When Alexandra Moltke left Dark Shadows in 1968, the producers took the bold step of recasting the pivotal role of heroine Victoria Winters. Actress Betsy Durkin tells us about her stint as the character's new incarnation, and her new book, Dressing the Man You Love...

How did you get involved in acting?
My career before Dark Shadows was entirely on the stage.  My first job was with the Cherry Lane Theater, playing Polly - the Julie Andrews part - in the British musical, The Boyfriend.  I was under sixteen, so my dad had to co-sign my contract.  Later, I went on to do the First National Company producition of Mary Mary, and eventually got to Broadway - my childhood dream - where I played with Lauren Bacall and Barry Nelson, in Cactus Flower. Dark Shadows was my first part on a daytime television drama.

How did you land the role of Victoria Winters?
During the time I was performing on Broadway in Cactus Flower, Lauren Bacall and Barry Nelson, left the cast. Betsy Palmer and Lloyd Bridges were hired to take their place. At that time, I was understudying the third lead role of Tony, played by Lee Lawson. Very soon after Lee left to do another Broadway play, and Betsy Palmer and Lloyd Bridges called the David Merrick office - the producer of the play - requesting that I be moved up permanently into the lead role from my position as understudy.  David Merrick decided instead to hire the daughter of one of his best friends, Jim Albrey, so I decided it was time to give my notice. As it happened, several days later Betsy Palmer was having dinner between shows with friends at a nearby restaurant called Joe Allen’s.  Dan Curtis, the producer of Dark Shadows, was having dinner in the booth right next to hers.  She heard him talking about having to replace the ingénue on his program. Betsy Palmer introduced herself to him and suggested that he audition me. He later did, and that is how I got the part of Victoria.

Had you watched the show before?
I had not really watched the show much before being hired. I was so busy at the time doing seven shows a week on Broadway, rehearsing with new cast members, and trying to fit in the filming of television commercials on my free days, that there wasn’t much time for watching any television at all. I pretty much learned about the show on the job.

How did you feel about taking over an established role?
An actress can never be a better copy than the original person she is replacing.  Although the hair and make-up people on Dark shadows tried to do everything they could physically to make me look as much like Alexandra as possible, it was up to me to interpret the role in my own way using my own unique emotional talents. Alexandra was a hard act to follow, but I didn’t try in any way to imitate her interpretation of the role. The show brought in a professional colorist to quickly die my hair to match Alexandra’s. It came out very badly. So for several weeks, at the very beginning, I had light reddish-brown circles all over the top of my head. I looked a lot like a spotted deer!

Were you used to live taping and the pace of the show?
As I mentioned before, as I came from a theatre background, I never felt as comfortable as the other actors were - they knew just which camera was actually filming at any one time. In a stage performance you must be in character and on top of things at every moment. On a stage there is never any down time. On Dark Shadows, I never really knew how to save my emotions for my close-ups. I think, for that reason, working on Dark Shadows was especially exhausting for me, because Victoria Winters was always the character who was consistently having terrible things happen to her!

How did you find your co-stars to work with?
All of the actors were very gracious to me, and they were always very professional.  They never made me feel like an outsider even when I first arrived on the set. Since we all worked very hard, there was little time for socializing during the working day. We arrived at the studio when it was dark, worked all day rehearsing, and after the show was filmed, stayed on to do a read-through of the next day’s script. Many years later, when I became a lyric writer and wrote songs for other daytime dramas, I realized that television shows are no longer filmed from the beginning to the end, the way they were in the 1960s and 70s. Doing Dark Shadows in those days was like performing a brand new play every afternoon. Every actor had to be on their toes at all times.

Victoria was written out shortly after you joined the show. Was this always the plan?
To be honest, I never really thought much about how long my character would last on the show. I think only Dan Curtis could have answered that question at the time of my being brought on board. Whether he had plans to write the character out even before I entered the show isn’t clear. It may have been a decision he made after I came in, as I think it must have been difficult for fans to accept me, having watched Alexandra in the role for so long a time. Perhaps it would have been better if I had been written in as her missing half-sister instead of a total replacement of her character with a different actress entirely. I guess we will never know.

Were you asked to return to Dark Shadows after leaving?
Yes, actually I was. The production office called me to return to play the role for a couple of episodes. I was in England with my family during that period, and it didn’t pay for me to return over the Christmas holiday to do some last shows for them. An actress named Carolyn Groves came in to play that brief flashback role. Carolyn and I were actually friends. I had previously done a pre-Broadway production with her of The Women at The Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey.  She was a very accomplished actress and I am sure she did a nice job.

Alexandra Moltke talks about once meeting one of her successors by chance...
That was me. I was walking on 72nd Street in New York City one sunny day and I spotted her waiting for a cross-town bus. I walked right up to her and I said “You and I played Victoria Winters on Dark Shadows. We were both 25 years older, but she didn’t look different to me at all. She was still a very beautiful woman. We must have stood on that corner and talked for half an hour sharing all of our experiences from the show. She told me about her new career as a documentary film maker, and I told her about my career as a lyricist, about my son Peter, and about how I had decided to obtain a college degree at nearby Marymount College. It was wonderful to know that our lives had gone on to include other exciting adventures since our Dark Shadows days.

You recently attended your first Dark Shadows Festival �?what was that like?
It was utterly fantastic! I had felt a little nervous about attending at first. I wasn’t sure if the Dark Shadows fans would remember me, having appeared on the show for so short a time. Craig Hamrick, who had interviewed me for his upcoming book about Dark Shadows, promised to stick close to me. The fans turned out to be phenomenal. They welcomed me with open arms. They were so interesting to talk with and so polite, not only to me, but to each other as well. I was so impressed by them all. There must be something about Dark Shadows that attracts a very special group of people. I could have hugged each and everyone �?and I guess I did do a lot of hugging during those three days of the Festival.

Tell us about your work since Dark Shadows...
After I left the show, my husband and I decided to have a child. About a year later my son, Peter, was born. Because my own father had been killed when I was only two years old, it was important to me not to have to travel away from my son for my work any more, so I began doing a lot of television commercials.  

You said that you worked as a lyricist...
Yes, I began the study of the piano, which lead me into a whole new career as a lyric writer. By chance the singer Carly Simon lived in my apartment building, and we had become friends. I showed her some of my early lyrics and she not only encouraged me, but she introduced me to a very fine music writer, Barbara Morr. Barbara and I wrote our first song together, Love is Holding On, for Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston’s mother. I later went on to write a song called Love Express with The Michael Zager Band which became very popular at Studio 54 in New York City and sold over three million records worldwide.  At one period during my lyric writing career, I even returned to the world of daytime dramas, writing theme songs for characters in such programmes as Texas, As the World Turns and Search for Tomorrow. It felt to me at the time as though my life had come full circle.

You’ve recently branched out into publishing, with your new book, Dressing the Man You Love...
My husband and I moved away from New York City four years ago to Shelter Island, a small island on the tip of long Island, three hours from New York City. He is a music writer and arranger. I am not a country girl at all, and I desperately missed the pulse of city living. When a very dear friend, Joan Jaffe, told me about a class that she had volunteered to teach about on-camera techniques for television commercial actors at the Screen Actors Guild Conservatory, I jumped at the chance to help her with additional research on how to dress the part - to get the job. It was at that time that I became fascinated with men’s clothing. After talking with a lot of my women friends about my research, I discovered that most women were buying all or at least most of the clothes for the men in their lives. When I looked around in book stores and on the internet, I discovered that there was no book written for women about men’s clothing, so I decided to write one myself. And so Dressing the Man You Love: A Woman’s Guide to Purchasing, Coordinating and Caring for His Classic Wardrobe was born. 

How did you find the process of putting the book together?
Writing a book is the perfect profession for someone living on an island with only two thousand winter residents. It saved my life. I have gone on to learn a lot, not only about how to write, edit, and design a book, but also about the whole area of book promotion. It was very interesting to discover at the Dark Shadows Festival in Brooklyn how many other actors who have appeared in Dark Shadows over the years have gone on to write books of their own. This gave us a lot to share besides our part in one of the most celebrated daytime dramas of all time.

To order Dressing the Man You Love from Amazon.com, click here.