Posted on 04/19/2012 12:54:35 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Jonathan Frid, the man known to fans around the world as Barnabas Collins, the suave vampire from the cult hit soap opera "Dark Shadows" has died at age 87.
The Hamilton Spectator, of Hamilton, Ontario, reports the Canadian actor died in his hometown of Hamilton at the Juravinski Hospital on Friday, April 13.
Frid's final screen role was a cameo in "Dark Shadows," the soap opera's upcoming big-screen revamp directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas.
Kathryn Leigh Scott, who co-starred with Frid on the original "Dark Shadows" and recently reunited with him to film her own cameo in the film, paid loving tribute to the actor on her website.
"I am so grateful to have worked with Jonathan, and to have known him as the charismatic, entertaining, complex and plain-spoken man that he was," she wrote. "What fun we had working together! He was irascible, irreverent, funny, caring, lovable and thoroughly professional."
Scott recalled the moment when Frid and Depp first met on the "Dark Shadows" set: "I won't ever forget the moment when the two Barnabas Collinses met, one in his late 80s and the other in his mid-40s, each with their wolf's head canes. Jonathan took his time scrutinizing his successor's appearance. 'I see you've done the hair,' Jonathan said to Johnny Depp, 'but a few more spikes.' Depp, entirely in character, replied, 'Yes, we're doing things a bit differently.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
When people were talking about kids and the Twilight movies, I pointed out that those girls' mothers or grandmothers swooned over Dark Shadows. Nobody knew what I was talking about.
Ive seen the trailer, and the movie is nothing like the series. More of a comedy. Kind of disappointing.
Tim Burton is talented, but his adaptations (Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland) aren't usually improvements. Likewise, Johnny Depp is prodigiously talented, but his movies with Burton aren't his best work.
Thats a lot of money and discs!! Yikes, indeed!!!
Looks like an "Austin Powers" kind of thing (i.e. you didn't have to be that attractive to be a sex symbol in those days).
We're in the death zone now and everyone dying is around our age.........I refuse to read the obituaries like my parents and grand parents did.
Nah, I've never wondered - although this does give some insight. :-)
Well, at least Barnabas Collins didn't sparkle . . .
When people were talking about kids and the Twilight movies, I pointed out that those girls' mothers or grandmothers swooned over Dark Shadows. Nobody knew what I was talking about
He must have seen the Johnny Depp movie. RIP.
I met him once, at our family-owned restaurant, he was just stopping in for a bite.
PING!!!!!!
When i was a kid, the chaplain priest at my school had a glow in the dark Barnabas poster in his office and we talked about the show as we were all fans. When the priest said mass, he always said the name of Barnabas very loudly and significantly!
I bet your right :)
LOL!!!!
Now you know...
I would have LOVED to have been at that mass!
Man, they’re dropping like flies: Dick Clark, Charles Colson, Levon Helm, now Barnabas.
Does the sax Player for Men At Work count? Greg Ham was murdered. It’s his sax on Who Can It Be now..
That is hilarious! Your mom sounds like a hoot! I have begun watching the Dark Shadows series on Netflix (was a baby when it originally aired). Ironically, just this morning I watched the episode where Barnabas rises from the dead. And now I get the horrible news that he died. Such a sad day!
I saw the commercial last night. They've ruined what could have been a really good movie. Not that it had a chance with Depp looking like some light-in-the-loafers club kid.
I was in the first grade, and the teacher addressed the class and explained how bad the show was for children and warned us to stay away from it, LOL.
What I can complain about is that Sci-Fi (then) lost the rights to show them when there were fewer than a dozen episodes left to be shown! Incredible! And they could have prevented this because they preempted it for a couple of weeks just a month or so before that! I was annoyed.
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