Life and Career
Selby was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, the son of Sarah E. McIntyre Selby and Clyde Ira Selby, a carpenter. He attended West Virginia University in his hometown, earning Bachelor of Science and Master's degrees in theater, followed by a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University.
He eventually brought his Dark Shadows character to film with the second Dark Shadows movie, Night of Dark Shadows, released in 1971 after the TV series' cancellation. In 1979, Selby also turned down the role of Gary Ewing on Knots Landing, hence, the role was ultimately given to Ted Shackelford, who guest-starred on Dallas, with Joan Van Ark. A year before joining Falcon Crest in 1982, he played the villainous Michael Tyronne on the final season of the NBC primetime serial Flamingo Road.
When Richard Channing was originally written into Falcon Crest, he was considered more of a villain. However, over the years the character became more of a hero (arguably due to David Selby's rather sympathetic portrayal of the character), and was an audience favorite. For his eight seasons on Falcon Crest, he had developed a wonderful on- and off-screen chemistry with Jane Wyman, mirroring their mother/son relationships. In 1989, Selby was very devastated to hear about his childhood television iconic actor's and series' lead's (Wyman) medical leave from the show, at the beginning of the ninth and final season on Falcon Crest, that he alongside Lorenzo Lamas (who played Selby's on-screen nephew) and Susan Sullivan (who played Selby's on-screen wife), visited the ailing star at the hospital. That same year, his screen-time had been expanded for most of the last season. Long after the series was cancelled, and while co-starring opposite his old friend Jane Alexander in the short-lived series, Tell Me You Love Me, Selby was grief-stricken when his series' lead and friend, Jane Wyman, died in 2007.
Selby's movie credits include co-starring roles with Barbra Streisand in Up the Sandbox (1972) and with Ron Leibman in The Super Cops (1974), White Squall, Rich and Famous, (1981) D3: The Mighty Ducks, Raise the Titanic, and Surviving Christmas (2004). In 2010, he appeared in The Social Network as the attorney representing the Winklevoss brothers. He has recently reprised the role of Quentin Collins for a new series of Dark Shadows audio dramas from Big Finish Productions. On the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, Selby appeared on stage with President Barack Obama and portrayed Lincoln in a scene from the play The Heavens Are Hung in Black at the historic reopening of Ford's Theatre.
His writing includes the plays Lincoln and James and Final Assault as well as the poetry collections My Mother's Autumn and Happenstance. His novels are Lincoln's Better Angel and The Blue Door. A Better Place combines memoir and social commentary to discuss Selby's West Virginia upbringing. In 2010, Selby published My Shadowed Past, chronicling what it was like to work on Dark Shadows during the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s.
He played Abraham Lincoln in the Touched by an Angel episode "Beautiful Dreamer".
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