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Joe Caldwell, a writer connected nan original 1960s gothic cult-hit daytime TV bid Dark Shadows who co-created nan show’s signature vampire characteristic Barnabas Collins, died Monday, July 13, pursuing a stroke. He was 97.
Caldwell’s decease owed to “a monolithic stroke,” was announced connected Facebook by Bob Issel, a friend and predominant big of Dark Shadows instrumentality events successful nan New York City area. Issel said Caldwell had fallen precocious and had been convalescing astatine a rehabilitation halfway anterior to his death.
Caldwell is credited, on pinch chap writer Ron Sproat, pinch processing nan Barnabas characteristic – a pivotal storyline that saved nan show from cancelation and that’s proven to beryllium a amazingly durable creation – aft being instructed by nan show’s shaper Dan Curtis to adhd a vampire to nan gothic soap’s landscape.
The vampire saved nan show from imminent cancelation, prompting a spike successful ratings and a caller guidance distant from a moody Jane Eyre-like gothic romance style to outright supernatural (if unintentionally campy) horror.
Sixty years aft nan show’s 1966 debut connected ABC, Dark Shadows – and particularly nan Barnabas characteristic – endures: Just past month, Warner Bros. Animation announced that it was processing Dark Shadows arsenic an big animated bid pinch nan logline “Blending gothic, horror, and supernatural genres, this coming adjustment promises each nan acheronian twists and romanticist intrigue that defined nan transformational bid crossed its 1200-plus section run.”
And later this month, nan last Dark Shadows Festival, a decades-long tradition, is planned for July 31-August 2 successful Los Angeles, pinch surviving formed members David Selby, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Roger Davis, Jerry Lacy and Donna McKechnie, among others, scheduled to attend. Cast members from a 1991 primetime reboot, including Joanna Going, Rebecca Staab and Roy Thinnes, besides will participate.
Several caller books to commemorate nan 60th day person been released aliases are successful nan works, including java array book Dark Shadows Legacy (Hermes Press), The Collins Family Album (Chinbeard Books) and nan independently published Dark Shadows Daybook Triumphant. A bid of vintage tie-in novels written by Marilyn Ross are being reissued by Hermes Press and digitized for Kindle.
The lasting effect of nan bid would beryllium unthinkable without nan Barnabas characteristic – nan vampire was moreover slyly name-checked successful nan existent deed Apple TV+ bid Widow’s Bay. Originally played by character Jonathan Frid, nan 200-year-old vampire was portrayed by Johnny Depp – a lifelong Dark Shadows instrumentality – successful Tim Burton’s 2012 characteristic movie adjustment besides starring Michelle Pfeiffer. (Ben Cross took connected nan domiciled successful nan ’91 TV reboot).
In his 2019 Audible memoir In nan Shadow of nan Bridge, Caldwell, calved October 2, 1928, successful Milwaukee and later a longtime New York City resident, elaborate really nan characteristic was developed by himself and Sproat aft Curtis issued direct, if alternatively vague, instructions to adhd a vampire to a show that had, until that point, only toyed pinch supernatural characters for illustration ghosts.
Caldwell and Sproat – some gay, if not retired to their leader Curtis, who according to Caldwell had considered firing a formed personnel of nan show aft learning of his homosexuality – decided to bring their secreted experiences successful pre-Stonewall cheery New York to nan character. The result, cooked up by Caldwell and Sproat while nan 2 were drinking astatine a Manhattan cheery bar, was a vampire alternatively dissimilar others successful nan scary genre, a tormented, self-loathing fig who kept his existent aforesaid and concealed urges hidden from nan descendants pinch whom he now lived.
“It is pinch a peculiar glee,” Caldwell wrote successful nan memoir, “that I savor nan realization that [producer] Dan Curtis, a committed homophobe, had his top occurrence pinch his astir celebrated character, Barnabas Collins, a vampire, a man knowingly created by 2 cheery men, who successful their ain measurement were dramatizing their ain plight.”
Caldwell mostly near tv penning pursuing his 63-episode stints connected Dark Shadows from 1967 to 1970, turning his attraction to penning plays and 8 novels, nan second including his 2008 comic, Ireland-set enigma The Pig Did It, which spawned 2 sequels.
Information connected survivors was not instantly available.
