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On June 27, 1966, Joan began what was initially supposed to
be a couple of shows per week in ABC-TV's daytime series, "Dark Shadows." The gothic-thriller chapterplay attained enormous
popularity and, before Joan quite realized it, her part was soon extended to five shows a week with the actress on the studio's
stages from 8:11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. most days. The series was eerie and loaded with sinister happenings in which someone
was often killed off or transported to "parallel time" or another century. Joan was Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the
matriarch of the Collins family who resided in and around the Collinwood estate. The series was on the air for five
years.
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| Naomi Collins, Dark Shadows 1968 |
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| My favorite Joan Bennett Dark Shadows character, Flora Collins; somewhat like a grown-up Amy March |
With sisters Constance and Barbara and ex-husband Walter
Wanger all passed on, Joan felt it safe and fair to write The Bennett Playbill, published in 1970. A frank
history of the illustrious Bennett acting clan, Joan honestly admits that "Lois Kibbee did all the dirty work, all the research.
I never would have been able to do it." Charles Higham, reviewing the book in The New York Times, wrote "Joan
Bennett's screen personality has always been marked by a sturdy determination, a sharpness and directness and unstinting drive;
not surprising, then, that her family protrait should have precisely those qualities. It is a fascinating book."
Many thought David a positive force in Joan's life.
He insisted she keep up socially and attend all the latest movies and plays; given her quiet nature, Joan, left to her own
devices, might simply have faded from the scene. Most of all, David provided the two things she needed most at this
point in her life: steady companionship and financial stability. David's independent income meant that she would
not have to be a burden on any of her children as she aged and professional opportunities eventually narrowed. His secure
position seemed a good reason to stay with him as she neared sixty, still the self-reliant woman that she had been in 1929,
when she left New York for Hollywood.
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| House of Dark Shadows with Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins, 1970 |
House of Dark Shadows was filmed at the palatial
Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown, New York. Shooting the film posed a thankless chore for Joan. Despite special billing,
her role was small and confined to the sidelines. In addition, she lost patience with Curtis' working methods, which
she considered inefficient; while she was able to accept television's low standards, she expected more of film. "Once,
Joan and I drove out to the location at Lyndhurst," remembered Kathryn Leigh Scott. "And she said, 'My entire career,
people have told me that I would be a great second unit man or assistant director.' In other words, she was so organized
herself that she could look at a call sheet and tell what was going to work and what wouldn't. She would go out at some
ungodly hour and look at the call sheet and know she was going to sit around half the day." One morning on location,
the sink drains in the hair/dressing rooms were plugged, and it was impossible to do anyone's hair. Scott recalled Joan
sitting in her makeup chair with a scowl on her face. When a plumber came to fix the drains, he did a double take and
said, "Aren't you Joan Bennett?" "I used to be," she muttered.
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| with Kathryn Leigh Scott and David Selby in parallel time, 1970 |
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| as Flora in the year 1840 |
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| Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in Dark Shadows |
During the time "Dark Shadows" aired, it rode high as one
of daytime television's most popular programs. The fact that Jonathan Frid's character, Barnabas Collins, had become
the series' focal point did not bother Joan in the least. As the seasons rolled on and the plotlines unfolded in other
time periods, she was given acting opportunities that were meatier than the perennially tense and nervous Elizabeth Collins
Stoddard. When "Dark Shadows" began airing flashbacks to 1795, Joan portrayed Barnabas' mother, the long-suffering Naomi
Collins, who commits suicide after the death of her young daughter and upon learning that her son is afflicted with vampirism.
In a long sequence of episodes set in the Collinwood of 1897, she played Judith Collins, an iron-willed spinster who marries
the obsessive, witch-hunting Reverend Trask who tries to have her committed to a sanitarium, then kills him by walling him
up in an unused suite of rooms in the mansion. In a plot strand set in 1840, she played Flora Collins, author of frilly
romance novels and a devotee of astrology. Whenever Joan needed time off, the writers wrote in a coma or nervous breakdown
for her character-----once, she was even buried alive.
When Joan was not involved with her Puritan Dress
manufacturing deal to produce a line of women's clothes called "Forever Young," she found time to work in television and on
the stage. But Joan's busy schedule had not diminished her need to have a man in her life. During the 2nd season
of "Dark Shadows," she received an invitation to a dinner party and there met an old friend of the party-givers, David
Wilde. He was quite unlike anyone else Joan had dated. David was a short, attractive, charming, down-to-earth man who
had a degree from Yale in English literature, two daughters from a previous marriage, and had been comfortably well off from
birth. A lifelong movie and theatre buff, he was delighted with his new life as a steady escort of Joan Bennett.
The success of "Dark Shadows" enabled Joan to return to feature
filmmaking for the first time in 10 years. In 1970, with the series still enormously popular, Dan Curtis launched a
movie based on it. House of Dark Shadows told the story of Willie Loomis' discovery of Barnabas' coffin in
the hidden room of the family crypt and loosing the vampire in a murderous rampage in the vicinity of Collinsport in
and around Collinwood. The movie is a much harsher version of a similar storyline from the television series-----lots
of blood and gore, with a few of the lead characters getting murdered.
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| with Don Briscoe and Roger Davis at the costume party |
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| Elizabeth learning Carolyn may have risen from her grave as a vampire |
Distributed by MGM, House of Dark Shadows was a
sizeable hit when it was released in the fall of 1970, grossing $2.5 million. But by early 1971, the series' television
ratings had begun to slip. Most put the blame on the increasingly convoluted plotlines that called for the characters
to enter parallel time, where they led very different lives. "We were all so confused," said Nancy Barrett. "At
that point, I was doing three different characters, and I didn't know what time period I was in, what my hair was supposed
to be, what clothes I should be wearing." In any case, Curtis was not enthusiastic about continuing the run for much
longer-----he wanted to go to Hollywood to make feature films-----and several of the cast members were eager for new challenges.
On April 2, 1971, "Dark Shadows" aired its 1,245th and final episode. Ironically, in the series' final months, the ratings
had once again been on the upswing.
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Joan Bennett, Diana Anderson, Diana Markey, Melinda Markey, Melinda
Beno, Stephanie Wanger, Stephanie Guest, Shelley Wanger, Shelley Mortimer, John Marion Fox, Gene Markey, Walter Wanger, Richard
Bennett, Constance Bennett, Barbara Bennett, Barbara Downey, Adrienne Morrison, Adrienne Bennett, Mabel Bennett, Mabel Morrison,
Adrienne Ralston Fox, www.joanbennett.net
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