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Dan
Curtis' Dream Becomes Reality
In 1965, a young TV
executive named Dan Curtis had a nightmare that changed his life
-- and the destinies of countless others. Curtis was an Emmy-winning
producer of CBS Golf Classics and he was more than a little
bored in that job. One night, he dreamt of a mysterious young
woman on a train. 
The next morning at the breakfast
table, the producer told his wife, Norma, about his eerie dream.
She thought it sounded like a great plot for a new TV show. Soon
he pitched it to ABC, and network officials agreed with Norma.
Curtis (pictured right) hired Art
Wallace to develop a story from the fragment he'd dreamed. (Among
other elements, the writer gave the show its name, Dark Shadows.)
Robert Costello joined as Line Producer (Curtis' own title was
Creator and Executive Producer), and Lela Swift, one of the few
female directors in the industry, agreed to take the helm of the
new soap opera. John Sedgewick and Henry Kaplan directed as well.
Robert Cobert composed theme music, and Sy Thomashoff set out
to design the spooky mansion that would be the eventual home to
the girl on the train. Next Curtis had to find that girl -- as
well as the rest of the cast.
 Alexandra
Moltke (pictured left), a young actress with some stage experience,
was cast as Victoria Winters, the orphaned governess who finds
herself working at a spooky Maine mansion called Collinwood, in
search of clues about her mysterious past. Movie star Joan Bennett
was tapped to play Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Victoria's employer.
Elizabeth's hard-drinking brother, Roger, was played by Louis
Edmonds, a Louisiana-native who had spent the previous twenty
years acting on the New York stage. Petite blonde stage actress
Nancy Barrett was Elizabeth's daughter, Carolyn, and child actor
David Henesy played Victoria's charge, David Collins, Roger's
son.
The first episode, starting with
Victoria on that dreamed-about train, was taped June 13, 1966,
and aired two weeks later.
Variety
reviewed the first installment of Dark Shadows in its June
29, 1966 issue. "Writer Art Wallace took so much time getting
into his story that the first episode of this neo Gothic soaper
added up to one big contemporary yawn." The reviewer would
have preferred to see more of movie star Joan Bennett, and less
of Alexandra Motlke, who "did okay in her ambiguous part."
Variety did praise producer Robert Costello and director
Lela Swift for creating a dark and somber mood. But critics and
fans were fairly unanimous: There wasn't much happening on this
new show. Ratings were bleak.
 Dark
Shadows is best remembered as a
supernatural thriller, filled with vampires, zombies, werewolves,
and mad scientists. But in the beginning, the scariest thing on
the screen was the bad blonde wig Kathryn Leigh Scott was forced
to don for her first few outings as waitress Maggie Evans. As
Victoria poked around Collinwood's dusty deserted west wing, trying
to figure out if she was a long-lost Collins, there were occasional
supernatural undertones. Young David Collins claimed to see ghosts
all over the place, and in the 70th episode, which aired September
30, 1966, viewers saw a specter emerge from the portrait of Josette
Collins, then dance around the grounds of the great estate. Dark
Shadows was finally heading where no soap opera had strayed
before. The ratings, though still anemic, were goosed a bit by
the unusual story.
 In December,
almost six months into the show's run, Diana Millay (pictured
left) was cast as Laura Collins, Roger's wayward wife, who turned
out to be a real monster. Now there was more than hinting about
the supernatural -- the writers showed Laura using magic to make
trouble for her family members. The character's evil deeds caused
the ratings to climb a bit, but Diana was pregnant, so her stay
on the show had to be short, and Laura was destroyed. With waning
viewer and advertiser support, the show itself was facing an unceremonious
demise. Then in April1967, a vampire named Barnabas Collins showed
up at the front door of Collinwood and changed the face of daytime
programming forever.
NEXT:
A
Vampire Changes Everything 
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