The Life of Bela Lugosi: Hollywood's Most Famous Dracula
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Life of Bela Lugosi: Hollywood's Most Famous Dracula
Photo by Silver Screen Collection / Moviepix
By Bill Lamb, ThoughtCo Movies, Updated November 10 2018
Bela Lugosi (born Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko; October 20, 1882–August 16, 1956) is best known for his role in the stage and screen productions of Dracula. Lugosi's portrayal of the titular vampire is one of the best-known performances in horror movie history. Lugosi continued to work as an actor throughout his life, but he never escaped the influence of Count Dracula on his career, and found himself limited to horror movie roles due to typecasting.
Fast Facts: Bela Lugosi
Born: October 20, 1882 in Lugos, Hungary
Died: August 16, 1956 in Los Angeles, California, USA
Occupation: Actor
Known For : Starring in the iconic role of Count Dracula in the 1931 film Dracula
Education: Dropped out of school at age 12
Notable Films: Dracula (1931), The Black Cat (1934), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Spouse(s): Ilona Szmik, Ilona von Montagh, Beatrice Weeks, Lillian Arch, Hope Lininger
Child: Bela Lugosi, Jr.
Famous Quote: "I have never met a vampire personally, but I don't know what might happen tomorrow."
Early Life
Bela Blasko, the youngest of four children, was born on October 20, 1882 in the city of Lugos, Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania). Blasko dropped out of school at age 12 and began his acting career in 1901. He adopted the stage name Lugosi, which was inspired by the name of his hometown, in 1903. Lugosi acted in regional theater productions for several years until moving to Budapest in 1911. He joined the National Theatre of Hungary in 1913.
World War I interrupted Lugosi's acting career. He served with the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 through 1916 and earned a medal for wounds received on the Russian Front. Lugosi also took part in the 1919 Hungarian Revolution, which created the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. When war with Romania destroyed the fledgling government, Lugosi was forced to flee. He traveled first to Germany, then entered the U.S. in December 1920.
The Role of Dracula
After arriving in the U.S., Lugosi first found work as a laborer. However, he soon traveled to New York City and began acting in a touring stock company with fellow Hungarian actors. Lugosi appeared on Broadway in 1922 in the play The Red Poppy and took several roles in silent films, including 1923's The Silent Command .
Lugosi's breakthrough role came in the summer of 1927, when he was asked to star in a Broadway stage production: an adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula . The play ran for 261 performances in New York, then traveled through the U.S. to widespread critical acclaim and financial success. After a West Coast series of performances, Lugosi decided to stay in California and focus on his film acting career.
At the time, movie producer Carl Laemmle was looking to create a movie version of Dracula for Universal Pictures. Bela Lugosi was not Laemmle's first choice for the role of Dracula, despite his onstage success. Lugosi personally lobbied the producers for the role and was ultimately selected. He starred in the legendary horror film masterpiece Dracula, directed by Tod Browning, in 1931.
Newspapers reported that audience members fainted when they saw the shocking scenes of Count Dracula on the screen. Universal Pictures played up these stories to help publicize the movie. Dracula was a huge box office success, earning a profit of more than $700,000 and cementing its status as Universal's biggest success of the year. Coupled with Frankenstein , released later in 1931, Dracula helped Universal build a reputation as the top horror film studio of the 1930s.
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff
Bela Lugosi tried but failed to avoid being typecast in horror roles. In 1934, he co-starred in The Black Cat with Boris Karloff, best-known for portraying the monster in Frankenstein . Lugosi and Karloff became an iconic pair and went on to appear in seven films together. Their final co-starring movie was 1945's The Body Snatcher.
Conflicting stories exist about how the two legends got along. Some say that Bela Lugosi resented Boris Karloff's ability to find acting roles outside of the horror genre. However, many also say they eventually became good friends.
Later Career
By the late 1930s, Bela Lugosi's acting career was in decline. However, he experienced a revival in popularity when a California theater showed Dracula and Frankenstein as a double feature. Audiences flocked to the screenings, and soon other movie theaters followed the example. Lugosi frequently appeared in person to speak to the audience.
The renewed popularity of Dracula encouraged Universal to hire Bela Lugosi to star in 1939's Son of Frankenstein . Lugosi worked in successful horror movies throughout the 1940s, including 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein , where Lugosi appeared as the Dracula character for the second and final time onscreen. In 1943's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man , Lugosi took on the role of Frankenstein's monster.
A final, idiosyncratic chapter of Bela Lugosi's film career took place in the 1950s. Ed Wood, notoriously pegged as one of the worst filmmakers of all time, discovered Lugosi living in obscurity and hired him to appear in a series of movies. Lugosi had roles in 1953's Glen or Glenda and 1955's Bride of the Monster . Test footage of Bela Lugosi in his Dracula cape was used posthumously in 1959's Plan 9 from Outer Space .
Personal Life
Bela Lugosi married five times. He first wed Ilona Szmik in 1917. They divorced in 1920, reportedly over political conflicts with her parents. In 1921, he married Ilona von Montagh, whom he divorced in 1924. Lugosi's third wife was San Francisco socialite Beatrice Weeks, the widow of famed architect Charles Peter Weeks. They were wed in 1929 and divorced after just four months when Beatrice Weeks claimed that her husband was having an affair with film star Clara Bow.
In 1931, Bela Lugosi became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He married 19-year-old Lillian Arch in 1933. They had one child: Bela Lugosi, Jr. In 1953, after Lillian took a full-time job as an assistant to actor Brian Donlevy, the couple divorced. Lillian later married Brian Donlevy in 1966, ten years after Bela Lugosi's death.
Lugosi married Hope Lininger, his fifth wife, in 1955. She was a fan who frequently wrote letters to Bela. They remained married until he died a year later.
Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956. He was buried in one of his Dracula costumes, complete with a cape. Reportedly, he did not request burial in costume, but his son and Lillian made the decision, believing that it was what Lugosi would have wanted.
Legacy
Countless films feature the character of Count Dracula , but Bela Lugosi's performance set the standard for the role. The 1931 film has been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress due to its cultural significance. The American Film Institute listed Lugosi's Count Dracula as #33 on their list of Top 100 Heroes and Villains in film.
Bela Lugosi has appeared in a variety of ways in popular culture. The British band Bauhaus released their single, "Bela Lugosi's Dead," in 1979. The song is considered a cornerstone of gothic rock. Martin Landau won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1994 for portrayal of Bela Lugosi in the film Ed Wood . Lugosi has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Sources
- Don Rhodes, Gary. Lugosi. His Life in Films, on Stage, and in the Hearts of Horror Lovers. McFarland, 1997.
- Rhodes, Gary, and Bill Kaffenberger. No Traveler Returns - The Lost Years of Bela Lugosi . BearManor Media, 2016.
My favourite vampire - Nobody ever did it better.
Certainly no denying Lugosi set the standard for the genre of vampire movies that followed.
"I bid you welcome," "I never drink wine," "Children of the night...what music they make," and of course "I am Dracula" are memorable lines that resonate throughout horror films, literature, art, etc... throughout the 20th century because of a landmark film made in 1931 starring Bela Lugosi and directed by Tom Browning. This film was the birth of the horror film as we know it. Its importance can not be underestimated. Dracula is a wonderful film for so many reasons, but first let's look at its many faults.
The film is by today standards very antiquated. It has almost no soundtrack, stage acting for the most part, limited special effects, and a slow pacing. It has long parts of little action and lots of chat. It shows little while leaving much to one's imagination (a plus for those like myself that are good at envisioning what is not shown). With all this not going for it, why is Dracula such a classic? Why is it considered to be such a great film and a great horror film?
The answer is that even with all these flaws (and bear in mind some of these flaws are not flaws for all) the film offers a rich story in an eerie, atmospheric way. Bela Lugosi was Dracula. He was the model for oh so many vampires to come. His gesturing, his deliberation in speech, his facial movements all created a vampire never to be forgotten. Despite Lugosi, however, is the real genius of the film....Tod Browning. Browning created a movie and a setting hitherto imagined and conjured on a screen. Browning was the man behind the camera that created the cob-webbed stairs of the Dracula castle and the squalid emptiness of the crypt. He created the ghoulish female vampires thirsting for blood. Dracula is not just a film to see, it is film history and should be viewed with that in mind and not put under a microscope of today's languishing tastes.
Enjoy this classic....
NWM
Thanks for posting it. I hope that those who have never seen it will watch it.
Always my pleasure Brother....
It is a classic that started the whole horror movie craze.....
Much better than the "blood & gore" special effects movies.....
Well worth watching.....
He didn't want to be buried in costume...but..they thought it was what he would want...
One might say it "suited" him.
Have they checked lately to see if he's still in there?
LOL. If they did and he wasn't, then make sure you carry some garlic with you whenever there's a full moon.
Interesting. Thanks.
I don't know if this is an urban legend or not, but it was something I read years ago. It would seem that almost every morning BL, would walk to a news vendor stand for his morning paper. When his body was being transported for burial, something or someone took control of the vehicle. It turned down the same street he walked every day to get his paper.
Cool!!
I don't think that's such an unusual occurance. I had a client whose funeral procession (in which I participated) drove out of the way to go past a few places that he frequented in downtown Toronto. Of course the fact that he had been friends with the Chief of Police may have been a factor.
I'm much more of a wherewolf fan but vampires are cool....So was Bela.
Have you watched "The Howling" movies? I thought their version of werewolves was pretty good.
I always thought BL's accent was spot-on for Romanian, now I see why it was so good. A little exaggerated maybe, but based on his accent when he landed in the U.S.
Bela Lugosi.
Brings back memories.
Very rarely, even from a very early age, did I have a Saturday to stay home and watch Saturday TV. Usually had to go with dad to do tree work.
On that rare Saturday I got to stay home, I would search around to see is anything interesting was on the "sports channel". ABC Wide World of Sports. Hopefully some kind of automobile or motorcycle race.
More often than not and unbeknownst to me, my older sis already one of those old horror flicks scheduled. One would think I would have had this in mind...
If there was a conflict, guess who lost?
One more question? Guess who the star actor was in those movies that took precedence over those much more interesting automobile and motorcycle races?
The man of the hour, Bela Lugosi.
Took me a long time to get over my grudge against him...as I got older, I came around.
I don't think anyone else had as large an impact on a movie genre as Bela.....
Everyone doing horror movies wanted to be like him........
He was very scary when I was little
He definitely made an impact......
Although Bram Stoker's Dracula was released around the same time as "Frankenstein", for some reason Dracula seemed to be a scarier movie. However, the two movies were always considered to be a kind of "pair" to me. I will soon be posting a bio of Boris Karloff.
At that point then I'll load up Frankenstein.....
The Boris Karloff bio is now posted.
uploading now....
Ok Dracula has been up two weeks. Received eight streams....
Will be taken down at 9:00 pm tonight so if anyone wants to watch it, now's the time......
I watched it a few days ago, thanks
Glad you enjoyed it....
Thanks, NWM. The article and the posted movie have had a good run.
My pleasure Brother....