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First of Two Dick Cavett Interviews with Jonathan Frid
This is the first of two appearances Jonathan Frid made on the Dick Cavett Show.
Guests also included actress Elaine Stritch and the comedy team of Klare & McMann
Dick Cavett: I get a lot of people and fan mail who write in and say we're part of the Dark Shadows Club and tell ABC to keep it on. In that show is a most eerie character named Barnabas Collins and his real name is Jonathan Frid. I want you to meet him but first I want you to see this picture that we have from Dark Shadows. It's a gothic soap opera. Have you ever seen the show? Let's see how we can get a shot . The monitor isn't on but that's Jonathan on the show.
Guest: What's the matter with his umbrella?
DC: That's nothing to ask a man. It's his cane! Jonathan is the most popular vampire in America today. And I have another picture of him here . that's what he looks like in real life. It's hard to believe that the actual in-the-flesh Barnabas is here with us but here he is: Jonathan Frid!
Jonathan Frid: I really look like a song and dance man.
DC: You go for my neck and I'll drop you. Jon, you've brought your . .
JF: Some of the appurtenances, yes. This is the cape if I can get it from under here . .
DC: You are a regular person to me.
JF: That's right. Oddly enough, this coat, you would think you'd be able tro get one nowadays with all the mod clothes around but they couldn't get a cape so what they did, they got two coats and they made a cape out of the other one.
DC: It's like what Jack the Ripper wore. It's sort of a . it's not worsted, is it?
JF: Well, no, I think it's a little fancier.
DC: Do you wear this on the street ever?
JF: No.
DC: Jonathan and I go back aways together. You were at the Yale Drama School when I was an undergraduate and Jonathan was at that time a Shakespearean actor and director, and you've gone on to Shakespeare festivals and other things, but you've hit it really big in blood.
JF: I would like to set the record straight a little bit. I noticed in an ABC release the other day it said the 175 year old vampire was a classmate of Dick Cavett's. Well, we were classmates. He was in the undergraduate school and I was in the graduate school, so that would make you about 170.
DC: Yes, but I'm so well preserved. Jonathan, what about the fan mail that you get. I hear all kinds of things about the fact that ladies send you fan mail and that they are just digging you the most and it is sort of strange that women would ..
JF: Can I get rid of this? (The cape)
DC: Sure, give it to me.
JF: I don't know what you are going to do with it . .but . ..
DC: Now what do I do with it? I think it's so cool in here today I thought I might put it on. Can I see what I look like in it?
JF: Sure.
DC: Oh, that's great. Is that how you do it?
JF: You kind of flap the wings a little bit.
DC: I look like a gorish rabbi. Oh, the master's own cane. Was this handed down from Bela Lugosi?
JF: Maybe.
DC: Is there any significance to the wolf? (At the head of the cane)
JF: Well, they do chase me around a little bit in the show. You hear them baying when I'm about to . . maybe you'd like to try the teeth too.
DC: My own are not giving me any trouble. Well, tell me about your teeth because people are surprised, I suppose, when they see you that you don't really have the fangs.
JF: Well, it's like a bridge you put in and it's created a lot of fun on the show because I can't talk with them very well. I sort of talk like this when I've got them in so they always have to cut away from me just before I put the bite on and show the close up of the person I'm talking to and they always have to get dialogue for them to say while I'm running off and doing this off-camera.
DC: Is this show live.
JF: No.
DC: That would be too rough, wouldn't it?
JF: There are too many technical problems in this show. It's a very ambitious show for a daily soap opera. We're constantly getting into all kinds of gimmicks. As a matter of fact, when we read the script the day before we tape we have a cutting session. The scripts are always a little longer because they can't write right on the nose and so they are always a little extended so we have to make cuts. We always sort of vie to get the most cuts so we'll have the least lines to learn that night. And any time when we're reading these scripts there'll be a description of a bat flying into the room or somebody appears or disappears in front of the camera, which always means a half hour of technical rehearsal over that one effect so every time we see one of these things in the show, in the script, we all groan and say there goes our run-through tomorrow, there goes our dress rehearsal because there's so much time taken up with all these effects.
DC: The pressure of a daily show like that . .
JF: Particularly this show.
DC: Must be terrific. Have you got your fangs with you?
JF: Yes, I have them right here. I was a little hesitant as to whether I should put them on in front of the camera or not.
DC: Oh, we can take it.
JF: I keep them in this little bottle and the other day we were taping a show and I was looking out this window summoning Victoria Winters to me and so forth. It was all done voice over, in other words, I didn't actually speak the lines but I was looking very spookily out the window and I suddenly remembered I forgot to put them on and I had to have them on for the very next scene and I had no time to get them on afterwards . .so I had them in my pocket and while I was doing this scene I was inside in the pocket. I got the lid off with all this liquid in, got the teeth out, put the lid back on and had the teeth ready in my hand to put them in quickly for the next scene.
DC: They didn't catch you?
JF: No, they didn't catch me. Meanwhile, I was supposed to be looking very kind of ominous through the window.
DC: Why are they in liquid?
JF: Well, it's just a kind of mouthwash to keep them fresh except that they are getting a little tainted from . .
DC: We're about to see a man put his fangs in. They look scary. They really look like you could do damage with them.
JF: There they are. You see what happens, it's very hard to talk with them.
DC: Yes, that's right.
Audience: Bite him!
DC: Now, cut that out. We have a message and we'll be back. We have some terrific film of Jonathan so stay with us.
[BREAK]
DC: Here's Jonathan Frid as Barnabas on Dark Shadows and, Jon, are you in danger of getting typecast as a vampire now that you've soared to the top of vampiredom?
JF: Well, first of all, the villains I think always seem to have more to play than a straight romantic role. I mean, you get all of these people who play romantic roles and they usually, not only do they have to stay in one track, bu they usually play themselves.
DC: There's a certain amount of variety in the role too.
JF: Yes. Well, this is was aired about a month ago. I was playing for awhile my pre- vampire days. We went back into the past to show how I became a vampire and so I'm a romantic juvenile in a sense in this particular scene that you will see. I won't try to explain what it was all about because I've probably forgotten anyway.
Videotape:
Angelique: Barnabas, is there any news of my lady?
Barnabas: No, none at all.
Mr. DuPree: Barnabas, may I suggest that you go to bed and try to get some rest. I'll go and speak to the others. We can resume the search in the morning.
Barnabas: I prefer to stay here and wait for her.
Mr. DuPree: Oh, very well, if you like. Goodnight.
Angelique: Barnabas, you really should try and get some rest after what you've been through tonight.
Barnabas: In spite of what I've been through, I still love her. No matter what has happened or will happen, I shall always love her.
End of Videotape
DC: That's you as a teenage vampire.
JF: Well, I was just looking at it again and I still look spooky as a romantic juvenile.
DC: But apparently a lot of people did that. I know your fan mail has just been enormous. Everybody at the network talks about it. Maybe later we can get a sample of what ladies write in to you. Did you bring anything with you.
JF: I have a couple of letters.
DC: Okay. We have not very long here and we'll have to stop for a message but later we have another piece of film of Jonathan in an entirely other age bracket as a vampire. We'll have Elaine Stritch here in a moment and you're going to see some more vampire film and we have all kinds of surprises so please come back.
BREAK
DC: Here with me is Barnabas Collins who is, right, who is in real life Jonathan Frid, if you can be considered to have a real life these days. Jon, is the vampire matinee idol of ABC on Dark Shadows so if you've just joined us and we saw some quite eerie film:
JF: Some romantic film you've seen film.
DC: But there's still a sinister undertone in you, Jon, you must admit.
JF: Yes, I have to admit that.
DC: Now we'll see another piece of film which those of you who watch the show regularly have probably seen before that it's great because it shows the age contrast Jon plays on the show. What else should we know before this before we roll it?
JF: Well, this is a doctor . woman scientist . who tried to cure me at one point and she goofed and all that happened was that I became the real age of the man, 175 years old. We did that for a couple of days and that's what the film will be:
Barnabas: What are you doing here Carolyn?
Carolyn: I came to see cousin Barnabas.
Barnabas: And now you see him.
Carolyn: But, you can't be cousin Barnabas!
Barnabas: But I am.
Carolyn: But, what's happened to your face?! You're so old!
Barnabas: I won't be old much longer. You may scream all you want but no one will hear you. Don't be afraid of me, my dear. I'm not going to hurt you. I wouldn't do anything to hurt my own flesh and blood.
DC: Oh, brother! And now we have a word from Lavoris. That gave me real goose pimples on the lower arms and other appendages. That makeup was remarkable.
JF: Yes, I had to go in at 4:30 in the morning to get that one everyday I was doing this and Joan Bennett, the star of our show, she said to me one day, "I don't think you have to bother with the make-up . coming in at 4:30 alone will make you age".
DC: If you do that often enough. What about the mail you get? What do they say? It couldn't be like the mail Van Johnson in his heyday?
JF: Well, one interesting letter I got last summer. It was a 100-page letter and it went on that this woman claimed she was a night woman and she had that identification with me . .
DC: Wait a minute . . she said she was a night woman?
JF: Well, whatever that means . She said she writes at night . .
DC: Oh!
JF: She's a writer and she likes the night and sleeps during the day . well, she's got to sleep sometime. And she said in this letter that I imagine a lot of your fans think you're very attractive and so forth and so on . that is not the case. The mystique about you is that you're so ugly that women feel that they have a certain mystique themselves with identifying with you much to the surprise of their friends. They think that there's something so horrible and ghastly about this character that it's their own little private identification that gives them a mystique to their friends. That was her theory which I thought was rather interesting.
DC: What did she do in the other 99 pages?
JF: Wrote poems, you know, quoted poems that had something to do with Dark Shadows and so forth.
DC: Do you answer any of these bizarre ladies?
JF: Well, I tried to at first, but you know, I couldn't be answering particularly with all the shows I have to do, learning lines every night and so I get very little time to even read them now, I'm afraid. I do read some of it. I read the mail tha tcomes into the studio but the mail that comes to ABC headquarters, I'm afraid, that it;s gotten to be I can't manage it.
DC: Is any of the mail really weird? Very strange people?
JF: Yes. One woman wrote me a letter way back when, last summer, and she enclosed a nude portrait of herself and she said that she identified with me in a seance back in 1633 in Spain. I mean she was really very serious about it but she knew that she had known me back in Spain in 1633. She went though this kind of seance thing, and oddly enough, this was before we got into the seances in the show so that must have really fascinated her when we got into this.
DC: You have no memory of her in 1633?
JF: No, I'm afraid I don't. I've tried hard to recollect.
DC: You must be sick of these jokes. Is it true you laugh all the way to the blood bank?
We'll be back in a moment.
BREAK
DC: The show is, of course, in color. The film clips that we showed from Dark Shadows were in kinescope . taken from tape - so that's why they were black and white but those of you who watch in color know it's in color and those of you who don't, don't . but you do now. Do you send out photos of yourself as your vampiric persona?
JF: Yes, oh yes. They always want that . I don't know if I like this or not particularly but they always want pictures of Barnabas and whenever I sign Jonathan Frid . silence. But when I write Barnabas underneath they go into hysterics, they scream and carry on, but there's always the Barnabas image they are fascinated with.
DC: Are you recognized, Jon, as the character much on the street?
JF: Yes. I was just outside of the theater here before we came in. There was a group of girls going to school or back from school and they do a couple of takes, you know, they're not quite sure.
DC: We have a bat living in this theater that's so thrilled you're here today.
JF: I felt at home when I came in here.
DC: Yes, this could be your rumpus room.
END OF INTERVIEW
Special Thank you to N. Kersey and www.jonathanfrind.com for all the material provided.
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