Do You Remember When Kate Jackson Played a Ghost on ‘Dark Shadows’?
Most wannabe actors know that there’s a ghost of a chance that they’ll ever make it in showbiz — but for Kate Jackson, future star of Charlie’s Angels and Scarecrow and Mrs. King, it was a ghost that gave her that chance. Jackson, then 23 and a new graduate of American Academy of Dramatic Arts, was working as an NBC page when she landed the role of Daphne Harridge, a sweet governess turned silent but deadly spirit, in the final season of ABC’s gothic soap, Dark Shadows (1966-1971).
Jackson’s time on the show was unfortunately short-lived: though the series premiered 59 years ago, on June 27, 1966, she only began appearing on the show in 1970, a year before the series ended. But it — plus a role in the feature film Night of Dark Shadows — created enough of springboard to launch Jackson into a spate of guest-starring roles on other popular series, and then on to TV stardom.
So soapy but so creepy
Credit: Everett Collection
Created by horror master Dan Curtis, Dark Shadows concerned the wealthy, eccentric, and evidently eternal Collins family, who lived in the Collinswood Mansion in Collinsport, Maine. The clan is plagued by generations of dark secrets, supernatural curses and otherwise tragic fates, many of which came to head with the return of Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) some 200 years after he died.
Barnabas is now a vampire, and what began as a moody, mystery-based take on classic daytime soaps turned into a juicy, full-blown freak fest filled with vampires, ghosts, witches, time travel and parallel universes. The evolution mesmerized teens just home from school and also housewife mamas, who could now exorcise their demons with more than family foibles and business-related battles.
Introduced as a silent ghost in Dark Shadows‘ modern-day story line, Jackson’s Daphne Harridge was the former governess of the Collins kids and paramour of Barnabas’ distant cousin Quentin Collins (David Selby) during Shadows’ 1840 storyline. In a thread inspired Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, kind and gentle Daphne fell for the cursed and brooding Quentin, who genuinely loved her back. Quentin probably knew he was not an ideal boyfriend, even as he tried to convince Daphne otherwise.
When young Daphne died, she found a fine way to be with Quentin forever: She haunted the daylights out of him — and pretty much everyone else in Collinswood.
Quiet on the set
Jackson said that she didn’t mind that her character said absolutely nothing for her earliest weeks on set, because it gave the young actress the chance to observe the veteran cast at work. “I didn’t speak for about 5 weeks because I was a ghost, and I beckoned, which was great because then I could sorta learn how to do things and how things were done there,” she grinned in a later interview conducted for the MPI release of the show on video and DVD.
“I began to really appreciate it because I realized that it was so wonderful to go right from the American Academy into Dark Shadows, where you, right away, got to use all the tools and techniques that you had been studying,” Jackson continued. “To suspend your disbelief and be an actor in some of the circumstances that we were put into to play a character who was within real circumstances for that character — maybe not for anybody else in the universe — but for that character, I thought it was just a wonderful learning tool. And I was always aware that it was probably going to be one of the best ways to start out.”
Still, the job was demanding. Dark Shadows was shot in a manner similar to live theater at ABC Studios in Manhattan, with actors expected to deliver pages of dialogue in a single take and minimal time for retakes because the process was so complicated.
“‘Live on tape’ was something different from what live on tape is now,” Jackson explained. “We were in New York and we got the tape, or the feed, or whatever it was, and if we blew it and, for some reason, had to stop tape — which was the thing you did not want to do — then we’d have to wait for hours to get the feed again. It wasn’t like you could just stop it like a video camera again and start it over again. It made it pretty exciting.”
Learning from her costars
Everett Collection
As for her costars, Jackson said she was awed from the start and could hardly believe that her first TV job gave her the chance to learn from such respected actors in a trailblazing show with multiple timelines. Even on days when she wasn’t called to set, Jackson would show up anyway to watch how her colleagues prepped for and then completed a scene.
“Jonathan made a great impact on me. I learned a lot from watching him,” Jackson said, proudly noting that Daphne never experienced the vampire’s fangs. “I don’t know how anyone else could’ve been Barnabas Collins except for Jonathan Frid.”
Grayson Hall (Dr. Julia Hoffman), Jackson said, taught her young protege how deep dive into her character’s motivations.
Actress Joan Bennett. Credit: Everett Collection
But Jackson admitted that she was particularly starstruck by the small but mighty Joan Bennett who played multiple characters on the show, earning an Emmy in the process. Jackson said her mom filled her in on Bennett’s long-running movie career before the Suspiria actress joined Dark Shadows. “I thought she was great,” Jackson said. “She was very teeny, but she had a lot of presence.”
And Jackson had a particularly vivid memory of stopping production, courtesy of a lively scene with Jim Storm, who played Daphne’s other love interest, creepy sailor Gerard Stiles.
“I hit [Jim] on the head with a breakaway vase, a vaaaaze. Popped him on the noggin,” Jackson recalled. “He was knocked out stone cold. He fell to the floor, I stepped over him and walked out of the room, she chuckled. They went to commercial.”
And though Daphne Harridge and Dark Shadows both met their demise in 1971, Jackson was tickled to know her time with many of the cast members wasn’t over.
“It was a real thrill to go right from the series into the movie,” Jackson said of the 1971 feature film Night of Dark Shadows, in which she played Quentin Collins’ wife Tracy. “It was beautiful where we were shooting [Tarrytown, NY] and I got to ride a horse and do all sorts of great things and be outdoors all day.”
Oh, honey!
Jackson also learned a valuable piece about life as an actor. “I learned the meaning of ‘the honey wagon,’” she said gleefully. “I couldn’t believe it. … I really felt Hollywood when I knew what a honey wagon was.”
Though the actress would go on to stardom — and a trio of Emmys — in other high-profile TV series and a run of telefilms, Dark Shadows would always hold a place in her heart.
“When I remember Dark Shadows, immediately I think of the people,” Jackson reflected, “because it was a real special group of people, and it was my first job and all of them were really very helpful. … I just remember all of these nice people doing this crazy thing, and I got to go there every day and do something crazy with them.”
Do you remember Dark Shadows’ Daphne? Who were your other favorite characters? Tell us about it in the comments below!
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