Jerry Lacy
Dark Shadows Characters:
Tony Peterson, Reverend Trask, Gregory Trask, Mr. Trask, Lamar Trask

Appeared in: 40 episodes

First episode: # 357, November 7, 1967

Last episode: # 1198, January 27, 1971

Born: Gerald LeRoy Lacy, Sioux City, Iowa, March 27, 1936

Jerry Lacy was discovered by two Dark Shadows stars -- Nancy Barrett and husband David Ford -- when the three acted together in a regional production of The Physicists in Virginia. The couple was taking a break from DS to appear in the play, and when they returned to New York, they recommended Jerry to Dan Curtis. He was soon cast as attorney Tony Peterson.

But it was later, during the 1795 flashback storyline, that he played his most distinctive part -- the fanatical Reverend Trask. For the next few years, he played variations of that character in different storylines. Then in 2005, he resurrected the character for a radio drama titled Vengeance at Collinwood, performed at that year's Dark Shadows Festival.

Jerry was born in Sioux City, Iowa, and attended high school in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he and his parents moved when he was 12. Two years later, his family relocated to Topeka, Kansas. Soon it was time to move again, but Jerry decided to stay put. "I didn't leave home at 16; it left me," he later told a fan magazine. He remained in Topeka and dropped out of high school.

As soon as he was old enough, Jerry joined the Marines and served time in Korea and at Camp Pendleton in California. While enlisted, he earned his high school diploma, and once discharged he enrolled at Los Angeles City College as a physics major.

"I wanted to go into atomic physics," he said later, "but mathematics and sociology were my downfall." He had to give a speech in sociology the same day he was required to take an algebra test.

"I was painfully shy and withdrawn and hated to talk in public," he continued. "I worked so hard and so long on the speech that time just flew by, and before I knew it, I'd missed the algebra test. That upset me so badly that I didn't show up for sociology and just quit school."

Later the results of an aptitude test suggested he should enter the music field, so he returned to college as a music major. To help conquer his shyness, he took a course in pantomime. At the end one of his first classroom performances, the rest of the class burst into applause. "That applause created a monster," he said. "Within a month I was running around looking for a job. I got a couple, too."

He got out of school in 1962 worked nights as a bank clerk while he searched for acting jobs. On New Year's Eve 1962, he moved across country to New York City. He struggled for two years, landing a few jobs, including a stint as a soldier on an episode of Hallmark Hall of Fame.

But by 1966, he was ready to give up and returned to California. After another year there, he decided to try the east coast again and returned to New York. His second day in town, he got a job at the Wayside Theater in Middletown, Virginia, where he met David Ford and Nancy Barrett.

Jerry started working on Dark Shadows on Halloween 1967. While he was on the show, Jerry's remarkable resemblance to Humphrey Bogart helped him land the part of the screen legend's ghost in the Broadway show Play It Again, Sam, written by and starring Woody Allen. He played Bogey again in the film version in 1972 and in a several TV commercials -- including one that costared Marie Wallace.

After leaving Dark Shadows, for several months in 1971 he played Simon Gilbey, a flamboyant businessman on As the World Turns.

Jerry moved behind the scenes to work as a writer for the Bob Newhart sitcom Newhart in 1982. He and series star Julia Duffy later married. (Julia played Stephanie, a spoiled rich girl turned hotel maid.)

He has acted occasionally in later years, including guest spots on the TV series Designing Women (1991) and Chicken Soup for the Soul (2000) and in the film The Big G (costarring his wife, 2002).

At the 2005 Dark Shadows Festival, held in Hollywood, Lacy returned to his Shadows roots, reprising of his most popular roles from the series, the ghost of Rev. Trask, and Tony Peterson, in the radio drama Vengeance at Collinwood.

In the new drama, written by Jamison Selby, Peterson is revealed to be a descendent of the Reverend. Driven by Trask, Peterson returns to Collinwood to torment Angelique in return for the grief she casued the Reverend. He is betrayed by Quentin, however, and ends up entombed in the secret maseleum room on the Collilnwood grounds, with the blood of Barnabas Collins coursing through his veins and turning him into a vampire.

Jerry, Julia, and their two children live in California.

Dark Shadows Online © 2006 Craig Hamrick
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