This year the landmark television series Dark Shadows celebrates its 60th anniversary. Anyone who’s been reading my work for a while knows of my 40+ year love of the gothic soap opera; it’s the first thing I ever wrote about online, and my one byline in the new FANGORIA Presents: VAMPIRES one-shot is about the televised saga of Barnabas Collins, and why those 1,225 episodes of television are so incredibly special.
So you can only imagine what an honor it was when the series’ leading lady, Kathryn Leigh Scott, reached out with screenwriter John Logan (Penny Dreadful) and offered Fango the chance to share both her introduction and his preface to the upcoming book Dark Shadows Legacy. Taken together, their pieces paint a picture of what was happening on both sides of the TV screen back when Dark Shadows aired, as well as the enduring effect of the show’s very particular brand of magic.
Series creator Dan Curtis could not have possibly foreseen what an amazing ambassador he’d chosen for his series in Ms. Scott; her dedication to keeping the show and its fans engaged over seven decades is a miraculous feat, and she’s one of the first horror actresses to truly embrace her legacy, and to appreciate the meaning her work still has for the faithful. Mr. Logan’s Penny Dreadful took what made Dark Shadows so special and brought it into the era of “prestige TV.” It should be no surprise that he’s one of the kids who ran home from school to catch Barnabas and company every day.
Enjoy both pieces below, and be sure to pre-order Dark Shadows legacy now; the 256-page coffee table book (with cover art by Mark Maddox) is released on August 4th.
PREFACE
John Logan
On January 7, 2025, my house burned to the ground. My husband and I were one of the many victims of the hellish wildfires that scorched through Malibu and other LA neighborhoods, obliterating over 16,000 homes and buildings. Overnight, in about an hour apparently, everything I owned was gone. There wasn’t a teacup left. Every film, television and theater memento from my own career as well as all my other books and collectibles and art were nothing but scorched earth. I’m a proud Southern California native, so it was, almost literally, like my whole life and history had gone up in smoke.
The first thing I did as soon as we evacuated to my mother’s house was hop on eBay and buy a Barnabas cane.
Dark Shadows was always a safe space for me. As an awkward, asthmatic gay kid I found kindred spirits in the disenfranchised and marginalized monsters of Collinsport. This was a place where being different was celebrated, a source of power, not shame. Over the almost 60 years since I first “ran home from school” I had amassed an enviable collection of Dark Shadows merchandise and mementos. What I came to realize in the months after the fire was that gradually rebuilding my DS collection from scratch wasn’t an act of avarice, it was an act of healing. My husband Tommy correctly calls this my “trauma response.” This is how I cope. Dark Shadows has always been how I cope.
But all that is necessary background to what I really want to write about, which is the kindness and generosity of my Dark Shadows family.
As soon as people heard I had lost everything, they started giving. Kathryn Leigh Scott led the pack with armfuls of books to start rebuilding my library. In short order friends and colleagues like Ansel Faraj, Danielle Gelehrter, Mark Dawidziak, Mary O’Leary, Steve Rogers, Jeff Thompson, Charlie Band, Jim Pierson, Jamie Anderson, Paul Garner and Sam Irvin were sending or handing me treasures: sharing their own collections with me, giving me parts of their past to help build my future. Dear Dick Klemensen sent me the entire run of Little Shoppe of Horrors magazine (53 years’ worth!) and my friends Nige Burton and Jamie Jones did the same for their beautiful Classic Monsters of the Movies magazine and Ultimate Guides.
These kind souls are my Dark Shadows family as much as Barnabas and Julia and Carolyn and Count Petofi. My horror community came through for me with open-hearted solace and love. You’re part of that community too. Anyone holding this book and turning these pages is part of the sprawling and diverse Dark Shadows family. Cherish this, please. And always know when you need help, when your world seems like nothing but ashes, you can always count on Barnabas Collins to be there. He always has been. He always will be.
For me, that is the true legacy of Dark Shadows.
INTRODUCTION
Kathryn Leigh Scott
“I got it!” That’s my journal entry, June 9, 1966, the day I was cast as Maggie Evans. Sixty years later, I don’t need journal entries to remind me of the emotions engulfing me that day—I knew my life had changed. I was now a working actress, with a contract and union membership to prove it. But back then, I couldn’t have imagined all that Dark Shadows would come to mean in my life.
The morning had begun with a 9:30 AM camera test for the role of Maggie Evans opposite two actors competing for the role of Burke Devlin in the new ABC-TV soap, Dark Shadows. An hour later, I was seated between the two actors at the bar in Joe Allen having eggs and coffee, trying not to get my hopes up.
By noon, I was at rehearsals for The Contrast, an early American Restoration-style play that would open the first season of the Eugene O’Neil Festival in Waterford, Connecticut. Our director, Worthington Miner (whose son, Peter, was one of the Dark Shadows producers) soon took me aside and told me to call my agent.
I raced to a phone booth in noisy Times Square, thrilled to hear my agent confirm that I’d been cast as Maggie—but swallowed hard when I learned I’d have to drop out of The Contrast and would no longer be in the running for a role I coveted in a film with Burt Lancaster. “Cheer up, my dear,” my agent laughed. “You’re employed!”
Dropping more coins into the payphone, I called my parents in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, to share my good news. “I never heard of this show,” my mother said, and urged caution. “Just don’t get carried away now and give up your part-time job.” My bread-and-butter job at the time was working as a Bunny at the New York Playboy Club.
I took my mother’s sobering words to heart. Dark Shadows was new in every way; a moody, Jane Eyre-like Gothic romance that was nothing like the other run-of-the-mill soaps on the air. Would it find an audience among kids and stay-at-home housewives? I kept my job at the Playboy Club another month, just in case.
The first rehearsal of Dark Shadows was held at 10 AM the following morning in the Terrace Room of the Empire Hotel on Broadway at 63rd Street. I arrived early—and so did everyone else, all of us keyed up as we excitedly introduced ourselves around a table laden with coffee and Danish pastry. Producer Dan Curtis, with his leonine grin, stood beside director Lela Swift, greeting the cast. I recognized several of the actors, including Louis Edmonds, Nancy Barrett and Joel Crothers from the final auditions held two days earlier at Dan’s Madison Avenue office. Also present were Alexandra Moltke, Conrad Bain and Mitch Ryan, one of the two actors I’d camera-tested with the day before. Mitch wrapped his arm around my shoulders in a reassuring squeeze, and whispered, “We made it, kid!”
Joan Bennett, glamorous in a pink suit and blue-tinted eyeglasses, greeted me warmly, but eyed the Danish in my hand with a droll raised eyebrow. In cultured, mid-Atlantic diction so familiar from vintage Hollywood movies, she gently advised me that the “figure one has before age twenty-one is the figure one should keep a lifetime.” The cheese Danish slid off my hand into a wastebasket. Then in her late fifties, Joan was as trim and elegant as a woman less than half her age and had arrived at rehearsal with a container of homemade chicken soup in a small Tiffany shopping bag.
In the early days, we rehearsed at the Empire Hotel, then walked two blocks north to record our show “live” in the cavernous ABC-TV studios on West 66th Street, a makeshift arrangement that was disorienting for everyone. Fortunately, we soon moved to a two-story brick building at 433 West 53rd Street, wedged between tenements, a public school and a Pentecostal church in a neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen.
Cozy, but cramped, Studio 16 was all ours! We didn’t have to share our new digs with other shows, and that became a unifying element in creating our Dark Shadows family. We even had our own dedicated watering hole up the street, the Brittany du Soir, where cast, crew and staff alike all gathered at the end of a workday, forming lifelong bonds. There were other factors that made us feel special—and, to be honest, “superior” to other soaps. We often referred to our show as an anthology series, drawing on great literature for our plotlines. We were also innovative, weaving ghosts, a glamorous phoenix, a dazzling witch, a mutton-chopped werewolf and a matinee-handsome warlock into our stories, complete with elaborate special effects—and time-traveled with abandon. What other soap provided stage-trained actors with an opportunity to portray characters in another time period wearing wigs, capes, satin waistcoats and brocade gowns?
On April 17,1967, the introduction of a heart-swooning, sympathetic vampire, embodied by Shakespearean actor Jonathan Frid, ensured our popularity with housewives and kids—and scored legions of fans of all ages. We had 20-million viewers, hit-parade theme songs, spectacular merch and (turning live-TV blunders into endearing howlers) became famous for our “bloopers.” It was rumored that Brandon Stoddard, the ABC Television executive who pulled the plug on Dark Shadows after 1,225 episodes, fled his office by a back entrance to avoid irate fans.
Sixty years later, we’re still very special. Dark Shadows has never been “off the air”—although that “air” today encompasses digital platforms and streaming services that weren’t dreamed of when the series originated in black & white on one of only three broadcast networks June 27, 1966. Continuous replay also means that Dark Shadows actors receive residuals, a rarity for casts of soaps. Dark Shadows has the distinction of launching a cable network, spawning three motion pictures and multiple series reboots, inspiring dozens of novels and nonfiction titles, as well as a syndicated comic strip, bubble gum cards, phonograph records and board games, podcasts and a network of fans so devoted that thousands show up to attend cast-reunion Festivals.
But perhaps our greatest legacy is in service to all the youngsters for whom a scary, spooky afternoon TV show became a safe haven, a half-hour escape from the fears and anxieties that are part of growing up. All kids want to feel that they belong, that they fit in and that they are accepted for who they are. Dark Shadows, with its cast of eccentrics, loners, rebels and other-worldly characters, celebrated the “other” . . . the “not us” . . . the “outsider” . . . the “outlier” . . . and it’s the reason kids felt at home watching the show. Dark Shadows provided a safe space to explore and ponder those yearnings to belong.
It’s the magical lure of Dark Shadows that still keeps us coming back for more.
There’s no escaping the phenomenon Dan Curtis created six decades ago—and those of us in the original series can take considerable credit for the enduring popularity of Dark Shadows and its legacy. No one forced us to answer fan letters, or twisted our arms to attend annual Festivals—we had so much fun that we went again and again, often signing autographs until well after midnight. We could have turned down requests for interviews and resisted the urge to appear on talk shows or write books—but we didn’t. As a result of our combined efforts and the devotion of fans, we’ve kept Dark Shadows alive for sixty years—and it’s still going strong.
You can pre-order Dark Shadows Legacy here.
