, who because the vengeful witch Angelique Bouchard spent centuries entangled in a love-hate relationship with ’s Barnabas Collins on the gothic ABC cleaning soap opera Darkish Shadows, has died. She was 84.
Parker died Thursday in her sleep at her dwelling in Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles, her daughter, Caitlin, advised The Hollywood Reporter.
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On the large display screen, Parker stood out as a prostitute whose shopper has a coronary heart assault in John G. Avildsen’s Save the Tiger (1973), starring Jack Lemmon in an Oscar-winning flip, and he or she performed the spouse of Peter Fonda‘s character within the satanic horror movie Race With the Satan (1975), additionally that includes and Loretta Swit.
Mere days after arriving in New York in 1967, the green-eyed Parker auditioned for Darkish Shadows creator Dan Curtis, who forged her as Angelique in a narrative arc that will element the origin of the tortured vampire Barnabas.
A soldier and the son of a transport magnate, Barnabas in 1795 seduced and deserted a servant lady from Martinique not realizing she was a witch. That lady was Angelique. “He simply dallied together with her after which dismissed her, and he or she was to not be dismissed,” Parker said in an undated interview for a Darkish Shadows dwelling video launch.
An enraged Angelique would rattling Barnabas to enteral life as a vampire, kicking off a battle between the 2 that will proceed by means of totally different time durations.
“I performed her as someone who was rather more of a tragic determine, who was desperately, desperately in love,” Parker said in 2016. “And her coronary heart was damaged. That’s rather more sympathetic than simply being a imply previous witch. I felt that her acts have been acts of desperation, not acts of evil.”
Although Angelique and others she would inhabit would perish, she would stay with the daytime serial by means of its April 1971 demise.
“Dan Curtis [would call Parker and say], ‘You’ve been nice, kiddo, however we’re going to kill your character. Thanks so much for every part,” she recalled in 2020. “After all I used to be very unhappy, however about two months later they referred to as me and stated that they wished me again.
“We have been form of the primary crew, and the followers appeared to look at it extra when Angelique and Barnabas have been combating it out. That appeared to be the most well-liked a part of the present, so [Curtis] introduced me again many, many instances.”
Parker was born Mary Lamar Rickey on Oct. 27, 1938, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her father, Albert, was an lawyer, and her mom, Ann, was lively in civic teams.
She graduated from Central Excessive Faculty in Memphis and attended Vassar — she roomed with Jane Fonda there — and Rhodes School in Memphis, the place at 19 she served as Wink Martindale’s assistant on his WHBQ-TV present, Dance Social gathering. She then earned a grasp’s diploma from the College of Iowa.
After a busy summer time appearing on the Millbrook Playhouse in Pennsylvania, Parker left her husband and two youngsters in Wisconsin for a spell to see if she might discover work as an actor in New York. “By the point the kids have been 6 and seven years previous,” she stated in a 1972 interview for Mid-South journal, “I knew that I simply couldn’t sit there and have a look at these fields for the remainder of my life.”
In New York for her second-ever skilled audition, she was forged as Angelique. “I believe my solely response to it was paralyzed worry,” she said.
Darkish Shadows, which had debuted in June 1966, acquired a viewership jolt when Frid was launched as Barnabas in April 1967. Parker arrived within the fictional city of Collinsport, Maine, seven months later.
“We realized [the show] was fashionable,” she stated. “In every single place we went [the cast was] acknowledged. There was an enormous crowd outdoors the [Manhattan] studio once we completed within the afternoon of autograph seekers. Individuals would present up, the identical folks each single day, day after day. They worshipped a few of us and would stroll us to the subway.
“I can bear in mind standing on the subway when college acquired out and seeing 200 or 300 youngsters all ready to take the practice. They might see me and begin screaming and run to the opposite finish of the platform! They have been so terrified as a result of I used to be so evil.”
In the meantime, feminists admired Parker due to her character’s power, she stated. “She was coming in firstly of the ladies’s motion and he or she was very impartial,” Parker famous. “They form of missed the truth that she was obsessed together with her love for Barnabas and that was destroying her.”
On Fb, her Darkish Shadows co-star wrote Monday that Parker’s dying left her “heartbroken, as all of us are who knew and liked her. She graced our lives together with her magnificence and expertise, and we’re all richer for having had her in our lives.”
Throughout breaks in manufacturing, Parker acted on Broadway in September 1968 in Lady Is My Thought, which lasted simply 5 performances, and within the early Brian De Palma movie Hello, Mother! (1970), starring Robert De Niro.
And towards the tip of the daytime serial, she and fellow castmembers together with John Karlen, Kate Jackson, David Selby and Grayson Corridor appeared within the poorly acquired MGM movie Night time of Darkish Shadows (1971).
In 1972, Parker relocated to Los Angeles and went on to seem on episodes of such exhibits as Medical Middle, Kojak, The Rockford Recordsdata, Police Lady, Kolchak: The Night time Stalker (as a witch) and The Unimaginable Hulk, the place she performed David Banner’s first spouse in a flashback sequence within the pilot.
After stepping apart from appearing, Parker labored as a instructor, earned one other grasp’s in artistic writing and wrote 4 Darkish Shadows novels: Angelique’s Descent, first revealed in 1998, adopted by 2006’s The Salem Department, 2013’s Wolf Moon Rising and 2016’s Heiress of Collinwood.
Extra not too long ago, she was lively within the audio-only continuation of the Darkish Shadows franchise by means of Massive End Productions.
Parker rejoined Frid, Selby and Kathryn Leigh Scott to make cameos in Tim Burton’s 2012 remake of Dark Shadows — Frenchwoman Eva Inexperienced portrayed Angelique within the Johnny Depp-starrer — and reteamed with Scott and one other Darkish Shadows co-star, Jerry Lacy, within the crime movie Physician Mabuse (2013) and its 2014 sequel.
Survivors embody her second husband, Jim Hawkins; youngsters Caitlin, Rick (a music producer) and Andy; daughters-in-law Miranda and Celia; grandson Wesley; and her canine, Pearl.
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