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| Charles Delaware Tate | |
|---|---|
| Production Information | |
| Portrayed by | |
| First appearance | |
| Last appearance | |
| Episode count |
28 |
| Audio appearances | |
| Biographical Information | |
| Name |
Charles Delaware Tate |
| Also known as |
Harrison Monroe |
| Age |
27 (1897)
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| Date of birth |
1870 |
| Year of death |
1970 |
| Manner of death |
Attacked by Chris Jennings as a Werewolf |
| Profession |
Artist |
| Supernatural abilities |
People and object creation
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| We have 2 images of Dark Shadows Charles Delaware Tate | |
Charles Delaware Tate (1870-1970) was a famous painter, particularly of portraits. The world did not suspect that his gift came from Count Andreas Petofi nor that his paintings sometimes were magical.
- "Charles Delaware Tate - the noted painter, pursued by rich women and beautiful girls, all hoping to be captured in one of your immoral canvases." - Description by Count Petofi when Tate first arrives at Collinwood.
19th Century
Tate was hired by Petofi (in the body of Jamison Collins) to paint the Portrait of Quentin Collins. Count Petofi noticed a sketch of a woman Tate had drawn many times, who was his ideal woman, and asked for the sketch, but Tate refused. Later Petofi saw Amanda Harris and recognized her as that woman and arranged for she and Tate to meet. Tate was later asked by Gregory Trask to paint his daughter's portrait also, but then decided he should paint Amanda's instead. This gave Tate a chance to talk to Amanda and discover she suffered from amnesia, and the first day she could remember was the exact same day Tate drew his initial sketch of her, which was in 1895. To relieve his mind at his inability to remember meeting Amanda, Tate drew a still life of a bowl of fruit, then decided the sketch needed a vase to fill in an empty space. To his shock, when he finished with the sketch, the vase was on the table where the table had previously been empty.
In an attempt to convince Amanda that he had created her, Tate drew a portrait of a man, who then appeared in his studio (842). Amanda told Tim Shaw about the man and Tim got him away from Tate. But just as the man was starting to talk, Tate burst into Tim's room at the Collinsport Inn (843) and shot the man. His corpse then vanished (844). Tate was in love with Amanda and he proposed marriage to her. Amanda turned him down because she was in love with Quentin.
Count Petofi removed Tate's ability to paint at all after Tate stole the portrait of Quentin Collins and refused to say where it was. This prompted Tate to agree to help in the search for the proper hexagram that would take Count Petofi to the future. In fact, it was Tate who discovered that the 49th hexagram was the needed one for the journey, for which Petofi was grateful enough to restore Tate's talent for painting. Tate also helped Petofi with killing Aristede. Petofi told Tate about how he was persued by Garth Blackwood. Petofi gave Tate the information he needed so he could draw Blackwood and bring him to life. Blackwood later captured Petofi and set Tate's studio on fire.
20th Century
In 1915, resenting Petofi’s gift and wanting its removal, Tate sought out a gypsy named Ivanka Romano. The gypsy tricked him by removing his sight, so that he can never see beauty again. Tate eventually ended up in a sanitorium, where he remained and continued to paint until 1920 when he unwittingly transferred his gypsy curse of blindness to another person. (The Blind Painter)
Tate's abilities were not as good as before, and he gave up painting portraits and began painting landscapes. It was one of these landscapes that Julia Hoffman purchased from Philip Todd in 1969, triggering her to wonder if Tate were still alive and could paint a portrait of Chris Jennings to cure him of his werewolf curse. She discovered that Tate had died about 10 years ago, but the discovery of another landscape which was identical to the one she purchased led her to believe Tate was still alive and painting under a new name. Tate painted under the name, Harrison Monroe. She went to visit Tate, who was nearly 100 in 1970 and found him to be very uncooperative. Tate made a mechanical dummy of his younger self and through his voice from behind a curtain to hide his aging self.
When Chris Jennings went to visit him, with Grant Douglas he forced Tate to paint his portrait, but it was not magical and Chris killed the painter when he transformed into a werewolf in his studio (938). Shortly before his death he was reunited with Amanda Harris whom he had never forgotten. Amanda, who had not aged in over seventy years, looked as beautiful as he remembered. Content that his lost love had returned, Charles Delaware Tate died peacefully at her side.
Background information and notes
- This was the fourth character played by Roger Davis, and his second role in the 1897 flashback.
- He appeared in recycled footage in 938.
Source Material
- Tate's story was based on the legends of Faust and Pygmalion.
- The character was based on Basil Hallward from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
- Tate's name is similar to H.P. Lovecraft's "Charles Dexter Ward", a novel that centered around another cursed portrait.