A Behind the Scenes Look At the 1960s Soap Opera, Dark Shadows

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Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins.

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Hello! I'm Mr. Ed

Blog Created: 1-31-2026

Last Updated: 2-1-2026

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Dark Shadows is an American Gothic soap opera that aired weekdays on the ABC television network from June 27, 1966, to April 2, 1971. The show depicted the lives, loves, trials, and tribulations of the wealthy Collins family of Collinsport, Maine, where a number of supernatural occurrences take place.

Initially framed as a mixture of family saga and gothic romance, the series introduced progressively more supernatural elements during its first year, culminating in the debut of the vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), who quickly became Dark Shadows' breakout character and main protagonist. The show would go on to feature ghosts, werewolves, zombies, man-made monsters, witches, warlocks, time travel, and parallel universes. A small company of actors each played many roles; as actors came and went, some characters were played by more than one actor. The show was distinguished by its melodramatic performances, atmospheric interiors, numerous dramatic plot twists, broad cosmos of characters, and heroic adventures. Critics and scholars have credited the series with pioneering a more nuanced characterization of supernatural creatures that had previously been depicted as one-dimensional villains or inhuman monsters, and influencing subsequent horror and paranormal-themed TV shows.

Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins and a werewolf from Dark Shadows.

Dark Shadows developed a large teenage audience and a dedicated cult following; by 1969, it had become ABC's highest-rated daytime series. The original network run of the show amassed 1,225 episodes. The success of the series spawned a media franchise that has included two feature films (House of Dark Shadows in 1970 and Night of Dark Shadows in 1971), a 1991 TV remake, an unsprouted 2004 remake pilot, a 2012 film remake directed by Tim Burton, and numerous spin-off novels and comics. Since 2006, the series has continued as a range of audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions, featuring members of the original cast including David Selby, Lara Parker, and Kathryn Leigh Scott.

Detail from Dark Shadows newspaper comic strip. Art by Ken Bald.

TV Guide's list of all-time Top Cult Shows ranked the series #19 in 2004, and #23 in 2007.

History ~

Creator Dan Curtis claimed he had a dream in 1965 of a mysterious young woman on a train. The following day Curtis told his wife Norma Mae Curtis of the dream and pitched the idea as a TV series to ABC. Network officials greenlit production and Curtis began hiring crew members.

Dan Curtis.

Art Wallace was hired to create a story from Curtis's dream sequence. Wallace wrote the story bible Shadows on the Wall, the proposed title for the show, later changed to Dark Shadows. Robert Costello was added as a line producer, and Curtis took on the creator and executive producer roles. Lela Swift, John Sedwick, and Henry Kaplan all agreed to be directors for the new series. Robert Cobert created the musical score and Sy Tomashoff designed the set.

Collinwood drawing room stage set.

Broadcast history ~

Perhaps one of ABC's first truly popular daytime series, along with the game show Let's Make a Deal (which had moved from its original home NBC in 1968), Dark Shadows found its demographic niche in teenagers coming home from school in time to watch the show at 4 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Central, where it aired for almost all of its network run, the exception being a 15-month stretch between April 1967 and July 1968, when it aired a half-hour earlier. Originally, it was aired in black-and-white, but the show went into color starting with the episode broadcast on August 11, 1967. It became one of ABC's first daytime shows to win the rating for its timeslot, leading to the demise of NBC's original Match Game and Art Linkletter's long-running House Party on CBS, both in 1969.

Dark Shadows began with a 4.1 rating in the 1965–66 TV season, tying for thirteenth place out of eighteen daytime dramas. The audience figures only improved slightly, to 4.3, in 1966–67. 1966 was a volatile year for soaps, and many ended their runs between the premiere date of Dark Shadows in June and the month of December. By that time, six months had passed, and Dark Shadows had failed to gain major traction. In June, it ranked #13 out of 18 soaps, and by December, the lower-rated offerings were gone and the show officially ranked #13 out of 13 soaps. "The show was limping along, really limping", head writer Sam Hall remembered, "and ABC said, 'We're canceling it. Unless you pick up in 26 weeks, you're finished.' [Series creator Dan Curtis] had always wanted to do a vampire picture, so he decided to bring a vampire — Barnabas Collins — to the series."

Sam Hall.

Barnabas Collins, (Jonathan Frid) was introduced in April 1967. With a time slot change to 3:30 Eastern/2:30 Central, many more teenagers found the program. By May 1968, the series was still in last place (out of 12 offerings), but rose to a 7.3 rating, the rough equivalent of gaining the viewership of three million households in the span of one year. Dark Shadows returned to its 4 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Central time slot in July 1968, without losing much of its audience. One Life to Live, which was launched by ABC in July 1968 in the 3:30 slot, also sought to reach the newfound young demographic.

The series reached its peak in popularity during a storyline set in the year 1897, broadcast from March 1969. By the end of May, Dark Shadows was ABC's most popular soap opera, and by late 1969 it was reaching between 7 and 9 million viewers on any given day, and ranking 11th out of a total 15 daytime dramas in that time period.

In November 1969, the 1897 storyline came to an end. With ratings at an all-time high, the writers were under pressure to hold the audience. Fans tended to dislike the portrayal of Barnabas as the pawn of some greater power in the next storyline, known as "The Leviathans". They were more interested in the archetypes of classic horror—the vampire, the witch, the werewolf—than in off-camera suggestion. The launch of Somerset in March 1970, a much-publicized spin-off of NBC's Another World, also hurt the series considerably.

The release of the film House of Dark Shadows in September of that year is also thought to have caused TV ratings to fall, possibly due to parents, attending the film with their children, discouraging their choice of television viewing material due to the amount of blood spilled on screen. Beginning in the fall of 1970, several ABC stations across the country dropped the show due to falling viewership. Within six months, ratings dropped from 7.3 to 5.3., though the ratings improved in its final weeks. The series was canceled on April 2, 1971, and replaced the following Monday with a new version of the game show Password. The last minute of the final episode included a voiceover by actor Thayer David wrapping up many of the plotlines on the show.

The original cast reunited in 2003 for a special reunion play recorded for MPI, and in 2004 resumed production of Dark Shadows audio dramas for Big Finish. These dramas have been ongoing for 10 seasons

Production

Casting ~

List of Dark Shadows characters Alexandra Isles (then Alexandra Moltke), a young actress with little experience, was cast in the role of Victoria Winters, an orphan who journeys to the mysterious, fictional town of Collinsport, Maine, to unravel the mysteries of her past.

Veteran film star Joan Bennett was cast as Victoria's employer Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, a woman who had not left her home in over eighteen years. Stage actor Louis Edmonds was cast as Elizabeth's brother, a widower, Roger Collins. Another stage actress, Nancy Barrett, was cast as Elizabeth's headstrong daughter Carolyn Stoddard, and child actor David Henesy was cast as Roger's troubled son David Collins.

As production on the series continued, many new and mysterious characters, played by unfamiliar actors and actresses, were introduced. Two early cast changes brought stage actors David Ford and Thayer David into the ensemble. Thayer David would go on to play several villains over the course of the series. Michael Currie, as Constable Jonas Carter, was replaced by veteran actor Dana Elcar, as Sheriff George Patterson. Most of the actors played multiple characters, and those characters often returned through flashbacks, through the use of parallel timelines, or as ghosts.

Thayer David and Dana Elcar.

Both theatrical films, House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971), were shot primarily on location at the Lyndhurst estate in Tarrytown, New York. For the TV series, Essex, Connecticut was the locale used for the town of Collinsport. Among the locations sited there are the Collinsport Wharf, Main Street, and the Evans Cottage. The Griswold Inn in Essex was used for the Collinsport Inn, and the town post office was used for the Collinsport Police Station. The Collinwood stand-in mansion used for the TV series is the Carey Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, until August 2009 used by Salve Regina University. The exteriors for the "Old House," aka Collins House (the original Collinwood mansion) were filmed at Spratt Mansion, which was also located on the Lyndhurst estate; this mansion was destroyed by fire in 1969. The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in South Norwalk, Connecticut, was also used for some scenes in House of Dark Shadows. The mausoleum shots for House of Dark Shadows were filmed in the famous Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, not far from the Lyndhurst Mansion.

Carey Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.

Mausoleum at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

All of the interiors of the TV series were shot on sound stages at various ABC-owned studios in Manhattan. The early episodes were shot at ABC Studio TV-2 at 24 West 67th Street, and the rest of the episodes were shot at the smaller ABC Studio TV-16 at 433 West 53rd Street, now demolished.

Music ~

Of particular note is Robert Cobert's music score, which broke new ground for a television program. In September 1969, the original soundtrack to Dark Shadows, credited to the Robert Cobert Orchestra and featuring 16 tracks written or co-written by Cobert, reached no. 18 on the Billboard 200 album chart. The song "Quentin's Theme" earned Cobert a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Theme, but lost to John Barry's theme for Midnight Cowboy at the 12th Annual Grammy Awards. A recording of "Quentin's Theme" by the Charles Randolph Grean Sounde was released as a single, and in August 1969, when the TV series was something of a phenomenon, it peaked at no. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, no. 3 on its Easy Listening chart, and no. 5 for 3 weeks in Canada.

"Quentin's Theme". 45-RPM record.

Home media ~

Unlike some other soap operas of its era, the episodes of Dark Shadows all were preserved in some format, although one episode exists only as an audio recording and several color episodes only have black and white kinescopes available.

MPI Home Video currently holds the home media rights to the series. All episodes were issued on VHS from 1989 through 1995. Episodes 210–1245 (Barnabas Collins' arrival through to the end of the series) have been released on DVD in 26 Collections from 2002 through 2006. Episodes 1–209 were released in 2007 under the title of Dark Shadows: The Beginning. On April 3, 2012, MPI re-released the 32 Collections. The first (and sometimes, the second) collection (from Barnabas's introduction) has been released internationally, but due to generally low sales, this has been the extent of the international release of the series.

On April 10, 2012, MPI released a "Limited Edition Complete Series" box set in the shape of a coffin. The 131 DVDs are housed in 22 individual plastic cases, with the spines looking upward to show the entire body of Barnabas lying asleep in his coffin. Only 2,500 numbered copies of these were made, with each set including a limited edition card signed by original series star Jonathan Frid. A similar but unlimited "Deluxe Edition" set was subsequently released on July 10, 2012, without the limited edition card signed by Jonathan Frid and without the serial limitation number plate on the bottom of the box.

Dark Shadows: The Complete Original Series. DVD set.

Films

House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows ~

MGM released a feature film titled House of Dark Shadows in 1970. Dan Curtis directed it, and Sam Hall and Gordon Russell wrote the screenplay. Many cast members from the soap opera, including Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Roger Davis, and Kathryn Leigh Scott, reprised their roles. 1971 saw the release of Night of Dark Shadows, also directed by Dan Curtis and written by Curtis and Sam Hall. Actors included David Selby, Grayson Hall, Kate Jackson, and Lara Parker, among others.

During the filming of House of Dark Shadows in 1970, several actors were written out of the TV series so that they would be available to shoot the movie. Kathryn Leigh Scott was absent from 30 episodes (986 to 1015); Jonathan Frid was absent from 28 episodes (983 to 1010); Grayson Hall was absent from 21 episodes (986 to 1006); John Karlen was absent from 21 episodes (990 to 1010); Nancy Barrett was absent from 20 episodes (991 to 1010): Louis Edmonds was absent from 17 episodes (991 to 1008); Don Briscoe was absent from 15 episodes (986 to 1000); Joan Bennett was absent from 15 episodes (991 to 1006); and David Henesy was absent from 9 episodes (993 to 1001).

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DARK SHADOWS, Alexandra Moltke modeling rabbit fur coat, (1967),

Jonathan Frid promotional headshot, 1957.

Jonathan Frid at the 1985 Dark Shadows Festival in Newark, NJ.

Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins.

Collinwood drawing room.

Collinwood foyer staircase.

Mordecai Grimes’ cottage.

The woods.

Christopher Pennock and Joan Bennett.

Christopher Pennock.

Joan Bennett and Louis Edmonds.

Jonathan Frid, David Selby and Joan Bennett.

Kathy Cody and Thayer David rehearsal.

Kathy Cody.

‘Dark Shadows’ reunion.

Cigarette break.

ABC DS tech on the Collinwood staircase.

Another cigarette break.

Jonathan Frid talks to Louis Edmonds while the child actors look on.

Camera Operator Charles Capitano.

Camera Operator Charles Capitano.

Camera Operator Charles Capitano.

Camera Operator Lenny Gerardo and Tom Happer in the background.

Jonathan Frid in makeup.

Jonathan Frid setting his fang dentures.

Going over the script.

Director Henry Kaplan.

Frid and Selby during a break.

James Storm.

Jonathan Frid & Grayson Hall during rehearsal.

Lighting Director Mel Handelsman having a bite to eat on set.

Frid and Edmonds relax between scenes.

Joan Bennett in makeup.

Thayer David and the crew with scripts in hand. Donna Wandrey appears in the background.

Nickerson and Selby.

Rudy Piccirillo - Senior Video Engineer (left) Lenny Gelardi - Camera Man (right).

Jonathan Frid with his idol, the original Dracula, Bela Lugosi.

Carey Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.

Griswold Inn in Essex.

Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in South Norwalk.

Lyndhurst estate in Tarrytown, New York.

Spratt Mansion.

Mausoleum at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

“Old Dark Shadows Bourbon" - Aged in Collinwood - 100 Proof - Season’s Greetings from Peter & George” George refers to Associate Producer George DiCenzo. Presumably, Peter refers to Producer Peter Miner.