photograph courtesy special collections, university of memphis libraries
Lamar Rickey in 1958.
Born in Knoxville in 1938, Mary Lamar Rickey moved to Memphis at a young age with her family. Her father was a prominent attorney in Memphis, and her mother played a role in many civic groups here. In other words, she was well-connected.
Lamar — she preferred that name to Mary — graduated from Central High School, took classes at the Memphis Academy of Arts, and then won a scholarship to Vassar College, where she studied philosophy. After two years, she came back to Memphis and began appearing in plays at the old Front Street Theatre. In 1958, at age 19, she became host Wink Martindale’s assistant on his hit TV show, Dance Party.
But Rickey wanted more. After earning a degree from Southwestern (now Rhodes College), she left home to attend graduate school in creative writing at the University of Iowa. About this time, Lamar Rickey evolved into Lara Parker. During a trip to Europe, she met an artist named Tom Parker, who came back to Iowa with her. They married, and with two children, settled on a farm near Whitewater, Wisconsin, so Tom could teach nearby. “By the time the children were 6 and 7 years old,” she told The Commercial Appeal, “I knew I couldn’t sit there and look at those fields for the rest of my life.”
photograph courtesy special collections, university of memphis libraries
Lara Parker as the vampire “Angelique” in Dark Shadows.
When her husband landed a teaching job in New York, she joined a professional touring company there and “I did seven leads in seven plays.” She was only in New York three weeks when “I just walked in and got the part in Dark Shadows,” she told reporters. “They were casting a witch and they’d seen a lot of dark-haired, sexy girls. I came in looking blonde and angelic and younger than my age. I think I just happened to hit them right, and everything fell into place.”
Dark Shadows, a “gothic/horror soap opera,” was one of ABC-TV’s biggest shows from 1966 to 1971. The series focused on witches, warlocks, vampires, and other unsavory characters who inhabited the sleepy village of Collinsport, Maine. Viewers were slow to embrace such a show, at a time when its main competition was the family-friendly Let’s Make a Deal, but they warmed to it. One critic wrote that Dark Shadows was “distinguished by its vividly melodramatic performances, atmospheric interiors, memorable storylines, numerous dramatic plot twists, adventurous music score, broad cosmos of characters, and heroic adventures.”
Parker remained one of the hottest actresses of her day, appearing in Broadway productions and guest-starring on such well-known shows as Hawaii-Five-0, Kung Fu, Remington Steele, The Incredible Hulk, and many others.
Parker played the time-traveling witch and vampire Angelique Bouchard. Over the six years the program aired, Angelique lived (and died!) over a three-century period and practiced “conjuration, elemental control, mediumship, necromancy, spell casting, telekinesis, and voodoo.” Needless to say, it was a role with considerable range, and Parker recalled, “I came to enjoy playing an evil, conniving woman.”
Despite its huge cult following, ABC canceled Dark Shadows in 1971, replacing it with the game show Password. Afterwards, Parker remained one of the hottest actresses of her day, appearing in Broadway productions and guest-starring on such well-known shows as Hawaii-Five-0, Kung Fu, Remington Steele, The Incredible Hulk, and many others.
Somehow she found time to write books and short stories based on the characters from Dark Shadows, and in 2012 she made a cameo role in the Tim Burton-directed remake starring Johnny Depp. Her fourth and final novel, Heiress of Collinwood, came out in 2014. She also taught college in L.A. and conducted workshops in horror writing in New York City.
She wrote scripts and screenplays, formed Old Canyon Press to publish an illustrated collection of verse, Bugs and Critters I Have Known; appeared in the crime drama Doctor Mabuse; and starred in the TV mini-series, Theatre Fantastique. For years, she maintained a website, where she offered DVDs of Dark Shadows and her movies, along with autographed books and photos.
Rickey/Parker passed away one year ago — on October 12, 2023, at age 84. Not a bad life and career for the Memphis teenager who got her start spinning records on Dance Party.
