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<\/p>\nLara Parker, who found small-screen fame in the 1960s and \u201970s as a beguiling and vengeful witch on the popular Gothic soap opera \u201cDark Shadows,\u201d died at her home in Topanga, Calif. She was 84.<\/p>\n
The cause was cancer, said Kathryn Leigh Scott, a friend and fellow \u201cDark Shadows\u201d actress.<\/p>\n
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\u201cDark Shadows,\u201d seen daily on ABC from 1966 to 1971, was a departure from standard soap opera fare, blending romantic intrigue with horror and science fiction. The show chronicled a wealthy and eccentric Maine family dealing with the usual soap melodramas \u2014 but also time travel, ghosts, werewolves and vampires.<\/p>\n
With her icy beauty and elegant demeanor, Ms. Parker proved coolly seductive in her primary role among several on the show, Angelique, an 18th-century servant girl and witch who puts a curse on a wealthy shipping scion, Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) after he spurns her for Ms. Scott\u2019s character, Josette, turning him into a vampire and dooming the two to carry on a tempestuous cycle of passion and revenge as they time-hop through history.<\/p>\n
Despite the pulpy premise, Ms. Parker brought a complexity to her role. \u201cI played her as somebody who was much more of a tragic figure, who was desperately, desperately in love,\u201d she said in a 2016 interview with Den of Geek, a pop culture website.
\nIn doing so, Ms. Parker, whose character also dabbled in vampirism, and Mr. Frid helped expand the two-dimensional portrayals of vampires and witches seen in old Hollywood B-movies.
\n\u201cWhen you\u2019re invited into someone\u2019s living room in a show that is essentially bodice-ripping horror, you have to make yourself palatable to the household, which in those days mostly meant housewives and children,\u201d Ms. Scott said in a phone interview. \u201cLara and Jonathan did that by bringing a dimension of vulnerability, so you cared about the characters as people, not just evil forces. In that way, \u2018Dark Shadows\u2019 was really the granddaddy for all contemporary vampire films.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the show grew in popularity, Ms. Parker found herself continually recognized by loyal viewers on the streets \u2014 although not always in ways she expected. \u201cI used to get on the subway platform when school let out at 3:15 in the afternoon,\u201d Ms. Parker said during a television appearance in the early 1990s, \u201cand instead of the fans coming up and asking for an autograph, they would run.\u201d
\nLara Parker was born Mary Lamar Rickey on Oct. 27, 1938, in Knoxville, Tenn., to Albert and Anne (Heiskell) Rickey. Her lineage included the Confederate general James Longstreet and L.Q.C. Lamar, a Mississippi statesman who achieved a national profile as a congressman, senator and Supreme Court justice after the Civil War.
\nMs. Parker, who went by the name Lamar, grew up in Memphis, where she attended Central High School, and eventually earned a scholarship to Vassar College, where she studied philosophy, before transferring to Southwestern (now Rhodes College) in Memphis.<\/p>\n
She later studied speech and drama in a master\u2019s program at the University of Iowa and had several lead roles at a repertory theater in Pennsylvania before moving to New York City. Within two weeks, she was in the cast of \u201cDark Shadows.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the show went off the air, Ms. Parker moved to Los Angeles, where she turned her attention to prime-time television, appearing on \u201cHawaii 5-0,\u201d \u201cKung Fu,\u201d \u201cBaretta,\u201d \u201cThe Incredible Hulk\u201d and other shows, as well as several television movies. She also had a powerful, if brief, role as a prostitute who tries to revive a client after he has a heart attack in the 1973 feature film \u201cSave the Tiger,\u201d for which Jack Lemmon won the Academy Award for best actor.<\/p>\n
Still, Ms. Parker\u2019s relationship with the show that made her famous was far from over: \u201cDark Shadows\u201d become an enduring cult favorite to new generations of horror fans, and Ms. Parker fed their obsession after turning her attention to writing. In 1998, she published \u201cDark Shadows: Angelique\u2019s Descent,\u201d the first of her four novels inspired by the show, which chronicled the early life of her character.<\/p>\n
She also helped revive the show on the big screen, appearing, along with her former co-stars Ms. Scott, Mr. Frid and David Selby, in a cameo role in the 2012 feature-film version of \u201cDark Shadows,\u201d directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas, with Eva Green as Angelique.<\/p>\n
Ms. Parker\u2019s survivors include her husband, Jim Hawkins; two sons, Rick and Andy Parker; a daughter, Caitlin Hawkins; and a grandson.
\nIn the years following her breakout role, Ms. Parker discussed the significance of the show, which in her view helped modernize \u2014 and sexualize \u2014 the vampire figure in the years before \u201cTwilight.\u201d To her, this seemed only natural.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bite itself is like the act of sex,\u201d she once said. \u201cThere is penetration, and there is pleasure and there is abandonment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story of the vampire goes back to before the Egyptians, before the Greeks, and exists in every single culture,\u201d she added. \u201cWhy is it so widespread? Not because it\u2019s true, but because it contains the truth of our fears and our desires.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lara Parker, who found small-screen fame in the 1960s and \u201970s as a beguiling and vengeful witch on the popular Gothic soap opera \u201cDark Shadows,\u201d died at her home in Topanga, Calif. She was 84. The cause was cancer, said Kathryn Leigh Scott, a friend and fellow \u201cDark Shadows\u201d actress. \u201cDark Shadows,\u201d seen daily on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memorial"],"yoast_head":"\n