Ronald Sproat (2 November 1932 – 6 November 2009 in Manhattan, New York) [1] [2] [3] was an American screenwriter and playwright known for Dark Shadows .
Sproat is best known for his work on Dark Shadows , the 1960s ABC Daytime gothic soap opera. Sproat created the vampire character Barnabas Collins portrayed by Jonathan Frid, and turned the low-rated show into a huge national success. [4] Sproat worked on the show from October 1966 through January 1969. [5]
Sproat also worked on several other soap operas, including Never Too Young , a 1965-1966 ABC soap aimed at teenagers, Where the Heart Is , a 1969-1973 CBS family melodrama, and Strange Paradise , a Canadian soap opera that aired in syndication in the United States from 1969 to 1970, as well as Love of Life , The Doctors , and The Secret Storm . [6]
In addition to television writing, Sproat penned the play The Dry Season which was performed in 1954 by The Hamilton College Charlatans. He also wrote for musical theatre including Abie's Island Rose and Back Home: The War Brides Musical, both of which ran off Broadway. [7] [8] Both shows had lyrics by Sproat's longtime partner, Frank Evans, who died in 2016. [9]
Sproat received his MA from the University of Michigan, and performed undergraduate work at Hamilton College. While at Hamilton College, he won the William Duncan Saunders Award for creative writing. Sproat also attended Yale University, where he earned a MFA. While attending Michigan, Sproat was also the recipient of the Avery Hopwood Award. [4]
Tootsie is a 1982 American satirical romantic comedy film directed by Sydney Pollack from a screenplay by Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal and a story by Gelbart and Don McGuire. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, and Charles Durning. In the film, Michael Dorsey (Hoffman), a talented actor with a reputation for being professionally difficult, runs into romantic trouble after adopting a female persona to land a job.
Dark Shadows is an American gothic soap opera that aired weekdays on the ABC television network from June 27, 1966, to April 2, 1971. The show depicted the lives, loves, trials, and tribulations of the wealthy Collins family of Collinsport, Maine, where a number of supernatural occurrences take place.
Jonathan Frid was a Canadian actor, best known for his role as vampire Barnabas Collins on the gothic television soap opera Dark Shadows. The introduction in 1967 of Frid's reluctant, guilt-ridden vampire caused the floundering daytime drama to soar to 20 million daily viewers. His watershed portrayal has been cited as a key influence on contemporary genre film and television series such as Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries.
One Life to Live is an American soap opera broadcast on the ABC television network for more than 43 years, from July 15, 1968, to January 13, 2012, and then on the internet as a web series on Hulu and iTunes via Prospect Park from April 29 to August 19, 2013. Created by Agnes Nixon, the series was the first daytime drama to primarily feature ethnically and socioeconomically diverse characters and consistently emphasize social issues. One Life to Live was expanded from 30 minutes to 45 minutes on July 26, 1976, and then to an hour on January 16, 1978.
Jonathan Tunick is an American orchestrator, musical director, and composer, and one of nineteen of the "EGOT" – people to have won all four major American show business awards: the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. He is best known for orchestrating the works of Stephen Sondheim, their collaboration starting in 1970 with Company and continuing until Sondheim's death in 2021.
Kimberly Jo Zimmer is an American actress, best known for her role as Reva Shayne on the CBS soap opera Guiding Light. For this portrayal, she has won four Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
Rupert Holmes is a British-American composer, singer-songwriter, dramatist and author. He is widely known for the hit singles "Escape " (1979) and "Him" (1980). He is also known for his musicals The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which earned him two Tony Awards, and Curtains, his AMC television series Remember WENN, and his novel Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide.
Linda Dano is an American actress and television host. She began her career appearing in film and prime time television before, in 1978, she was cast as Rae Cummings on the ABC daytime soap opera, One Life to Live (1978–80). From 1983 to 1999, Dano starred as Felicia Gallant in the NBC soap opera Another World. She returned to One Life to Live starring in the show from 1999 to 2004. Dano was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award seven times, winning once for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1993 for her work on Another World.
Broadway theatre, or Broadway, is a theatre genre that consists of the theatrical performances presented in 41 professional theaters, each with 500 or more seats, in the Theater District and Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world.
Michael Frank Park is an American actor, best known for his roles as Jack Snyder on As the World Turns, Larry Murphy in the original Broadway cast of Dear Evan Hansen (2016), and reporter Tom Holloway in the third season of the Netflix series Stranger Things (2019).
Joel Anthony Crothers was an American actor. His credits primarily included stage and television work, including a number of soap opera roles, the best known being Miles Cavanaugh on The Edge of Night, whom he played for eight years. He was also known for his roles as Joe Haskell and Lieutenant Nathan Forbes on Dark Shadows, Ken Stevens #2 on The Secret Storm, and pianist/newspaper editor Julian Cannell on Somerset.
Ron Raines is an American actor. He is known for the role of Alan Spaulding on the television soap opera Guiding Light. Raines also performs in musical theatre and in concert with symphony orchestras.
David Ford was a TV, film and stage actor. He was known for roles on TV's Dark Shadows (1966–1971) and Search for Tomorrow (1951), and as John Hancock in both the 1776 Broadway musical and its film adaptation.
Robert Cobert was an American composer who worked in television and films. He is best known for his work with producer/director Dan Curtis, notably the scores for the 1966–71 ABC-TV gothic fiction soap opera Dark Shadows and the TV mini-series The Winds of War (1983) and its sequel War and Remembrance (1988), for which he received an Emmy Awards nomination. Together, the latter two scores constitute the longest film music ever written for a film.
Strange Paradise is a Canadian occult-supernatural soap opera of 195 episodes, initially launched in syndication in the United States on September 8, 1969, and later broadcast on CBC Television from October 20, 1969, to July 22, 1970. The production was the brainchild of producer Steve Krantz, in an attempt to capitalize on the phenomenal success of ABC's daytime serial Dark Shadows in America. To develop the series, Krantz hired actor-writer Ian Martin and veteran TV and radio producer Jerry Layton, both of whom were given screen credit for the creation of Strange Paradise. With the CBC and American broadcasters Metromedia and Kaiser Broadcasting handling distribution and co-production, the series was filmed in Ottawa, Ontario, at CTV affiliate CJOH-TV and aired for 39 weeks, presenting three separate 13-week story arcs.
John Francis McMartin was an American actor of stage, film and television.
Ronald David Carlivati is an American screenwriter. He is best known for his tenures as head writer on the ABC Daytime soap operas One Life to Live and General Hospital. He served as head writer for the Peacock soap opera Days of Our Lives until his departure in July 2024.
Lin-Manuel Miranda is an American songwriter, librettist, actor, singer, filmmaker, and rapper. He created the Broadway musicals In the Heights (2005) and Hamilton (2015), and the soundtracks for the animated films Moana (2016), Vivo, and Encanto. He has received numerous accolades including a Pulitzer Prize, three Tony Awards, two Laurence Olivier Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and five Grammy Awards, along with nominations for two Academy Awards. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2018.
Thomas Robert Kitt is an American composer, conductor, orchestrator, and musician. For his score for the musical Next to Normal, he shared the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Brian Yorkey. He has also won two Tony Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Next to Normal, as well as Tony and Outer Critics Circle nominations for If/Then and SpongeBob SquarePants. He has been nominated for eight Drama Desk Awards, winning one, and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for Jagged Little Pill in 2021.
Solea Pfeiffer is a Zimbabwe-born American actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Eliza Hamilton in the first national tour of Hamilton, which she landed after performing as Maria in West Side Story at the Hollywood Bowl. In 2019, she starred in the New York City Center's production of Evita. Since then, she has joined the Broadway productions of Hadestown as Eurydice and Moulin Rouge! as Satine.