Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, has died at 61 of pancreatic cancer, according to her website.
The Sally Ride Science foundation also announced that Ride is survived by her partner of 27 years, Tam O'Shaughnessy:
Sally Ride died peacefully on July 23rd, 2012 after a courageous 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Sally lived her life to the fullest, with boundless energy, curiosity, intelligence, passion, joy, and love. Her integrity was absolute; her spirit was immeasurable; her approach to life was fearless.
Sally was a physicist, the first American woman to fly in space, a science writer, and the president and CEO of Sally Ride Science. She had the rare ability to understand the essence of things and to inspire those around her to join her pursuits.
Sally’s historic flight into space captured the nation’s imagination and made her a household name. She became a symbol of the ability of women to break barriers and a hero to generations of adventurous young girls. After retiring from NASA, Sally used her high profile to champion a cause she believed in passionately—inspiring young people, especially girls, to stick with their interest in science, to become scientifically literate, and to consider pursuing careers in science and engineering.
In addition to Tam O’Shaughnessy, (pictured right) her partner of 27 years, Sally is survived by her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin, and nephew, Whitney; her staff of 40 at Sally Ride Science; and many friends and colleagues around the country.
Sad news: I Love Lucy and Bewitched director William Asher, 90, has died of complications from Alzheimer's disease.
Asher's first episode of I Love Lucy happened to be one of the classic comedy's most famous: Lucy and Ethel working on a candy shop assembly line. ("Speed it up a little!!!")
In the 1960s and '70s, Asher directed Bewitched starring his then-wife Elizabeth Montgomery.
I interviewed Asher twice, the first time in 2001 on the 50th anniversary of I Love Lucy; the second time in 2005 to discuss Montgomery and Bewitched.
Exactly 50 years ago this evening, America met the Ricardos and the Mertzes. Fittingly, Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel celebrate their golden anniversary tonight on TV Land with a restored rebroadcast of I Love Lucy 's debut episode.
"It's timeless entertainment, " said Miami ad executive Michelle Zubizarreta, 34, who grew up loving I Love Lucy . "I can still watch those reruns and laugh, even though I know what's coming. I still laugh when she puts those chocolates in her mouth."
Such is the power of Lucy . Just mention "those chocolates, " or the wine vat filled with grapes, or Vitameatavegamin, and millions the world over know what you are talking about.
Although Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance and William Frawley have been dead for years, their black-and-white alter egos live on. And on.
"Lucy: A Tribute" is a popular attraction at Universal Studios in Hollywood and Orlando. Lucynet.com and Lucylibrary. com are websites that promote Lucy chocolates, a $79 Lucy and Ricky doll set, stamps, plates and all sorts of memorabilia. CBS, the series' original broadcast network, plans a 50th anniversary special Nov. 11, featuring the stars' children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr.
Perhaps the greatest testimonial to I Love Lucy 's success: In 50 years, it has never been off the air.
"I'll watch an episode I may have seen a trillion times, " said Miami filmmaker Joe Cardona.
MARRIED IN 1940
Ball and Arnaz married in 1940, after they met making a movie, Too Many Girls . When they became the best-known TV couple in America, they set a standard for bicultural relationships, said Cardona, 34.
"Today, this kind of marriage in Miami is commonplace. It was such a precursor of what was to come in this community, " Cardona said. "To Cubans in South Florida, this was kind of like looking into a crystal ball."
And Ricky's rich accent? It was Arnaz himself who played it up, said Madelyn Pugh Davis, one of I Love Lucy's original writers.
"When we first started working with him, we'd write like he said things. He said it in perfect English and we wrote that. We wrote 'Take it easy.' "
But once the cameras were rolling, Arnaz would say, "take-i-tizzy, " Davis said.
Ball was the only cast member allowed to mock Arnaz's English. "Because she loved him, " Davis said.
She finds it a bit odd that a half-century later, the public is still loyal to Lucy.
"It's very flattering. It's amazing. It's unbelievable, " said Davis, who originally wrote the show with her longtime partner Bob Carroll Jr. and series creator Jess Oppenheimer. All three first worked with Ball in her 1940s radio show, My Favorite Husband .
When I Love Lucy premiered at 9 p.m. Monday, Oct. 15, 1951, on CBS - in an era before the television rerun - people just figured "it was on the air and it's gone, " Davis said.
A PERFECTIONIST
Continuity didn't seem important to the writers, who struggled to crank out 39 episodes a season, Davis said.
Ball was a perfectionist who never felt comfortable until she had "rehearsed and rehearsed, " said Davis, who is in her 70s.
"When she really knew it, she could have fun with it."
Like Davis, series director William Asher never realized how long people would be hooked.
"It didn't really dawn on me until much later, " said Asher, now 80. "That was the very early days of television. We didn't know what we had."
Asher, who in 1963 married Elizabeth Montgomery and created her signature TV series, Bewitched, joined I Love Lucy in May 1952.
His very first episode: Job Switching, in which Lucy and Ethel go to work in a chocolate factory while Ricky and Fred stay home and keep house.
"I had no idea that first show was going to be among the most memorable, " Asher said. "It was a very difficult show to do. It was complicated with the girls doing the candy bit. It was extremely hard to time the conveyor belt, building up speed, stuffing candy in their mouths, their blouses."
BEHIND THE SCENES
Just as difficult, Asher said, was directing the scene in which Ricky and Fred cook dinner. "The rice overflowing. Desi put I don't know how much rice in a pot. He put in the whole package. It was really slippery. He took some falls that were not rehearsed."
It was also during his first week at work that Asher encountered Ball's temper.
"I was doing a scene without Desi, with the girls at home. It was obvious that Lucy was doing the directing behind the stage. "I said, 'Lucy, there's only one director and right now, I'm it. If you want to direct, get rid of me.'
"She burst into tears and ran off stage. Everybody else did. . . . I went back on the stage. Desi was there and he screamed at me in Spanish. I calmed him down and told him what happened. And he said I was absolutely right."
Here's Asher's take on the principals:
* Lucille Ball (1911-1989). "She was self-conscious. Not really a funny person. That kind of bothered her, I think. She needed material to be funny. But there wasn't anybody who executed it better. She really was the best."
* Desi Arnaz (1917-1986). "Desi did everything better than the others, except for the natural comedic talent Lucy had. He was very bright. When it came to a story problem, he was really able to think things out. When we had troubles, he was always the one with the answers.
"He was not known for that and that bothered him a bit - he was the Cuban singer married to the great comic."
INSISTED ON FILM
(Arnaz is credited with insisting I Love Lucy be filmed, rather than broadcast live. Later, that allowed the series to be rerun.)
* William Frawley (1887-1966). "He was what he is: perfect. He had the musical talent. He had many, many years on Broadway. All that talent he threw into the show."
Asher said Frawley studied only his own lines and often had no idea what the rest of the show was about.
* Vivian Vance (1909-1979). "A great straight person for Lucy. Also a great comic, who worked very well with Bill Frawley, even though she didn't like him. . . . She didn't like being married to an older man. But it never showed.
"She had to keep her weight up and do things she didn't want to do. It bothered her. She went on with Lucy, oh, I don't know how many years. . . . It was a very close, warm friendship."
After I Love Lucy, Ball and Vance continued being on-screen pals in The Lucy Show, from 1962-65. Vance retired that season, but the series continued with Gale Gordon as co-star until 1968. Then, Ball began a new series, Here's Lucy, co-starring Gordon and her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr.
Ball left weekly television in 1974. For the next decade, she continued to appear in network specials.
In 1986, at age 75, Ball attempted a much-publicized weekly TV comeback, Life With Lucy . Critics lambasted the Saturday night series, which drew poor ratings.
After eight episodes, ABC unceremoniously dumped the Queen of Television.
On April 26, 1989, Ball died at age 77 after heart surgery.
Desi Arnaz had died of lung cancer three years earlier. Even though they were divorced for 26 years, Ball and Arnaz never stopped caring for each other.
From the beginning she put her career on the line for him.
When CBS first approached Ball in 1950 about doing I Love Lucy, network executives didn't want Arnaz to play her husband.
No one would believe that the All-American redhead could be married to a Cuban bandleader, they said.
But Ball said she would do the show only if Arnaz could be her co-star, and CBS relented. In the end, it became an element of the show that made it popular, said Gregg Oppenheimer, son of Lucy creator Jess Oppenheimer.
"That's really the strength of the show, " said Oppenheimer, 50, who completed his late father's memoirs, Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy, and is creative consultant for the show's recent release on DVD. "The chemistry between them is real. People knew they loved each other."
But Ball found it increasingly difficult to cope with Arnaz's drinking, gambling and running around with other women. Finally, after I Love Lucy and a series of Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour specials, they divorced after 20 years of marriage.
Although each would remarry (Ball to comedian Gary Morton, Arnaz to Edith Mack Hirsch, who died in 1985), they still loved each other, Asher said.
At Arnaz's funeral, Ball told Asher about their final days together. Just before Arnaz died, Ball visited him at the home they once shared in Del Mar, Calif.
"He was pretty well out of it by this time, " Asher said. "She went to leave. He said, 'Where are you going?' She said, 'I'm leaving.' He said, 'What do you mean, you're leaving? You live here.' He had flipped back to those years." She called Morton, her husband, and told him she needed to stay.
With the twitch of her nose (actually her upper lip), Elizabeth Montgomery made it seem so easy, like magic.
"She was charming. She had comedy. She had drama, as well. She was just terribly likable, " said retired television director William Asher, who shepherded Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy and Montgomery - then his wife - in Bewitched.
Bewitched, about a sorceress named Samantha married to a mortal who disdains witchcraft, led ABC's prime-time lineup after its debut in 1964. It became the network's most successful series to date, ranking No. 2 in the ratings that season behind NBC's Bonanza.
The magic of Bewitched is about to be tested: Sony Pictures is releasing the first season of the TV show on DVD, and an updated big-screen version (opening today) starring Nicole Kidman in the role originated by the iconic Montgomery, who died 10 years ago at 62 of colon cancer.
Bewitched "has lasting communication in a time of social turbulence, " said Ron Simon, television curator at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. "It has elements that harken back to I Love Lucy. But unlike Lucy, who wanted to break into show business, you have Samantha who has magical powers that can change the suburban landscape."
Until Bewitched, Montgomery was best known as the daughter of MGM movie star Robert Montgomery. She frequently acted on his 1950s television anthology series, Robert Montgomery Presents.
After a seven-year marriage to movie star Gig Young ended in 1963, Montgomery met and quickly wed Asher, a behind-the-scenes member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack.
"They eloped. I don't even have wedding pictures of them, " said their oldest son, Billy Asher, 40, a Los Angeles guitar builder.
William Asher, now 84 and living near Palm Springs, Calif., says that when he and Montgomery married, she was ready to give up her career.
"She wanted not to act anymore, " William Asher said. "She was pregnant [with Billy] and didn't want to do it anymore. She was too good to quit. I suggested we do a television show together."
He wrote a script for Montgomery about "the richest girl in the world" who falls in love with an ordinary guy. Asher gave the script to Columbia Pictures execs who said it reminded them of another property being considered for Broadway star Tammy Grimes.
"It was the script of Bewitched, " William Asher said. "I liked that better and so did Liz, so we did that."
Asher helped assemble one of TV's most memorable ensembles including Citizen Kane co-star Agnes Moorehead as Samantha's mother, Endora, and comedian Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur.
Dick York was cast as Samantha's mortal husband, Darrin Stephens. York, who died in 1992, stayed with the show for five years, until illness forced him to quit. Bewitched was still a hit, though, and Asher simply recast the part.
"I decided to go ahead and do it without any explanation - nothing to the fans, " Asher said. When season six began, actor Dick Sargent was Darrin.
As the Asher family grew, so did the Stephens family.
When Montgomery became pregnant with son Robert in 1965, Samantha became pregnant with daughter Tabitha. Four years later, Montgomery gave birth to daughter Rebecca and Samantha had son Adam.
Bewitched was so popular it spawned a 1965 copycat comedy, NBC's I Dream of Jeannie.
"Elizabeth was furious, " William Asher said. "She didn't like it at all. It didn't bother me. It was a good show. But we went eight years, they went five."
After Bewitched ended in 1972, Montgomery and Asher divorced amicably. She later married actor Robert Foxworth, who in the 1980s starred on TV's Falcon Crest.
Montgomery abandoned comedy in favor of dramatic movies of the week. Much of her later work was tied to political activism, Billy Asher said.
For her post-Bewitched TV comeback in 1974, Montgomery chose to star as a rape victim.
"She was very aware of what was going on around her in the world, " Billy Asher said. "A Case of Rape was a bit of material to open people's eyes of what was going on in the courtrooms and what women went through."
Montgomery also became a champion of gay rights. "A lot of her friends, people in the industry were gay. Paul Lynde, " her son said.
Soon after Dick Sargent publicly came out of the closet, the two former Bewitched stars appeared as grand marshals of the 1992 Los Angeles gay pride parade. Sargent died two years later of prostate cancer.
In 1994, Montgomery assumed the role of Herald crime reporter Edna Buchanan for the TV-movie The Corpse Had a Familiar Face. A year later, she filmed a sequel, Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan.
During filming, Montgomery suddenly became ill. Within weeks, she was dead.
William Asher, who has remarried twice since their divorce, still gets choked up when talking about Montgomery. He planned to attend this week's world premiere of the movie Bewitched, but said he had nothing to do with making it or the DVD series release.
"I made a very bad deal, " said Asher, who also wrote and produced TV's Bewitched. "We have nothing to do financially with the show. I should have made a different deal and I didn't."
Theater, film and TV legend Celeste Holm died Sunday at age 95 in her New York City apartment.
Holm, who won fame as the original Ado Annie in Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1943), also won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Gentleman's Agreement (1947).
She also co-starred in All About Eve (opposite Bette Davis and Anne Baxter); High Society (with Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra) and Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella (introducing Lesley Ann Warren).
In her later years, Holm was married to a former waiter more than 45 years her junior and estranged from her two adult sons.
Gad Beck, 78 and ailing, vividly recalls his "great, great love" and how he lost him to the Nazis.
Sixty years later, Beck still calls it "the darkest hour of my life." He says it's important for him to tell his story, however painful.
So two years ago, the retired educator wrote an autobiography, An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin. And that year as well, he was one of a handful of known gay Holocaust survivors to appear in a film documentary called Paragraph 175, which will be screened Sunday at Temple Israel in Miami.
Paragraph 175 was an 1871 section in the German criminal code that strictly prohibited anal intercourse, German historian Lothar Machtan said.
In 1935, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rewrote Paragraph 175 to outlaw all forms of male homosexuality. Lesbians were excluded from the law.
"That was the basis for the prosecution, persecution, harassment - even the killing of homosexuals - by the Third Reich, " said Machtan, author of a controversial new book called The Hidden Hitler, which alleges with no proof that Hitler himself was gay.
Between 1933 and 1945, German police arrested an estimated 100,000 men as homosexuals, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
About 50,000 of those men were sentenced by German courts to regular prisons; between 5,000 and 15,000 were interned in concentration camps.
PINK TRIANGLES
Forced to wear pink triangles signifying their homosexuality, these men were among the most-abused prisoners in the concentration camps, according to the Holocaust museum.
No one knows how many gay men died in the camps.
Gad Beck was born in 1923 in Berlin to a Jewish father and a Christian mother.
Early on, Beck became aware of his homosexuality.
"At the age of 12, it was clear to me I was in love with a boyfriend, " Beck said last week from his home in Berlin. But, he added, "in the time I was a young boy, there was no way you could speak of it."
At 15, Beck met and fell in love with Manfred Lewin, a 16-year-old Jew. Three years later, Lewin and his family were jailed by the Nazis.
Because Beck's mother wasn't Jewish, the Germans didn't intern him. He joined and became a leader in the Jewish underground in Germany.
VISIT TO JAIL
One day, Beck stole a German soldier's uniform and sneaked into the jail where Lewin was being held. He pleaded with Lewin to escape.
"He said to me, 'Look, this is impossible to understand. No Gad, I can never be free. I'm with my whole family.' He went back, " Beck said.
"We had prepared a life together. . . . Three weeks after this meeting, he was going to Auschwitz with his whole family, " said Beck, who never saw Lewin again.
After World War II ended, Beck searched for Lewin and discovered that he and his family perished in Auschwitz.
[Before Lewin's arrest, he gave Gad Beck a handwritten diary about their life together. The book, with English translation, can be viewed online at the museum's website, www.ushmm.org/doyou rememberwhen/co/co.htm]
In 1947, Beck helped organize the emigration of Jewish survivors to Palestine. He lived in Israel until 1979, when he returned to Berlin.
In 60 years, much has changed for gay men in Germany. In 1994, after the two Germanys reunited, the law was abolished.
Earlier this year, the German congress voted to allow gay civil unions.
And last month, Klaus Wowereit was elected mayor of Berlin.
During the campaign in June, Wowereit announced: "I'm gay and that's a good thing."
In Germany and around the world, that has become a cult phrase among gay men and women.
NORMALIZATION
"There has been a very positive change and a trend toward 'normalization, ' " said Marc Fest, 35, a gay businessman born in West Germany and now living in Miami Beach.
Although Fest grew up hearing about Paragraph 175, he knew little about the gay men who died during World War II.
"The first time I heard there were gay people in the concentration camps was not in school, " Fest said. "We were fed an extraordinary amount of information about what happened in the Third Reich. Every year in history class, we were looking at a different aspect and a different angle about those events.
"The first thing I remember, I saw a reference to that was when I moved to Berlin to go to the university in 1989. I remember at a subway station I saw a new memorial, a pink triangle made of marble at a subway station in the gay district of West Berlin."
The inscription: "Beaten to death, silenced to death - to the homosexual Nazi victims."
Longtime South Florida gay journalist Bob Kecskemety preferred to write good news about the folks he covered.
“Bob never wrote anything negative about anybody,” said his friend Norm Kent, publisher of South Florida Gay News. “He loved doing things that showcased people in the community, putting a positive spin on nice people.”
Now, Broward County’s gay community is mourning the loss of Kecskemety, a videographer and writer who died of complications from bone and bladder cancer Wednesday night in Hollywood. He was 60.
“He was very generous, just a kind person,” said Kecskemety’s close friend, Tim Yatteau, who met him about nine years ago when they worked together at the old Buzz magazine in Fort Lauderdale. “His passion was reporting and keeping people abreast on issues he thought were important. ... Most people that knew Bob loved him. It’s very rare to find someone so genuine these days.”
Bobby Blair met Kecskemety five years ago.
“He was with me the very first day I got into the publishing business in 2007, which was the summer I took over Buzz magazine,” said Blair, now publisher of Florida Agenda, the last paper where Kecskemety worked. “He was a remarkable, passionate person trying to create news and information that would build up the LGBT community. He was always into finding good causes, and the really good people who were making a difference.”
Born in Cleveland, Kecskemety graduated from Fort Lauderdale High School and attended Broward College. During the 1990s, the former travel agent wrote a social column for Scoop, a onetime South Florida gay magazine.
“I met Bob at Pridefest in 2008,” said Ryan Dixon, 24, now QueerChannel’s TV host. “He interviewed me. I was kind of shy, quiet. I didn’t know what to say on camera.”
The two became friends and eventually Kecskemety hired Dixon, even though he believed the younger man would bomb on-air.
“He said, ‘Ryan, I didn’t think you’d make a good host. I didn’t think you’d be outgoing. Then you blew me away,’” Dixon recalled Thursday.
Dixon, who contracted HIV while working as porn star Kameron Scott, said Kecskemety helped save his life after his parents in Virginia threw him out.
“My father told me I was going to die of AIDS and burn in Hell. He didn’t want me in the house. That’s when I flew back to Fort Lauderdale and stayed with Bob. I don’t know where I would have been without him. He was literally a life saver.”
Kecskemety bequeathed his company and camera equipment to Dixon, who plans to keep QueerChannel in business.
A memorial service for Kecskemety will be held sometime in mid June at the Pride Center in Wilton Manors. Also, this year’s 13th annual Stonewall Street Festival on June 24 in Wilton Manors will be dedicated to him, said Jason Tamanini, general manager at the Manor Complex and co-chair of the Rainbow Business Coalition.
Kecskemety, who co-founded the Stonewall festival, continued to write until about a month ago, when he entered hospice at Memorial Regional Hospital South.
“Each year, I write a feature in the last issue of the year for whatever publication I have worked for, getting New Year’s resolutions from people in the community, and though I would have liked to have gotten many more for the last week’s issue of the Agenda than I did, I was too weak to continue,” Kecskemety wrote, still upbeat about the future.
“One person, who I asked for his resolution a week ago, turned the tables on me and asked me what my New Year’s resolution was. I simply replied, ‘2013.’”
NEW YORK -- Disco queen Donna Summer, whose pulsing anthems such as "Last Dance," "Love to Love You Baby" and "Bad Girls" became the soundtrack for a glittery age of sex, drugs, dance and flashy clothes, has died. She was 63.
Her family released a statement Thursday saying Summer died and that they "are at peace celebrating her extraordinary life and her continue legacy."
Summer gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s, and released a number of albums that have reach gold or platinum status, including the multiplatinum "Bad Girls" and "On the Radio, Volume I & II." Her No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits include "Hot Stuff" and "MacArthur Park."
Her sound was a mix of genres, and helped her earn Grammy Awards in the dance, rock, R&B and inspirational categories.
She released her last album, "Crayons," in 2008. She also performed on "American Idol" that year with its top female contestants.
Orchestra leader Mort Lindsey, who conducted for Judy Garland during the early 1960s (including her famous Carnegie Hall concert) died May 4, reports Reuters.
Lindsey, 89, suffered long-declining health and recently broke his hip.
In addition to the Carnegie Hall concert, Lindsey conducted The Judy Garland Show in 1963-64, as well as Garland's final film, I Could Go on Singing.
He won an Emmy for Barbra Steisand's TV special, A Happening in Central Park and also worked with Garland's daughter, Liza Minnelli, in her award-winning TV concert, Liza With a Z.
For 25 years, Lindsey also was musical director for The Merv Griffin Show.
An upcoming feature remake of Dark Shadows, starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas, is set to open in a few weeks. Frid has a cameo in the film.
Here's a Miami Herald feature I wrote in 2006 about Dark Shadows, in which I interviewed two of Frid's co-stars: Broadway star Donna McKechnie, who played two roles on the show; and Lara Parker, Barnabas' evil nemesis, the witch Angelique. I also spoke with Dark Shadows historian Craig Hamrick, who died of colon cancer a few months later.
In 1966, a weird daytime soap opera debuted on ABC. Unlike most soaps, this one didn't feature young housewives, handsome doctors and affairs of the heart.
Dark Shadows told spooky tales of witches, vampires and stakes in the heart.
The last original episode aired in April 1971. But 35 years later, like one of its vampires, Dark Shadows lives on and on.
Not only was it a hit in the United States, it became a sensation in Central and South America, dubbed into Spanish and retitled Sombras Tenebrosas.
Charles Peters of Miami was one of millions of kids in the late '60s and early '70s who raced home every day to watch vampire Barnabas Collins, Angelique the witch, scientist Dr. Julia Hoffman, ghost Quentin Collins and werewolf Chris Jennings.
"It became an obsession, " said Peters, 50, a Winn-Dixie assistant manager. "You didn't see that sort of thing on television. You don't see it now.
"If you have the fanaticism about Dark Shadows, it's different from everything else, " he said. "Not everyone gets it. But the fact that after all these years, we're talking about a show that disappeared 35 years ago, it has to be different."
The show that refuses to die has spawned hit music, a book series, children's board games and two feature films. Reruns ran for years on the SciFi cable channel.
It is the most prolific TV series on home video - all 1,225 episodes have been released. MPI Home Video has sold more than 300,000 four-disc DVD sets, each with 40 episodes and retailing for $60. The final episodes will be released next month. Previously, MPI sold the entire series on VHS tape - 250 four-episode volumes, according to MPI spokeswoman Chris Hester.
This weekend, series stars will reminisce and sign autographs at the Dark Shadows 40th Anniversary Festival in Brooklyn, N.Y.
"It's still very, very popular with loyal fans. They come to the conventions. They have Dark Shadows blogs. They argue about who did what, " said actress Lara Parker, who played Angelique and will be at the convention, along with former co-stars including David Selby, John Karlen and Donna McKechnie.
Dark Shadows premiered June 27, 1966, a Jane Eyre-like Gothic drama about a young governess named Victoria Winters (played by Alexandra Moltke) who comes to live in a spooky old Maine mansion called Collinwood.
Movie legend Joan Bennett, then 56, played Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, matriarch of the Collins family.
Bennett, who died in 1990, starred in some of Hollywood's earliest talking pictures. Her film career collapsed in 1951 after her jealous husband shot her agent.
"She was pretty desperate to work, " said Craig Hamrick, author of Barnabas & Company, a book about the series. "Her agent had talked her into it. It was $333 a show with a minimum of three shows a week, even if she didn't work. Her agent also said he didn't think it was going to last and she believed him."
Bennett's agent almost was right. Audiences had trouble warming up to the series and within 16 weeks, ABC came this close to canceling it.
Series creator Dan Curtis took advice from his children: Make the show scarier.
"I figured why the hell not. I'll make it really scary, " Curtis said in an interview before his death at 78 in March 2006. "What have I got to lose?"
First, the show introduced a ghost. The ratings went up. Then, a few other spooks came to Collinwood. Viewership increased again. "When we put the vampire on, forget it - the ratings went through the roof, " Curtis said in the interview, included on a DVD.
Thanks to the vampire story, Dark Shadows gained a huge gay following, according to Hamrick.
"Vampires are hiding who they are and I could identify with that, " Hamrick said. "I was living in Kansas at the time and I couldn't tell my family."
On his website, www.darkshadowsonline.com, Hamrick describes himself as a "blossoming gay kid" who grew up in the '70s reading old Dark Shadows novels. He discovered the show itself years later in reruns.
Some Dark Shadows stories were adapted from other works, including a Bride of Frankenstein knockoff about two man-made monsters, Adam and Eve. Other stories involved time travel and something called "parallel time, " which allowed cast members to play different characters during the same time period.
Donna McKechnie, who won a 1976 Tony for A Chorus Line, played two parts in different eras during her Dark Shadows stint from August 1969 to January 1970.
The 30-minute show was barely rehearsed and videotaped in real time with no stops and starts.
"It was manic. Once you got into the tempo of it, it was kind of exciting, " said McKechnie, 63, whose autobiography, Time Steps: My Musical Comedy Life, comes out in September.
McKechnie - her character came to life from a painting - departed the show in dramatic fashion: crushed by debris in a bridge collapse.
"They just dumped that stuff on me and left, " she said. "I was sitting in total darkness with peat moss in my mouth."
Peters, the grocery store manager, remembers it well: "Her death scene was hilarious. It wasn't intended to be. She and David Selby [as Quentin Collins] got so caught up in the drama of the scene, they went over the top. It was one of my favorite death scenes."
"Camp" is a word frequently used today to describe Dark Shadows. Not 40 years ago.
"We played it serious, " said Parker, 60, who recently earned a master's degree in creative writing. She now writes novels based on characters from the series. Her newest, The Salem Branch, focuses on her own character, Angelique, and how she became a witch.
Dark Shadows launched the acting career of Kate Jackson, spawned several hit records and two feature films starring the TV cast, House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971). Both are set for DVD release next year, as is a seven-disc CD set of music from the series. Also available on DVD: a 1991 NBC-TV prime time revival that starred Ben Cross as Barnabas.
Canadian actor Jonathan Frid played Barnabas in the original series. Then in his 40s, he became a teen idol.
Parker said much of the series' success came because of Frid, who played a tortured vampire viewers felt sorry for. The agony viewers saw actually was Frid nervously forgetting his dialogue in an era before teleprompters.
"You'd say, 'This man is suffering so much, ' " Parker said.
Frid, 81, is semi-retired in Canada, according to Jim Pierson, 40, director of marketing and promotions for Dan Curtis Productions in Burbank, Calif.
Frid's character was one of Charles Peters' favorites. He dressed up as Barnabas on Halloween about 40 years ago. He collected Dark Shadows comic books, plastic models, novels and a View-Master slide reel.
"When my uncle died, I didn't want to go to the funeral because Dark Shadows was on, " Peters said, still feeling a bit guilty nearly 40 years later. "Is that a terrible thing? He wasn't one of my favorite uncles."
Today, Peters' wife, Dalia, has set limits.
"I drive her crazy about it, " he said. "I have three pictures of Collinwood on the wall and I sit at the computer and look at them. I don't think I could have a DarkShadows room. That would be overstepping it."
Richard Shack, who began collecting contemporary art when a Jasper Johns could be had for $100, and went on to help establish Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art, died Monday at his Brickell Avenue home.
His wife, former Miami-Dade Commissioner and longtime community activist Ruth Shack, said her husband of 58 years suffered heart problems and succumbed to a second stroke in recent years.
Born Aug. 15, 1926 in Brooklyn, the retired entertainment agent, whose stable of stars included Harry Belafonte, Liberace, George Burns and Anita Bryant, was 85. A gallery at Miami Beach’s Arts Center/South Florida bears his name.
“Dick Shack was the consummate collector of contemporary art,’’ said Dennis Scholl, vice president/arts, for The Knight Foundation. “In 1981 He invited me to his home in [Miami Shores Heights] to see his and Ruth’s collection. When I walked into the bedroom, I saw three works of art by Gene Davis mounted on the ceiling over their bed...He showed me that there were no limits to collecting and that building an art collection was an artistic experience in its own right.’’
In addition to Tam O’Shaughnessy, (pictured right) her partner of 27 years, Sally is survived by her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin, and nephew, Whitney; her staff of 40 at Sally Ride Science; and many friends and colleagues around the country.
