A Bloody Good Time 07.17.08: The Terrifying Bela Lugosi
Posted by Joseph Lee on 07.17.2008
Universal treated him poorly, but he got the last laugh.
Welcome to A Bloody Good Time.
Last week I covered Boris Karloff's career. Due to the rivalry between Karloff and Lugosi, it only makes sense that I cover Bela Lugosi's career this week. Since there was no episode of Fear Itself last week, let's just get right into it.
Bela Lugosi was born in 1882 in Lugoj, Romania (formerly Lugos of Austria-Hungary) under the name Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó. He started acting early, like Karloff last week, only he began on the stage. He became married in 1917, and this was also the year that he had his first film role. It was a Hungarian silent film, much like many of the early roles in his career. He would star in mostly silent films in Hungary and Germany and on the stage for the first six years of his career. In 1923, he was in his first American film, starring in the silent film The Silent Command. From here he had other silent film roles, this time in America. The majority of these were dramas, although one significant film was a drama in 1929 called The Thirteenth Chair. This is significant because it was the first pairing of Lugosi and director Tod Browning, which would become relevant later.
It was around this time that Lugosi was asked by famous stage actor Hamilton Deane to star in the stage version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The performance was well recieved and when Universal wanted to legally adapt the story into a film (the previous version, Nosferatu was made without permission from the Stoker estate), Lugosi was mentioned as taking the role. It turns out that he almost didn't get the role that made him famous. Producer Carl Laemmle Jr wasn't interested in Lugosi, and it was rumored he wanted Lon Chaney for the role. However, Chaney soon died tragically due to throat cancer. Laemmle tried different actors for the part, but Lugosi lobbied hard and eventually won everyone over. Once again he would work with Tod Browning and play the most memorable vampire in the history of cinema.
Dracula(1931) was a smash for Universal, both critically and financially. Many hailed Lugosi's performance as scary and memorable, due to his speech patterns and menacing scare. Like Karloff with Frankenstein, Lugosi is still considered the definitive Dracula. The Transylvanian (Hungarian) accent and look is regarded as the look of Dracula. Unfortunately for Lugosi, this would also be the role that typecast him over the years as a horror actor and a vampire. Not just a horror actor, but a horror villain. The fact that Universal seemed to prefer Karloff certainly didn't help and there were some who claimed Lugosi became very bitter over the years (Martin Landau portrayed him as such in Ed Wood). This could be one of the reasons for his rivalry with Karloff, although reports vary on how much Lugosi disliked him.
Due to a number of reasons, Lugosi wasn't given as much mainstream work as his contemporaries. This was due to his Hungarian accent, the fact he had been typecast and the fact that when it came to horror, producers at Universal went to Karloff first. However, that doesn't mean he wasn't making quality work over the years.
One year after Dracula, in 1932, Lugosi would have two horror films, and a mystery-thriller. The first of these was Murders in the Rue Morgue, a Poe adaptation about an evil scientist that kidnaps women and injects them with primate blood. The film was considered a consolation prize for Lugosi and director Robert Florey after the two were dropped from the Frankenstein adaptation. Although regarded as a classic today, it didn't make a lot of money on it's original release and as a result Universal's first contract with Lugosi (from Dracula) was dropped. His other horror role was in the classic White Zombie. It's famous for several reasons, one of them being this was the first film to ever feature zombies. The zombies in this film were the result of voodoo, and nothing like the style of zombie Romero created. However, they're still considered zombies and it was the first film role for them.
Lugosi would have a number of horror roles over the 1930's, including: Island of Lost Souls(1933), The Black Cat(1934, his first pairing with Boris Karloff), Mark of the Vampire(1935, in which he both worked with Tod Browning and played a fake vampire in a remake of the lost film London After Midnight), The Raven(1935), The Invisible Ray(1936), and Son of Frankenstein(1939), in which he played the first film portrayal of Igor (then called Ygor). He would also have roles in the serials The Whispering Shadow, SOS Coast Guard and The Phantom Creeps.
In the 1940's, Lugosi's popularity didn't wane but the number of quality roles he recieved did. He had many roles, but not many of them memorable. He wasn't receiving starring roles and top billing either. He played the werewolf that bites Lon Chaney Jr in The Wolf Man(1941), Ygor in Ghost of Frankenstein(1942) and the Frankenstein monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man(1943). He would return as Count Dracula in the horror-comedy, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. He would also play another vampire in The Return of the Vampire(1944), adding to the perception that all he could do was horrorific vampire-like roles. Other genre films in the 1940's he starred in were: Black Friday(1940), The Devil Bat(1940), The Invisible Ghost(1941), The Black Cat(1941), The Corpse Vanishes(1942), Night Monster(1942), Bowery At Midnight(1942), The Ape Man(1943), Zombies on Broadway(1945), The Body Snatcher(1945), and Scared to Death(1947).
In the 1950's, towards the tail end of his career, Lugosi began headlining films again. This was due to a big fan of his deciding he had been treated poorly and deserved to star in more films. Unfortunately for Lugosi (and film goers), that fan was Ed Wood. The three films that Wood directed with star Lugosi were Glen or Glenda(1953), Bride of the Monster(1955), and the infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space(1959). These, along with only three other roles, would be the last of Lugosi's career. He died of a heart attack in 1956. Wood continued Plan 9, having his wife's chiropractor hold a cowl in front of his face to play the vampire role he had Lugosi playing. The film was released posthumously after Lugosi's death, three years later.
Lugosi was buried in one of the many Dracula capes he wore from the stage play at the request of his son and fifth wife. It was rumored that Lugosi had requested to be buried in it, but it was his family who did this.
Lugosi will always be remembered as Dracula, and while he may have seen this as unfortunate, it really shouldn't be. While he did have other great roles in his career, there's a reason Lugosi's Dracula is still talked about today. Lugosi's version is regarded as the definitive Dracula, as I stated above. The accent, the walk, the fact he's a suave foreigner...Lugosi didn't just make his stamp on the role of Count Dracula, but the role of the vampire in general. Anytime you see a "sexy" vampire seduce women, that's a characteristic of the vampire that Lugosi created, not Bram Stoker. That's 70+ years of vampires all in the style that Lugosi created. While there have been other, more horrific types, it's this style that has permeated Hollywood films. Lugosi left his mark on cinema and will always be remembered as the man who didn't drink...wine.
Can horror and comedy mix? We'll find out next week, because I'm going to attempt to countdown the top ten horror-comedies. See you then.
