This article and the accompanying images originally appeared in the December 1970 issue of TV Dawn to Dusk. Special thanks to an anonymous donor for this material.

DAVID SELBY: The Problems of Being a TELEVISION IDOL

    On December 9, of 1968, a handsome young actor by the name of David Selby made his first appearance on ABC's Dark Shadows. The event marked Selby's debut on television and changed his career from that of an unknown actor to one of the idols of thousands of teenagers and adults who follow the soap operas regularly.

    Becoming an idol has its disadvantages, as David found out soon after he became a regular on the show. He is constantly besieged by female admirers when he leaves the studio where Dark Shadows tapes, and he says, "I still can't believe they mean me." Also, David and his wife of nine years, Claudeis (whom he calls Chip), were inundated with phone calls at their Manhattan brownstone apartment for the first couple of months after David became a celebrity because they had neglected to have their phone number changed from the one listed in the New York City telephone directory.

    Unfortunately for David, he is very recognizable to his fans because of the very distinctive mutton-chop sideburns he was required to grow when he took on the part of Quentin Collins. He and wife Chip have learned to spend their evenings in, because going out and taking the chance of being mobbed by a hoard of eager teenage girls is just too exhausting. After a couple of these run-ins, David realized that the discomfort of staying home on a beautiful evening is less than that of fighting off fifty screaming fans.

    Actually, were it not for his sideburns, David could probably roam around the city unnoticed by most New Yorkers. After all, with the exception of three daytime dramas emanating from California, all the other serials are taped in New York, and the city's residents are used to seeing soap stars on the subways and sidewalks around town. However in David's case, even working people, who aren't familiar with his portrayal of Quentin, stop and stare when he strolls by-- it's those sideburns again.

    For David, playing a role like Quentin represents a considerable change from anything he has ever done before. It gave the actor an entirely new image. "Quentin is very evil," says David. "He accepts what he is and doesn't make a pretense to be other than that. I like the character because I've never gotten to play a role that wasn't a sympathetic hero."

    Actually, David never envisioned himself as anything but a sympathetic hero-- even before he decided to become an actor. He was born and reared in Morgantown, West Virginia, and went on to West Virginia University and later to Southern Illinois University. In high school, he recalls writing a paper on the possibility of becoming an FBI agent (what could be more sympathetic than that?), but after experimenting with a local television show during his senior year, he became hooked on acting, although he enrolled in college as a business major. ("I thought it would be a good idea to have something practical under my belt, just in case. . .")

    Speaking with a slight Southern accent, the 29-year-old actor admits that he took diction lessons to erase his drawl but when he gets very relaxed, he has a tendency to lapse back into it.

    Before his transformation as the supernatural Quentin, David had considerable acting experience on the stage. He has appeared with such well-known American theaters as the Barter in Virginia, the Cleveland Playhouse, the Playhouse on the Mall in Paramus, New Jersey (where he was at the time of his audition for Dark Shadows, appearing in a production of Dear Charles,) and he has been lucky enough to tour in several road shows, notably The Impossible Years. Besides the valuable experience he gained, David's years as an itinerant actor were responsible for his getting married, because it was while he was appearing in summer stock in Beckley, West Virginia, that he met his wife Chip. She was a school teacher (her subject was English) and she came to see a play he was in. After that, a mutual friend introduced the two, and in 1961, they were married. The Selbys are the proud parents of one son, Jamison Todd, now 15 months old.

    David and Chip live in a brownstone apartment because, David says, "I don't think I could ever live in a huge apartment building. In general, I dislike large things like big restaurants, big cards and big department stores."

    Although he enjoys city living, David misses the outdoors.

    "I do pushups because they make me feel better, not because I like to do them," he confesses. "Also, I like to walk. It's the most relaxing thing I get to do, but in New York, it's hard. I paint a little, too, and I'd like to play golf and tennis if I could ever find a place for them here in the city."

    About women, David says, "I like a woman to be a woman. I like vulnerability. I like a strong, independent, fighting quality in a woman-- but I still like her to be vulnerable. I don't like a hard type."

    In talking about himself, the actor has this to say: "I'm both naive and optimistic by nature. But I'm not good at selling myself as an actor. I find that very difficult. And I really suffer when I don't get a
role that I want very badly. I take long walks to relieve the disappointment. My worst trait? Daydreaming. I procrastinate a lot, too."

    Perhaps because he is a daydreamer, David is especially fond of poetry, and can sit for hours reading works by poets like Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell. He also says that he gets a thrill out of reading poetry aloud, and admires the work of actors like Paul Scofield and Katharine Hepburn, who are fine readers of poetry.

    As for his ambitions for the future, David is rather noncommittal. He finds it hard to think beyond the immediate future, and that means that he cannot foresee himself doing anything else at the moment but Dark Shadows. He is extremely grateful for the opportunity to be able to work at his craft every day of the week, and unlike some soap stars, David has nothing but praise for the serial scene. He doesn't like to put things down, especially something that has been as good to him as daytime TV. He realizes that were it not for the lucky break he got in being cast in the role of Quentin, he might have gone on for years appearing at different little theaters around the country and never having anyone really know who he was or what he had done. Now, thanks to the incredible popularity he's built up on the show, those days will come.

    Other than the daily show, his most recent assignment was appearing in the full-length movie version of Dark Shadows, an experience he adored, and would like to repeat with other full-length features.

    In the meantime, he is a television idol-- 1970 style-- and he's got plenty to keep him busy. In talking about his fan mail which arrives by the bagful every day, David says smilingly, "I'm going to answer every single letter. I don't know how long it's going to take me, but I'm going to do it."

    And that-- believe it or not-- is one of the major problems of being a matinee idol!

By Reggie Manganero

Webmaster's Note: The article refers to David's filming a Dark Shadows movie while he was still at work on the daytime version of Dark Shadows. This must be an error, since the only Dark Shadows movie filmed during the run of the series was House of Dark Shadows, in which David did not appear. Night of Dark Shadows, the Dark Shadows film starring David Selby, was not filmed until shortly after the daytime drama ended.

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