Bela Lugosi

A lot of household names earn their status because the stars are beautiful, sexy, cast in roles in which they deliver great lines. One household name may not include characteristics of great beauty or indomitable sex appeal, but the gifts he brought to the silver screen are unparalleled. Bela Lugosi is the name. You recognized it immediately, didn’t you? You saw Bela Lugosi pictures in your mind, or you heard the classic staccato “I vahnt-to suck-your blud.” Or you might have gone over all the films this definitive star made in his career of acting in over 109 movies over forty-two years.

Interesting, too, are the Bela Lugosi trivia:

Bela Lugosi ran away from home (and a strict father) at the age of eleven.

Lugosi’s jobs—besides acting—included mining, working the railroad, and working for the army (which he got out of by successfully feigning mental illness).

Bela Lugosi began acting not in films but on stage, in Shakespearean roles, when he was a young man in Hungary (where he was born, in all places, Transylvania).

Though he was born Béla Ferenc Dezs? Blaskó (in October of 1882), he took a stage name for his work in Cinema of Hungary--Arisztid Olt—before becoming the Bela Lugosi we know.

His struggles and challenges include his being included in post-collapsed Hungarian Soviet Republic persecutions of left-wingers and trade unionists; getting addicted to morphine (which was originally prescribed for the intense back pain he suffered); having difficulties finding work (in the 30’s and 40’s), worrying him about supporting his family; divorce from a wife who announced she had divorced him by telegram; and his marrying five times throughout his life.

Lugosi’s Count Dracula debuted on stage, running for 33 weeks in 1929, two years before the movie version (which slated Lon Chaney for the part originally, only casting Lugosi after Chaney died and after heavy negotiations and pleading).

Bela Lugosi was paid much less than the star with second-billing, David Manners. He was paid $3500 for his role in Dracula.

Lugosi died at the age of seventy-three, of a heart attack which was reportedly drug-related. When he died, he was sitting in a chair holding a script by Ed Wood, the quirky but clever director who had sought out Lugosi and resuscitated his acting career.

He was buried in one of the Dracula capes he had worn in the stage productions of Horace Liveright and John Balderston’s Dracula, adapted from Bram Stoker’s novel of the same name.