Original subtitles

- I think there's something very magical about "Dark Shadows."

We kind of fell into it.

I was always fascinated by those kinds of stories,

but "Dark Shadows" evolved into something I

never really planned on.

It's its own world.

It's a magical world in that nothing that happens today,

no matter when we were doing the show, ever intruded

on the show.

If there was a war going on, you don't know about it

in Collinsport, Maine.

It exists in a world of its own.

And the key to the whole thing is

this incredible, fantastical, magical love

story that spans time.

- Dan Curtis was the macabre mind

behind "Dark Shadows," a soap opera that

dared to infuse the daily format's

usual melodrama and romance with vampires,

ghosts, and a brooding Gothic atmosphere.

But during its relatively brief time on air,

"Dark Shadows" stoked a feverish base,

which like Barnabas Collins himself, spanned generations.

- I hate people who make lists.

That's what I hate about the Oscars.

All these people bring out this list

of 400 people they want to thank.

But I have my own list.

It's not that long.

I put down 10 things about Dan Curtis

that I feel summarize the man.

Impatient.

Creative. - Brilliant.

- Pragmatic.

- Energetic.

- Commanding.

- A very, very strong personality.

- Demanding. - Focused.

- Tough.

- Tough guy attitude. - Hard working.

- He called it like it was.

- Loyal.

Dedicated.

- Him and I got along great.

- There was something romantic about him and something,

something...

dreadful.

- Stubborn, and proud.

- And I was terrified of him.

- Behind all of that kind of...

that cloak of kind of largesse and everything,

there's this very vulnerable person.

I was very conscious of that.

There was this extremely vulnerable person

behind it all.

He couldn't have been so intuitive without it.

But he had this stunning duality.

- He grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

His father was a dentist.

He really didn't talk too much about his childhood, actually.

I think that his mother was very dear to him.

And I think after he lost his mother,

I never heard stories growing up about family life.

- When he was 13, his mother died suddenly

in the middle of a sentence to him.

She had an aneurysm.

- And he was right there in the car.

And she was pulled out of the car and put on the pavement.

And I think this was the defining factor of his life.

- And his father didn't really know what to do with him,

and so he got sent to boarding school for a year.

I think he turned that really into a strength, just

the confidence that he had on himself

and how he just trusted himself more than he would

trust other people's ideas.

- My parents met at Syracuse University, in 1950, I believe.

And after they graduated, they got married two years later.

My mother was very creative, and my father trusted her intuition

inherently.

She did believe in him very much so.

They were quite a team.

- What really struck me in looking back

was the incredible commitment and loyalty.

- Shortly after moving to Chicago with his wife Norma,

Dan began working as a salesman.

And while he had not originally aspired

to a career in television, one of the first jobs he landed

was at NBC.

- I used to be a salesman.

I was selling syndicated junk to the local television stations.

And they were awful.

So I always used to say things like, "If I couldn't do it

better than these dumb bastards, I'd give up the business."

- He certainly never liked anybody telling him what to do.

He didn't want to work for a network.

And he wanted to be his own man.

- Curtis decided the best place to launch his own production

company was New York City.

He and Norma made the move, but success did not

come without a struggle.

- I got myself a little office.

It was a penthouse office, I called it.

It was a storage room at the top of 119 West 57th Street.

You had to walk out on to an outside fire escape

to get up to a fire door to get into the room.

Room was filled with junk.

I had $300 left in a checking account.

I couldn't make the next mortgage payment on the house.

I had $10,000 in unpaid bills in a big cardboard box.

- Despite having little to his name, Dan

had what he thought was a solid gold pitch, inspired by one

of his passions in life--

golf.

Beautiful shot.

- He felt he had this great idea for a golf show.

And so he convinced my mother that he would stop working--

so now nobody was working--

and he had a year to try and sell this.

And he kept getting rejected.

He claims he had literally 300 rejections.

It was CBS that called him and said, "OK, Dan,

we're going to do it.

And we'll pay you $50,000."

And my mother is sitting next to him.

And he says, with no money in his pocket,

"I will not do it for anything less than $150,000."

My mother, when she told the story,

she just wanted to kill him. - And I sold it.

I pulled it out. It's a great story.

I pulled it off the last second.

It was called "The CBS Golf Classic."

It stayed on the air for 10 years

and I suddenly had my own company.

- "CBS Television Sports presents 'The CBS Match Play

Golf Classic.'"

- The success of the program stoked Dan's creative spark

into a fire that made him eager to plunge deeper

into the field of television.

- My father, out of all the people I've ever met,

I never saw him not working or trying.

He had a script in front of him, rewriting.

He had books-- he was always reading books, reading scripts.

He always was looking for his next idea.

- Dan refused to play by the rules.

Dan was meeting with a Vice-President of ABC.

And this person was sitting with back to the doorway.

I wasn't part of that meeting, but I had

to pass by to get to my office.

The shirt collar-- stiff shirt collar--

was drooping and dripping with sweat.

- Dan's no-nonsense approach did not always make him popular

with the network executives.

His gruff personality once even got

him banned from the set of his own show.

- Dan and I were in a taxi, and he had still

been working on the "CBS Golf Classic."

And they forbid him to come on the scene.

They said he couldn't come on the set.

He's out.

And I turned around and looked at him and he was crying.

That was a very bad time for him.

He had his wife, he had his two girls.

In the meantime, Dan was always working, always

planning something.

He wanted to do a soap opera.

- That's the way I want to live.

- You're a wonderful person, Joe.

- Thank you, ma'am.

- Soap operas started on radio

and they were extremely popular there.

And they came over to TV as one of several genres

that made the transition successfully.

And it was an easy transition, because they were very talky.

It was relatively cheap to produce.

- Soap operas began as a housewife's medium.

- "Mrs. Cliche is always found in the kitchen

next to a washing machine.

Her uniform: shirtwaist dress, half apron, smile."

- Radio understood, and certainly early television

understood, that it was the working mother

who needed some type of relief from the daily chores.

And they created the soap operas,

obviously soap being one of the main sponsorships of the form.

- "You'll know that it's Holsum your very first bite."

- One night, I had a dream.

It was a girl on a train.

And she was riding along a rocky coastline.

I can remember waves smashing on the rocks.

And in the dream, I knew that somehow she

was being hired as a governess to work in this big house.

The train drops her off at the little one-horse station.

It's nighttime.

And she steps out onto the empty platform

and the train pulls away into the darkness and the mist.

And she's standing there all alone.

And I woke up.

My wife was awake.

And I had been thinking about it as I was shaving.

And I thought that this great idea that I had

during the night was garbage.

It was ridiculous and didn't make any sense at all.

- And he told my mother, who was very influential whether things

were a good idea or not, and she's like,

"Danny, Danny, I love it!"

- The big question was where to shop the concept.

There were only three major American television

networks at the time,

and ABC was regularly in last place.

- They didn't have the stable that CBS and NBC had.

They needed daytime programming.

ABC was operating in a bit of a handicap

economically in those days.

- The network was trying to build a serial soap opera

block in the afternoon, and this was the last half hour

before the network stopped programming

and the local stations took over and it was also a time of day

when youngsters began to influence viewing.

- This youth audience, which is always a prized demographic

for television because young people are

more susceptible to branding images,

they're less set in their ways as consumers,

and they have a lot of power and influence

over where their parents spend their money.

- A journey that would bring me to a strange and dark place,

to the edge of the sea, high atop Widow's Hill,

a house called Collinwood.

- I did not envision this brilliant idea of mine,

this dream that I had, as being a daytime show.

Daytime shows were people sitting in kitchens.

- I was asleep.

It was very early in the morning,

and my phone rang in my apartment in New York.

And a man named Dan Curtis called me.

And he said, "I have to see you."

- And I told him about this idea and how

I thought what a great nighttime show it would make.

"What a great idea!

Let's do it in the daytime."

I said, "Oh, it's not a daytime show.

This thing isn't a soap."

- And Dan was a very powerful salesman,

but he also sparked something in me.

- By the end of the meeting, we shook hands

and I don't know why I had said to him,

"OK, all right, we'll do this as a daytime show."

Writer Art Wallace was brought on board

to come up with the story.

He titled the treatment, "Shadows on the Wall,"

which was inspired in part by a script he had written

called "The House" for the 1950s mystery anthology

series "The Web."

- "'The Web' comes to you live from New York.

Tonight, a story called 'The House,' the story of this house

in New England; the two women who lived in it;

and the stranger who brought back their past."

- Living here with my thoughts in this horrible house.

- But you love the house.

- And now that Pa's home--

- He's not your father.

Your father's dead.

I killed him.

- We didn't know what we were going to call the show.

Somebody came up with "Shadows on the Wall"

and I didn't like that title.

And I was just--

"Oh, I've got to come up with a title that makes sense,

something like 'Dark Shadows' would be good."

And somebody said, "Well, shadows are always dark."

I said, "Not necessarily.

There are light shadows as well.

'Dark Shadows'-- that kind of says it all."

- I went up to meet Dan.

There he was, really looking like Dan, about 90 teeth.

He had 900 teeth in here, like that.

And when he was happy, he would gleam his teeth at you,

like this.

We spoke for about 15 minutes.

And he said, "OK, you're it.

I want you to do this."

Well, I learned subsequently that Dan was a person who

wanted instant gratification.

He was very impatient right away.

He says to me, "How soon can I hear the theme?"

Well, fortunately, about a week later,

I was shaving one morning, right in the middle, I heard,

[singing theme].

I thought, that's it. So I got down there.

And he said, "OK, how are we going to hear this?

Have we got a piano?"

I said, "I'm just going to whistle it to you."

And I went [whistle].

And he looked at me and his teeth are just like this--

and he said, I--

I can't say that word.

He said, "I really love it!"

He said, "OK, when can I hear it with the orchestra?"

- "It is to this isolated old mansion high on Widow's Hill

that 20-year-old Victoria Winters has come to probe

the mystery of her past."

- "Dark Shadows" first crept into American homes

on June 27, 1966.

- I had worked in soap operas before

as the commercial coordinator.

So I knew sort of what I was getting into I thought.

Little did I know what this show would actually become.

- It was a Gothic romance, and it

was about this eccentric family, the Collins family,

in Collinwood, very wealthy, sister and brother living

together.

And of course, that was legendary film star

Joan Bennett and then Louie Edmonds.

And the story was really "Jane Eyre."

- I'm Victoria Winters.

Is Mrs.--

- Come in, Ms. Winters.

- If you look back into TV Guide when "Dark Shadows" launched

in late June of 1966, not much was

mentioned of the Gothic appeal.

It was just the governess taking care of a 10-year-old.

You would have no idea of what was to come.

- A chauffeur tells a desk clerk,

who tells a housekeeper, who tells me that you're

going to work up in Collinwood.

That makes you a jerk.

- But why?

- At that time, the soap opera was hardly

a format synonymous with groundbreaking television.

- There's one born every minute.

- It was not considered a high art.

And I think that from an acting perspective,

it's basically considered something

that you start with in order to learn the business on the job.

- "Oh, you want to do a soap opera?"

And I said, "No."

I mean, I really didn't want to do a soap opera.

I was on to a different kind of career that I was seeking.

I know what it's like to be locked up.

It's dark and bare and lonely.

Remember, I'm right outside if you need anything.

- Soap operas in those days, it was just

people sitting at coffee tables knocking knees and talking

about who was getting a divorce and that sort of thing.

It was just very mundane.

- I felt at that time that I had missed the boat.

I was 28, 29 years old.

And I said, it's all over.

I'm not going to make it.

I get this call to replace somebody

on this television show.

And I mistakenly took the job.

Atta boy.

Now you're talking like a real ex con.

- It is regrettable that some people have this, oh, you just

worked on soap operas.

I said, if you really knew how hard we work--

I mean, we were basically doing an entire production in a day

and turning around and doing it the next day.

- I mean, soap operas...

You worked your butt off and you didn't make any money.

- You need ice water in your veins

to do a soap opera because you have so little rehearsal.

- There were usually only five characters on each episode.

And so we had a lot to do on the days that you were on.

- We started at 8 o'clock in the morning with a walk-through

with script in hand.

- We had a camera blocking around 10:00,

and that was after doing the blocking up

in the rehearsal room.

And then we had what we called a stumble-through.

- Run it two or three times, and go into makeup and hair.

Get in our fabulous costumes.

- I don't think we actually had a break for lunch.

I don't think the actors ever got outside that little studio.

- And then we had a dress rehearsal.

You'd get notes or lines would be cut or all kinds of things

would happen after a dress rehearsal.

And you were going on to do the show live.

And then we just taped it.

- It was all one half hour shot.

And we had to finish on time because they

started the 4 o'clock news.

- That adds an element of suspense and--

what?-- fear to the day.

- What is that sound?

- The wind.

Or the widows.

- Some actors navigated the rough waters of live on tape

dramatic television better than others.

- ... Moaning with grief

as they have for hundreds of years.

- I've seen men forget their line on a live show

and they'd be as dry as you are now.

And one second later, the sweat would

be pouring off their face.

They had forgotten their line completely.

And somewhere along the way, somebody threw it to them

and they kept on going.

But live TV was fun.

- Look at me when I'm talking to you.

- I can hear you.

- I said, look at me.

- Some of the veteran actors had more difficulty, especially

somebody like Joan Bennett, who had

come from film where they do take after take and a studio

system.

- She was wonderful on this show, but she was terrified.

She had beautiful green eyes that kind of--

I could see just panic, just absolute panic.

- You've never had a stranger living here, Carolyn.

Perhaps it was a mistake.

- We would meet at the bar at the end of the day

and get soused and take off.

And there wasn't a lot of socializing out of the thing,

but while we were performing, while we were working,

it was really cool.

We really liked each other.

- We were like a family, like a little repertory company.

And we never felt, I don't think,

that we were doing a soap opera.

I never thought of it as that.

I always thought of it as sort of a wonderful anthology

series.

- I know people now say, wow, we were doing something

really groundbreaking.

I never really thought that.

I was so happy to have a job that I just kind of learned

my words and went every day as prepared as I could be.

- Despite the dedication of its cast and crew,

"Dark Shadows" initially struggled to find an audience.

- When the show went on the air, nobody was watching.

And as we got past the first 13 weeks,

I knew we were going to be history,

we weren't going to make it.

- Nobody paid any attention to it.

It got bad ratings--

well, hardly any.

- The way in which you achieved ratings on these shows

was to see to it that the audience that you had,

instead of watching 1 1/2 times a week, or twice a week,

watched 2 1/2 times a week.

That tied very much into the way in which

you had to plot these shows.

- Sorry, I was just getting a cup of coffee.

- My name's Devlin.

- What?

Why, Burke, it's nice to see you.

- Burke Devlin. I wired for three rooms.

- We weren't moving the plot fast enough.

It had to move faster.

He was always trying to energize the process

of the unfolding of the show.

His instincts weren't always wrong,

but with regard to how a soap opera works,

it wasn't the best.

- Roger, who else knows about this?

- What difference does it make?

- I want to know.

- The show wasn't doing well.

And it was really kind of dying.

- He said to me, "Tell me the truth.

You're going to have to cancel me, aren't you?"

I said, "Yeah, their numbers are not really good."

- And he called the guy at ABC, he said,

"Look, give me just 13 more weeks.

That's all I'm asking.

Let me just see if I can salvage this thing."

He said, "Then let me take the lid off."

I said, "What do you mean by that, Dan?"

He said, "Let me really push the envelope."

And he came in one morning and he said one of his daughters--

I don't remember which one--

said to him-- he was complaining.

It wasn't working out for him.

- Me and my sister, we were the perfect age for "Dark Shadows,"

and we were very into it.

And one day, he was asking us about it.

And the way he always told the story, he always mimicked us.

He said, my daughters said, daddy, make it scarier.

- And he came in that next morning

and he said, we're going to do ghosts and ghouls.

- Did you see the ghost?

- David, I've told you there are no such things as ghosts

- Yes, there are. I've seen them.

- Where?

- Here at Collinwood.

They like it best at night.

- I figured, why the hell not?

Let's make it really scary.

What have I got to lose?

I'm going off the air.

No one's ever done anything like this.

I'll let it rip.

- And I had said to Dan, "Once you go supernatural,

you can't go back.

This is it."

- I was on the show the very first day when our director,

Lela Swift, read the script and said, "Oh...

Oh!

We're doing a ghost story."

- Again, when you are in a little bit of a survival mode,

you were more willing to take chances.

ABC was an innovative network, largely because it

was typically a last place network, and the history of TV

is always the last place network is

going to be the most innovative network.

But you know there was a real emphasis

on going for a real vision there, that they needed

to do something different.

- Dan Curtis said to me, "So what do you think you can do?"

There was the character of Laura,

who was in an institution in Phoenix, Arizona.

And she was getting out of the institution,

and she wanted to come to Collinwood.

- I had a feeling about you, a feeling that it's not good

for you to be in this house, that you might be happier

and safer away from Collinwood.

- I said, "She is a Phoenix, a mythological creature who

every 100 years goes into the fire and is reborn.

And that's what she wants to do with her son, take him back,

they'll go into the fire together,

and they'll be reborn together for another 100 years."

- He's going to be reborn, just as I've been

reborn century after century.

- Dan and his vice president are looking at me and I'm saying,

"Oh, my god, I blew it."

And Dan said, "Well, you think you can do it?"

I said, "Look, you're only on the air for four more weeks.

What have you got to lose?"

- The Phoenix is reborn!

- As soon as it hit the air, the ratings started going up

and a couple of sponsors started buying in.

Four weeks was all it was supposed to last.

With all the increases, ABC decided

to renew for another 13 weeks.

Dan Curtis and I were talking.

And he said, "What do we do now?"

"Let's do something continually in the supernatural."

So he said, "How about a vampire?"

I said, "That's it!"

- I am Dracula.

- Historically, horror literature

and popular entertainment have portrayed the vampire

as a cold, bloodthirsty monster, typified most famously

by Bram Stoker's "Dracula."

Numerous movies had exploited such a character

to chilling effect, but "Dark Shadows"

was about to shatter the mold with its daring approach

to the undead menace.

- Yes?

- Let's pretend we are the first people doing a vampire series

anything.

We make our own ground rules.

They never heard of Bela Lugosi, the people in this town.

They never saw "Dracula."

They never read it.

They knew nothing about it.

He can't turn into a wolf.

He is a relatively human-seeming body who thrives on blood.

- We were going to make him a reluctant vampire.

And all of a sudden, the emotional possibilities

of playing on that, that he really

did not want to do this to people,

he didn't want to be who he was.

- Don't cast a guy who looks like Bela Lugosi.

Get some guy who--

young, blonde guy, not an old vampire.

But get a young blonde guy, and we'll play it from there.

- Canadian stage actor Jonathan Frid

was cast as the vampire Barnabas Collins.

He arrived at Collinwood in the spring of 1967.

- Oh, Madam.

If you would, you may tell her that it's Barnabas Collins.

- Jonathan Frid was on his away to California

and the phone rang.

He was halfway out the door-- true story--

turned around, picked up the phone,

got the job as Barnabas Collins.

- There's been a drastic change in my life.

I am no longer really human.

- I remember going to the office and seeing all these cadavers

sitting around that were also up at the last for the part.

And when I realized that I had out-cadavered them all,

it wasn't exactly too heartening.

But anyway, the actual person who cast me

was Ron Sproat, who was one of the writers,

and he'd been a playwright at Yale

while I was there as a directing major.

- Ron and I one time, we were in a saloon in the village

and there was Jon.

And Jon said, "Oh, I'm going to be on that show.

I'm going to play the vampire."

And we though, "Oh shit."

- Of course, they hired Jonathan Frid, who when I looked at him

I wanted to faint.

I mean, they had hired Bela Lugosi.

And I knew he was scared stiff.

Suddenly he's the star of a soap opera.

- What is true, father? What?

- So I said, "Jonathan, you're a nice guy.

Be a nice guy with everybody and all the characters.

Make them like you.

They're your family.

So just play it easy.

Relax it.

And don't go overboard."

And that's what he did.

- And of course, he turned out to be perfect.

- I was a very nervous actor.

I think what made the part work for me is that Barnabas also

was a very nervous character.

If you accept the premise, he comes out of his coffin,

having been in it for 150 years or whatever,

and he comes out into this new world

and has to tell a lie instantly, that he

was the great grandson of this portrait, when in fact he's

the same guy.

- Forgive me for staring, but for the moment it

seems as though I've seen a--

- Ghost?

- Well, the likeness is remarkable!

- So he was a very nervous person,

and as he adjusted and got his act together, so I as an actor

got adjusted to television.

So the two of us kind of went along together.

And that's probably why people maybe

identified me as the vampire.

- He chose to play him not like a monster,

but like a romantic hero who has been cursed,

who has been given this death sentence to have to be someone

who drinks blood to stay alive.

- I am free now and alive.

The chains with which she bound me are broken,

and I've returned to live the life I never had...

Whatever that may turn out to be.

- Everything about him, unlike any vampire that's ever

been written, was so human.

And people could attach themselves to it.

They could say, oh, I know that feeling.

I've had that feeling.

- The depth of his guilt and the anguish

that he experienced as a result of what he was cursed to be

and what he had become--

that's what he chose to play, rather than the fiend who

climbs through the window and has the teeth hanging out

and the long fingernails.

- I feel your presence.

Show yourself!

- He was a tragic hero.

He'd messed around with the wrong woman

and she fixed him forever.

- I set a curse on you, Barnabas Collins.

- She kept saying, I'll take away the curse

if you'll love me.

But he wouldn't do it.

- I could not love you.

- Perhaps this time you will learn to love me.

- Think about that.

I mean, here's this enduring, iconic archetype

of international horror who's represented

one way for all these years.

And then Dan Curtis and Jonathan Frid

basically came along and changed that.

That was hugely significant from a cultural perspective.

- Oh, it was completely new.

There had never been anything like this on television.

- I think it was the excitement about that.

And certainly for teenagers, it was like a new discovery,

an entry into adult sexuality, but a very odd adult sexuality.

- It really was about compulsive sex.

"I've got to have it or I'll die."

Well, literally for Barnabas, that was true.

"I've got to have it or I'll die."

And especially teenagers, they're

going to die if they don't have it.

- It's a sexual metaphor.

So everybody who got bit always grabbed their partner and--

like it was very pleasurable.

- Dan was so worried about homoeroticism or anything

like that, so that when Barnabas bites somebody,

women got bit on the neck and man got bit on the wrist.

- Your arm looks strange.

- We had a representative that sat in the green room,

and if she saw any blood at all, she'd go back

and she'd say, "I'm sorry, we can't have any blood,"

because, you know, Ivory Snow or Ponds was our sponsor

and she was afraid that people would turn off

because it was so scary.

- And it became apparent very early on

that we were onto something.

- It came on at 4 o'clock in the afternoon,

just in time for the kids to be home from school.

And they got a horror show at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

Unheard of.

Not some stupid, silly little drama of two people kissing.

This was the real McCoy, bloodsucking and stuff.

- Vampires and Gothic stuff...

I'm 8 or 9 or 10, and it was just right up my alley

because that's the stuff I loved.

- I don't know how we knew that there

was going to be this show about vampires, but we did.

And I remember it came on late in the afternoon

so that if we jumped off the bus, school bus home,

and ran inside one of our houses,

we'd get there right when it started.

- I was a very, very young teenager at that point.

I would never run home from school to watch a soap opera.

Never.

Would never have occurred to me or my friends--

I mean, particularly male friends.

And all of a sudden, we had to get home at 4:00 or 4:30,

whenever it was, because we had to see Barnabas

on "Dark Shadows."

- Anybody I meet and say I worked on "Dark Shadows,"

they say, "Oh, I used to run home from school.

I'd get home at 4 o'clock to see it."

Everybody.

- There was something about it that just attracted us.

It was exciting. It was out of the ordinary.

It was unusual.

- It wasn't your mom's Gothic romance.

It was your Gothic romance.

These were characters that were talking to you.

- That I should come to this century,

find you so like Josette.

- Initially, Barnabas was only intended

to be on the show for 13 weeks.

Dan had planned to kill him off while young viewers were home

watching on summer vacation.

- He'd been there a couple of weeks

and Dan Curtis is coming down the hallway,

holding what looked like some perhaps legal papers.

And Jonathan thought, I'm getting sacked.

This is the notice.

And Dan said, "Here, these are for you, Jonathan."

And he said, "What?"

He said, "They're fan letters."

And Jonathan said, "Fan letters for me?"

And that was the beginning of weeks and weeks

of thousands of letters started to come in.

And he was stunned that all these people

were watching the show and loving what he was doing.

- I remember going out the front door of the studio,

and there were some school kids there.

We signed a few autographs and chatted and whatnot.

A week later, it was double the size

and then quadruple the size.

And suddenly we had a whole street

full of kids who had come to the studio after school to see us.

- You'd sign enough autographs to get through the crowd

and hopefully make it up to the corner so you could get a cab

and get out of there.

- They were wild. They were wonderful.

I had them stealing and getting in the back of my truck

and I didn't know it and I'd get home

and they found out where I lived.

Oh, man. That was insane.

- People don't usually talk about this.

It was very popular with prostitutes and drug addicts

because they were just waking up--

4 o'clock, watching our show.

So I'd be walking down 48th Street

and the hookers would be out there, "Jeb!

Hey, Jeb!"

- We had to hire a company to handle all the fan mail.

It was unbelievable.

At the beginning, we would get it and read it

and we'd love reading the fan mail.

Well, the fan mail got to be so gigantic

that you couldn't read it.

I mean, the company had to answer letters.

It was just-- it got to be insane.

- "16 Magazine..."

I was on the cover of "16 Magazine"

and "Tiger Beat" magazine.

- And I also used to get "16 Magazine."

And so "16 Magazine" always had the cast.

And Jonathan Frid's picture was on my wall

because I wanted to get bit.

- The articles that we wrote were generated by the mail

that we got from the readers.

And it was very interesting because all of a sudden

we started getting some random letters

and they were asking about who played Barnabas

Collins on "Dark Shadows."

And when we did take a look at the show,

we saw that he played a vampire, which

is a very romantic figure to a lot of young girls.

But it was very unusual, because we

didn't get mail about soap opera people,

even young people on soap operas.

We also featured a lot of things about the storyline

of the show, which was very unusual because you didn't

usually write about what an episode of "The Brady Bunch"

was about or "The Partridge Family."

You wrote about what David Cassidy

liked to eat for breakfast.

But it was very different with "Dark Shadows."

It was a whole show that had an appeal.

Definitely more dangerous, more edgy

than a lot of the other things that we would write about.

The creator of "Dark Shadows," Dan Curtis,

was quite astute because he understood the power of having

an inroad to this audience.

- "You can never tell what in the dark shadows

or what lurks behind each door.

But with groovy horror heads for friends,

you won't be scared anymore!"

- You may notice some fog drifting

in from backstage here.

You'll understand why when you see

the gentleman who needs no introduction to the younger

generation.

Watch.

- What is your blood type?

- I think it's O. Back to the hearse.

- He did a lot of appearances, sometimes in very small towns

across the country.

And they wouldn't be prepared for the thousands

of fans who would appear.

And in fact, in his neighborhood,

he was being stalked at the grocery store

and he was having to run in and out

and discovered it was going to be too difficult to stay

in his apartment, and he ended up leaving that apartment

and moving into a apartment that had a doorman.

- This show has really caught on.

I know in my house, my son runs home after school.

We can't pull him away from the set.

- And this, of course, is the star of it.

Here's Jonathan Frid.

- I may lose interest in what you're saying.

This lovely neck right here. - I know.

I know.

We hear, in that part of television,

that soap opera is...

I mean, tedious work. It has to be.

You have to learn a new script every day, don't you?

- Yes.

Oh, yes, it's tedious in that sense.

- Sometimes he would be on every day.

He was exhausted come the weekend,

and yet they often had appearances for him

to go on on the weekend.

So it was a very draining schedule for him.

- He actually had dyslexia, which he only

realized around that time.

So the fact that he had to overnight learn lines

was always challenging and would keep him up late at night.

- Tomorrow evening will be an occasion long remembered.

That night must go nothing wrong.

- Sweetheart of sweethearts.

Couldn't remember a line, but was a great guy.

He was always looking for the lines somewhere.

I would whisper a line to him, even on camera.

- I am defending the right of this girl to be judged innocent

until she is proved innocent.

- After the show we'd go to this bar a couple of blocks away

and he'd have about five or six vodkas and...

He was a great dude, Jonny.

He was a sweetheart, just a sweetheart.

- He was definitely an actor who was

critical of his performance.

And he would sometimes go home at the end of the day thinking,

oh, I wish I could have done that better.

But there was a part of him that said, well,

I get another chance tomorrow, there's another show tomorrow.

And he didn't ever think the show would be rerun.

He said, "It'll be aired once.

It won't be seen again.

All right, I'll get the opportunity

to do another show."

Little did he know that the show would go on and on and on.

- It's hard to describe the success of that show, isn't it,

Jonathan? - Yes, I must say it is.

- What is the audience's fascination with the morbid?

- I've really never been able to figure it out

but I'm enjoying it immensely.

But I've never been able to figure it out.

- I get asked a lot, as if I'm somehow

an expert on this, what is it about vampires

that's attractive to people or women or youngsters?

Ultimately, I think they're not dying thing.

That's really attractive. I thought about it.

And I thought, maybe it's a safe way

to have a sort of fantasy of being taken.

- I know what you are.

- He presented that idea that you could

be part of this Gothic love.

"Is it you?"

It was kind of wonderful because he'd bite somebody,

and he tried really hard to look rough while he was biting

but he didn't.

He didn't look like he was going like rip your throat out.

It was like, "Oh, yeah, I want you to bite me."

- Jonathan, I'd be curious to know what

your mail is like on that show?

What do people write to you about?

- Well, it gets rather exotic at times, I must say.

- Is it sick mail or very appreciative?

Do you recall any particular piece of mail that--

- Well, I think most of the mail that I find it amusing is

the kind of mail from people who really get involved

in the story, and they cannot imagine you as anybody else

but the character you're playing.

And even on tours I've been on, people come up to me

and they really believe I'm a vampire.

- Jonathan used to get tons of big bags of mail

from women, pictures of themselves.

It was crazy.

They used to send him these pictures of--

nude pictures of themselves, all kinds of very sick stuff

was going on.

- You're going to die, Miss Trask?

Do you realize that?

- I will be with him.

- It was really an incredible success.

It could not have been anticipated in any way,

and that when it did happen everybody reveled in it

and worked hard.

- We were a soap opera.

And it was just phenomenal to have that kind of response.

- It was way out in left field.

It was revolutionary.

- It changed the entire face of daytime television.

- Committed to continuing the success of "Dark Shadows," ABC

built a studio for the show at West 53rd Street, New York

City.

- I got a pretty good imagination.

And I reached the point where I didn't know

what I was going to do next.

What kind of a story could I come up with

and keep this guy going?

- What's happening?

- We're trapped!

We're trapped in another time!

- I was always fascinated by time travel.

And I thought, "Well, wait a minute!

Why don't we go back into the past

and find out how Barnabas became a vampire?"

- Your soul will never rest, Barnabas.

- Wow, you talk about success.

It was our most popular story.

I never wanted to get out of the past.

I stayed there forever.

And the thing that was so wonderful about it

is when Victoria was transported back through a seance--

that was my device--

and she walks into Collinwood-- or the old house,

the way it was in those days--

and there are all the same actors playing different roles.

The audience went nuts over that.

They just loved that.

- Why doesn't anybody know me?

- Good evening.

I'm Mrs. Collins.

You must be the new governess.

- The network executives told Dan

this was not going to work, he needed

to hire a different actress. And he said, "No, no."

He said, "No, the audience will follow us.

I trust them."

And they did.

- The biggest problem for me on "Dark Shadows"

was to constantly come up with stories.

And I thought, wouldn't it to be great

if I could bring in another character that was equally as

popular as Barnabas so that every story didn't have

to be tied to the vampire?

Which was the problem with the show.

Because if you didn't have the vampire operating as a vampire,

the audience wasn't very happy.

So it was a true challenge to try and find

something else that really worked.

- Hi, Quentin.

- They said, come over to the studio the next day.

So I did.

And all they did was look at me on camera and that was it.

And then that's when they told me

that I wasn't going to speak for the first few shows.

- Aren't you going to say something, Quentin?

- Did you imagine doing a show with ghosts and vampires?

No.

Nor did I ever imagine in the world

that I would be playing a werewolf.

I can't...

- I love a werewolf.

And I just think, sometimes you just

have to take people as they are.

You just have to accept them.

I would have taken that bite also.

Just saying.

- Somebody mentioned to me that there was going

to be a song, a theme song.

And every time the character appeared,

there would be this music.

- It's such pretty music, isn't it, David?

- Once again, I got a call from Dan.

"Cobert, you've got to come down.

I got a new spook.

I got a new spook coming on the show.

His name is Quentin.

And he first appears out of an old phonograph.

And we hear this music, which will be Quentin's theme."

And then he said, "Well, how long

is this going to take you?"

And I said, "Would you like to hear it

in about 30 seconds or so?" And he looked at me.

He said, "Come on, Cobe.

What are you, kidding me?"

I said, "No."

[singing quentin's theme]

He said, "Oh, my God! I love it!

That's gorgeous!

That's fantastic."

He said, "It sounds familiar."

I said, "Yeah, it should sound familiar.

I wrote it for Billie Whitelaw in our 'Jekyll and Hyde.'"

- Hey.

Did your friend warn you?

- Jekyll?

He isn't here tonight.

I looked.

- Well, he's brought some reinforcements.

- That music...

- It's his!

- I called my dad.

And I said, "Dad, I got my theme song!

I've got a theme song."

And then they wrote words for it, "Shadows of the Night."

- Shadows of the night, calling me to you.

- Biggest hit song to ever come out

of daytime television, possibly the only hit song

to ever come out of daytime television.

One of the few major hits to come out

of any kind of television.

And the LP that came out featuring Quentin's theme

was the second highest selling LP

from television of all times.

- And I know that Quentin's theme

was recorded by several people.

There were a lot of different orchestrations of it.

I guess it did fine.

- Sold lots of records.

Come on, made a lot of money.

Let's not be shy about this.

- It was a respite to go to the studio

because of what was going on around us with the Vietnam War,

with the Kennedy assassination, the Martin Luther King

assassination, with the political situation.

It was a difficult time.

- "By 1967, more than 100 Americans

were dying each week in Vietnam."

- It was a way to in many ways escape

the pressures of America, especially for teenagers.

Teenagers obviously had older siblings

who were involved in either the war

effort or the anti-war effort.

There was a great division in almost every family.

And I think the kids especially who

really were getting a little tired

of this continuing debate in the family,

where you politically stand, this was a way

to sort of see the world anew, but it also sort of brought you

back into the world, too, the idea of the world

seemed possessed.

There seemed to be demons loose in America in the late '60s.

But here, it was a way to look at a world possessed but maybe

not as anxiety feeling as the real world was.

- We would go inside this studio and create this other world.

And I think to a certain extent, people loved that other world.

- Harry and I went to Europe every year.

Mainly, we would go to London first or London at the end.

They had wonderful secondhand bookshops.

And I used to bring a lot of stuff back to the office.

Gave them a lot of horror material.

- Horror is a very rich source to steal from.

- "Dark Shadows" was not shy about borrowing plots

from other places.

- "The Turn of the Screw," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,"

"Dracula," of course, the Frankenstein story,

"Jane Eyre," "Wuthering Heights."

- There was one thing that we missed, I think,

and that was mummies.

But other than that, we hit them all.

- I have the witch!

- At one point, some viewer wrote to Dan

and he said, "You don't have a staff of writers,

you've got a den of thieves."

- He used to say, this is not--

"Dark Shadows" is not horror.

"Dark Shadows" is Gothic romance.

- No.

This is insane.

- I used to read the scripts, obviously,

ahead of time when we got them.

And I would scratch my head on certain things and go,

I have no idea how we're going to pull this off.

- With five half hour slots a week to fill,

producing a steady flow of surprises

was an arduous task for Dan and his writers.

- Ron Sproat used to have very long sessions with

Dan Curtis about plotting the show.

They were legendary.

- We actually had 24 hour story sessions.

And we'd leave the place at 9 AM--

went in at 9 AM, came out at 9 AM the next morning.

Of course, we wanted to get a couple of weeks work laid out

so we can go and write them instead of meeting every week.

- The sessions with Dan could be grueling.

He would putt golf balls.

He even had a wall to wall green carpet.

And so he would just constantly putt that ball back and forth

and then he would talk and while he was doing it.

- I've seen writers come out of interviews with him

with their knees shaking.

He scares them to death.

He had those penetrating eyes.

He would say, "All right, send in this asshole."

He said, "Send him in." And so they'd send him in.

"Tell this asshole that if he doesn't

drop this idea of wanting more money,

I am going to go out of my office and go down the corridor

and get in the elevator and go down to the first floor

and walk across the street to his office

and tear his fucking face off."

If you gave him anything less than your best,

he did not appreciate that and would not use you again.

- He was an artist and a real artist because he kept saying,

how can we make it better?

What can we do to make it better?

How can we-- to keep challenging himself and to challenge us.

- You start trying to plot and you

think the most stupid things.

And I remember Dan Curtis literally

falling out of his chair and rolling on the floor.

It was a good time.

- One of the reasons I liked writing for "Dark Shadows"

is that I could be shameless and could just

do shameless things that you couldn't do any place else.

You could really stick it to 'em.

- Make them my servants...

Now!

- While the writers scoured all corners

of Gothic and supernatural lore to maintain the show's

rapid pace, in turn the special effects crew

were on call more frequently than one would

expect on a daytime drama.

- Kitty?

- Back in 1966, special effects were very primitive.

One of our special effects was a paper bat

hanging on a fish line and a prop man

jiggled a fishing pole.

That was our scary bat.

- I remember when my head was chopped off

and it rolled across the floor as this one character,

and it was so funny.

And I just couldn't stop laughing.

And nobody could stop laughing.

And Dan finally said, cut, cut-- which he rarely cut.

Rarely cut.

You had to do something like this for him to cut.

And he goes, "Hey, Rog, don't break up, OK?"

- Please.

- I ordered you to go.

Now!

- I mean, the hand coming out of the grave

was literally a prop guy lying on his back underneath.

I remember my favorite note was, "Kathryn,

when you see the hand coming out of the grave,

turn to camera three and scream."

- The vampire would say, "Come to me for comfort.

I need you."

And then the other person would go...

While they were doing that, you're

putting in your teeth, which were fitted.

They were made by the dentist.

They are fitted right on our own eye teeth.

And then the camera would come back to you and you'd go--

It turned out a little campy because when you have a ghost

coming out of his grave and he's covered with blood and bandages

and...

you just can't help but think it's funny.

But on the other hand, we played it entirely as

though it were really, really happening.

- You must learn what it is to live in the land of the dead.

- I'm really amazed that the shows came on that well.

I mean, we're known for our bloopers, I know,

for the shaky scenery and all of that sort of thing.

- I 'spect you're wondering what I'm doing here, eh?

- No, I'm glad you're here.

- Frankly, considering the circumstances

we were working under, starting at 8:00 in the morning

and doing our show live at 3:30?

Pretty amazing.

- Tell them that you saw no one here.

- Oh, that's fine.

What am I going to tell them?

- That you saw no one here!

- The mistakes that you were making,

because of the limited budget a lot of times

you weren't going back and reshooting it.

The most famous one from "Dark Shadows"

is there's a credit crawl at the end of one episode where

you actually see Jonathan Frid, who played Barnabas,

walking across the screen holding his shoes.

- It's just like being in summer stock and doing a play.

Things went wrong, the boom would come into the shot,

or the prop man would be running across and back.

Or I'd walk through the graveyard

and the gravestones were all Styrofoam

so I'd knock them over with my dress.

- The camera bumping over a cable, so the shot kind of

goes up and down.

- Several of my incestors--

incestors-- my ancestors are buried here.

- After one of those shows, you'd

go to your dressing room and burst into tears

and then beg for another chance, just this once can we redo it?

And Dan would say, "No! Why?

He said, "This is going to be seen once

by a bunch of housewives.

Who cares?"

- You know what to do, Vicki--

you know what to do now, Julia.

- It was like a repertory company.

- Seems to me that--

- I would advise you not to make a move.

- But Dan was...

He was a force.

- The actors adored him.

They loved his direction.

They loved the way he treated them.

- He was always on my side.

And I really was incredibly indebted to him.

- I got along with him just fine because he

loved my sense of humor and I loved his

and we'd make each other laugh a lot.

- If you were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in a leaky

rowboat with one oar,

you would want Dan Curtis in that boat

with you because he would figure out a way to save your neck

and get you to shore.

- By this point, Dan Curtis had set his sights

beyond television and was poised to make a leap into movies.

The choice of his first feature was obvious--

a spin-off of "Dark Shadows."

- I command you to come to me!

- "Barnabas Collins, vampire,

takes a bride in a bizarre act of unnatural love.

Come and see how the vampires do it."

- When Dan prepared "House of Dark Shadows,"

he took the basic premise of the series

but he went to a more traditional vampire, a vampire

who was really evil and deserved to get a stake in his heart

at the end.

- They weren't making Barnabas a reluctant vampire.

And I mentioned that to Dan.

I said, "You're not making him vulnerable.

You're not making him reluctant."

And he looked at me in a very-- he said, "No, we're not

doing it that way this time."

- "'House of Dark Shadows.'

Where death is a way of life."

- And we got to do another take.

And they stopped and they relit you

so that you were doing a close up with different lighting.

My goodness, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

- He loved directing.

He was just a kid in a candy shop.

He was having a wonderful time.

- "House of Dark Shadows" was an unexpected hit for MGM.

The studio green lit a sequel almost immediately.

However, this did not sit well with everyone.

Jonathan was ultimately disappointed

when he saw the movie because it had so much more the blood,

the gore.

So he was disappointed and told Dan

he didn't want to do the second movie.

And Dan wasn't happy about that.

- And he said, "I don't think playing

a vampire is good for my image.

A number of my friends have said to me

they don't think this is good for my career."

And I can still remember saying to him, "What about the image

of an out of work actor?

Is that better?"

- I believe that there was a wedge that

came between them because he obviously had

to create a whole new script.

- "Come back to Collinwood, that house of dark shadows,

where life and death go on as usual.

'Night of Dark Shadows.'"

- "Night of Dark Shadows" proved less successful

at the box office.

- After the movie, I didn't know what else I was going to do.

I couldn't think of another idea.

But then we started getting into things like the Leviathan

and stuff like that.

I was becoming very disenchanted right along with the audience.

I was just hoping it was going to end.

I just wanted to move on.

I couldn't squeeze my brain any harder

to come up with one more story.

- Come to me.

Come to me.

We shall share eternity.

- As the show got more complicated,

I think that we may have started losing a few audience

members then.

- We weren't working with Dan anymore.

And we weren't that good.

We weren't.

As I mentioned before, we needed Dan.

And without him there riding herd, the show suffered.

- Dan used to say, when asked why did you

stop "Dark Shadows"?

And he goes, "Simple.

We ran out of things for Barnabas to bite."

- So I was out in the middle of a wardrobe fitting

and I got the news that, don't bother,

they've canceled the show.

- "And for as long as they lived,

the dark shadows at Collinwood were but a memory

of a distant past."

- Collinwood quietly shuttered its doors on April 2, 1971.

- But the irony of this whole thing,

that "Dark Shadows" is actually one of the shortest

lived soap operas ever.

But then, of course, one good reason for that

is because it dealt with specific material

and we ran out of material.

I mean, there are only about a dozen classic horror stories

and we did them once and twice over.

- "Dark Shadows" is not that much different

from most hot things in American culture,

whether it's music, film, or television.

There's an intensity.

But then, obviously, teenagers age.

They go to college.

And you had that great period of teenagers, 14 to 18,

but they will mature and they will go on to something else.

- Then we just went on with our lives.

I mean, I was very young.

I went to California to become a movie star,

not realizing that the best role I would ever get

would be Angelique.

- Though Jonathan Frid continued to work,

the roles he was offered were not always to his liking.

- He actually got a new agent right

towards the end of "Dark Shadows"

and they immediately said we're going to send you out to all

these different projects.

And they were horror movies.

He did the "Devil's Daughter." and then

he did Oliver Stone's directorial debut, "Seizure."

- "You can never hide from it.

The breath-stopping panic of 'Seizure.'"

- He had found Barnabas a multifaceted character and yet

casting people were saying, "Oh, do your thing, Mr. Frid!

He said, "What thing?

I didn't have a vampire thing.

I was an actor playing a very varied character."

There was definitely frustration.

So he decided to take a break from acting.

- Meanwhile, Curtis encountered a similar frustration,

finding that the majority of projects

he was able to get off the ground

returned into the realm of horror.

- What's kind of interesting to me about Dan Curtis post "Dark

Shadows" is that if you think about that period

in the '70s, I think Dan Curtis pretty much defined television

horror in that period, when he did those classic adaptations

with Frankenstein and Dracula.

- "A terrifying love story that reaches

back into the dead past."

- And then "Night Stalker" and the two films.

Particularly the first one, I think,

were very successful from a ratings perspective.

I mean, "Trilogy of Terror" is another thing

with an incredible shelf-life.

- He felt that he was trapped in the genre, as a matter of fact.

He said, "You can't get out.

If you do well, the better you do,

the more they want you to do more of the same kind of thing.

And I'm tired of doing that stuff," he said.

"I've scared enough people."

- "In this old house, something lives.

Something strange.

Something evil.

'Burnt Offerings.'"

- I think that he had wanted to move on

and he had been there, done that successfully.

He was ready to try something new.

- Something shifted, I think, inside of him

where he really wanted to do things with more meaning.

- Dan convinced writer Herman Wouk

to sell the rights to his epic novel, "The Winds of War."

So began a colossal three year production

in six countries with a cast of thousands.

- Dan started out by saying, "The book is

the Bible of the mini series.

We're going to follow the book.

And when in doubt, we go to the book."

This is what he said to me.

In attempting to write for television,

I did some ad libbing.

And he said, "No, go back to the book."

That was the first thing I learned from him, which is--

it was music to my ears.

- And we started working on this show, which was

so devouring and so intense.

We were like rabid wolves.

I think we had around 300 speaking parts in

"Winds of War" and 2,000 extra parts and 3,000 extras

all in costume.

Dan loved difficult and very challenging

kind of nerve-wracking situations.

It was his perilous sense of drama.

We were insane. We shot six day weeks.

Six day weeks and we were looking at dailies at midnight.

And then you get up at 5:00 AM to go to the set.

And then on Sunday, we're preparing for the next week.

And I don't know how anybody survived.

- And he said, "You feel like God."

He said, "Here, let's do Pearl Harbor next week."

He said, "Turn the battleship around."

"Well, Mr. Curtis, it takes an hour and a half

to turn the battleship around."

"I want it facing the other direction.

It should be facing that direction."

They said, "No, no, no, sir.

We better shoot it facing this direction.

It'll-- "Turn the battleship around!"

- So he was king of the castle, king of the circus.

He was made to be some kind of--

some creature like Napoleon.

"Onwards and upwards.

We'll make it through this horror show.

We'll do it.

We'll win!"

- Budgeted at $40 million, the "Winds of War"

was a historic undertaking for television.

And the Herculean effort paid off.

The mini-series attracted an audience

of over 140 million viewers in the U.S. alone

and became a resounding success worldwide.

- The "Winds of War" was a huge success.

I mean, wild.

It was the most dominant show of that era.

- It was so successful.

The amount of viewership and ABC was very excited.

- It was the toughest thing I ever had to do,

yet I never got tired.

And it was the experience of my life.

- I'm happy as a lark, believe me,

as we go rolling, rolling home.

- After "Winds of War," ABC asked him

to do "War and Remembrance."

It was quite an undertaking to do "Winds of War"

and I know a huge decision on my father's part.

And my mother saw that he wasn't that

happy after doing that big project

and not having something of that scope to do next.

And so he decided to do it.

The network said, "Well, why don't you

hire a director to do each segment?"

And he's like, "Are you kidding me?

I'm going to do them all!"

- And there we were in New York, starting

to prep "War and Remembrance" in the Plaza Hotel.

And Barry Diller calls up and said he's pulling the plug.

And I remember, I got this insane sense of elation.

I thought, "Thank God!

Save me, God.

Thank you.

They're pulling the plug.

I don't have to commit to this for another five years."

And Dan, who was a brilliant salesman,

spoke to Barry Diller for an hour and talked him out of it.

- And so a further four years of epic television production

in eight countries began.

- It was the first time anybody had ever filmed in Auschwitz.

And he got the approval.

It was a very, very emotional time, too,

because that was the first time ever

that such graphic images were portrayed

on TV of the Holocaust.

- The Emmy goes to "War and Remembrance."

Dan Curtis, executive producer, Barbara Steele, producer.

- He won the Golden Globe award.

He won an Emmy.

He was honored by the Simon Wiesenthal

Center with an award.

- It took longer than World War II, I know.

But I love actors.

And these are the greatest actors.

I love 'em!

And what they did, they brought this thing to life

and they made it happen.

- The entire two together constituted

34 hours of television.

And that will never happen again.

They'll never have the financing for it.

They'll never have a man who can do it.

- Spook fans and all that will think that "Trilogy"

was his masterpiece.

"Dark Shadows" was certainly a masterpiece.

But as a producer and everything else,

"Winds" and "War" went way, way above.

- Oh, I think this was the pinnacle of his existence.

It wasn't just his creative existence.

- Despite the enthusiastic critical reception,

the viewership for "War and Remembrance"

did not reach the record breaking

heights of the "Winds of War."

- "Bill," he said, "I can't get back to that level.

I don't think I'll ever get back to that level

again because they won't finance anything like that again.

I'm really frustrated because I've done these things.

I've gotten these great reviews from people.

I've gotten notices for the first time in my life

that I never thought I'd ever get."

He said, "Marvelous appreciation."

When he had to go back to the genre

again and do horror films, it was a big letdown for him.

- I had spent 10 years on the "Winds of War" and "War

and Remembrance."

I thought nothing would ever satisfy me again.

Everything seemed so paltry to me.

But all along, NBC had been coming to me, calling me

in London at weird hours.

They had the writers' strike.

They wanted to do "Dark Shadows."

And the last thing in the world I wanted to do

was "Dark Shadows."

I didn't want to go back into that world again.

I'd just had it.

So I said to them, "If you allow me to use the stories that I

used before, that might be interesting because I could do

it in a way that I always envisioned being able to do it

but couldn't."

- "Dark Shadows" was resurrected in 1991 with a 13 week

commitment on NBC in primetime.

Ben Cross assumed the mantle of Barnabas Collins.

- I, frankly, have never seen

one episode of the original series.

I asked Dan.

I said, "Please give me at least some of those episodes

so I can look at them."

And he said, "No, Ben.

You don't need it.

This is on another level."

- And I think it was, to a certain degree,

modernized in its approach.

You couldn't certainly act the way

they acted in the earlier ones, the early versions.

It was very kind of stilted but it worked for that.

It worked because it created a certain atmosphere.

This kind of opened it up.

And it was shot in color, of course, and shot on film.

- And so it lent very heavily on Dan

for the first, let's say, four or five episodes.

So it was rather lovely.

Each episode after that, I got to bite

the necks of some rather beautiful Hollywood actresses.

I mean, this isn't in any way--

I'm not demeaning women by judging them on their sexuality

or not, but you cannot make a vampire show, film, series...

It's all about sex.

The undercurrent is all about sex.

Dan Curtis didn't say, now, the undercurrent of all this

is this.

Of course not.

But at the same time, there is this kind of wild aspect to it.

He had forces inside him that at times he literally

could not control.

So at the moment of biting someone's neck,

there is that feral, vicious, wild--

This sort of blood fest, this need for blood.

But of course, it's a bit like getting drunk and making a fool

of yourself the night before.

There's this awful regret the next day when you think about,

perhaps, what you've done.

- Ben Cross was the vampire in our show.

And I thought he was great because he

looks like a medieval gargoyle.

He had this drawn, very intense face.

And I play his sort of adversary,

this character Julia Hoffman, this doctor

who's got this sort of secret in her potions

on how to keep him alive.

- We had people that were--

Jean Simmons, for example.

I mean, iconic actress from the movies.

And she was playing the matriarch of the family.

Even Joseph Gordon Levitt was on that as a little boy.

Little Joey, we used to call him.

I mean, I worked as a director on the first two

and then produced the other ones.

I was given a lot of latitude because Dan

was very, very generous.

And I learned a lot from him, too.

- No one on the set worked harder than him.

Incredible stamina, incredible drive.

If he didn't like something, boy, did you know it.

If it was critical or it was this or it

came from frustration.

"Oh, god, I've got to get this right!"

And that's the kind of man he is.

- Dan was possessed and agitated.

I think he was very reluctant to go back and do

a "Dark Shadows" again.

It was very painful.

I actually quit in the middle of it.

Bang in the middle.

I couldn't stand the way he talked to me.

He was so concerned about the framing

of the syringe or something.

I couldn't stand-- and I said, "I'm out of here.

I quit.

Five weeks into shooting.

Recast me.

Reshoot everything.

I'm gone."

And the crew applauded.

Oh, the crew applauded!

I've never felt so good.

Then I made this wonderful exit.

And then, of course, I came back the next day.

- The end result, I thought, pictorially was wonderful.

- I think people were eager to see this again.

I mean, the people who were familiar with it certainly

tuned in.

And those who were unfamiliar with it were intrigued.

So you had an audience.

Unfortunately, what also happened historically

at that time was the Gulf War.

- The first Gulf War occurred at that time.

And it being the age that we are in-- were in at that time--

this was like a live feed from the battlefront.

And it was on all the major channels.

And so the series, in a sense, was bumped.

There was no room for that kind of thing at that moment.

The ratings were not there for NBC

and we heard that NBC's not going to renew.

- I'm not only not ashamed that I did that series,

I actually consider myself very lucky and blessed

to be given the opportunity.

- While a return to Collinwood was struggling to take hold,

appreciation for the original series continued to grow.

"Dark Shadows" inspired fan conventions

that achieved rabid popularity.

And the cast embraced the burgeoning fandom

as the original series episodes were released on home video

and re-run on television.

- He returned in 2006 and then through 2011.

And now in his 80s, he wasn't in the best physical shape.

Why did he come back?

I mean, an actor is always an actor.

He loved the fans.

And he really, I think, had a desire

to see the fans again, to one more time glory,

to be there and tell them stories.

And so he got himself back.

And he loved being there again.

- Bravo!

- Physically, towards the end, it was hard,

but he made the effort to be there,

to see them again and perform for them again.

- I'm not suggesting, I'm telling you: don't kick ass.

Better that than to kiss it.

- Jonathan Frid passed away in 2012.

His final role was a cameo that year

in Tim Burton's reimagining of "Dark Shadows,"

with Johnny Depp assuming the role of Barnabas.

- I will say there was a time when I just

wished "Dark Shadows" would go away,

just shoo, go somewhere else.

However, since then my feelings about the show

and about the people who watched the show

have grown exponentially.

- I am so proud of the fact that we are celebrating

our 50th anniversary.

It's very special to me.

I love all of the people that are

coming to help us celebrate.

- It's mind-boggling.

I mean, there are people in that audience who are grandchildren.

It's amazing.

I mean, people say, oh, God, you do "Dark Shadows"?

They kind of put it down and that--

I'm kind of proud that we had the opportunity

to do what we did.

- And I asked some people yesterday

when I was signing autographs,

"Why do you come to this gathering?"

And they said, "Well, we grew up with you."

- And it became a big part of their childhood

and that's one of the reasons for the longevity of the show.

Because as we all had something we liked when we were kids,

we still remember it.

And for them, for that generation,

it was "Dark Shadows."

- And I think the people who find it think it's their show

and they love it and they make their kids watch it,

and then their kids love it.

- If you look at "Dark Shadows" now

and you realize that it was about characters

that were outsiders who were trying

to find their way in the world as it exists

and get people to understand.

- It's when the others became popular for a while.

The eccentrics.

You got to admit, we had a load of eccentrics.

And you know what was good about them?

The actors were just as eccentric

as the characters they played.

- We've known each other for 50 years.

And it's just been a real joy to know them--

- Knock if off.

- And to deal with him.

He hasn't changed.

I knew him 50 years ago, and he's still the schmuck

that I knew 50 years ago.

- It's a treat to see how people's lives progress.

And it's seldom, I think, in life

that unless people are relatives,

you actually get that chance to see what's happened

to people after 50 years.

- Shadows of the night, calling me to you.

I've never had a moment where I wasn't

grateful for doing the show.

It meant so much.

And a lot of it was because of the people.

- He gave us all our start so we'll forever

be grateful to him.

And he was the one who okayed my writing the books.

So he's a powerful figure in my life.

I wish he were still around.

- Dan Curtis was flattered by the adulation

for "Dark Shadows" but was not one to simply dwell

on the past.

He continued working on new projects until his final days.

- His work ethic never diminished.

His love and creativity never waned his entire life up

until the final days. He was directing--

I think he had just finished "Our Fathers"

very close to when he got sick.

- And my father was losing his strength.

But he had such a drive.

And he used to tell me, "The only reason

I work out as hard as I do is so that I

can outlive your mother."

- Dan passed away on March 27, 2006,

less than three weeks after his wife Norma.

- It feels very strange to be the creator of "Dark Shadows,"

because everywhere I go, when I hear "Dark Shadows"

or they say, are you the guy who did "Dark Shadows"?

And they all have the exact same line--

"I used to run home every day from school to see

'Dark Shadows.'" I always said, I'll probably be remembered

for "Dark Shadows" and not the things that I really cared

about, which were the great epics that I made.

"Dark Shadows" will be the thing that will be on my gravestone.

But I love "Dark Shadows."

I guess it's terrific to have somehow created something

that will live forever.

It's not like brain surgery, but it's...

Hopefully, it will live forever.

[music playing]