Jonathan Frid and The Menu Caper

The "Remembering Jonathan Frid" book project is going well.  Many individuals who worked with Jonathan over the past decades in some capacity or another, professional or semi-professional are sharing stories for the first time.  Friends and family will also be contributing their insights and stories.  Nothing like this book has ever been done before.

In preparing my own contribution to this tome, I have jotted down ideas and wrestled with the narrative; how much story to tell compared to observations.  I am leaning towards more of a story-telling venture as the capacity for observation naturally comes into play and still allows readers the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about what it was like to work and/or know this very interesting man.

That's what the book focuses on: what Jonathan Frid was like as a person.  It's not a series of essays about how good an actor he was, his professional legacy or even a study of his life.  Jonathan was a good story teller and now the tables will be reversed, focused on him.  And there are plenty of great stories, so many that it's a task unto itself to jot down quick remembrances and decide which stories show the most about Jonathan as a person, a friend, a family member, a boss, a co-worker.  What made him tick?  That's a question many are curious to know and this book of stories will certainly provide plenty of insights.  I am reminded in this journey just how much Jonathan was like a bionic banana - you can peel away the many layers, think you're done, only to find out there are still more layers to get through.

There is one story in particular that stands out in the memory of a few, especially myself.  Jonathan and I laughed about this story for many years. It's was simply known as "the Menu" caper.  I love this story not just because it was funny (well, we thought it was funny) but it shows the kind of impish humor Jonathan had.

The story took place after a very successful performance of Jonathan's one-man show at a place I won't divulge as the story centers around the behavior of a the event host.  She is most likely unaware of how funny her determination to make dinner the perfect event for Jonathan turned out to be.  So I am keeping the name of the place and hostess my little secret.

The hostess and her co-hostess wanted to take Jonathan out to dinner after the show.  Jonathan was ready to kick back after a great performance and signing autographs for an hour afterwards.  When we arrived at this restaurant, Jonathan was delighted that there was not only a bar there while waiting for seats (the place was booked up and we had to wait to be seated) but everyone ate and threw peanut shells on the floor of the bar area.  The hostess was clearly horrified at the lack of decorum of patrons throwing their peanut shells on the floor but we learned that is the way it was every night at that bar.  We found a bar table and four bar stools to sit on and a basket of peanuts.  The hostess ran off to plead with the restaurant host for seating as soon as possible.  She was really bothered by the site of peanut shells on the floor and thought it not appropriate for Jonathan to be in such an inelegant atmosphere.  In running back and forth to the restaurant host, she didn't witness Jonathan not only gloriously tossing his empty shells on the floor but throwing them at me.  Naturally, I threw them back at him.  "I'm getting us a table! I'm getting us a table!" our anxious hostess and her assistant kept saying in tandem.  Jonathan told them he was fine just eating at the bar table and he asked a passing server for some menus.  He was content to eat right where he was.

The menus were the long, glossy, skinny things boasting of some good eats.  The hostess' assistant finally sat down with us and picked up one of the long menus too.  I saw a swordfish dish, a Frid favorite, and I was pointing out to Jonathan when suddenly our hostess came running to our table, and then ran around it, pulling the menus right out of our hands while announcing she had secured a table for us.  Jonathan's hands were still positioned  as if holding the menu and then he pointed to what was now thin air and said "I think I'll have that."

In spite of the fact I had a slight "menu" burn on my hands from having the menus whipped away from me so fast, I was now in tears from laughter.  Our hostess, unaware of our flabbergastedness, was at the host station waiting for us to join her there.  I was laughing so hard, and trying to swallow the laughter, I not only walked behind Jonathan, I had to put my head into his back in an effort to hide and recover before the hostess saw us.  Jonathan, clearly amused by the hasty menu removal from our hands, reached around behind him to me and said "Get it together, girl.  Here we go! The Golden Table awaits!"  He gestured that I walk in front of him.  I managed to compose myself and followed our hostesses to a long table in the back with an equally long cushion seat on either side of the table.  The hostess indicated she wanted me to sit at the far end so that she and her assistant could sit next to Jonathan.  I figured if he wasn't fine with that, he'd let them know.

As it turned out, I was lucky to be away from him.  He could not let go of the humorous behavior of our hostess running around the bar table yanking the menus one by one out of our hands.  And he knew I was just a spit away from getting hysterical all over again.  The server brought us menus (a different size, this time).  I was looking at mine, hoping the stitch in my side from laughter would fade away by eating and having a drink.  While our hostesses were preoccupied with their menus, Jonathan kept craning his neck out so he could stare at me with raised eyebrows and a smile.  Of course, the hostesses didn't know why he was doing that, probably just assumed he was checking up on me.   Periodically, throughout the dinner, he would repeat this craning and smiling.  I simply could not look at him if I wanted to stay composed.  Now he knew I was avoiding the sight of him altogether.  I managed to do this throughout meal.  When dessert was being ordered, Jonathan said to our hostesses "If you don't mind, please let Nancy sit near me as we always share apple crisps."   Yes, that was true since they were usually to big for one person but the last thing I wanted to do was to sit next to him at this juncture.  I did not want to laugh in the faces of these two women.  But the hostesses, eager to please him, leapt up and made room for me to slide out and move to the one side of Jonathan.  "Now, there were are!" he pronounced and gave me a gentle elbow-in-the-side.  I started to laugh, the hostesses didn't know what I was laughing at and I feebly said that we had an "in joke" about apple crisps.  Jonathan smiled.  The hostesses gave us a blank smile and we did indeed share the apple crisp.

Later, when we were on our way back to the hotel in the rental car, I said to Jonathan "I will get you for that, I promise!" and he just laughed "HA HA HA."  The simplest things amused him.

"I don't know how to explain her" he said

A few days ago I received an email from one of Jonathan's old friends from Yale.  I was gobsmacked he was able to find me, let alone remember me at all this lovely man named Richard whose wife also attended Yale Drama School the same time Jonathan did.

Richard told me something very funny.  When Jonathan had people over to his apartment in New York for a dinner party - people he had not seen in many years - he usually asked me to come as well to be the "hostess."  I also had the facility to seamlessly fit into a group of strangers, a skill I had to learn in my early twenties even though meeting new people made (and continues) to make me initially very nervous.  Richard reaccounted this particular visit because it was the last time he and his wife saw Jonathan.  It was also a lot of fun.  Richard told the story about the head of the Yale Drama School directing a play they were all in and his heavily-accented English made the commend "Focus! Focus!" come out "Fuck-us! Fuck-us!"  This, of course, reduced Richard, Jonathan et al. to puddles they laughed that hard each time the director issued this command.

It was very cool to hear stories of antics on campus and off campus.  Richard and his wife came with two other individuals from those Yale days.  The stories were hilarious.  I sure wish I could remember some of them other than the fact they were very funny.  At one point Richard joined Jonathan in the kitchen and Richard told me the other day when he contacted me that he remembers asking Jonathan how the two of us got together.  Jonathan said to him "I don't know how to explain her."  Eventually, he told Richard that I first came into his life working on the one-man shows, then did personal assistant-type work for him and today, like other times, he just liked having me play the hostess with the most-ess.   This type of scenario played out many times during the course of our relationship over twenty plus years.  When friends came from Canada and he invited me over it was to help him stay organized and entertain.  I became friends with some of those friends and relatives over the years and later when regularly visiting Canada.  The really sweet thing about Jonathan is that he was very proper.  I was half his age and a woman.  That could be construed in a more unflattering light in his opinion.  Of course, anyone who knew either one of us knows it wasn't anything more than just a friendship.  But that age difference and gender made him uncomfortable at times.  He once told me that while touring with ARSENIC AND OLD LACE he felt that his co-star, Gary Sandy, wanted to be friends with him.  But the "problem" was that Gary was so much younger.  I sat there with my mouth agape.  "What does that have to do anything if you like each other?" I said.  He didn't answer, but that was an issue for him even though he would later cultivate friendships with people much younger than himself, much in thes same way his mother did.  She felt it kept her younger in mind and spirit.  He sought the same.

But there were still the awkward times when Jonathan went to meet someone and asked me to go with him, even though the person was a stranger to me.  Truth was, Jonathan was very shy in many respects and the one thing I could do was talk.  And talk I did, to keep the conversation going but know when to stop talking if the two of them got going.  It was common for the individual (friend or acquaintance of Jonathan's) to ask: "So, how did you two meet?"  I was never introduced in any particular way except as a "friend" and that aroused the curiosity of the asker.  I, of course, explained (since Jonathan would just sit there silent) that I was hired to work with him on the one-man shows and we became friends.  I didn't add that I had several friends much older than myself so a friendship with someone older like Jonathan wasn't anything new to me.  But it made Jonathan uncomfortable.  Sometimes if I was somewhere and he was with me he told me to introduce him as my "uncle."  So I did.

While I worked for Jonathan and was studying at a local acting school, sometimes Jonathan would write out a check to pay for my tuition, and give it to me.  At first, he was reluctant with this payment arrangement because he was afraid it would give the impression to whomever received the check that I was a "kept" woman.  That really concerned me though I was pretty sure no one else would think that for a single moment.  I assured him of this.  (I also "paid" him through writing and personal assistant services to give me voice lessons.  I "studied" voice with him for about a year.  In fact, he directed me in a show I did as part of my two year intensive acting program.)

So, keeping me a proper lady did hit snags now and then.  When I went up to Jonathan's place in Canada, I always helped him around the house and with the yard.  I enjoyed this.   We were sitting at the dining room table one afternoon along with our mutual friend, Kay Fry, and Jonathan complained that the web-like cocoons in his trees were going to eventually kill them.  He had some men out to eradicate these cocoons but he had a falling out with the local business and they would not come out anymore. (Falling out with people was commonplace with Jonathan as he had a quick temper.  But usually those relationships mended)  He wondered out loud if there was a way the three of us might be able to get the cocoons out of the trees.  Fifteen minutes later, I was climbing one of the stricken trees, Jonathan was standing at the base of the tree ready to catch me if I fell, and Kay was handing me up various implements to use in order to remove the cocoons.  He chided me at one point for "not having the right kind of shoes on to be in a tree."  As if I knew I was going to be climbing trees that weekend.

Some time later again while visiting Jonathan we were doing something in the front yard and he stopped to look at his water spouts, noting that he had to get them cleaned out as they were cluttered with leaves.  We were standing right by the garage and I said "If you help me with the ladder, I will get up there and clear out the gutter."   He stood there, stunned, looking at me.  "What?" I asked.  "Well, you can't do that," he said.  I asked "Why not?"  "Well, you're a lady . . ."  Only a few months earlier he had no trouble with my climbing up a tree but climbing up a much shorter distance and on a stable ladder he didn't want me to have any part of.  I didn't laugh because I didn't want that sensibility of his made fun of.  He felt strongly about that at that moment so the gutter didn't get cleaned out by me.

No wonder he couldn't explain me to other people.  I was a vacillating entity.

A Fridean Odyssey

This will be the final post in a series in this blog about working with the late Jonathan Frid.  Today I was reminded of an important lesson I learned about myself when working with John.  Earlier this morning I was asked to create digital signage for the television screens in a large building.  I have had some training in this but not had a chance to actually do it.  Now I have been asked, given the slides and have to go through the initial nervousness of doing something I have never done before and hoping I get it right for the customer.

Back around 1990, Jonathan asked me to help him develop a Shakespearean Reader's Theater show which would be called Jonathan Frid's Shakespearean Odyssey.  It is a myth that Jonathan performed mostly in Shakespeare productions in his career - he did not.  He credited his classical theater training to the works of the Bard.  When he talked to me about the show, I cautioned him that it would not be a big seller even on the college circuit.  The acting workshops we developed to accompany a booking at a college or university would similarly be based on Shakespeare.  However, this is what he wanted to do.  So I did it.

What filled me with fear and much trepidation was being asked to write narrative to weave together the scenes that filled up the show, and the different plays being presented.  While as an English major I had much exposure to Shakespeare, I really didn't know that much about the plays in an analytical way.  I should be the last person explaining to the viewing audience what the hell was going on.   But I was charged with this task and as nervous and incompetent as I felt, it had to be done.  He was patient.  I went to Canada with Jonathan when he did a first run of the show at his alma mater McMaster University.  The show went well and most of the audience comprised of Jonathan's family and friends, many of whom he grew up with.  It was the first time I met one of his brothers and a slew of relatives that I would see many times again in the next 15 years.

What impressed me the most about Jonathan's family, whose homes I would be welcomed into so many times, is how nice and funny they all could be.  And classy.   They called Jonathan "Mort" because from childhood his ears were protruding and reminded them of Mortimer Snerd.  I never heard family member or long time friend call him anything but Mort Frid.

I digress - the Shakespeare show wasn't a popular show, however, watching Jonathan go from one character to the next and then one play to the next playing the narrator AND the character was simply amazing.  He was amazing.  Somehow I managed to pull off a respectable narrative for him, Jonathan made his own changes, of course, and a cohesive show was formed.  I learned the lesson that somehow, no matter how scared I am, I manage to land on my feet.

I launched Jonathan's website in 1998 partly to promote the charity performances I was producing for him state-side and also so he could do reader's theater programs on the internet.  He even learned to type!  I was a novice at website building and did my best to upload sound and video onto the server.  Naturally, it was better that Jonathan hire someone there in Canada to be with him as it was getting difficult to travel to Canada every six weeks as I was doing to work on the website and develop content.  Fortunately, Jonathan was able to get good help and eventually when he wanted to focus on Richard III for the website around 2006, I was burned out but knew someone who could help him and was frequently in Canada.  Eventually, she would take over what I used to do for Jonathan.

What I learned from Jonathan in the many years I worked for and with him was to persevere.  That came in handy because after 2006 my life took an unexpected and ugly turn with the loss of work, eventually no income and dealing with skin cancer and no insurance.  That period lasted until February 2011 when I finally got full-time work again.  Knowing how Jonathan pushed forward no matter what was a great inspiration for me in these darker times.  There were times I didn't think I would survive it all with all the pressures, however, I did get back on track.  Jonathan once told me "Don't hate what you have" and that meant deal with what you have and make the best of it.  I would tell myself in the worst of times, there were people in more dire straits than I was.  At least I had family who would help out when they could.   I had friends who did the same, providing emotional support.  Jonathan grew more emotionally distant with age, not unusual.  I saw that in my grandparents.  Early in the 2000s, Jonathan said he felt himself "turning inward" which I initially dismissed, out of denial, but I saw he had less and less to do with people, some he had known for decades.  Again, I saw this with my own grandparents.  It was harder to stay in touch but I was so preoccupied with my own disasters that was the least of my problems.

What is consoling is that Jonathan was surrounded by people who had his best interests at heart, were local, and he could trust.   All of us should do that well in any stage of our lives.

Tell Tale Hearts and Humor

This is a continuation of a series of blog entries about my working with Jonathan Frid.  If you are new to the blog or haven't been here in a while, you may want to scroll down for previous blog entries if this subject interests you.

I still have a lot of pride about "Fridiculousness."  It remains my favorite show; a lot of hours of work, re-work, editing, re-writing and debating went into that show.  The Fridean genealogy featured some of Jonathan's writing and that was also true of the other two original pieces: the answering machine story about his mother and the hospital emergency room phone line. The only criticism, if you can call it that, I have about working with Jonathan on the genealogy and hospital emergency room story is that he did not understand how to structure comedy pieces to maximize the humor/laughs.  For the genealogy piece, he added and added to the discovery of the variations of the Frid name to the point where the audiences didn't laugh much anymore in that section of the story.  He didn't understand why.  I explained my opinion that it was because he was making it too obvious and pounding the audience over the head with it.  He didn't agree and we continued to not get the big laughs where we used to get them.  Oh well.  That was frustrating and one of the times I had to remind myself that it was his name in the title of the show, not mine.  (I should note here that by this time due to my work at the Ensemble Studio Theater I had been asked by others developing their own plays or cabaret acts to come in and "fix" problems.  It frustrated me when I was not allowed to "fix" a problem in a show I was in any way involved with.)

In the hospital piece he kept moving the Press this and that bit around in the story.  The order I wrote this in was very specific.  The "Press 3 if you are unconscious" line always brought down the house.  When the order got changed, the impact was sometimes reduced.  The line itself got laughs because of how ridiculous it and the situation was.  I wrote the hospital piece (while sick, ironically enough) and in my ending the guy fell over dead. Jonathan rewrote the ending to the guy getting disconnected and sent back to square one.  His ending worked much better than mine.  That's what wound up in the show.

If I told other people, usually other fans of Jonathan's, about such dilemmas I'm the one that got chided for putting up a fuss to begin with.  "How can you disagree with him?"  Well, I am not a potted plant.  And I would not have lasted five minutes in this role if I agreed with everything Jonathan said and did.  He didn't want that in a person working with him on a show.  He appreciated it when fans thought he was terrific but in a real world, day to day situation, that line of thinking didn't work for him.  There were times we really went at it over a point (it was our nature to be short-tempered over things we really believed in.) and sometimes he conceded the point because he knew I was right or I conceded a point because it was, in the end, his show.  The audience was coming to see him, not me.  There were times Jonathan did a performance and said to me afterwards "You were right.  Let's change it."   For me, it wasn't about being right but putting on the best show with the best possible material.  That was also true for him; we just didn't always agree on what was best.  Likewise, sometimes I saw that he insisted on did, in fact, work better than what I was suggesting.

There were times I would be sitting in the audience of a show or even a rehearsal and watch Jonathan and say to myself "Here I am working on a show with the same man who inspired me to go into the theater.  How very cool is that?"

The more challenging aspects of working with Jonathan on shows was putting up with the insecurities and nerves that came before he went onstage.  He acted out, usually towards me.  The older he got, the worse it got.  I wish I could say I was always patient and calming.  I would put up with a lot in those instances, but I did have my limits.  He had the grace to apologize for particularly bad episodes.  That's the type of man he was.

If nothing else demonstrated our shared sensibilities, the inclusion of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" in "Fridiculousness" said it all.  Initially, Jonathan's manager didn't understand why this piece was in a show that was fairly humorous.  "I was never kinder to the old man than the week before I killed him" is a funny line if you are a gallows humor fancier.  Nobody but nobody can touch Jonathan Frid's interpretation of "The Tell Tale Heart."  I mean nobody.  It takes real craft to tell the story, especially from the start.  If you act all out crazy from the top of the story, you have no place left to go in the story.  Jonathan would start off the story with a wry kind of craziness.  That touch of wry worked well as then the character can tell the story initially from the standpoint of showing how clever he was in plotting out this murder, all brought on by this preposterous preoccupation with the old man's warped eye.  Insane people think they are sane.   The killer gets paranoid and then thinks the heart is out to undo him.  In this view, to us, the story is humorous and would fit perfectly into "Fridiculousness" as the last piece.

The stories got rearranged from time to time especially as Jonathan got older because some stories take more energy than others.  To this end, the more energetic stories were spaced out and new narrative written to weave them all together.

With the two main shows completed, Jonathan wanted to create a Shakespearean one-man show.  His manager wasn't crazy about it because a Shakespeare show is a hard sell in the United States.  But he wanted to pursue it and hired me to help him on what would be the third and final one-man show creation.

Fridiculousness

When collaborating with someone else on a project, obviously it is key to understanding their basic sensibilities and outlook on life in general.  As complicated a person Jonathan was, I got to know him well enough to feel comfortable in the role of collaborator.  I knew this much about him by this point: he had a gallows sense of humor, loved a sense of irreverence, enjoyed practical jokes, loved "The Carol Burnett Show,"  "Cheers," watched political satire comedians on PBS, could laugh at himself, and took whatever came at him and made it work for him.  I shared similar tastes.

Jonathan asked me if I would work with him on developing a second show.  He had a long-standing fascination for The London Bridge and the Titanic and wanted to see about developing a show based on these subjects.  I was pleased that he wanted to work with me to develop a second show but horrified that he thought two hours of stories about the London Bridge and the Titanic would make interesting reader's theater.  In my mind, it would not.  Remember, reader's theater isn't visual except for the acting standing on a stage.

But we talked about it.  He gave me a folder full of material and asked me to think about it.  As I had already learned, when you say you will work with Jonathan on a project, that also means you will be willing to make him a priority if you have other commitments to juggle.  Creating a whole new show from the ground up would be time consuming.  It wouldn't just be discovering material, molding a concept, and endless rehearsals at the libraries and Jonathan's apartment; it would require me at the typewriter writing and working on the narrative.  It would easily be a 25 hour a week commitment at the very least for me, probably more.

I would be nuts to turn down this opportunity especially when there were already customers waiting for whatever the finished product would be.  The theaters, universities and public library programs who had booked "Fools and Fiends" wanted another new show from Jonathan.  As long as I was going to have creative input into the show, I was willing to put in the time.  There was no question of getting paid, I would be from the start, but committing to this kind of project it always meant kissing my personal life goodbye for awhile.

This is how Jonathan worked.  His personal life would go out the window as well.  He would say that once committed to a project, then you should be 110% engaged in that project.  Between 1988-1990 working on "Fridiculousness" was all-consuming for him.  He was offered movie roles in big budget films such as "Bob Roberts" and even more stage work such as playing Captain Hook in a major touring production of "Peter Pan."  There were television offers as well.  But Jonathan wasn't interested.  All he wanted to do with the rest of his life was work in reader's theater until he couldn't do it anymore.  It gave him such joy.  It was the driving creative passion of his life from the early 1980s to his death.

He often said that many thought he had made a "mess" of his career but the reality was Jonathan was a lazy actor by his own admission; he did what he wanted to do because he could.  He would not starve.  He was lazy in the sense of not wanting to pursue all the work he could but not at all lazy when it came to developing three full one-man shows that would ultimately tour around the country between 1986-1994.  "Fools and Fiends" housed stories that Jonathan knew would cater to the crowd who wanted to see him in spooky and unsettling roles, and I say roles because Jonathan played as many as a dozen in a single show.  This "Fridiculousness" used as its centerpiece items I found out about the origin of the Frid name and a chance discovery in a book on fairies and hobgoblins that boasted a creature called A Fridean.  The way with Jonathan was to write something, he would take it apart, I'd write something else based on what he wrote/edited and so on.  It was a never ending process.  We collaborated on three original stories for this show, and he wanted to give me some credit but still keep me as a ghostwriter.  So in one of the stories about the Frid family tree, I was given a mention as part of the story.  That suited me fine.  The stories were very popular with the audience.

As we spent so much time together, it was natural to take breaks and since Jonathan had other things to attend to with daily life, my role as a ghostwriter evolved into that of a personal assistant.  When I wasn't doing one job, I was doing the other.  I would not have ever sought to be anyone's personal assistant but as I liked Jonathan - shared the same sense of humor and view on life - spending time with him wasn't a chore. Sure, I longed to do some of my own things (we decided that weekends would be free for the most part) but Jonathan was someone who managed to get his own errands done when someone was with him.  This kind of work included helping him clean out and organize his closets and drawers and going with him to buy new clothes.  None of this is exciting stuff but sometimes there was some cool things such as going with him to a social function and meeting some of his Yale friends or helping to plan a luncheon for relatives arriving from Canada.  I learned a lot about entertaining - what cheeses to serve with which cracker, what wine went best with what dish, and while doing all this, Jonathan would perform one of the stories we were working on for the crowd since they asked what he was up to.

Jonathan's cocktail parties were informal yet just right: he made the best sangria yet years later didn't remember ever having made any.   It was interesting to meet people from the different phases of Jonathan's life.  He told me that he tended to go through "groups" of people in five or even ten year periods; he had intense periods doing a particular thing and then moved on.  When four years of "Dark Shadows" was over, it was natural and traditional for him to move on and even leave people he knew behind.  That was that.  However, usually at least one or two people carried over into whatever the next phase of his life would be.

So much of "Fridiculousness" captured Jonathan's personality and life perfectly.   It was to be his favorite show.

The Return of Jonathan Brewster

This continues on my memories of working with Jonathan Frid.  Earlier entries can be found below.)

The "Arsenic and Old Lace" was an big success and Jonathan had earned critical acclaim for his work as Jonathan Brewster.  In fact, sometimes he was the only one in the cast who got a good review even from the cranky reviewers.  The most important aspect of the tour for Jonathan (and his manager and me) was his renewed media visibility.  On his Monday nights off during the tour, Jonathan had bookings for his reader's theater program at nearby libraries and special theater events.

What was also winding down was my creative role with Clunes Associates.  I've never minded doing the boring clerical work that accompanies the production company venture but once Jonathan was back in New York City and the tour over with, my role was clerical.  Jonathan was getting bookings for "Fools and Fiends" and there wasn't anything more for me.  This wasn't said to me, of course, as help with administrative tasks was always needed but I didn't want to spend my time doing that.  I told Jonathan's manager that I didn't want to be involved anymore and explained why.  I wasn't upset with anyone.  There wasn't anything for me that I wanted to do.  I was involved in other theatrical ventures and what time I had, I want to devote to creative work.

I called Jonathan to tell him.  He said he was very sorry to hear of my decision.  In fact, he sounded rather fine with it although a little surprised.  When I hung up, I was a little hurt that my decision to quit was taken with such aplomb.  But, whatever, life goes on, I thought.  

My fantastic "internship" at Ensemble Studio Theater had been extended but now was over.   I had learned so much from Curt Dempster and the talented group that ran and made up the theater's membership; actors who were very visible to the public but chose to spend their free time developing and appearing in new plays.  These were connects I was anxious to use.  And now the work I had been doing for Jonathan and Mary seemed at an end.  Though I knew I was making the right decision for myself, I was unhappy because I had grown to like Jonathan and working with him.  However, I had to do what was best for me.

What I didn't know until later was that Jonathan was very upset by my decision to leave Clunes.  Of course, nothing in our phone conversation had reflected this.  He told everyone else but me.  Mary told me later he had her come down to his apartment to talk about my decision, had they done something to upset me, and so on.  She told him no, only that I needed more creative work to keep me interested in staying.

Jonathan called me and asked me to meet him for dinner down at Pete's Tavern.  This wasn't unusual as I had met him there many times for dinner but I wasn't sure what he wanted to talk about.  If it was just to have dinner, that would be great.  I was interested in maintaining contact with him.  I did like him and if down the road he took on other projects, I wanted to be the one of the people he called to assist.

At dinner, he kissed my hand and cheek.  This wasn't indicative of setting me up for anything - that was a common way for Jonathan to greet a woman acquaintance or friend.  I deliberately did not hug or have any physical display of affection towards Jonathan while I worked for him.

He asked if he could call on me to assist him as needed with personal projects that could include nothing more than assist Mary with fan mail, and accompany him on errands and work on projects in his apartment. That was fine with me, I said.  He told me how much he had appreciated what I did for him at the Dark Shadows Festivals and other fan events he employed me to attend, and I probably would have attended on my own anyway.  All these compliments led me to wonder what was going.  Finally, Jonathan said he had been concerned that I felt unappreciated with Clunes. As I was a ghostwriter, a behind-the-scenes person, my name didn't appear on programs.  I told him that my real reason was what I had stated: I needed more creative input and work in order to keep Clunes work on a high priority list. (Note to readers: in the theater, you are always juggling jobs as most work is project to project).

Jonathan then asked me if I wanted to collaborate with him on the development of another one-man show.  He said that the theaters and libraries where "Fools and Fiends" had played now wanted him to come back with another show.  I would still be a ghostwriter.  I told him that career-wise, I only needed to be able to put down a resume that he and I had collaborated on projects and that I was a ghostwriter for him.  I only cared what potential employers knew about my experience.  They could call him as a reference.

A wild creative ride known as "Fridiculousness" was about to begin.

Jonathan Frid and Arsenic and Old Lace

While Jonathan was on the "Arsenic and Old Lace" tour in 1987-1988, I was working at the Ensemble Studio Theater as the artistic director, Curt Dempster, assistant.  Curt was to be another important part of my professional life, and that's another story entirely.  The period between 1986 and 1991 was very intense for me professionally and I would stay associated with EST throughout that time.  By 1989, I had enrolled in the theater's highly regarded two year intensive study school focusing on acting and playwrighting.

Getting Jonathan ready to go on the tour was something else.  When you are going away for not just a week but months, it is tough to decide what to pack.  It was winter when Jonathan was starting the Arsenic tour so packing coats was an issue.  He had two steamer trucks and one of them was packed with every single coat he owned.  "I want to have a choice," he said when I stared at the collection of coats with my mouth open.  Let's just say I needed a sedative by the time the whole packing deal was done as he could not make up his mind.  The irony is that every time I saw him later on the tour, he was wearing the same coat.

On weekends in 1987 while Jonathan was on tour, I frequently traveled to see his play on the east coast.  This afforded me the opportunity to see him on stage many times (he was always fresh each night) and now I knew some of the other Arsenic cast members, it was fun to see them again and again.  Between shows, Jonathan and I met to talk about "Fools and Fiends" as a wonderful thing had started to happen: Jonathan was getting bookings in the cities he was appearing in with "Arsenic."  In the professional theater, actors have off on Monday nights and that is when Jonathan would get booked at local regional theaters and colleges to do his one-man show.  This was terrific and, of course, provided more meat for the publicity campaign tying in his reader's theater program and be able to explain what it was in high profile print and television interviews that accompanied the larger tour.

When you did work for Jonathan, he made sure you wanted for nothing.  In addition to getting paid for my time, he paid for dinner and hotel room service when I was there working on fine-tuning "Fools and Fiends."     This really made life easier as the work sessions with Jonathan were always intense.  What we planned on doing was sending out flyers to the substantial list of Dark Shadows fans we had accumulated, to those fans who lived in the area where Jonathan was doing "Arsenic" and when he was also doing "Fools and Fiends."

What we discovered during this time was that Dark Shadows fans did come see Jonathan but most just came to the stage door AFTER the shows - "Arsenic" and "Fools and Fiends" - they did not go see the actual productions.  They came backstage for an autograph only.  Now, this wasn't true of all fans, of course.  But more often than not, when Jonathan asked the fans at the stage door how they liked the show they admitted they had not seen it.

So it didn't make any sense to continue soliciting Dark Shadows fans by mail.  It was a big cost with little payoff.  I think this really hurt his feelings.  After being told how much fans adored him for his work on DS, so many of them would only come to the stage door for an autograph and not come see him on stage either in "Arsenic" or "Fools and Fiends."  With that marketing target of no use to us now, we decided to create surveys to hand out at theaters where Jonathan performed his reader's theater programs to ask them who they were, how they heard about the show, why they came, etc.  The response we got back was gratifying - many theaters and even public library programs where Jonathan was doing "Fools and Fiends" had patrons who came because they were either subscribers or patrons.  Many of them had no idea who Jonathan Frid was or, for that matter, what to expect from a reader's theater program.  Turns out they were quite pleased with the performance and impressed with Jonathan's considerable theater resume.  The man worked in some of the best theaters with top stage directors all over the country.  It wasn't hard to be impressed.

Jonathan had to accept, somewhat reluctantly, that there were not enough DS fans who would come out to support him in his stage projects to depend so much on them for attendance.  That shifted the marketing focus considerably to theater go-ers, and we had to make them care about seeing a show by an actor they were probably unfamiliar with.  That meant selling the show to the regional theater programmers so they could sell it to their subscribers.  Once again, with Jonathan's extensive theatrical resume and the success of "Arsenic" it was much easier to market an actor who was currently active and receiving a lot of media attention.  VARIETY reported that the Broadway tour of "Arsenic and Old Lace" was shattering box office records across the United States.

(To be continued)

Ghostwriter to the Vampire and Other Stories, Pt. 1

Jonathan posing just before a rehearsal at a New York Public Library in 1986
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(NOTE: This entry is just one of a series on Jonathan Frid)

A review I had written in a Philadelphia theater magazine of Jonathan Frid's then "work in progress" of FOOLS AND FIENDS got into his hands.  He made inquiries as to who I was and within a few months of my write-up of his new theatrical ambitions, I went from one in a large audience in a ballroom to one of a few in Jonathan Frid's apartment.  It was April, 1986. I still lived in Delaware, just south of Philadelphia - a city he knew well - and I was looking to move to New York to pursue work in the theater as an actor and writer.  

Jonathan Frid was looking to hire someone to help him in the writing of original material for his first of what would be three-one man shows, JONATHAN FRID'S FOOLS AND FIENDS.  The original material in question was the narrative that connected the short stories in the reader's theater program he was developing for touring on the college/university circuit and theaters across the country.  It was a lofty ambition, I thought.  Why I thought it was a lofty ambition was not something I felt comfortable in sharing with this man who was interested in opinions on the new material he was presenting at these rehearsals in his apartment.  

Like many of my generation, I grew up watching "Dark Shadows" in the afternoons and I was fascinated, absolutely gobsmacked with the character of Barnabas.  My favorite characters up until this point in 1967 had been Zorro and The Green Hornet.   Barnabas was different.  I couldn't get enough of him or the actor's voice.  I read in magazines how this actor had gone to school and out on the road to study and hone his craft.  I decided that I wanted to be an actor.  I was forever hooked on the beauty of The Spoken Word and the power of the voice.  

Now, almost twenty years later, the skinny, spastic redheaded girl who was mesmerized by Barnabas Collins was sitting in the creator's apartment and Jonathan Frid was a real person indeed, shaking my hand gently and then raising to his lips to kiss it.  I nearly passed out.   A  few apartment rehearsals later, Jonathan invited me to a meeting with his business partner and manager, Mary O'Leary, and young writer and rehearsal organizer, Billy McKinley.   I had given them my resume which detailed my theater and literary experience both in academic and professional settings since the four years I had been out of college.   I was as intimidated as I ever had been.  What I admired most about this actor was his extensive and impressive resume in addition to his obvious talents as a performer. And here we were his asking about me and my work.  

Would I come and work for him - or, more to the point - his new production company Clunes Associates?  I had planned on moving to New York anyway and within a few months I did just that.  I was pleased with myself as I had made my intended move and already had a theatrical project I was involved with.  

But the hard part was yet to come.  Jonathan said that "we" had to have some strong conversations about marketing.   He asked me for my opinion on how to proceed and what obstacles we had to overcome.  I am not known for mincing words when asked for my opinion.  I don't strive to be mean or hurt (usually) and here I had to be blunt - and I was scared I would get kicked out of the opinion.  

"Well, I see two major obstacles," I ventured, somewhat reluctantly.

Jonathan was a little impatient at that.  He didn't like to chase or prod.  Spit it out, already.

"The first obstacle is trying to explain to people what Reader's Theater is and convince them it's exciting to watch."   Jonathan smiled and nodded.

"The second issue, I think, is getting the word out there that you are, like, still alive as you have been out of the public eye for quite a long time."  Much to my relief, he smiled rather broadly at my honesty.  

Later when we went out to dinner, I apologized if I hurt his feelings.  "Oh no no, stop that!" he said, impatiently.  "We need to know what we are up against."

Jonathan later told me that he had problems finding people enthusiastic about his wanting to get back into the business with this idea of reader's theater AND willing to debate with him on the merits of this, that and the other thing.  In other words, not be a "yes" man.  If you were someone constantly in awe of Jonathan and thought everything he did was wonderful and right, you would not last in his employ.   He came out and told me he appreciated people who were willing to be confrontational with him over material he was working on.  I assured him that I had no trouble with being confrontational.  I also told him that I admired him as an actor, couldn't wait see what he did with this reader's theater program but I was not a star-struck person.  The fact that I admired his talents didn't mean that everything that came out of his mouth was golden.   I remember he smiled and winked at me.    Whew, I was lucky I could just be myself and not blow this deal where I was now living in New York City and involved in a theater project just getting off the ground.


In my relatively short life (28) I had already collaborated with others on a variety of stage works, in addition to accepting commissions to write plays commemorating a significant event for civic and religious groups in the Mid-Atlantic area.  Naturally, I was a little intimidated at the prospect of working on a collaboration with an actor I admired and whose professional and life experience greatly exceeded my own.


JONATHAN FRID'S FOOLS AND FIENDS was indeed a joint effort.  What I came to appreciate about Jonathan was the fact he respected the opinion of those whose background was not nearly as accomplished as his own.  He asked me, Will McKinley and Mary O'Leary to vote on the stories that we felt should be included in the final "cut" of the one-man reader's theater program.  We did and that became the show.  My task was to write narrative that would tie together the stories.  The way this final worked was that I would write narrative that was really more conceptual than in Jonathan's actual voice.  He would take what I wrote, pick out what he wanted, write a bit of it, I would take that and flesh it out more using what he wrote and then fine-tune it.  This took lots of time.  I easily was putting in 25-30 hours a week at Jonathan's apartment and my own work space at home at this particular task.   I was contracted to be a ghostwriter meaning my name would not appear on any copy.  


The number one frustrating trait of Jonathan's was the constant changing of his mind.  There were days I thought I would take the gas pipe after having spent hours and hours working on a narrative we agreed the day before would go a certain way - only to discover he had completely changed his mind about the tact he wanted to take.  Then he would forget that he had said this, that and the other.  To keep things on track, we agreed to audiotape our work sessions.  This helped for me to review later what we had talked about, agreed on and what he ultimately wanted to do.  This also prevented him from denying that he ever said something when, in fact, he did.  His memory was never good and in these work sessions I came to realize that he had some form of dyslexia.  This realization brought back memories of watching "Dark Shadows" and hearing Jonathan as Barnabas say "This night must go nothing wrong" (or something like that).   Ah, that explains it, I thought.


Jonathan hyper-focused which could be mentally exhausting for me as he went over and over the same material, getting everything he could out of it.  What kept it all pleasant (and me sane) was the side-tracking that went on.   It was during these "asides" that I learned how much we had in common despite our age difference: a love of old movies, political satire, Carol Burnett, Ruth Draper, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn (he loved redheads), Bette Midler, rooting for the underdog in life, history - quite a bit to talk about.


Something we would be working on would remind him of one thing, we would start talking about that which would lead to another topic and so on.  



Jonathan was a generous employer and while with him working on a project, he wouldn't let you pay for a meal.  You had to be on time, prepared, and focused.  But the sometimes grueling schedule of working on the development and fine-tuning of a performance project was made bearable by Jonathan's personality and humor.  We shared the exact same sense of humor and view of life.  He was so funny I came to describe him to people as one of the funniest people I've ever known in my life.  Some twenty years later, this is still true.



While a project was being finalized for performance, it was not unusual for me to be scheduled to spend all my days at Jonathan's apartment.  He asked that I do this.  I kept a graveyard shift, word processing job at a large law firm in lower Manhattan.  He had me come to his place at 8:30 a.m. after work, have me sleep in his bedroom until 2 p.m. while he worked in his office/living room and ran errands.  I would wake up to whatever he fixed for me, work for about four or six hours, have dinner and I would go home to shower and change for work - and it would all start over again the next day.    This schedule could go on for weeks with the agreement weekends were usually free.


Well, not entirely free.  It was on weekends during 1986-1988 that I worked on marketing proposals and direct-marketing letters for Jonathan's manager and business partner, Mary O'Leary.   We even went to weekend conferences hosted by organizations that brought together programmers from nationwide and regional colleges, universities and theaters.  We also developed acting workshop programs that Jonathan would conduct.  That was something I worked on with Mary, who held a degree in Theater Education and then, obviously with Jonathan too.


Then something happened to shake everything up.  Jonathan was asked to read for the role of Jonathan Brewster in "ARSENIC AND OLD LACE."  This particular production was on Broadway in 1986 starring Jean Stapleton and Marion Ross as the crazy sisters.  Jonathan initially resisted the offer because he wanted to focus on the one-man show but fortunately Mary talked him into it, citing that it was a good business move.  The Broadway tour of this production would take him across the country, garner press attention and let the public know that he was alive and relevant.  If we were going to make a go of the one-man show, we needed to sell it and sell him.  We had been buoyed by the initial response to Jonathan while attending the conferences and selling the show to programmers.  A high profile Broadway tour of a popular play would be just what we had been looking for.


So, just before Christmas, Jonathan Frid would step out on a Broadway stage for the first time in over twenty years, to conclude the remaining two week run before commencing the Broadway tour.


What this meant was finalizing the FOOLS AND FIENDS script and put it aside for the time being.  I was then hired to run lines with Jonathan every night (after his day rehearsals) for about three weeks.  To learn lines, he would have me be the character (and he wanted me to act the character) and respond in kind.  He had me do this for his tape recorder in which I would say the line of the character and he would mouth the words to leave time for him to respond when he was listening to the recorder by himself.  I even went with him to the rehearsals at the theater to take notes and sometimes run the lines with him and Larry Storch, occasionally with Jean Stapleton.  



Jonathan and Larry Storch had very different theatrical backgrounds.  Storch had an innate sense of timing and Jonathan did not trust his sense of timing.  There is a scene in the play where the Storch and Jonathan characters are trying to get a body through the window.  Storch's timing was instinctive whereas Jonathan needed to have it literally timed out.  This caused frustrating on Storch's part and he was as patient as possible though sometimes he looked at me and mouthed "HELP!!"  I studied how Storch did this scene in rehearsals and back at Jonathan's apartment we physically rehearsed the scene over and over until he got comfortable with hit.  By this point, I had memorized much of the dialogue in the play and was able to play Storch's character with Jonathan.  He noted that I seemed to have gotten down how Larry did the scene and that these rehearsals would help him get his own timing down.  It did.  


The day he was to open (replacing Abe Vigoda) in the role he went to the theater very early.  He was nervous, I could tell.  I had a beeper for work and Jonathan also used it to contact me. After telling me he didn't need me for the rest of the day (he opened that night) he wound up beeping me several times for this and that and I finally convinced him to just let me stay at the theater.  He was uptight, nervous - and that always manifests itself in his being snappy and overly picky.  I practically hid in the the corner of his dressing room saying nothing while reading the newspaper, Playbill or whatever.  I had written the Playbill copy of his biography which pleased me no end.   He finally told me that my being there made him feel better.  You couldn't prove it by me but, hey, if he felt that way, fine.  I just wanted him to relax and do well.


He asked me (and paid for) to go watch Abe Vigoda twice in the role.  Jonathan himself never saw him play the part and didn't want to.   I don't remember why he wanted me to do that.  It may have been to make a comparison to see how different Jonathan would be in the role.  Jonathan had to be told by the director a few times not to worry about the comedy.  Jonathan didn't see where his character was that funny compared to the hilarious antics surrounding him.  He had to learn to trust the material.   Jonathan asked me to come watch the show a few nights a week (as his guest) and take notes on what I thought of what he was doing.  


In spite of his nerves, Jonathan was great opening night.  He brought flowers (as was his habit) to the leading ladies Jean Stapleton and Marion Ross.   He also got great reviews throughout the tour of the production.  Sometimes he was the only one of the cast who got a good review in a particular city, such as Philadelphia.   He started to relax, fans living in and around New York City came to the stage door and it turned out he had the biggest stage door "business" of all the cast.  I would come and take him home every night in my car.   We would go for a drink at Pete's Tavern.  He still wondered about when he would get back to the one-man shows.  That would never leave his mind.

The cast of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE in a more casual shot.

MORE TO COME.  CHECK BACK TOMORROW.

Jonathan Frid - the Man I Knew

The reason why Jonathan was so hesitant to answer questions about how he liked working with so-and-so is because he believed that to truly answer the question, you have to tell the good and bad.  That is how you provide a whole picture of working or knowing someone.  However, he didn't usually care to disparage someone living or dead at least not publicly.  This was at the core of his thinking as an actor: the interesting characters have opposite poles - good and bad - and that's where you find the emotional truth of the character.

I must admit that I am writing this blog entry mostly for my own emotional need at the moment.  And in doing so I need to share both sides of the man.   I have read countless articles and blogs written since Jonathan's death in those early morning hours of April 14th.  They focus on his work and the odd remarks here and there made during public appearances.  There was so much more to the man than anything that has been covered thus far.  That bothers me because John was a fascinating man.  He was a good man, good friend and a good teacher for me.  But I had to decide that if I was going to go through with writing a public blog entry about John, I would have to be as he wanted: honest.  He said he didn't care what people wrote about him and for the most part that was true.  He wasn't married to any public image he had.

One thing Jonathan would never be is emotionally tied down, or pinned down.  This aspect of his nature was reflected in his work and even more recently so when he told the interviewer for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND that the new Dark Shadows should not be like the original.  He added that he wouldn't even think to tell Johnny Depp how to play the character that made Jonathan famous.  He didn't feel emotionally obligated to the role anymore than he felt it should pin him down as an actor as if his professional life started and ended with Barnabas Collins.  John simply didn't have loyalty in those terms in his personal or professional life.  Emotions ran deep but were forever on wheels with that man.  And if those feelings were hurt, it took awhile for them to heal.  This is what made him such a powerful actor as feelings ran a full course in him and he knew how to tap into them during a performance.  Though John was not a  demonstrative person, he could quickly read the emotional state of others and pick up on emotional nuances the more casual observer might not notice.

Even though emotions ran deep, the temper did not.  As fast as the temper would surface, it would peter out soon afterwards.  Disorganization and sloppiness would send him flying into a fit.  He strove for perfection in his work and anything he was involved with which would invariably create frustrations.  It took him longer to do things: he absorbed things very slowly but once he had gotten it down, it became a natural part of him.

I mentioned loyalty earlier.  John did set his clock to much of anything.  He liked TV shows such as "Cheers,"  "The Carol Burnett Show,"  "All in the Family" and political satire shows, the occasional movie but he would not make plans to be home to watch something.  If he was home, he watched it.  If he wasn't, well, he didn't watch it.  He appreciated the devotion of fans, for example, and the organized fandom around "Dark Shadows" but he didn't understand the culture of it.  He didn't make a secret of this fact.  Watching the same show over and over again isn't something he would ever do, except in the case of a movie like "Gone with the Wind."  John loved old movies and would watch some more than twice but not a television series, not even one he starred in.  John understood the necessity of his professional ties with "Dark Shadows" and honestly did enjoy the time he spent at festivals and fans.  When he was preparing to move back to Canada and "retire" he said to me "I want to find a way to keep in touch with the fans."  He was grateful to them.

And there's that word again "was."  I am still having a tough time writing in the past tense about John.  Even though I had little to do with him the past few years, the twenty years I knew him and the good times and friendship are soothing.   He was a good man - a very complicated person - but all in all, a good man.  I said that to him once and he shifted uncomfortably and uttered "Well, I guess Mother would be proud" making a bit of a joke of it.

What times I remember that also reflect the kind of person John Frid was?

Fans who had their luggage stolen out of a car in New York City just before attending a festival were a bit at a loss as to what to do.  Jonathan contacted them and offered to loan them money and do anything he could to help them out for the weekend while they were at the festival.

Another fan was driving into New York City from New Jersey to attend a rehearsal at his apartment.  Much to her horror, the car broke down INSIDE the Lincoln Tunnel.  She was pushed out by the Tunnel traffic service and once out of the tunnel, was able to make a call to John to explain why she would not be there.  John offered to excuse himself from his company and go to the tunnel exit where the car had been pushed and sit with her until help arrived.  His plan was to order food in for the guests and dash off to the tunnel so the fan would not have to sit by herself in what was not a great area.  The fan told him that help was already on the way and he didn't need to come.  He ordered in food, explained the situation to his other guests, and they wanted for this fan to arrive.  John got her a drink, some food and saw that she was settled. He went on with the rehearsal.

John was a gentleman, especially where women were concerned.  He had grown to accept women in all sort s of roles but that did not stop him from treating them in a courtly manner.  he believed in seeing to their physical safety.

If fans came up to him and started talking about DS or John, John would turn the conversation around by saying "Now, tell me about you."  He wanted to know what made fans tick.  He wanted to know something about the people who admired him.  It was the essence of a personality that fascinated him.

I remember watching him raise holy hell inside a grocery store because someone had left their dog in a car with rolled up windows.  He loved animals.  He loved the underdog - no pun intended.  Animals needed our car and help and he supported that.  The underdogs of society was something he was committed to helping with his own John H. Frid Foundation in Hamilton, Ontario.  His private charities included feeding house-bound individuals with illness, commonly known as Meals-on-Wheels.  He donated money to numerous AIDS organizations and other charities such as Make-A-Wish Foundation.  At Christmas he would buy toys  for the organizations who donated them to children.

The one story that always chokes me up is the one where one of John's friends who was suffering from several maladies had a seizure and was taken to the nearby hospital.  He was dumped unceremoniously in what John described as an unclean, horrible ER room cubicle.  The other friend who was with them later told me that John took the head of his friend, now upset by his surroundings, and gently turned it into his chest to comfort him and so not to have to look at the crappy room.  A few moments later the friend died.

Another friend was dying and John, along with several other friends, took turns going to the friend's apartment to augment the home hospice care.  John had already committed to attend a DS festival in New York City the weekend he had to care for his friend.  John believed once you made a commitment, you kept it.  I remember that fest weekend when John would disappear for a few hours to go sit with his friend, clean up after stomach upset, administer other comforts, clean up messes, and then return to the festival.  His friend died the following week.

So why didn't John talk publicly about these things that greatly affected him?  He didn't even talk that much about them privately.  John was a very private person.  There wasn't a single scandalous thing in his life but he kept even the most mundane things private.  I think being the youngest boy and everyone in your business is what was behind this very strong trait.  Likewise, if you told him something that was private, he kept your business to himself.

At the root of John's personality was his shyness.  He learned how to cope with it; still, sometimes the shyness came off as being aloof.  That was my initial impression with him when he hired me back in 1986 - I thought he was aloof and overly reserved.

I will go into that and how much of a teach and influence on me he was in my next and final blog entry.

Jonathan Frid - the legend

For therapeutic reasons and also wanting to "put it out there" some things about Jonathan Frid in the wake of his passing, I am blogging about three aspects of John (as I called him).  These will appear here in three separate posts: the type of man he was, how he worked and what working with him was like, and the blog entry you are reading now;- the legend surrounding John from the perspective of a fan who grew up admiring him for his role as Barnabas Collins.

First, he would scoff at the title of this blog entry - Jonathan Frid, the legend - saying it sounded idiotic.  But I really don't know what else to call it.  The words applied to John over the course of his career after DARK SHADOWS included words like legendary, cult hero, and even immortal.  One of the reasons John sometimes had difficulty embracing the legend Barnabas Collins had become is that the character had taken on a life of its own, an importance, far beyond what his experience was as an actor.  A character of that dimension takes hold of the collective imaginations of viewers, as well as a personal context to individual fans, that is best demonstration by the expressions of a very real sense of loss to DS fans.  It's still a profound sense of loss even though Barnabas still exists anytime a fan wants to watch an episode of DS.  But the one real thing a fan could touch, communicate with or see on a stage was Jonathan Frid and now that opportunity is gone.  There is where the deep sense of sadness lies for fans.

It has never been a secret how baffling fame was to John.  He didn't understand why or how he became a celebrity.  He very much appreciated fans but not in the context of being a celebrity but rather an actor who is there to entertain an audience and to build on that audience.  John didn't think he was all that.  People liked him for something he wasn't, or so he thought.  On the street he would rather not be recognized.  When he moved back to his native Canada, if he was known at all it was for being a member of the Frid family and their legacy of community service which he too was involved in.  In time, word would filter around in his neighborhood that he was a famous actor who worked in the States.  When asked about this, John would be polite and acknowledge it but asked that the person not "spread it around."  He once told me that he never ever wanted to be that famous again as it was back in the hey dey of DARK SHADOWS.  He objected to losing his privacy, which included being able to walk around like everyone else.

It was an experience John never wanted in the first place.  In a 1961 interview John did while in summer stock in upstate New York, the reporter asked about his ambitions and John said that he was working to gain all the professional experience he could in the theater.  He would like to be on Broadway at least once but had no desire to become a Broadway "star."  John went on to say that being a celebrity was completely different than just being an actor and that's not something he wanted.  At some point he wanted to take his experience and knowledge and become a drama professor.  This was six years before John's life was changed forever.

So what was the big deal about being a celebrity?  Why object so to it?  That goes to the roots of John's personality.  He was a fiercely private person about everything in his life.  Being the youngest child, I suspect this came about because his elder brothers may have been a little bossy, told him what to do and interfered with his plans.  His brothers would want to go see a western and John wanted to see something else.  The minute you become a celebrity, you need handlers including a press agent, and work to keep whatever image it is you want to project.  For John that was not only too much work but unappealing.   Phoniness of any sort drove him up a wall and he would not participate in it.  If he was cranky during an interview, he could be less than diplomatic and even say things he didn't really mean.  But he wanted the freedom to be human, to be cranky, or not feel well and just be who he was at least at that moment.  If you are a professional celebrity, you can't do this.

So when fans or writers would write about  Barnabas, his allure and impact on pop culture, it was as if someone else was being described to John.  Of course, it was as Barnabas is a fictional character .  The problem was there were many people who felt Barnabas and John were one in the same.  For a person who hates phoniness and is very much an individual, this is annoying, not because John disliked the character of Barnabas but because HE WAS NOT BARNABAS.  He was John Frid, a human being, an actor.  He wasn't a fictional person.

Part of what compelled fans to make the association with John was his charisma.  The magnetism on screen was also evident off-screen as well.  John's powerful, virtuoso voice on top of his existing charisma only served to forge the impression that the dynamic, vacillating vampire  who was so compelling to watch was the heart and soul of its creator John Frid.

Throughout his life, John had numerous individuals assist him, especially during and after the success of DARK SHADOWS.  Apart from competence to do the tasks he asked, the two components in getting along with John were having a sense of humor and not treating him as if he were anything special, other than being your employer.  If you were awe of him and leaping to do everything for him, you were quickly out the door.

He told me once that he couldn't have fans as friends.  Of course, that wasn't true and I asked him if I was chopped liver or something.   Were we not friends?  He recanted that statement but then amended it: friends don't ask me for an autograph for themselves, "friends don't scramble to do anything that I want," in other words, treat him like a celebrity or some big deal. In his private life, he detested that.   He expected that at conventions and from fans, whom he appreciated.  Conventions and public appearances were the appropriate arenas for adulation.  That's what fans do because they admire you and want to thank you for giving them the character of Barnabas.  (One of the reasons after returning to Canada John agreed to let me launch a website for him was the desire to stay in touch with fans and continue to entertain them.)  He divided up his world between his private and public life and insisted on keeping them separate.  (When he moved back to Canada in 1994, many of those who were integral to his public life lost contact with him.  For him, that part of his life was over and so were those relationships.  Frankly, I wondered if I would be one of them and decided not to pursue him in Canada (even though drove to Canada with him and stayed a week to assist him in the move).  I would leave it up to him to contact me if the relationship was going to continue.  Much to my surprise, John did call me and invite me and my friend Kay up to visit him about five months later after he was settled.  I really was quite surprised, but pleased as I liked him very much.

In order to stay grounded in reality and not fall into the "Hollywood" trap, it was important for John to remain the same John Frid who grew up in Hamilton.  That is where is personal identity rested and would remain all of his life.  He was fiercely proud of his native Canada, especially his home town of Hamilton.  For the last fourteen years of his life, John was the guy in Ancaster who judged garden competitions in local communities, he directed playlets for historical societies, attended the symphony (bought two tickets for the season so he would have a seat to put his coat on) and sometimes taught acting.  I would go up for a long weekend and accompany John on his judging garden and flower competitions and it was strange for me to be with him and other people when the other people were not in the least impressed with him as an actor.  They didn't even know he was an actor.  In such an environment, John was a different person than when attending public functions.  It's not that he was phony; but the public face and the private face could be very different.  They were two separate worlds for him and he operated the best way for wherever he found himself.  He had a greater, fundamental need for being in his private world.  It gave him solace and control he did not have in his public life.

So it should come as a surprise to no one that John Frid would quietly pass away with no memorial service, no fuss, no nothing.  He retained his sense of privacy to the very end.

Prepared yet Stunned

When I received word from a Frid family member that my friend Jonathan Frid had died, I felt two things at the same time: relief and punched in the stomach.

Relief because my very independent, physically strong friend had been in deteriorating physical health for quite awhile, especially the past two years and more so the past year.  Cognitively he was also on the decline.  None of this is unusual for someone in their mid to late 80s.  But in the case of Jonathan, even the inevitable decline seemed to be surprising.  I don't know why as there isn't any rational reason for that to be true.  I suppose it's because to me, Jonathan was always strong and pushed forward no matter what.

As a writer for his production company, his personal assistant and later producer of several one-man show charity performances, I had seen him in literally over a thousand rehearsals and hundreds of performances over the past twenty-five years I have worked and known him.  I knew when he was performing while ill, upset, insecure, and tired.  Only once did I ever see his emotional or physical state negatively affect a performance.

When he decided to buy his first house and car upon moving back to his native Canada in 1994, he had just turned seventy.  Most people would not want the experience of car ownership or owning a house for the first time at the age of seventy.  Naturally, he was able to hire people to help him develop and nurture his beloved garden and lawn but he did a lot himself.  He deliberately bought a push mower for the purpose of exercise and into his early 80s he was using that push mower to tend to his lawn.  I would stand there and scold him for insisting on mowing the grass in the high heat of a summer afternoon but, of course, he just waved me off, saying he would be done in a few minutes.

Going to visit Jonathan required an eight hour drive for me, a drive I actually enjoyed.  When I would get there on a Friday night, sometimes not until 10 p.m., Jonathan would be up waiting for me, having prepared a little snack and night cap.  Then we would sit down and talk and before you know it the time had gotten to 4 a.m.  We went to bed.  The guest room was near a skylight from an angle I could see the stars if they were out.  The next morning, I would open my eyes at 7 a.m. out of habit from work and frequently see Jonathan walking by my window, carrying a bunch of hose cord around his shoulders and arms evidently already out and about dealing with the lawn and garden.  The guy was 35 years older than I and yet he was all bright eyed and bushy-tailed and I just wanted to stay in bed.

He just struck me as heroic sometimes.  No matter what was going on in his life, he pushed through.

Jonathan took his first really bad fall around 2005 while playing with his cat, Sam.  He was down in the finished basement, on a wheeled chair playing with the cat and slipped off it, falling right on his tail bone.  Long story short, the doctors did not expect him to recover from that for well over a year, be able to walk well, etc.  Well, dear Jonathan was walking rather well within a few weeks.  Sure, he moved a little slow and clearly was hurting but he was walking when he had been told that was a distant success.

When Jonathan decided to do a play with his friend and former assistant, Dean Hollin, in 2000, he asked me if I would come up to Canada and stay with him for a month to rehearse and see the show through.  I wasn't working at the time, he was offering employment, so up I went.  Now, if you know me, you are aware that I have a lot of energy.  I wear other people out.  But here in this environment, a man older than me by thirty years, put me to shame.  "MASS APPEAL" would play in Hamilton for a limited run and then move to the prestigious Sterling Play Festival.  Jonathan was playing the older priest and Dean the younger one.

The daily schedule was like this: get up at 7 a.m. and have breakfast.  Jonathan made breakfast and I ran lines with him while played Julia Child in the kitchen.  We would then sit down for breakfast and run lines some more.  We went into Hamilton for rehearsal which started at 10 a.m., I took all the notes that I could from my perspective and anything the director said.  We broke for lunch around 12:30, went out to eat and ran lines some more.  Back at the theater after an hour, more rehearsal, home by 5 p.m.  We had dinner but did not run lines.  I spent dinner discussing with Jonathan the notes I had and the ones the director had given him during the rehearsal.  After dinner, we went back to Jonathan's house and ran lines until about 7:30 p.m. Then we had a snack and cocktail hour before retiring to our separate rooms.  Jonathan went to study lines and my notes for a few hours.

And the next day, it all started over again.  I didn't always hear the alarm and Jonathan would stand at the door of my bedroom, and click the timer back and forth to wake me. He was such a gentleman he would not actually come into the room to give me a push, but stand there and click the timer back and forth.  My own Big Ben.  I don't do mornings well.  I would manage to get to the dining room table and listen to him run lines and sometimes doze off.  He would tap my head upon realizing I had fallen asleep "HEY!!" he would chide.

One thing I learned about Jonathan while working so closely with him, he had some form of dyslexia.  He had to read things over and over again to read them right and sometimes when he said something, a word got misplaced.  I later learned from a family friend that he had trouble in school because of this.   I realized then that his problems in learning lines stemmed from this handicap.  But he struggled with it anyway and did not change his craft because of this major handicap.  How can you not admire someone like that?

Jonathan was onstage 90 percent of the time in MASS APPEAL and obviously had lots of dialogue.  It became apparent that there was no way he was going to remember all of that dialogue.  I suggested his wearing a "wire" in his ear while performing and I would be in the "booth" and could say lines in his ear when he "went up."  He was uncertain of how well that would work - trying to create a character and some disembodied voice speaking in his ear.  Dean and the director weren't sure either.  But Jonathan needed this assistance and that was a fact we could not get away from.  "How will I know he needs a line?" Dean asked me.  "I know when he's in trouble just by watching him," I explained.  "I have seen him rehearse and perform under every kind of condition.  I know when he's in trouble."  Jonathan said he would also give a certain signal from the stage to aide me.  Turns out that it all went fine.  The audience never knew the difference.  Jonathan gave one of his greatest performances as Father Farley and hearing my voice in his ear did not affect his performance at all.  That is something for an actor to overcome such obstacles and make it work.  Granted, Jonathan was used to my voice having heard it much for the 15 years prior to MASS APPEAL's staging.  As a writer for Clunes Associates, his production company, his personal assistant and later his friend, he had asked me to accompany him on performances that were going to be stressful for one reason or another.  Everyone said I kept him calm.  I didn't see that but that's what others said.  For me, he kept me riveted to what he was doing and knowing the stresses involved, he was always so very good.

When MASS APPEAL moved to Sterling, we only rehearsed a few times on stage.  The rest of the time, I was with Jonathan in the house rented for us.  Jonathan would study lines in his suite, emerge around lunch, out we went and didn't discuss the play, back in the afternoon.  He took a nap, I woke him up for a very light snack before going to the theater.  After the show, we had dinner and ran lines some more.  His preparation never stopped.  I was exhausted and he was like the energizer bunny.

Jonathan's larger than life personality and will make it all the harder to accept his death, though I actually prayed for it when learning of his hospitalizations and other problems.  Many nights sitting in Central Park, admiring the bright stars he talked about death, his lack of fear about dying, and his wish that he could die in his sleep.

I am so happy that work out for him.