Jonathan Frid: Interview with the Dark Shadows Vampire
Thomas M. Sipos
Copyright © 2001 by Thomas M. Sipos
Smashwords Edition
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The author may be contacted through PO Box 1903, Santa Monica, CA 90406-1903 or at CommunistVampires.com.
This interview with Jonathan Frid first appeared in Filmfax #83 (February/March 2001) under the title: “Sans Fangs” with Jonathan Frid. An expanded version was published later that year in my horror collection, Halloween Candy (2001). This ebook edition is of the latter, expanded version.
“Sans Fangs” with Jonathan Frid
by Thomas M. Sipos
“Look at this!” Jonathan Frid points to The Dark Shadows Files, its cover featuring himself in bared fangs. He begins flipping through the book. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four. Four! They know I hate this. They know I hate these fangs, and yet the first four pictures all show me in fangs. I know it’s all part of the game. But four!”
Best known as Barnabas Collins on TV’s Dark Shadows, Frid has other complaints about the book. He points to a fanzine on his coffee table. “They claimed I wrote an introduction to the book, and I didn’t. They were misinformed by the publisher.”
I had met Frid the week before, on a rainy March afternoon in 1986. We were to conduct an interview in a Manhattan eatery, but he’d forgotten and arrived late. All bundled up in spring, he came despite a cold, apologizing profusely. “I really thought it was for next week. Then I looked at the calendar and saw it was for today. Well, I rushed down as soon as I could.”
I say it’s okay, but he insists on paying for my lunch. As Frid is in no condition for a long interview, we postpone it for the following week. Then Frid interviews me, inquiring about my background. He listens intently. “I think I can trust you,” he concludes. We go to his East 18th Street apartment. (Frid has since returned to his native Canada). Once there, Frid lends me a video cassette of Seizure (a Canadian horror film starring himself, then unavailable in the US), and his scrapbook of press clippings. “This will help you in your research for our interview.”
I sense this gesture is part of his apology for being late. Frid’s reputation among fans for his courtesy and consideration is well-earned. And so the following week, I am in Frid’s apartment watching him lose his temper. But he isn’t angry for long, and soon regrets castigating The Dark Shadows Files’s author. “He was here earlier today, before you arrived. The poor guy. He brought this copy. He was so proud. He thought I would be pleased and I just let him have it!”
This is because Frid does not share his fans’ interest in vampires. “I’m not interested in horror movies. I’m interested in villainy. I’m interested in what makes ordinary people, like yourself, tick the way you do. And the way I tick. And the way somebody else ticks. I see horror every day, when people reveal themselves. It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s what he’s like! That’s why he does something.’ I’m constantly watching people. Watching their strengths and weaknesses. I find myself going into theaters less and less, let alone horror. I gave that up when I was seven or eight years old.”
That was also about when Frid had his first acting role: as part of a choochoo train in a Sunday school play. “Probably a middle car. I wasn’t even an engineer or the caboose.” Despite the minor role, Sunday school nurtured Frid’s dormant acting bug in other ways. “As a young boy I used to think I wanted to be a minister, because my grandmother thought I wanted to be a minister. I used to dress up and put gowns on and make like I was a priest. I used to hold forth on the stairwell and pretend it was a chancel. So I guess I got my gothic roots pretending that the stairs was a gothic church.”
But over time, Frid realized he lacked the calling to be a priest. “I was just using church ritual as a way of expressing my love of ritual. I must say I didn’t get much inspiration from the Presbyterian Church, which my family were connected with, because their services are pretty sparse. I should of been an Anglican or Episcopalian. The Episcopalian Church does a very elegant service. Even the Catholics, Romans as we called them. Anyway, be that as it may, that’s how I got my start.”
In prep school, Frid discovered the joy of acting. “I was about twelve or thirteen or fourteen, and I was in a class play and I just loved it. It was the greatest excitement of the year. I wasn’t aware of this being my life’s work, I just enjoyed doing it.” The turning point came at age sixteen. “The great decision in my life, probably more important than making a decision to go into the professional theater, was to ask to go into the school play. Not the class play, but the school play. It took me a week to get up enough nerve to ask to be in it.”
Frid’s request was deemed unusual because few boys at his all-male prep school wanted to do plays. “Especially when they had to dress up and play girls. [The school] just commandeered people to be in the senior play. The brightest students in the Latin of two senior years, you simply were drafted. I of course dreaded being called a sissy just because I wanted to be in the play. That’s what took such nerve. And secondly, I wasn’t one of the brighter students. I got two prizes in prep school. One was for Industry and Progress. I came from the bottom of the class to the middle, and that’s as high as I ever got. And I got the Reading Prize in my final year.”
Not being a top student, Frid required approval from both the Headmaster, and English Master in charge of plays. The day Frid approached the latter is forever seared into his memory. “Oh I was nervous, that was a nerve-wracking day. Everything is so important when you’re young. To ask to be in that play was the biggest decision I ever made in my life. I’ve always remembered that. I don’t remember when I decided I wanted to be a professional actor. Sort of vague ideas about it. But I not only got in the senior play, I got to play a very important role!”
The play was The Rivals, by Sheridan Brinsley Sheridan. Frid’s role was that of Sir Anthony Absolute. “He was the father of the young male hero. So I started playing heavies from the very beginning.”
That beginning also nearly ended Frid’s acting career. “I can remember waiting in the wings. I thought I was never gonna get my breath, I was so nervous. Then I came on. I was on Hell on Earth. Fortunately, I didn’t have to say anything for the first two minutes.” Frid played opposite the character of Mrs. Malaprop, origin for the term malapropism. “She gibble gabbles for two minutes. Gave me a chance to catch my breath. So when my first line came out, I said, ‘Where’s Jack?’ or something meaning my son. I had a big pompous line, and I was so big because I had all this gas in me from nerves. I was so pumped up with air, I couldn’t breathe. And just on cue, I was able to release all this, and I surprised myself and everybody in the place. I was this great voice suddenly. Now, if I had had to speak earlier, I probably wouldn’t have had a theatrical career. At all. Because I wouldn’t have been able to speak. It was just a miracle that I was on cue with my breath.”