Bela Lugosi: The Man and the Monster
© Anne Graves
Bela Lugosi is best known for playing the vampire. What I've always found fascinating is that although he created an image of Dracula that we are all so familiar with--elegant clothes, thick accent, long and flowing cape, and deep, dark eyes (which has been imitated and often parodied)--Lugosi only played the character of Dracula in two films.
Bela Lugosi was born Bela Blasko in October 20, 1882. And he was born in Lugos, Hungary, which, as it turns out, puts his birthplace a scant 50 miles from Transylvania. A travelling theatre company gave him his first bite from the acting bug, and soon enough he sought out acting roles. He then changed his last name to Lugosi, which means "one from Lugos."
After a few years he began to make a name for himself, working at various theatres in Budapest and then appearing in German films. He moved to the United States in 1920 and took roles in plays and movies.
What many people don't know is that Lugosi wet his teeth on the Dracula role in the theatre. The 1931 version of Draculawas based on a stage play by Hamilton Deane and John Balderston, which had been adapted from the Bram Stoker novel. Lugosi appeared in the play, which ran for nearly a year on Broadway before going on the road.
And when Universal Pictures bought the movie rights, their first choice wasn't Lugosi, although he was in the top five. Director Tod Browning wanted Lon Chaney to play Dracula, but he died, and Lugosi was ultimately given the role.
It is interesting to watch Browning's Draculaagain with all this in mind. A common criticism of the movie is that the acting seems rather over the top by today's standards. But knowing that so many actors were performing on the stage and that film (and "talking film" at that) was a relatively new medium, it's easy to understand why this is so.
While Lugosi appeared in a few other vampire films (Mark of the Vampire, Return of the Vampire)over the next seventeen years, he was not cast again as Dracula until 1948, in a parody of his original portrayal, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
America had lost its interest in supernatural monsters by this time, and instead paid to see movies about large insects and radioactive disasters. Meanwhile, Lugosi continued to act when he could, which wasn't often. He signed on to play a vampire yet again in the Ed Wood's cult classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space.However, Lugosi died on August 16, 1956, a week after shooting began. Another actor filled in for Lugosi for the rest of the movie, albeit with a cape always across his face.
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