Joined
·
7,184 Posts
From LA Times:
Jonathan Frid, whose portrayal of charismatic vampire Barnabas Collins in the supernatural soap opera "Dark Shadows" turned the classically trained actor into a pop-culture star in the late 1960s, has died. He was 87.
The campy daytime soap was a year old and struggling in the ratings in 1967 when series creator Dan Curtis took his daughter's advice to "make it scarier." He introduced Barnabas Collins, and the ratings took off.
Curtis intended Barnabas to be a short-term villain but soon realized that the Shakespearean actor "brought a very gothic, romantic quality" to the role, Curtis later said. Frid remained on the ABC show until it left the air in 1971.
When Frid was asked for his advice on developing the character, he later recalled saying, "Make him human. Remember he's real, and every monster is a human of sorts."
The series is credited with bringing the idea of a sympathetic vampire to the fore of popular entertainment. "Dark Shadows" is regarded as a precursor to the "Twilight" films and such contemporary television series as"The Vampire Diaries"and "True Blood."
"Without question, without the character of Barnabas Collins, you wouldn't have the vampires of today," Kathryn Leigh Scott, a regular on "Dark Shadows," told the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger last year.
The show retains a devoted fan base, fueled by cable reruns and video collections.
The young viewers who made up the core audience are now aging baby boomers who wax nostalgic over the show, "inevitably noting that they used to rush home from school" to watch it, according to the 2009 book "The Essential Cult TV Reader."
One of them was Johnny Depp, who plays Barnabas in the Tim Burton-directed big-screen remake of "Dark Shadows" scheduled to open next month.
