Jonathan Frid
Jonathan Frid is an actor, born 1924.
A single role rearranged his life and a network's afternoon schedule. Frid was a classically trained stage actor from Hamilton, Ontario, working in theatre and occasional Canadian television, when Dark Shadows cast him in 1967 as Barnabas Collins, a vampire who was thoroughly miserable about being one.
The choice he made was the important one. Gothic villains on daytime television were played for camp, and Frid played guilt instead. His Barnabas was courtly, tired and ashamed, a man apologising with his posture for things he could not stop doing, and a struggling daytime serial turned into an event. He stayed with the show for the rest of its run, playing Bramwell Collins as well, and carried Barnabas into the feature version, House of Dark Shadows, in 1970.
Afterwards he mostly went back to the stage, which is a quieter ending than the fame suggests. He returned once, as a guest in Tim Burton's 2012 film of Dark Shadows, and died that year. The claim usually made for him, that the conflicted television vampires of the last two decades descend from his, is easy to overstate and hard to argue with: the sympathetic vampire was rare on screen before Barnabas and became the default afterwards.
Movies (2)
TV (1)
Where to start with Jonathan Frid
There are three credits here and only one that really matters: Dark Shadows, the original serial, which you should not attempt to watch in order. It ran for years, five days a week, shot nearly live, and the flubbed lines and drifting boom mics are part of the texture rather than a flaw in it. Find the 1967 storyline where Barnabas is introduced and start there. House of Dark Shadows is the feature made while the show was still running, and it is far nastier than daytime television was allowed to be, which makes it the best single sitting on this page. Dark Shadows is the Burton remake, and his appearance in it is a courtesy rather than a performance, though it is a good thing to know is there.