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"Roger Collins had zero sense of
humor, so it was doubly hard to listen to him pontificating,
knowing that Louis' devilish wit was simmering just beneath the
surface."
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Louis
Edmonds Appeared in: 322 episodes First
episode: #1, June 27, 1966 Born: Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Sept 24, 1923 Died: March 3, 2001, of respiratory failure Biography:
"I
walked home, trying to move like Bette Davis," he said years
later with a laugh. "I'm sure everyone looked at me and wondered,
'What's that boy up to?'" As an acolyte in a local Episcopal church, Louis fell in love with the ornate garments he got a chance to wear and with being the center of attention. Years later he told a newspaper reporter, "The ceremony of the church was very appealing to me. Everything was translatable into theater. The congregation was the audience, and I held a great, brass crucifix, and I led the choir in. We wore costumes. Everything was theatrical." When
Louis was about 10 years old, he performed for the first time on
stage. In a talent show at the Paramount Theater, he and a young
girl sang a duet of "The Isle of Capri." When they finished,
Louis' partner didn't have enough stage sense to leave before the
applause died down. Louis, who already understood the importance
of timing, let the little girl know it. "I kicked her in the
butt," he said. "That got her off the stage." After
serving in World War II and attending Louisianna State University
and the Carnegie Intitute of Technology, Louis moved to New York
City in 1948. One of his first roles had a familiar setting: He
co-starred in a production of Life In Louisianna with Alice Ghostley.
Louis
worked extensively on stage and in the new medium of television.
Among his early TV appearances was a role in the Studio One
production of Taming of the Shrew, starring Charlton Heston
and Lisa Kirk. (Louis played Grumio.) He appeared on stage in revivals
of such classics as The Way of The World (with Thayer David, 1953)
and The Cherry Orchard (1955). Louis made his Broadway debut
in the musical Candide in 1956. Other Broadway appearances
included Maybe Tuesday (1957) and A Passage to India
(1962). Also in '62, he made his soap opera debut, starring briefly
as Rick Hampton on Young Doctor Malone. Even
after a busy stage and TV career through the 1950s and '60s, in
1966, Louis hit a dry spell. He'd been cast in a movie (Come
Spy With Me with Troy Donahue), but stage work was becoming
difficult to find, so he decided to leave New York City. "I
planned [to leave New York City and] really start my life,"
he told me 30 years later. "My Long Island home would be the
center of my life. I would sing in the choir every Sunday. I would
shop in the local shops and have nothing to do with New York City.
Of course, the moment I made that decision, I got a call from Dan
Curtis." Curtis
cast him as Roger Collins, brother of Joan Bennett's character.
He and the movie star went head-to-head in their first scene, culminating
with Roger grasping a wine glass with such intensity it burst in
his hands. The drama increased from there. In
1995, Alexandra Moltke also fondly
recalled working with Louis. "The
thing that impressed me about him was the way he could be lots of
fun, and then suddenly switch to being a total professional,"
she said. "He would be saying something incredibly droll-or
naughty-one minute, and then a cue would be given and he would slip
into character, leaving Nancy Barrett
and I very much out of character and trying not to laugh at
whatever witticism he had just uttered. "Roger Collins had zero sense of humor, so it was doubly hard to listen to him pontificating, knowing that Louis' devilish wit was simmering just beneath the surface," she continued. Alexandra was impressed by Louis' acting style. "Louis was really a character actor, and I always admired the grace with which he could slip into his role and be consistent despite the inconsistencies that resulted from having three script writers," she said. "He was also very steady during the terrors of taping. He could read the Teleprompter beautifully, and I felt that if the set fell down or everyone forgot their lines, Louis would somehow save the day." Louis reprised the role of Roger in the film House of Dark Shadows, but after the show's 1971 cancellation his career slowed considerably. He spent most of the rest of the '70s battling depression and working regional theater. In 1979, Louis joined the cast of the ABC soap All My Children playing a con man targeting rich divorcee Phoebe Tyler (played by Ruth Warrick, best known as one of the stars of the film classic Citizen Kane). Louis' Langely Wallingford was soon redeemed by love, however, and the role, which was originally intended to be short-term, was extended into the longest of his career. TV legend Carol Burnett briefly joined the cast of All My Children to play Langley's daughter, Verla Grubb in the 1980s. She returned to the show for a few episodes in 1995, which turned out to be Louis' last appearances on the show. He had undergone surgery for throat cancer a few years earlier, and never fully recovered his strength and stamina. Aside from a small role in the 1997 direct-to-video movie Next Year Jerusalem, Louis retired to his Setauket, Long Island home (dubbed The Rookery), which was where his health took a downturn in March 2001. He was rushed to the Stonybrook, N.Y., hospital, where he quickly succumbed to respiratory failure.
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