Sy Tomashoff Dead at 96

Sy Tomashoff, the seven-time Daytime Emmy winner who created the gothic atmosphere for the ABC soap opera Dark Shadows and spent 13 years on CBS' The Bold and the Beautiful, died Sunday at his Los Feliz home in Los Angeles. He was 96.

Seymour Tomashoff was born on September 11, 1922, in New York City. He attended Curtis High School on Staten Island and New York's City College before being sent to the Engineering Officer Training Program at Carnegie Tech at the outset of World War II.

He eventually served as a rifleman under General George S. Patton and was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge and a Bronze Star for valor.

Back home, Tomashoff received a bachelor's degree in architecture from Carnegie Tech in 1950, then landed a job as a scenic artist at ABC Studios in New York. In the '50s and '60s, he worked as an art director on such shows as The Edge of Night, Armstrong Circle Theater, East Side/West Side, For the People and The David Susskind Show.

Tomashoff joined series creator Dan Curtis at the beginning of Dark Shadows, which aired from June 1966 through April 1971. The daytime drama starred Jonathan Frid as vampire Barnabas Collins and — though filmed in a tiny New York studio — was set in a brooding mansion in the fictional town of Collinsport, Maine.