The Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows began in 1966 as a daytime soap opera on ABC television. With low ratings threatening cancellation, the show added supernatural elements to the plot, and then in April 1967 introduced a vampire. This vampire—Barnabas Collins—has joined Dracula and Lestat de Lioncourt as one of the most easily recognizable vampires.

Once Collins was introduced to the show, the ratings turned around and the show became a hit. While the show went off the air in 1971, fans have kept its memory alive to the present day through fan clubs, publications, and conventions.

The Origin of Dark Shadows: Dark Shadows began as an idea of producer Dan Curtis. The beginning of a story had come to him, according to one account, from a dream in which he saw a young woman with long dark hair. The woman was traveling by train to New England, where she had been offered a job as a governess. After she got off the train, she went to a large “forbidding” house. Curtis approached ABC with the idea of taking his opening and creating a gothic-flavored daytime show. He collaborated with Art Wallace in developing the idea, and assembled a production crew that included Robert Costello, Lela Swift, John Sedwick, Sy Tomashoff, and Robert Cobert.

As the story developed, it first centered on Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke), the young woman of Curtis’s dream. She was an orphan who had been found with a note, “Her name is Victoria. I can no longer care for her.” The rest of her name was added because she was found in the wintertime. As she grew up, the orphanage received donations for Victoria’s care from Bangor, Maine. On her 20th birthday, Victoria received a offer from a Mrs. Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett) of Collinsport, Maine, who wished to hire Victoria as a governess for her nephew. This gave her not only had employment, but the possibility of an opportunity to learn about her past.

Collinsport was a small fishing town on the Maine coast. Collinwood, the Collins’s family home, was a forty-room mansion built in the 1700s. The family resided in its central structure and had closed both wings of the house. Also on the property was an older house, built in the 1600s and now abandoned.

At Collinwood, the family estate where she was employed, Victoria interacted with the residents. Mrs. Stoddard, the family matriarch, had become a recluse after her husband disappeared eighteen years before. David Collins (David Henesy), her nephew, was nine years old and somewhat of a problem. He had driven off previous governesses by his undisciplined behavior, especially his nasty pranks at their expense. David’s father, Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds), had a drinking problem and was generally neglectful of his son. Carolyn Stoddard (Nancy Barrett), Elizabeth’s daughter, was a girl enjoying her youthful years and running through a series of loves. The mansion also was home to Matthew Morgan (Thayer David), the caretaker.

The cast was rounded out with several townspeople: Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott), a waitress in the local diner who lived with her father Sam (David Ford), an alcoholic artist; Joe Haskell (Joel Crothers), employed by the Collins Fishing Fleet and involved with Carolyn Stoddard; and Burke Devlin (Mitchell Ryan), a businessman Victoria met on the train ride to Collinsport.

Devlin became Winters’s first friend and confidant. He was also the focus of the initial storyline, which was built around his reasons for returning to Collinsport after an absence of ten years. He was certain that Roger Collins had lied in court, and Burke had been sent to prison as a result. He wanted revenge. In the tension resulting from his return, Bill Malloy (Frank Schofield), a local man who tried to mediate the situation, was killed. The supernatural element first entered into the Dark Shadows story when Malloy’s ghost appeared to Victoria and told her that he had been murdered.