter with a compelling stare that might have been perfected 180 years ago.

DARK SHADOWS News Bulletins

* More than a month after the death of DARK SHADOWS writer Sam Hall, his son Matthew has written a second eulogy for the man.

It was through Matthew's blog that the world learned of Sam's death, with a simple post that read: Sam Hall, March 11, 1921-September 26, 2014. A few days later he elaborated by sharing a eulogy he delivered to friends and family at a church service. This morning he posted a second eulogy for the late writer, one delivered during a recent memorial service. Here's an excerpt: 

"In that sense, my father was an entirely self-invented man. Writing was his form of self-creation; it allowed him to escape whoever that person was in Carrollton, Ohio whom he had refused to be. It allowed him to build a successful life with my mother and me in New York based entirely on writing. It allowed him, after my mother died, to become the figure of both charm and gravitas—and power, in his way he was immensely powerful—you all knew him to be in Rhinebeck. In a sense, he wrote himself into existence; his enormous writing talent—and it was prodigious, the largest talent I have ever known or ever will know—allowed him to become precisely who he wanted to be."

Read the entire piece HERE. You won't regret it.

* Speaking of Sam Hall, he makes this list of "Northeast Ohio All-Star trick-or-treat team," along with folks like Harlan Ellison, Wes Craven and David J. Skal.  LINK

* Kathryn Leigh Scott is participating in "A Murder of Authors," an online Facebook chat scheduled for Oct. 30. Kathryn will be chatting live from 3-3:30 p.m. EST, and will be giving away signed copies of her books "Dark Passages" and "Return to Collinwood." LINK

Meanwhile, Scott is also having a Halloween sale at her official website. Purchase a print copy of "Dark Shadows: Return to Collinwood" for $24.95 from her during the month of October 2014 and receive a free print copy of "Dark Passages" and a signed photograph of Josette.

You can find her new Facebook author page HERE.

 

* Tim Burton's 2012 DARK SHADOWS is being featured as part of ABC Family’s “13 Nights of Halloween.” It airs Friday, Oct. 31 at 4:30 pm EST. I'm rather curious to see how ABC Family will work around the scene depicted above.

* Bloody Disgusting things you should binge watch DARK SHADOWS this Halloween. While I hate the term "binge watch," I fully endorse this proposal. LINK

* Episode #291 of DARK SHADOWS makes The A.V. Club's highlights list of "Vampire TV."  LINK

SAM HALL, 1921 — 2014

"As a head writer, I didn't really write the scripts ever. I just plotted them. If I didn't like the writing (my staff) did, I could certainly rewrite it. But it became more of a routine: editing and plotting and dealing with networks."

—Sam Hall, April, 2009 

From left, Grayson Hall, Sam Hall and Jonathan Frid.

 In the early hours of Sept. 27, Matt Hall reported on his blog that his father, Sam, had died.

It was a short post, possibly the shortest that's ever appeared on his website, titled "Sam Hall" and accompanied by the text "March 11, 1921 - September 26, 2014." This is one of those occasions where brevity carries more weight than a 4,000-word obituary, and makes a very clear plea for privacy. A writer like his father, I suspect Matt will get around to saying more about his Sam Hall in the near future.

Sam and Grayson, courtesy of SHADOWS OF THE NIGHT.

Hired near the end of 1967, playwright Sam Hall quickly became the default voice of DARK SHADOWS for many fans. Myth has it that Hall was the reason that his wife, Grayson, landed a role on the series, but he was always quick to point out the faulty math inherent in that story: Grayson made her first appearance on the show earlier that year and was actually responsible for getting Sam a job on the series.

With more than 300 episodes of DARK SHADOWS credited to him, it's likely that Hall wrote more of the series than anybody else. But television writing is a lot more complicated than credits might suggest. While a credit implies that a writer is responsible for an entire script, it's common that they're just responsible for a preponderance of the material. Television shows like DARK SHADOWS have a staff of writers working together to keep the machine moving forward; scriptwriters often go uncredited for minor contributions.

Of course, this also means that Hall's contributions to DARK SHADOWS weren't limited to the scripts that just had his name on them. He was eventually promoted to head writer which gave him much more control over the future direction of the series. When Dan Curtis decided to translate DARK SHADOWS to the big screen with HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, he recruited Hall and Gordon Russell to write the screenplay. As an example of how complicated the show's DNA can be, the film's screenplay distilled the television show's first "Barnabas Collins" story ... which had been written by guys like Malcolm Marmorstein and Ron Sproat.

Grayson Hall and David Selby in NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS.

The following year, Curtis brought Hall and Russell back to write the sequel. The film was simply known as DARK SHADOWS 2 during the writing stage before changing to CURSE OF DARK SHADOWS, then NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS. It was a (mostly) original story that also provided a meaty role for Grayson. Much of her performance would wind up lost in the vaults for decades, though, thanks to a last-minute decision by distributor MGM to mutilate the film in an effort to reduce its running time.

"It just wasn't my work they butchered, but my wife Grayon's, as well," Sam Hall recounted in THE DARK SHADOWS MOVIE BOOK. "That affected me more. I didn't want to have to tell her."

When DARK SHADOWS was cancelled in 1971, TV Guide turned to Sam Hall was details about where the series might have gone had it remained on the air. While Hall points out that these plot points are not definitive, fans were so grateful that that many quickly elevated his concepts to the level of canon. You can read the entire thing for yourself HERE.

Hall would work again with Curtis on the adaption of FRANKENSTEIN for "The Wide World of Mystery" in 1973. Two years later, the series would reunite him with DARK SHADOWS director Lela Swift and former castmembers Diana Davila, Bernhard Hughes and wife Grayson for THE TWO DEATHS OF SEAN DOOLITTLE.

While it's a mere blip on his career, Hall also worked on a TV movie in 1969 titled DEAD OF NIGHT: A DARKNESS AT BLAISEDON. Produced by Dan Curtis and directed by Lela Swift, the short film (it clocks in at less than an hour) was meant to serve as a pilot for a primetime variation of DARK SHADOWS. It also featured two other Collinwood stalwarts, Louis Edmonds and Thayer David. It was not picked up as a series, though. In 1991, a second (and more legitimate) attempt was made to bring DARK SHADOWS to primetime. Again, Curtis recruited Hall, as well as his son, Matt, to write for the series. The show's pilot was based less on the original series, and more on 1970's HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS.

Hall would later write for GENERAL HOSPITAL, SANTA BARBARA and ONE LIFE TO LIVE. Earlier this year, he filed a lawsuit against ABC for royalties he believed were owed to him when the latter was made available on Hulu and iTunes.

"I'll probably be remembered for DARK SHADOWS instead of the things I really cared about," Hall said in Jeff Thompson's THE TELEVISION HORRORS OF DAN CURTIS. "DARK SHADOWS will be the thing that's on my gravestone — but I love DARK SHADOWS. I guess it's terrific to have somehow created something that will live forever. It will live forever.)

Clippings: Grayson Hall goes OUT OF THE SHADOWS, 1971

OUT OF THE SHADOWS:
A visit with the complicated Miss Grayson Hall
By Edith Efron,
TV Guide, Jan. 23, 1971

The freckle-faced, sharp-featured woman is lampooning Katharine Hepburn recklessly -- stretching her neck like a young giraffe and flinging her arms into the air in satiric anguish. The sedate waiters in a chic new York restaurant stare in astonishment. "Hepburn is an amateur!" she exclaims, amid a running fire of witticisms. "She's always been an amateur."

It is not every soap-opera actress who has the audacity to abuse Katharine Hepburn so roundly, but Grayson Hall, of ABC's Dark Shadows, expects to get away with it. She may be spending her own days as the mysterious Dr. Hoffman -- the one who suffers from unrequited love for a vampire -- but she has one of the classiest acting pasts to be found in the soaps.

Nominated for an Academy Award for her role in the movie version of "The Night of the Iguana," the Philadelphia-born, Cornell-educated actress has had a distinguished stage career as well. She starred in Tyrone Guthrie's "Six Characters in Search of an Author"; in Jess Gregg's "Shout from the Rooftops"; and Jose Quintero's production of Genet's "The Balcony." She's also done TV -- Chrysler Theatre, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., as well as Dark Shadows, on which she's been a staple for three years.

One of the directors of Dark Shadows, Henry Kaplan, says this about her acting: "Her talent is astounding. One of her most striking features as an actress is stillness. There's a kind of inner stillness when she's on. All the external stuff goes. She projects through this screen of inner stillness."

The externally wisecracking Grayson, with the "still" inner self, is both awe-inspiring and startling to the younger performers in Dark Shadows. Says Michael Stroka, the friendly neighborhood psychopathic killer in the series: "She's one of the biggest cutups on the set. She's forever clowning, making jokes, wandering around. If you were watching her, you'd never think she was taking anything seriously. And yet, by dress rehearsal somehow it's all there! I don't know how she does it."

All of which is very well ... but what is an Academy Award nominee and an "astounding talent" doing, laying Katharine Hepburn low at lunch, clowning around a soap-opera set, and killing off two years of her creative life by feigning passion for a vampire?

Grayson Hall explains: "I'm no longer ambitious. When you're young, 24, 25, you're committed to a kind of drive. When you get to the point where I am, and have a family ... well, I just love the work. That's all I care about.
 

Grayson Hall is unamused by Bill Murray Richard Burton in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA.

"I have the best of all possible worlds. I'm a wife, a mother, a housewife. And I work when I want to. So I'm fulfilled on all levels."

On level one, Grayson, wife, lives with writer Sam Hall in "a big, old funny apartment" in Manhattan, crammed to the gills with heavy conversation-piece antiques. Biedermeier chairs, a porcelain bidet, gigantic 15th-century Corsican cupids, and grotesque Ming dogs ornament the dark red living room.

Somewhere in the deeps of the apartment, there are roars of laughter. Grayson leads us to the roars -- to the kitchen, where a stout, bald, jovial man sits at a table covered with sheets of paper and scribbles. Husband Sam Hall is a writer of Dark Shadows -- which is written, daily, on Grayson's kitchen table -- and he's in conference with two other writers. Sam, too, has had an unusually distinguished career. He's written for the Theatre Guild, U.S. Steel Hour, Playhouse 90. Why is he churning out stuff about vampires? "If you want to stay in New York today," he says, "all there is is the soaps. Or move to California."

We visit the next level and give Grayson, mother, a whirl. We can't see her in action, because her child, Matthew, is not at home. But Grayson is full of funny talk about her precocious "12-year-old here." Matt, it seems, reprimands Grayson for her excessive comic exaggeration. He recently threatened to "curb her extravagance of language." "You come home from Bloomingdale's and say 'There were 8,000,000 people there.' You know there weren't 8,000,000 people there! You come home from the studio and say 'This was the worst day of my life You know it wasn't the worst day of your life!"

We move on the the last "level," that of Grayson, housewife. She's Domesticity Incarnate, it appears: "I'm a committed cook. Basically I'm a French cook. But I've also taken a course in Chinese cooking and in Mexican cooking. Most recently I've taken Yucatan cooking." Grayson labors three days to turn out an exotic meal for a few friends. Then they talk about it for weeks.

All "levels" have now been displayed and, after a parting flurry of jokes, the brief visit comes to an end.

Can this be the "best of all possible worlds"? Is this domesticated, wisecracking Academy Award nominee and lampooner of Katharine Hepburn "fulfilled," as she says? Unsurprisingly, many think not.

One Dark Shadows colleague says: "She's as neurotic as hell. Some kind of anxiety eats at her. She's a compulsive gossip. There's that compulsive need to be 'on' -- that constant barrage of jokes, and quips, and exaggeration. She's got the talent. She could have a far greater career. I think she knows she hasn't done with herself what she could have. I think frustration eats at her."

On the other hand, some believe it is not quite so "black and white" as all that. Director Henry Kaplan says:

"Actors are very strange people, and Grayson is a strange woman. I certainly think she'd like to be more successful. Even though part of her is fulfilled, she's still reaching out for that part that isn't. But Grayson's family is important and fulfilling to her. It's not a cop-out."

(NOTE: Thanks to Bill Branch for the scans!)

Collinsport News Bulletins

Dick Smith, right, adds a few hundred years to actor Jonathan Frid.

* Academy Award-winning make-up artist Dick Smith, the make-up artist for such films as THE GODFATHER, THE EXORCIST and HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, will be receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild in February. Smith was also the make-up artist on the original DARK SHADOWS television series. Via The Hollywood Reporter

* DARK SHADOWS writer Sam Hall is suing for royalties involving his work on episodes of ONE LIFE TO LIVE distributed in 2013 through services such as iTunes and Hulu. Via We Love Soaps.

* THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY's first book, MONSTER SERIAL, received a nice mention by the BAY AREA REPORTER. The book is available from Amazon.

* Sharon Smyth Lentz ("Sarah Collins" from DARK SHADOWS) will be appearing in July at the MonsterCon in Greenville, S.C., alongside folks like Butch Patrick, Pat Priest and Ricou Browning (of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON.)