Episodes 1-126
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Victoria Winters: (Alexandra Moltke) Vicki is the classic Jane Eyrehead type Gothic ingénue. Vicki is bursting with curiosity about the secrets around her, yet she sees about as much of what goes on behind her back as a WWF Referee. Vicki's mantra is “I Don’t Understand”. Her specialty is telling boring stories about the Foundling Home she grew up in. When Vicki was at the Foundling Home, a mysterious check postmarked from Bangor arrived for her every month. So, naturally when she received a job offer from a totally different town that was at least in the same state as Bangor, she assumed that there was a connection. Yes, she probably believes in UFO's too. |
Mrs./Miss Hopewell: (Elizabeth Wilson) The director of the Hammond Foundling Home deepens the mystery by confirming that no one at the home recommended Vicki for the governess job, nor would they have in a million years. |
Secretary: (Gwen Van Dam) Type, type, type, type, type, type. That's about all that Miss Retary gets to do. Fortunately she isn't on screen long enough to get... typecast. |
Sandy: (Katherine Bruce) Vicki's best friend at the Foundling Home, Sandy is forced to listen to all of Vicki's interminable stories about the place, even though Sandy was there at the time for most of them. |
Elizabeth Collins Stoddard: (Joan Bennett) Matriarch of the Collins Family. Eighteen years ago Liz's husband Paul mysteriously disappeared. The next day Liz fired all the hired help, locked a room in the basement, and stayed in the house permanently to make sure no one went near it. Nobody sees any connection between these two events. |
Roger Collins: (Louis Edmonds) Liz's younger brother. Ten years ago he was involved in a drunk driving accident in which a man was killed. The next day Roger bought $15,000 worth of paintings from Sam Evans, a local artist who happened to be walking down the road that same night, but who swears he didn't see the accident. Nobody sees any connection between these two events, either. |
Carolyn Collins Stoddard: (Nancy Barrett) Liz's daughter. Carolyn is The Bad Girl character to counter Vicki's Good Girl. Carolyn is pretty, rich, spoiled, has too much time on her hands, and loves to play with fire. So when a mysterious stranger, intent on destroying the family comes to town, guess who she's immediately smitten with? |
David Collins: (David Henesy) Roger's Devil Tot son. With an institutionalized alky mother, an uncaring father and no kids his own age to play with, David has taken to ghoulish pranks and consorting with the local spooks. So much so that he's been named an Honorary Ghost. There are a lot of people who would like to make it more than Honorary. |
Matthew Morgan (I): (George Mitchell) A Jack-of-all-Trades. Matthew is the only servant the Collins family has had for the last 18 years to take care of the entire estate. Butler, chauffeur, gardener, valet, masseur, cook, chimney sweep, window washer, and author of What to Do in Your Spare time. |
Matthew Morgan (II): (Thayer David) A grungier, slobbier, dumber, more obsessive Matthew, introduced to add one more sinister presence to an already top heavy cast. |
Mrs. Sarah Johnson: (Clarice Blackburn) Housekeeper to the late Bill Malloy. After Bill's death, Mrs. J is hired by Burke Devlin to get a job as the Collins Maid and report any incriminating conversations she overhears to him (which at Collinwood is just about all of them). Snooping and getting paid for it! How could she resist? Mrs. Johnson is the only spy who does windows. |
Burke Devlin: (Mitchell Ryan) Went directly to jail without collecting $200 for a 1956 DWI accident. Though admittedly he was too blotto that night to remember whether he had been driving the car or not, Burke is pretty sure he wasn't driving, and that Roger framed him. As it happens he's right, but it was a lucky guess. Burke did 5 years in stir, spent 5 years more making a fortune (sounds like the prison connections paid off, huh?), and has now come back to town to destroy the Collins family. What a sore loser. |
Wilbur Strake: (Joseph Julian) Burke's private eye from New York, assigned to dig up information on everyone connected with the Collins Family. Actually, Strake just bought a copy of the Art Wallace series Bible for $10 and wrote his report from that. |
Stuart Bronson: (Barnard Hughes) Then Came Bronson. Burke's banker in New York, Bronson is assigned to do a complete appraisal of the Collins Family's entire assets; cash, property, debts owed, Green Stamps, merchandising rights, everything. |
James Blair: (John Baragrey) Burke's other banker in New York. Burke is about to give Blair the go ahead to buy up all the Collins family's outstanding Demand Notes with the plan of calling them all in simultaneously and ruining the family finances. Suddenly realizing that such a foolproof plan would bring the story to an immediate and premature end, Burke comes to his senses and introduces Blair to Carolyn who blabs the plan to Liz and her banker. That was a close call! |
Maggie Evans: (Kathryn Leigh Scott) The Collinsport Inn Coffee Shoppe's answer to Florence Jean Kasselberry. Maggie is the classically cynical, hard bitten hash slinging waitress. At least she is early on, but her character is soon given a quick and drastic makeover... |
Maggie Evans: (Kathryn Leigh Scott) Allowed to drop the wig after Dan Curtis figured that, despite her dark hair, nobody would confuse Maggie with Victoria Winters. "And while you're at it, drop the accent too." |
Sam Evans (I): (Mark Allen) Local artist and father of Maggie. Ten years ago Sam witnessed a traffic accident in which a drunk-off-his-a$$ Roger hit and killed a pedestrian. The next day Roger bought $15,000 worth of Sam's paintings, and one month later Sam did not come forward to testify that Burke Devlin hadn't been driving the car that night. ANYBODY would see the connection between these two events if they knew about them. |
Sam Evans (II): (David Ford) Soon after Burke returned to town for revenge, the Witness Protection Program issued Sam this new face. |
Bill Malloy: (Frank Schofield) Manager of the Collins Fishing Fleet. Fiercely loyal to (and probably secretly in love with) Liz. Bill learns the truth about the manslaughter accident, and tries to handle it quietly, rather than hiring an armed guard and locking himself in a bank vault like anyone in a soap opera SHOULD do in such a situation. The mystery of Bill's death takes some of the focus off the manslaughter case for the next 4 months. |
Joe Haskell: (Joel Crothers) A sailor in the Collins Fishing Fleet, and Liz's hand-picked boyfriend for Carolyn, meant to help curb her wildness with his Boy-Scoutish ways. Joe is the Archie Andrews to Carolyn's Veronica. |
Amos Fitch: (George Mathews) One of four Collins Cannery workers courted by Burke with an offer to work for him at the nearby Logansport Cannery. Amos turns the offer down and rushes to Collinwood to warn Liz of Burke's skullduggery, taking care to mention several times that Burke had offered them all higher wages. Liz doesn't take the hint. |
Ezra Herne (II): (Dolph Sweet) Another one of the courted cannery workers. Ezra not only turns the offer down, but comes back later to turn it down again. He's especially insulted at the idea that they abandon Mrs. Stoddard to take new jobs with higher wages and profit sharing. The worker's loyalty to a woman who hasn't so much as come down to the plant to visit them in 18 years is somewhat surprising, actually. |
Ezra Bilodeau: (John Servetnik) Another one of the Cannery workers who sits quietly and ultimately refuses Burke's offer to work at the Logansport Cannery for a higher salary. If Burke had offered him a few lines of dialogue instead, he might have considered it. |
Zeb Cartwright: (Leo Marrell) You have to wonder why they even bother assigning names to characters that just sit there in the background doing nothing. |
Ezra Herne (I) [aka John Adair]: (Herb Holcombe) If you think that's odd, how about recasting a character who just sits there in the background doing nothing? |
Steve: (Steve Dawson?) A masher who hits Carolyn up for a dance while she and Joe are trying to have a quiet date. "Just one dance, Joe," Carolyn promises... |
Harry: (Robert Viharo) Another masher who hits Carolyn up for a dance while she and Joe are trying to have a quiet date. Since Harry fed the jukebox, she could hardly turn him down, could she? |
Mike: (Alan Feinstein) Yet another masher who hits Carolyn up for a dance while Carolyn and Joe are trying to have a quiet date. Maybe Joe should consider getting her a chastity belt? |
Bartender Bob Rooney: (Bob O'Connell) Calls the cops after Joe finally tries to mash the mashers. Bob then goes on to work in the Whale for years and years, while hardly ever having a line of dialogue. But his nods and facial expressions when people order drinks are legendary. |
The Dancin' Fool: (Harvey Keitel) Legend has it that it's possible to make it big in pictures by hanging around the malt shoppe until an agent discovers you. Harvey Keitel is the only known case where this ploy has actually worked. |
Constable Jonas Carter: (Michael Currie) The local Sheriff. Working in Collinsport in the days before it was infested with ghosts, ghouls, vampires, and werewolves is a little too boring, and Carter's last case, investigating a missing brake fluid valve from Roger's car, proves to be the final straw. Looking for more excitement, he takes a job with Holiday Inn, working to keep guests from stealing their towels. |
Sheriff George Patterson: (Dana Elcar) The new Sheriff proves much more eager to deal with the "hair-raising" experiences that come later. In George's first week on the job, a nice juicy maybe-murder comes his way, followed soon after by a kidnapping. A sign of good things to come. |
Richard Garner: (Hugh Franklin) Liz's lawyer. Vicki sees Garner's name on an old ledger while locked in the West Wing, and just because he lives in Bangor, she assumes that there must be a connection with the monthly remittances she received in the Foundling Home (she'll really grasp at ANY straw, won't she?). Later in the story, Richard has to explain to Roger that you can't sue the Police Department for arresting you when you're caught with the goods. (Don't ask.) |
Frank Garner: (Conard Fowkes) Frank is the Lawyer son of Richard Garner, and a temporary kinda-sorta love interest for Vicki. Co-publisher with his father of The Party Line (aka The Garner Report), an in-house Collins family newsletter that explains the official version of recent events when the real truth isn't fit for public consumption. |
Philip John Harris: (Patrick McVey) Liz's banker. At Liz's insistence, Harris puts a huge crimp in the family finances, setting up a Trust Fund for David (payable only if David reveals where he's hidden Grandma). Harris puts a stop to Burke's sure-fire takeover of the family business when Carolyn lets slip the association between Burke and Blair. So technically, Harris is the hero of the story. (If you were rooting for the Collins's, that is.) |
Mr. Wells: (Conrad Bain) The desk clerk at the Collinsport Inn. His suggestion to Dan Curtis that the show be based around him after first adding two black orphans to the cast was met with a shocked "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Conrad?". |
Susie (I): (Carol Crist) Susie is the other waitress at the Collinsport Inn Coffee Shoppe. Her prime function is to represent all the other people in town who hear and react to gossip about the goings-on that are going on in the story. |
Susie (II): (Colleen Kelly) Susie bets a friend that her customers are so jaded that they wouldn't even notice if she came in with a new face one day. She comes out both a winner and a loser. Nobody noticed, but the money she won on the wager didn't come near covering her plastic surgeon's bill. |
Doctor D. Reeves: (Fred Stewart) Treats Roger for cuts and bruises after David arranges a near-fatal traffic accident for him. Reeves prescribes tranquilizers, but whether they're intended to be used on Roger or on David is unclear. |
Train Conductor: (Alfred Hinckley) Conductor on the train that brings Vicki to town. Since the train hasn't made a regular stop in Collinsport for 5 years, he is forced to toss her overboard with the mailbags. |
Mrs. Mitchell: (Jane Rose) A gabby old lady on the train, who tells boring stories. A look at what Vicki will be like in 40 years? |
The Cab Driver From Episode 116: (Arthur Anderson) The Cabbie's arrival to take Vicki to the bus station for her vacation tips the others off about Vicki's kidnapping. Their urgency to find her is increased by the fact that he leaves the meter running in the meantime. |
Laura Collins: (Diana Millay) Wife of Roger, mother of David. Laura arrives a bit early, and has to hang around the Coffee Shoppe chatting with Maggie until her own story is ready to begin. |
The Widows: (Janet Burtis, Toni Darnay, Elizabeth Swain and Marin Riley) The ghosts of three (??) widows, Rachel Comstock, Margaret Finley, and Abigail Tolliver, each of whom jumped off of Widow's Hill to her death. Legend says that their voices wail in the wind, waiting for a fourth widow to join them, probably so that they can get a bridge game together. |
The Ghost of Bill Malloy: (Frank Schofield) Malloy's spirit returns from the dead and appears to Vicki where she's been locked in the West Wing by David, and left to die, to tell her to leave Collinwood before she's killed. It's kind of ridiculous. Since when is Malloy an expert on avoiding being killed? And for another thing, what's the point of telling someone to leave while they're locked IN??? Malloy makes an appearance later, to tell David where Vicki is being hostage. And to tell him to go to the Dagobah System. |
The Ghost of Josette Lafrenier Collins: (Kathryn Leigh Scott) French wife of the builder of Collinwood, Jeremiah Collins, who jumped to her death from Widow's Hill in 1834 (later retconned to 1796). Josette has devoted her afterlife to charity work, mostly saving Gothic ingenues from the dangers that surround them. For some reason, even though Josette is a Widow, she doesn't seem to be one of THE Widows, which are, after all, a pretty exclusive group. |
Burke's Silver Filigreed Fountain Pen: (A Bic and some glitter) An ersatz guilt detector. The pen is given by Burke to Carolyn, then confiscated by Roger, then found by Vicki at the site of Malloy's death, then stolen and buried by Roger. First Vicki thinks Burke did it, then Roger, unless maybe it was Sam. Roger eventually incriminates himself so stupidly that the Sheriff is left thinking he did it, but of course Roger couldn't have or he wouldn't have been on the show for the whole series, would he? |
The Bleeder Valve: (an old burned out spark plug) Supposedly a device that regulates the flow of Brake Fluid in Roger's car, if you believe in that sort of thing. David removes it, which causes the car to crash. Like the pen, the valve makes the rounds, pointing fingers of guilt wherever it goes. Pretty dangerous for something that only cost $1.98. |
Ned Calder: (Uncast) The previous manager of the Collins Cannery, who quit when Liz refused to marry him. Liz tries to get Ned to return to Collinsco, but he refuses unless he gets an engagement ring as a signing bonus. Liz says "thank you no, that's okay". It sounds like a plot angle that never got fully developed because they couldn't figure out where to go with it. |
Betty Hanscomb: (Uncast) A girl who lived in Collinsport in the early 1940's, who, judging by a Sam Evans portrait of her, is almost a dead ringer for Vicki. Another interesting plot device that never really gets developed. Obviously the idea was that Betty was Vicki's real mother, but since they never quite pulled the trigger on this idea, you might just want to forget that you ever heard of Betty. |
The DS Fly: (Itself) In an attempt to add another big name to the cast to work alongside (and on top of) Joan Bennett, Dan Curtis decided to fly in the face of tradition and created quite a buzz in the (rolled up) trade papers by signing The DS Fly, well known star of Stage and (Porch) Screen, and charter member of the Screendoor Actor's Guild, to a 5 year contract. Joining the Dark Shadows cast, fresh (?) from its work on Lord of the Flies, Superfly, A Bug's Life and various other fly-by-night productions, The DS Fly went on to appear in every Dark Shadows storyline without ever needing a script (it always made up its own dialogue on the fly). Taking the show's eventual cancellation harder than most, The DS Fly flew off the handle and refused to vacate the ABC studios, until the police sent a Swat Team to forcibly remove it from the premises, which resulted in a Sacrifice Fly. (Refusing to comment on this incident, Dan Curtis said only that he had always been fond of "fly casting", both on the job, and during his family vacations at Lake Ticonderoga.) |
COLLINSPORT INN RESTAURANT CUSTOMERS
Michael Ann
Andrew Elliot
Page Jones
Calvin Ander
Douglas Reed
Ted Tinling
BLUE WHALE CUSTOMERS
Walter Arnold
Diane Ball
Robert Bonds
Audrey A. Campbell
Ray Carlson
Richard Coate
Willis Downsing
Elizabeth Earl
Lenore Ellis
Jeff Gald
Bill Gish
John Felton
Anthony Goodstone
Timothy Gordon
Jeanne Kaplan
Russ Karser
Harvey Keitel <--- (Wonder if he went on to do anything else?)
Judd Lawrence
Allen Lindstrom
Pat Lysinger
George McCoy
Maryann Merrick
Tom Mixan
T. J. Murphy
Katherine Quint
Diann Redford
Frank Rerch
Al Smith
Larry Swanson
Ann Teeman
Barbara Young
Gwen Van Dam
Douglas Reed
BANGOR PINE HOTEL RESTAURANT CUSTOMERS
Dodie Bauer
Frank Dawning
Lenore Ellis
Charles Goff (Waiter)
Timothy Gordon
Sara Harte
Liz Ingleson
Charles James
Margo Lacey
Pat McNamara
Richard Marr
Jack Pickett
Mel Sigan
Ray Stewart
THE SPOOKS
Betty Beaird as Ghost
Jacqueline Bertrand as Ghost
T. J. Murphy as Ghostly Voice
Clarice Blackburn as Sobbing Voice in the Cellar
Florence Stanley as Sobbing Voice in the Cellar
Florence Stanley as Alternate Ghost of Josette