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CAREER
HIGHLIGHTS
BIOGRAPHY |
BIOGRAPHY
A CAREER BIOGRAPHY
OF JONATHAN FRID
Revised October 2002
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Jonathan Frid's stage career began almost
sixty years ago when he first offered his soul to
the theatre at a prep school in his native Hamilton,
Ontario, Canada - playing Sir Anthony Absolute in
Sheridan's brilliant Post- Restoration comedy The
Rivals. It was an experience which transformed the
shy teenager. In the years that followed, Frid went
on to play characters who were typically much older
than himself. They were often authoritarian or
downright villainous as well ... characteristics
which Frid stubbornly questioned at every turn. #1
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As John Frid, he joined the local Hamilton
Players Guild and attended McMaster University where
he learned, through practice and professional
tutelage, the basics of acting.
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Frid served in the Royal Canadian
Navy during World War II and later returned
to McMaster University, where he headed the
drama society, graduating in 1948. |
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In January 1949, Frid was accepted at
the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in
London, England. He subsequently found work
with British repertory companies and
appeared in a touring production of a West
End thriller The Third Visitor. Two years
later, Frid returned to Canada where he
continued working in repertory companies,
including the Earl Grey Players in Toronto,
where at the same time he also studied at
Lorne Greene's Academy of Radio Arts.
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| It was at this point where
Frid played one of the most
satisfying roles of his career… the
evil Dr. Sloper in The Heiress.
(check footnote
#1)
For a young actor in his twenties,
it was a great challenge defining
the complex nature of an aging
father. At one extreme a reasonable
and civilized man, highly respected
in the community, at the other, a
father devasted by his wife's death
during the birth of their only child
and subsequently possessed with a
stubborn refusal to acknowledge
anything good at all about his
only daughter, a very
sensitive young woman and the only
heir to his fortune. |
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During that period, Frid appeared on some of
the renowned radio dramas of the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation and on some of the CBC's
early experiments in television drama, pictured here
in a series based on Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under The Sea. |
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Frid moved to the United States in 1954,
where he enrolled in the Yale School of Drama,
earning a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Directing in
1957. Although Frid was a directing student, he
appeared in many plays at the famed school - on the
strength of his experience as a professional actor.
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Directing got left behind, or rather
put off, as Frid quickly found work in some
of America's most celebrated regional
theatres including the Williamstown Theater
Foundation in Massachusetts, where he was
the leading man in their inaugural season
(1955). |
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The following summer he worked at the
American Shakespearean Festival in Connecticut,
where he performed with Katharine Hepburn in The
Merchant of Venice and in Much Ado About Nothing...
a production that went on a national tour of the
United States in the winter and spring of 1958. |
| Though frequently cast as the
"heavy", Frid nonetheless "broke type" many
times to play a wide range of roles, such
as: Starbuck in The Rainmaker, O'Bannion in
Auntie Mame, Mr. Antrobus in The Skin of Our
Teeth and Petruchio in The Taming of the
Shrew, roles that showed Frid's natural
flair for comedy. |
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However, there were his more serious
roles, such as Dr. Sloper in The Heiress,
Orlando in As You Like It, Caliban in The
Tempest, Lord Capulet in Romeo and Juliet
and the title role in The Tragedy of
Macbeth. In addition Frid made several
television appearances during the 1950's and
1960's and had brief stints on Broadway. In
1962, John took the stage name Jonathan
Frid. |
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| In the summer of 1966 at the Old
Globe Theater in San Diego, CA, Frid took on
the roles of Lord Capulet in Romeo and
Juliet, Caliban in the Tempest and the Duke
of Milan in Two Gentlemen of Verona.
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Frid wanted to use his stage experience and
training to become a drama professor; he enjoyed
visiting schools as a performer and working with
students. He was an actor-in-residence at the State
College of Penn State University's professional
summer theatre in 1965, where he played the title
role in The Tragedy of King Richard III. |
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Still searching for a
teaching opportunity, Frid had just returned
to New York from a year-long tour with Ray
Milland in Hostile Witness when he was hired
to play the role of Barnabas Collins on
ABC-TV’s drama series Dark Shadows in 1967 #2.
The role was supposed to last for only a few
weeks. For Frid, it represented some extra
income before he headed to California for a
teaching job. But, once he was onboard, Dark
Shadows became a phenomenal hit. It ran for
four more years with Frid, and Joan Bennett,
as its stars. Frid's sensitive portrayal of
the complex, conflicted vampire earned him a
place as an icon of American popular
culture. The show is still on the air, in
syndication
#3. |
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During
the run of Dark Shadows, Frid appeared in
regional theatre productions of Dial M For
Murder and Wait Until Dark.
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He also starred in the motion
picture, House of Dark Shadows in 1970.
Based on the television series, the film was
a major box office hit for then ailing MGM.
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When the "Dark Shadows" series went
off the air in 1971, Frid was already in
rehearsal as Thomas Beckett in a stage
production of T.S. Eliot's Murder in the
Cathedral in New York City.
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In 1972, Frid
co-starred in ABC's television
movie-of-the-week, The Devil's Daughter,
with Shelley Winters, Joseph Cotton
and Belinda Montgomery.
In 1974, he played the lead in Oliver
Stone's stylish directorial debut, the
motion picture Seizure. |
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High visibility did not give Frid the same
variety of work he had enjoyed prior to his fame.
For some years, he left the business to pursue other
interests, to travel (a year in Mexico), and to
simply enjoy his privacy once more. However, Frid's
compulsion to act was strong and he accepted a
return engagement at Penn State University for an
anniversary production of The Royal Family of
Broadway (a not too subtle spin on the Barrymore
family) as Anthony Cavendish. |
He started to experiment with readings, seminars,
and theatre workshop productions in New York City
and immediately found that he enjoyed the
independence such work offered.
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| In the 1980's, when
Frid was appearing at Dark Shadows
conventions across the United States, he
began reading poetry, short stories, and
scenes from plays for his fans, who
responded enthusiastically. Frid enjoyed
this new format for acting so much that he
formed his own production company, "Clunes
Associates," with a business partner, Mary
O'Leary, in 1986, to develop and perform
three touring readers' theatre productions.
They became known as: "Jonathan Frid's Fools
and Fiends," "Jonathan Frid's
Fridiculousness," and "Jonathan Frid's
Shakespearean Odyssey." These programs were
ideally suited to smaller audiences and to
intimate venues. Frid toured regional drama
centres, colleges, and universities to the
four corners of the United States from 1988
to 1994. #4 |
Poster ad for Jonathan Frid's Fridiculessness.
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While still developing his first one-man show, Frid along with
Marion Ross, Gary Sandy and Larry Storch
joined the Brodway company of Arsenic and
Old Lace (a 1986 revival) specifically to
co-star with Jean Stapleton for the national
tour that lasted for a year, followed by a
spring (1988) tour of Florida. He won
critical acclaim for his villainous turn as
Jonathan Brewster. The Philadelphia
Inquirer, for example, lauded Frid as "one
who captures the eerie madness that is the
essence of this nutty piece." The show
shattered box office records across the
United States for the next year and a half,
as it toured all of the nation's major
cities. |
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Throughout that tour, Frid continued to develop
his one-man shows, performing them at local
libraries, supper clubs, and other venues on his
nights off.
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During that period he finally put to the test his
long neglected directorial ambition, directing a
production of The Lion in Winter by James Goldman at
the Georgia College Theater in Milledgeville,
Georgia. It starred his friend and erstwhile
colleague from Dark Shadows, Marie Wallace, as Queen
Eleanor of Aquitaine. |
Frid moved back to Canada in 1994. Ostensibly
retiring from public life, Frid remained active "on
the boards" in small ways to preserve his sanity. He
created special short programs derived from his
established one-man shows for such diverse
gatherings as the McMaster Alumni Association, the
United Empire Loyalists of Canada, and private
dinner parties - all with a view to raising money
for a variety of charities. In the process, Frid
created a new production company called "Charity
Associates."
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In April 1998, Frid was inducted into the
McMaster University Alumni Gallery Hall of Fame for
his continued devotion to the art of acting. In
September of the same year, Frid gave a lecture on
acting at the prestigious Hamilton Association for
the Advancement of Literature, Science, and Art.
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In the fall of 1999, Frid returned to the United
States to perform a one man show in Long Island (for
the second year in a row) another in Crawfordsville,
Indiana #5,
before closing out the year with a performance in
Oshawa, Ontario. The latter performance was so well
received that Frid was invited back by the Oshawa &
District Council for the Arts to perform a special
program at the council's annual fundraising event in
February 2000.
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In June 2000, Frid returned to the traditional
professional stage in the highly charged comedy
drama called Mass Appeal by Bill C. Davis#6
The play concerns two adhearents of the church: the
younger, an intense and idealistic seminarian
portrayed by Canadian actor Dean Hollin, despises
the tarnished values of an aging priest (Frid),
whom, he feels, has opted for popularity to the
detriment of his beliefs. It is a story of their
search together for the basic Christian truths. The
production was part of the summer series at the
Stirling Festival Theatre in Stirling, Ontario,
following a two-week "out of town" stint at the
Aquarius Studio Theatre, in Hamilton, Ontario.
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Then came time for Frid to catch up with the rest
of you and confront the likes Bill Gates and his mad
mad world of Microsoft... and that's where Frid is
right now.
Anyone for darts?
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1.
Frid recollects a personal comment made to him many years
ago by Herbert Whittaker, who was then theatre critic for
Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper. Whittaker had praised
him publicly for his interpretation of the evil Doctor
Sloper in The Heiress (a dramatization of Henry James'
Washington Square) at Hearthouse in Toronto. But the praises
only bewildered Frid, who felt they were all for the wrong
reasons, because he was attempting to portray the doctor as
a partly reasonable man. Whittaker's private explanation
went something like this: 'You may have been trying to bless
the character with some good intentions, if only to make him
believable - and, to your credit, that may be why you were
so effective - but in the end your Doctor Sloper remained,
and quite rightly so, an unconscionable villain.' Back
2. In fact, he
had to drop his suitcases after opening his apartment door
to answer a chance telephone call from his agent about the
Barnabas offer. Had there been any delay with the taxi
bringing him from the airport, or with the apartment
buildings' elevator taking even more time than it usually
did, his legacy with Dark Shadows would not have occured. Back
3. It airs daily
on the Sci-Fi Channel in the United States, after getting
its syndication start on various PBS stations. The series
recently completed its first run in syndication in Great
Britain. Ironically, it has never been widely available in
The-Head-Of-The-Lake (Ontario) region, embracing Buffalo,
the Niagara border and Toronto, Ont. (Frid's home
territory). The manager of the Buffalo affiliate of the ABC
network (partial affiliate, not outright) chose not to carry
D.S. during the initial run. Frid was overjoyed when he
learned of this during those early days of insecurity in the
role of Barnabas Collins. Back
4. "These days,
the Yale-trained Frid seems willing to exploit that
hollow-cheeked vampire of TV's Dark Shadows only enough to
get him audiences for something he values more, the
well-honed word, shared aloud with others" (The Orange
County Register, California). Back
5. Audiences were
drawn to those American venues via the internet, through
such websites as: www.jonathanfrid.com. Back
6. In 1984 the
play was adapted as a film with Jack Lemmon. Back
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