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Over the decades, there have been many horror stars, starting with Lon
Chaney, and Boris Karloff [Boris
Karloff bio - click here], Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Vincent
Price immediately come to mind, maybe also Barbara Steele [Barbara
Steele bio - click here], Lon Chaney jr [Lon
Chaney jr bio - click here], John Carradine [John
Carradine bio - click here], Tod Slaughter [Tod
Slaughter bio - click here], George Zucco [George
Zucco bio - click here], Lionel Atwill [Lionel
Atwill bio - click here], Dwight Frye [Dwight
Frye bio - click here], Paul Naschy [Paul
Naschy bio - click here] and Robert Englund [Robert
Englund bio - click here]. However none of these people was
quite as iconic in sheer appearance as Bela Lugosi, whose simple
appearance seemed to spell horror, whose mere features seemed to be quite
as demonic, and who seemed to be quite so much at ease with playing malevolent
characters.
Bela Lugosi's Dracula
was pretty much the definite article, no other actor would play the
Transylvanian nobleman quite as convincingly, charmingly, seductively and menacingly
and brought the same East European flair to the role as Bela Lugosi (who
interestingly enough was born not far away from Dracula's
imagined home). And despite the over hundred actors who have played the
character since, none has reached the same cult status as Lugosi - with
only Christopher Lee coming close, but he always played the count more
British than Eastern European to begin with. That said, Lugosi played Dracula
in a mere two films, with a stretch of 17 years between them (a time during which both
Lon Chaney jr and John Carradine tried their hands on the role), and he played vampires in only two more films besides his Dracula
outings (and in one of these films he is even revealed to be a mere actor
impersonating a vampire in the end) - yet Bela's performance as the king of
vampires went down with the audiences incredibly well.
But even besides Dracula,
Lugosi created some memorable villains, like Murder Legendre in White
Zombie (1932, Victor Halperin), Ygor in Son
of Frankenstein (1939, Rowland V. Lee) and Ghost
of Frankenstein (1942, Erle C. Kenton) and any number of mad
scientists from The
Phantom Creeps (1939, Ford L. Beebe, Saul A. Goodkind) and The
Devil Bat (1941, Jean Yarbrough [Jean
Yarbrough bio - click here]) to Bela
Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952, William Beaudine) and Bride
of the Monster (1955, Ed Wood [Ed
Wood bio - click here]). Despite the success Bela
Lugosi had as Hollywood's leading horror villain though it should be noted
that he began his acting career in his native Hungary as a romantic lead
and matinee idol, and despite the fact that he has become some kind of
horror icon even when he was still alive, he was pretty much out of
work towards the end of his career and died a poor man ...
Early Life, Early Career
Bela Lugosi was born
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in Lugos, Austria-Hungary (later Lugos,
Hungary, now Lugoj, Romania) in 1882. Publicity during his high times in
Hollywood was quick to exploit the (relative) closeness of Lugos to
Transylvania and would claim that he was of aristocratic origins and his
family even owned land in Transylvania - both of which was not the case,
the Blaskós had actually been farmers for generations, and Bela's father
broke with family tradition to become nothing more glamourous
than a baker. Anyways, young Bela got bitten by the theatre bug
very early in his life, according to some sources even in his pre-teens,
and allegedly he ran away from home at age 11 to join a theatre group, but
this did by far not go as well as planned and young Bela spent most of his
youth doing menial jobs. And as a result of this, Bela, when he was
finally accepted into the theatre world in the early 1900's, found his own
lack of education quite embarassing and soon started to do some massive
reading to make
up for the years (literally) of formal education he had missed out on. Bela's
first appeance as a professional theatre actor might have been somewhen
around 1902, when he was working for a repertory company travelling the
country, and he was playing all sorts of roles, sometimes even sinister
ones (like that of Svengali's assistant in the play Trilby in
1903). During that time, too, his stagename was born. Initially, he
performed under a number of different names, but soon saw the futility of
this and settled for Bela Lugosi, which means nothing more than Bela
from Lugos. Lugosi might not have had much of an education, but as
actor he was a natural, so eventually, he rose in the ranks, and by 1910,
he could be seen as the male lead in Shakespeare's Rome and Juliet
in Szeged, then one of Hungary's top theatre cities. Lugosi soon moved
to Budapest and played several stages, but was usually relegated to
supporting parts, which was not to his liking. Eventually though, Lugosi,
was admitted to the Budapest National Theatre, the most prestigious state
subsidized theatre of Hungary. Here he was not cast in
leading roles either, but he saw work on this stage as a sort of
apprenticeship - plus it was a very secure job with definite career
prospects. Everything, you could say, was perfect, but then
disaster struck in the form of World War I. Bela volunteered to serve and
defend his country and was commissioned as an infantry lieutenant. He was
wounded three times during his service, and was honourably discharged from
the Army in 1916. He returned to the National Theatre, but again being
relegated to nothing more than supporting roles no longer left him
satisfied, and when he married (for the first of five times) in 1917 and needed a bigger income, he
entered the Hungarian film industry - which was by then a mere five years
old ...
European Silents During
his Hungarian film career, short as it was, Lugosi appeared in quite a
variety of roles, like the romantic (secondary) hero in Küzdelem a Létért/The
Leopard, the role of Lord Henry Wotton in Az Élet Királya/The
Royal Life, an early film version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of
Dorian Gray, a young suitor of a rich man's daughter in Casanova,
or a red herring role - something he would play again and again in
his Hollywood years - in Álarcosbál/Masked Ball (all four
1918, Alfréd Deésy). During his days in the Hungarian film industry,
Bela would also make a handful of films with director Mihály Kertész - the man who
would later become famous in Hollywood as Michael Curtiz -, namely Az
Ezredes/The Colonel (1917) - in which he played a crook -, Lulu
- in which he played the romantic lead - and 99 (both 1918). Most
of Lugosi's films from that time (1917 - 1918) were produced by the
company Star Film, and early in his film career, Bela went by the
name Arisztid Olt, before he figured going by his real name - well his
original stage name - would get him better roles and dropped his new
alias. After World War I though, Hungary, one of the successor
countries of the defeated Austrian-Hungarian Empire, was thrown into
political turmoil, and after revolution and counter-revolution, Lugosi
suddenly saw himself on the wrong side of the ruling class which tended to
imprison and execute sympathizers of the previous regime - so Bela
saw no other way out than to flee the country in 1919 - as did other later
film greats like Michael Curtiz and Alexander Korda. At first,
Bela Lugosi relocated to Vienna, Austria, but as he was not able to find
work there, he moved on to Berlin, Germany, where several directors, aware
of his filmwork in Hungary, offered him parts. His most
interesting films from his German era are:
- Sklavin fremden Willens/Hypnose/Hypnosis (1920,
Richard Eichberg), in which Lugosi plays a malicious hypnotist using
his powers to corrupt a young woman - which anticipates many of his
roles he would later play in American horror movies, from White
Zombie onwards.
- Der Januskopf/The Head of Janus (1920, F.W.Murnau), an early version of Jekyll
& Hyde, with Conrad Veidt playing the good doctor and
Lugosi his butler.
- Lederstrumpf, 1. Teil: Der Wildtöter und Chingachgook/The
Deerslayer and Lederstrumpf, 2.Teil: Der
Letzte der Mohikaner/The Last of the Mohicans (both 1920,
Arthur Wellin), adaptations of the Deerslayer
stories by James Fenimore Cooper in which Lugosi can be seen as
Chingachgook to Emil Mamelok's Deerslayer. These two movies hit
American cinemas in a condensed
version in 1923.
- Bela Lugosi played an evil Sheik in Die Teufelsanbeter/The
Devil Worshippers (1920, Marie Luise Droop), Auf den Trümmern
des Paradieses and Die Todeskarawane/Caravan of Death
(both 1920, Josef Stein), films based on Kara Ben Nemsi
novels by popular German author Karl May.
- In Der Tanz auf dem Vulkan, 1.Teil: Sybil Young/Dance on
the Volcano: Sybil Young and Der Tanz auf dem Vulkan, 2. Teil:
Der Tod des Grossfürsten/Death on the Volcano: The Death of
the Grand Duke (1920, Richard Eichberg), an espionage two-parter,
Lugosi can be seen playing the romantic lead - who eventually
sacrifices his life for a bolschewik spy - for possibly the last time
on screen.
Coming to America It
was in 1920 that Lugosi learned for a fact what he had thus far only
suspected: That he was a political outlaw in his home country Hungary. He
was 38 by then and decided to move to the USA, a country that promised
opportunities aplenty. Not able to afford the journey, he saw himself
forced to accept a job as an engineer on a ship, and without any papers,
he later had to illegally enter the United States - but he was granted
temporary political asylum thanks to the influence of some countrymen of
his residing in New York. Lugosi himself arrived in New York in
1921, where he soon got in touch a the Hungarian cultural organisation and
formed a theatrical troupe to perform plays by Hungarian playwrights for
fellow emigrés in New York and neighbouring cities - exclusively in
Hungarian language, since Lugosi did by that time not speak any English.
And his involvement with the theatre troupe - where he was producer,
director and star - certainly didn't help in learning English either. Eventually
though in 1922, Lugosi was discovered by theatre producer Henry Baron, who
wanted him for an off-Broadway production of The Red Poppy by
André Picard. Despite the language barrier, Lugosi accepted the job and
learned the role phonetically - and despite his obvious linguistic
shortcomings, Bela was reportedly convincing enough as the play's romantic
lead as he brought just the right dose of old world dignity and passion to
the role. This opened the doors for more and more engagements on English
language stages, even though on the rarest of occasions as romantic lead. Eventually,
Lugosi was also discovered for silent cinema, where language barriers
played less of a role. Bela's first film was The Silent Command
(1923, J.Gordon Edwards), a film about enemy spies wanting to blow up the
Panama Canal. Bela plays the lead villain (anitcipating the actor's future, one
wonders) to hero Edmund Lowe, and he meets a gruesome fate in the end. A
handful of other silent films followed The Silent Command, with
Lugosi mostly playing continental types of roles, like that of another
foreign spy in Daughters Who Pay (1925, George Terwilliger). Of
more interest might be The Midnight Girl (1925, Wilfred Noy) in
which Lugosi competes for the affection of an aspiring opera singer (Lila
Lee) with his own son, or the role of Harlequin in Duncan Renaldo's Punchinello
(1926), a short based on an Italian folk tale.
Dracula: From Stage to
Screen - and Beyond
During his early career in the movies,
Bela Lugosi never forgot his first love, the stage, and with various meaty
parts in quite a number of plays (not necessarily leads), he garnered
quite a reputation, until a play arrived in New York in 1927 after playing
for four years in the UK that Lugosi just seemed to be cut out for. The
play of course is Dracula, written by Hamilton Deane adapted from
the 1897 novel by Bram Stoker. The play (which was re-written for American
audiences by John L.Balderston) required a Dracula
a tad different from the one that Stoker had envisioned, inasmuch as he
was a more suave and even seductive character, a character that looked
good in evening clothes and who had a certain old-world charm to him, but who
also had a domineering presence on stage - a description that fits Bela
Lugosi to the t. And for once, even Bela's Lugosi's Hungarian accent
fitted his role. The play, which also featured Edward Van Sloan
as Van Helsing and Herbert Bunston as Doctor Seward (both later in Tod
Browning's Dracula from
1931), opened on Broadway in October 1927 and became an instant smash hit,
playing on Broadway, then touring the country until eventually settling in
Los Angeles in 1928, and it also was the first big success for Bela
Lugosi. Interestingly though, despite his success in theatre,
his film roles during that time were relatively small, his comparatively
larger roles were in Such Men are Dangerous (1930, Kenneth Hawks),
in which he plays a plastic surgeon who transforms ugly millionaire Warner
Baxter into a new man, Renegades (1930, Victor Fleming), a foreign
legion yarn starring Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy in which he plays an Arab
chieftain, and The Thirteenth Chair from 1929, Lugosi's first
collaboration with Tod Browning, a murder mystery in which Bela plays an
inspector trying to solve a murder by spiritualism. Eventually,
Carl Laemmle and Carl Laemmle jr, then heads of Universal,
bought the film rights of the play Dracula, and reportedly, Bela Lugosi himself
was involved in the acquiring process, haggling with the Stoker-estate
over the price. To his surprise however, when it came to casting the film,
Bela's name was at first not even mentioned, according to rumours the role
was first to go to John Wray, fresh from his success in All Quiet on
the Western Front (1930, Lewis Milestone). Eventually though the
studio decided to go for a bigger name for the lead, and Conrad Veidt,
Paul Muni, William Courtney and Ian Keith were all on the studio's
shortlist ... and Bela Lugosi. For some reason, the Laemmles decided on
Bela Lugosi in the end, and thank God they did. Reportedly, Lugosi
learned about this when he was touring the country with Dracula
once more and had almost given up on getting the role in the film. Regarding salary though, Universal
proved to be less than generous, paying Lugosi just $ 500 per week for a
seven week shoot (that's a total of $ 3,500, in case you don't want to do
the maths), and no share whatsoever in the film that would prove to be a
smashing success if there ever was one, and would be Bela's career-defining movie, even though he was already 48 (!) by the time Dracula
was filmed.
Dracula,
released in 1931, was directed by Tod Browning, and starred, besides
Lugosi, Edward Van Sloan
as Van Helsing and Herbert Bunston as Doctor Seward,
who were both also in the play (as mentioned above), plus Dwight Frye
giving an impressive performance as Renfield [Dwight
Frye bio - click here], David Manners as the rather pale
romantic lead Jonathan Harker and Helen Chandler as a rather subdued
damsel-in-distress Mina Harker. The film became an instant success
(which many film historians quickly linked to the Depression Era as such
even though the play was playing successfully throughout the country before
the Great Depression), which is in large parts probably thanks to Lugosi's
performance, because critically viewed, the movie is far from a
masterpiece: Its second half drags on considerably and is quite stagey in
direction, and a tad too much in the film is just hinted at. However, a great and subtle performance by Bela Lugosi (who
had to relearn the role which he basically hammed up on stage), greatly
supported by especially Dwight Frye and Edward Van Sloan, inventive
direction by Tod Browning (during the first half of the film at least) and
lavish sets (which Universal
would re-use again and again) helped to make this film worthwhile after
all. Besides being a box office success, the film also secured
Lugosi a contract with Universal
and launched
Universal's
much celebrated horror cycle and had Bela Lugosi typecast for
the rest of his career - for better or worse ... After the
success of Dracula, Universal
were quick to link Lugosi to another gothic horror property they had just
bought, Frankenstein,
and initially Lugosi was quite thrilled by the idea of playing the monster
in that one, which was to be written and directed by Robert Florey, and
together with make-up wizard Jack Pierce, he was reportedly already
working on a suitable monster make-up - but ultimately he bailed out of
the project, reportedly either because he didn't want to become typecast
as a horror actor (too late for that) or because he thought the role
wasn't meaty enough (and he was wrong on that account). Other sources
claim though that the Laemmles removed him from the film after the
screentests proved to be less than adequate. Eventually, Frankenstein
was directed in 1931 by James Whale (Robert Florey bailed out as well)
with Boris Karloff [Boris Karloff
bio - click here] in the role of the monster, and Karloff, a relative
unknown until then, showed the world just how meaty the role was by
turning in his own iconographic performance and suddenly challenging
Lugosi for the throne of king of horrors - a throne that Lugosi had easily
usurped with Dracula due to lack of competition.
While
Frankenstein
was still in preparation with Lugosi as its proposed star, Universal
lent him out to Fox
Film to play a mystic in The
Black Camel (1931, Hamilton MacFadden), an early film of the Charlie
Chan series starring Warner Oland. Essentially, his role in The
Black Camel is a red herring role, but it is clearly modeled after
Dracula, relying again
on Bela Lugosi's aura of mystery and his exotic charms. Plus it can't be
conincidence that Bela's Dracula-co
star Dwight Frye is also in the film (as mad butler who turns out to be
the killer in the end. After his excursion to Fox
Film, Bela went on loan to First National,
where he played the small part of a Latino baddie in the Joe E.Brown
comedy Broadminded (1932, Mervyn LeRoy), which must have been to
Bela's liking inasmuch as he always felt the desire to play comedy - even
if Broadminded didn't turn out all too well. Finally,
Lugosi returned to Universal
to fulfill his contractual obligations, and he was given the starring role
in Murders in the
Rue Morgue (1932, Robert Florey), a shocker only vaguely based on
Edgar Allen Poe's famous genre-defining detective story while having all
the more to do with penny dreadfuls from later years. The thing it does
have to do with Poe's story is a killing gorilla in Paris, France, but the
plot about a mad scientist called Mirakle (Bela Lugosi of course) wanting
to inject women with gorilla blood is pure pulp. Silly as Murders
in the Rue Morgue might be concerning plot though, it's
beautifully photographed, features some lavish sets, and Lugosi as the
villain is impresive as ever.
The Boogeyman of the 1930's After
Murders in the
Rue Morgue, Bela Lugosi left Universal
for the time being, even though the studio could have promised him a
lucrative future inside their horror cycle
(to which Lugosi returned every now and again). Lugosi though wanted to
break away from horror, play straight roles, comedies even. However,
Lugosi had to notice that the film industry had little interest in Bela
the romantic hero or Bela the funnyman - which wasn't too bad (at least
financially) because following the success of Dracula
and Frankenstein,
pretty much all studios big or small had started making horror films or at
least horror-ish films.
And how did Bela react to all of this? In
1932, he made his maybe best ever horror film, White
Zombie (Victor Halperin), a shocker independently produced by
brothers Edward and Victor Halperin and released by United
Artists. In this Haiti-set shocker, Bela plays the mystic Murder Legendre
who uses his voodoo powers to turn people into walking dead and who is
asked by a spurned lover (Robert Frazer) to make the girl he adores (Madge
Bellamy) his - with most gruesome results.
Interestingly, for decades White
Zombie was considered old-fashioned even for its time, its box
office success notwithstanding, and only in the past few years it became
celebrated for the horror masterpiece it really is, with its eerie
landscapes, long silent scenes, superimposed pictures and many for the
time unusual close ups. And Victor Halperin's direction makes even the
familiar Universal-sets
(White Zombie was
shot on the Universal-backlot)
seem fresh and uncanny, and he manages to turn the (decidedly non Haitian)
sets into a nightmare version of Haiti. And Bela Lugosi? Of course,
he totally hammed up his role, but his acting style fits his character
perfectly, so his performance comes across as one of the best of his
career, and thanks to Halperin's direction, that takes up much time
examining the eerie actor's facial features (accentuated of course by make
up courtesy of Jack Pierce), his Murder Legendre has turned into an iconic
character almost rivalling his
Dracula. Of course, Lugosi could not expect to star
in genre masterpieces all of the time, but his next few films, made for
quite a variety of production outfits, were not too bad either:
- The campy Chandu
the Magician (1932, William Cameron Menzies, Marcel Varnel)
has Bela playing a supervillain with a deathray fighting the titular
hero (Edmund Lowe) in Egypt. The film, produced by Fox
Film, was based on a popular radio
show of the same name. Interestingly, when this show was adapted for
the big screen once again in serial-form, Bela was promoted to titular
hero (but more about that later).
As for Chandu
the Magician, the film is not perfect or anything but fun to
watch as an old fashioned fantasy adventure
- Something similar can also be said about said about The Death Kiss (1932, Edward
L. Marin), a low budget yet rather enjoyable murder mystery set in the
film industry itself (and therefore parodying it rather charmingly) produced by little KBS
Productions. On first look the film obviously tries to cash in on
Dracula by its
suggestive title and poster, and even by having Edward Van Sloan and
David Manners in the cast - but that doesn't make the film as such any
less entertaining.
- Paramount-produced
Island of Lost Souls (1932. Erle C.Kenton) was at best a so-so
adaptation of H.G.Welles' famous novel The Island of Doctor Moreau
(but according to many, the film was the best adaptation of the novel
still) with popular screen heavy Charles Laughton as the evil doctor
who turns animals into human, and Lugosi as the Sayer of the Law,
leader of the animal-men.
- The Whispering
Shadow (1933, Colbert Clark, Albert Herman) was Lugosi's
first serial, produced by serial-specialist Mascot
[Mascot history - click here]
- and it's pretty much your typical Mascot-serial:
Not exactly high on logic, but with many chases, fights and shoot-outs
to make up for it. Lugosi plays the owner of a wax museum in this
one who is also a scientific genius, and also a logical suspect for
all the murders that occur in the course of the proceedings - which is
of course reason enough for
him to be revealed as not to be the killer in the end but an
undercover agent. (The killer, by the way, turns out to be the comic
relief Karl Dane, while Malcolm McGregor plays the heroic
lead and Viva Tattersall his love interest and Lugosi's daughter.)
- Columbia
produced Night of
Terror (1933) is a rather disappointing murder mystery of the old
dark house-variety that's a little too convoluted and too
far-fetched for its own good. Lugosi, though top-billed, plays
little more than a typical red herring role.
- Paramount's
International House (1933, A.Edward Sutherland) is an all-star
movie featuring talent as diverse as W.C. Fields [W.C.
Fields bio - click here], Cab Calloway, George
Burns and Gracie Allen, socialite Peggy Hopkins Joyce, Rudy Vallee,
and - yes - Bela Lugosi among others, all playing in a comedy about the
introduction of television and a variety of international agents who
want to get their hands on it, Bela in a rare non-horror role being one of
them.
- The Devil's in Love (1933, William Dieterle), a Fox
Film-produced Foreign Legion drama starring Victor Jory, Loretta
Young, Vivienne Osborne and David Manners, has Lugosi in another
non-horror role, but this time around his role is so small he's not
even mentioned in the film's opening credits.
Bela Lugosi's next bona fide classic was Edgar G.Ulmer's The
Black Cat (1934), but not so much because it marked
his return to Universal
(he had just signed a three film deal with the studio) or its classic
horror series, nor because it marked the first collaboration
between Lugosi and the other horror great of the time, Boris Karloff [Boris
Karloff bio - click here], but
because of director Ulmer's exceptional directorial effort. When the rest
of Hollywood was still strictly thinking in period terms regarding horror
(especially concerning sets), Ulmer adapted art deco and gave the film a
modern yet entirely eerie look. Bela plays a former prisoner of war in
this one and Boris Karloff his former warden, with David Manners and Julie
Bishop caught in between them. In the end, Bela turns out to be one of the
good guys who is allowed to die a hero's death, even though everyone in
the cast has suspected him of being a baddie at one point of the film or
another. That said though, in this film Lugosi is easily upstaged by Boris
Karloff, quite simply because Karloff has the far meatier role.
By the way, The
Black Cat has even less to do with the Edgar Allen Poe short
story it is supposed to be based on than Murders in the
Rue Morgue.
Universal
was quick to reunite Lugosi and Karloff, their horror dream team, in Gift
of Gab (1934, Karl Freund), but this film with Edmund Lowe carrying
the feeble main plot about a writer trying to save a radio station, is
little more than a revue show, and the roles of both Lugosi and Karloff
are comparatively small, unimportant and unimpressive.
With his next two Universal-films
to fulfill his deal (Gift of Gab was not part of the
three-picture-contract) still in preparation, Lugosi was once again sent
wandering, and he once again accepted work from all kinds of studios, both
big and small, and the outcome is therefore very uneven:
- Above-mentioned The
Return of Chandu (1934, Ray Taylor), produced by Sol Lesser's Principal,
is another film (this time a serial to be precise) based on the Chandu
the Magician radio show, only this time Bela plays the
magician himself instead of his nemesis.
And truth to be told,
Lugosi is quite good as the good guy for a change, even though the
serial as a whole suffers from uneven pacing and from too much magic
involved to solve everything (that said of course it has to be
mentioned tas well that Bela really comes into his own only when he's doing
magic).
- In Monogram's Mysterious
Mr. Wong (1934,
William Nigh), it was back to bad guys for Lugosi as in this one he
plays the titular Chinese villain opposite Wallace Ford's nosey reporter
and his girlfriend Arline Judge. Some sentiments that might nowadays no
longer be seen politically correct aside, this is an entertaining if not
all that special little thriller, even though Lugosi's thick Hungarian
accent can't fool anyone into thinking he's Chinese.
(By the way,
this film has nothing to do with the Mister
Wong-series Monogram
produced years later with [mostly] Boris Karloff in the title role,
which was [mostly] also directed by William Nigh.)
- In the Columbia-melodrama
The Best Man Wins (1935, Erle C.Kenton), Lugosi has little more
than a cameo appearance in a tale of two friends (Edmund Lowe once again
and Jack Holt) in love with the same woman (Florence Rice) - a situation
not made any easier by an arm-amputation.
- MGM's Mark of the Vampire (1935, Tod Browning) marked the
third and final collaboration between Bela Lugosi and Dracula-director
Tod Browning and it marked Bela Lugosi's return to the role that made
him famous, that of a vampire. However, while not entirely bad, Mark of the Vampire
is also less than convincing, with Lugosi in the end being revealed to
be nothing but an actor playing a vampire to scare some baddies
out of hiding rather than the real thing. Actually the film was a(n
inferior) remake of Tod Browning's own Lon Chaney-starrer London
After Midnight (1927), but with Chaney's role split in two, Lugosi's
fake vampire and Lionel Barrymore's investigating inspector.
- The Mystery of the Marie Celeste/Phantom Ship (1935,
Denison Clift) even took Lugosi to the UK, to star in one of Hammer
Film's very first films, a very fictional recounting of the
mysterious goings-on on the Marie Cleste, turning the whole thing
into a murder mystery. Lugosi turns in a very nice, unusually subtle and
nuanced performance though.
- Another murder mystery is Murder
by Television (1935, Clifford Sanforth), a film by small-time
studio Cameo
Productions, which has very little to go for itself, it's a
terribly muddled, terribly directed and terribly acted whodunnit with
sci-fi-touches, and even Bela Lugosi (in a dual role) gives one of his
lesser performances in this one, with only Hattie MacDonald left
with the insurmountable task to liven
things up a bit.
Finally, Universal
had its next two projects for Bela Lugosi ready, both co-starring Boris
Karloff [Boris Karloff bio -
click here]: The Raven (1935,
Lew Landers) and The
Invisible Ray (1936, Lambert Hillyer).
The former is a shocker which is, much like The
Black Cat before it, only allegedly based on something by Edgar
Allen Poe. In the film, Lugosi plays a Poe-obsessed doctor who is also
obsessed by leading lady Irene Ware, whose life he once saved. But when
her father Samuel S.Hinds forbids them to see each other, he plans his
cruel revenge on all of them and coaxes cutthroat Boris Karloff into
helping him. In a reversal from The
Black Cat, this time around it's Bela Lugosi who is allowed to
upstage Karloff.
While The Raven was a
typical gothic by all means, The
Invisible Ray on the other hand is almost pure sicence fiction, a
story involving time travel, a meteor, radiation poisoning and the like -
and while the film is anything but intelligent, it's much fun on a pulp
level. Contemporary audiences though were a little disappointed that it
lacked the typical Universal's horror-touch.
Even less horror was Postal Inspector (1936, Otto Brower), an Universal-produced
crime drama of the B-variety starring Ricardo Cortez. In this one Lugosi
plays a nightclub owner who becomes a crook because he is indebted to a
bunch of gangsters. The film also includes some musical numbers.
In the second half of the 1930's, things took a less than fortunate turn for
Bela Lugosi, his role was dropped from the Dracula-sequel
Dracula's Daughter
(1936, Lambert Hillyer), he himself dropped out of the White
Zombie-sequel, (the ultimately disappointing) Revolt
of the Zombies (1936, Victor Halperin) - his role was then given
to Dean Jagger -, and the film he wanted to make (and also produce)
instead, Cagliostro, didn't find a backer. At around the same time,
a two-picture deal with a British company fell through when Bela learned
to go to the UK, his dogs would have to be quarantined for 6 months (!).
Then, in 1937, the British censorship board decided on a ban on horrorfilms,
and since the UK was then America's biggest foreign market by far, many
studios, first and foremost Universal,
decided to cease producing shockers altogether ... and despite his talents
in other fields, shockers were Bela Lugosi's stock-in-trade.
Accordingly, Bela Lugosi's output soon turned less than stellar:
In late 1936, he played another baddie - a Eurasian who wants to start
a war between Caucasians and Asians in Chinatown - in the (rather weak)
Sam Katzman-produced serial Shadow
of Chinatown (Robert F.Hill), with the later Bruce Bennett Herman
Brix playing the hero, and in his sole 1937 cinematic effort S.O.S. Coast Guard
(Alan James, William Witney [William
Witney bio - click here]), an early Republic-serial
[Republic history - click here], Lugosi
plays a mad munitions inventor
called Boroff opposite Ralph Byrd's hero.
To what an extent the decline of the horror genre hurt Bela Lugosi's
career in particular is best demonstrated by the fact that he did
not make one single film in 1938. During that time, Bela lost pretty much
all of the fortune he made in better days, and when his son, Bela jr, was
born in early 1938, he, a big star just a few years ago, had to relie on actors
relief to at least pull through, as even his theatrical career was
dwindling down. 1939 started less than promising as well, with Bela
Lugosi playing the villain in yet another serial, Universal's
The Pantom Creeps
(Ford L. Beebe, Saul A.Goodkind), a science fiction chapterplay in which
he plays yet another mad genius. But even though stills from that serial
turn up virtually everywhere, it is not one of Universal's
better cliffhangers and not one of Lugosi's better efforts, despite the
fact that it seems to have everything a pulp fan craves for in it, from suspended
animation and poisonous gasses to a stupid looking robot and a devisualizer
(basically just a belt that makes its wearer
invisible - but just imagine Bela saying devisualizer repeatedly
... great). Edward Van Sloan from Dracula
is also in this one by the way. With his last three films, all
serials, it seems that Bela Lugosi had found his future, a one-dimensional
villain in chapterplays, not really a satisfying career move for an actor
of his calibre and experience. But then, Universal
decided to re-release its horror classics Dracula
and Frankenstein
.. and everything would change for the better ...
The Return of Horror
Universal
re-released Dracula
and Frankenstein
in late 1938 - and was almost overwhelmed by how well they were doing at
the box office, so much so that the
studio bosses quickly came up with a plan to revitalize their
horror cycle, with a big budget film featuring an all-star
cast to be shot in colour: And the idea for Son
of Frankenstein (1939, Rowland V.Lee) was born, a film starring not only Universal-horror
regulars Karloff (as the monster of course) [Boris
Karloff bio - click here] and Lugosi but also Basil
Rathbone [Basil Rathbone
bio - click here] - then a popular A-movie villain - in the title role and Lionel
Atwill [Lionel
Atwill bio - click here]. And even though the idea to shoot
the film in colour was soon dropped, the film still had a lavish look to
it and showed Universal
could still make swell chillers (even if it loses out in comparison to
either of James Whale's two Frankenstein
efforts). The best thing about Son
of Frankenstein though is its swell performances: Basil Rathbone
is good as ever, Lionel Atwill as chief of police with a wooden arm gives
one of the most amusing performances of his career, Karloff simply is
the monster - but Bela Lugosi manages to steal the show as mischievous and
cunning hunchback Ygor who uses the monster as a tool for his personal
vendetta - and despite heavy makeup, something Lugosi was normally not too
fond of, Bela was on top of his game. He was so good actually that the
originally very small role of Ygor was constantly extended during filming
until he was one of the lead characters.
Ygor also caught on
with the audience, since besides the monster he was the only character to
return in Son
of Frankenstein's sequel Ghost
of Frankenstein (1942, Erle C. Kenton). However, Ghost
of Frankenstein is no match to Universal's
previous Frankenstein-efforts,
just a quickly made and badly scripted B-movie to cash in on former
glories and to give Lon Chaney jr [Lon
Chaney jr bio - click here], the new face of Universal
horrors a chance to cement his reputation - Chaney jr had
landed an extraordinary success just the previous year with The
Wolf Man (1941, George Waggner), a film in which Lugosi had a
small role as a lycanthropic gypsy. In Ghost
of Frankenstein however, Chaney jr proves that as the monster, he
is no match for Boris Karloff, and Lugosi as Ygor, totally hamming it up
this time, is the most entertaining thing to watch in the whole movie.
Eventually,
Bela Lugosi gets to play Frankenstein's
monster, a role he turned down 12 years earlier, in 1943 after all, when
he was already in his early 60's. The movie in question is Frankenstein
meets the Wolf Man (Roy William Neill), a movie with a title that
is pretty much self-explanatory and a film which started the trend to -
due to lack of inspiration on the screenwriters' behalf one is led to
believe - just let the Universal-monsters
meet each other, and this time it's Bela as the monster and Lon Chaney jr
as the Wolf
Man. The film is pretty much as silly as I make it to be, and
unfortunately Bela - not at all helped by a bad script that leaves him
little room to develop his role - proves to be as little a match for
Karloff in the monster-role as Chaney jr was.
For whatever
reason, Bela Lugosi did not take part in Universal's
next two monster-all-star movies, House
of Frankenstein (1944, Erle C.Kenton) and House
of Dracula (1945, Erle C.Kenton), but he did return to the series
one more time - and in his role, Dracula,
too - in the spoof Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948, Charles Barton), which was
little more than a swansong to the Universal
horror cycle as such, but at least decent, straight
performances by Lugosi as Dracula
and Lon Chaney jr as Wolf
Man outbalance the rather unfunny comedy of Abbott
& Costello. Even besides these series-horrors
though, Bela Lugosi was keeping pretty busy in the time frame from Son
of Frankenstein in 1939 to 1948, the time Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein was produced - which also marked
the end of Universal's
horror cycle, incidently.
1939 also saw Bela playing a
red herring-role in The Gorilla
(Allan Dwan), a rather atrocious Ritz
Brothers-vehicle also starring Lionel Atwill [Lionel
Atwill bio - click here]. In this horror comedy of the murder
mystery/haunted house variety neither Lugosi - playing your typical
sinister butler - nor anybody else can do much to save the film from so-so
comedy and realyl bad scriptwriting. Another movie comedy in
which Lugosi had a supporting part fares much better in that respect, the
Greta Garbo-starrer Ninotchka (1939, Ernst Lubitsch), which was nominated
for four Academy Awards (none for Lugosi though) and which gave Lugosi an opportunity to
act in a film outside of the horror genre - a rare treat at this point of
his career. However, Ninotchka was pretty
much the last A-movie
Bela Lugosi was in, from now on it was all B's for him - even if some of
them were quite good ...
- The Dark Eyes of London/The Human Monster (1940,
Walter Summers) is a British film based on an Edgar Wallace-novel in
which Bela Lugosi plays a villain called Doctor Orloff. In all, the
film is pretty enjoyable and Bela gives one of his better
performances.
- The Saint's Double Trouble (1940, Jack Hively) is the third
film in RKO's
The Saint-series starring George Sanders (before
Sanders, Louis Hayward played the role in one film for RKO).
However, the film is little more than a routine (if entertaining)
series movie, with Bela in one of his last attempts to break away from
his horror image, rather wasted in a supporting role.
- Black Friday
(1940, Arthur Lubin) is another Universal-production
that teams Bela Lugosi up with Boris Karloff [Boris
Karloff bio - click here], but for some reason, the
two do not have a single scene with each other and Lugosi, despite
second billed, is a mere supporting character in this one (even if his
performance is fine as usual). In all though, Black
Friday is an enjoyably silly mix of horror-, science fiction-
and gangster-motives co-scripted by Curt Siodmak [Curt
Siodmak bio - click here] that simply should not be taken
too seriously.
- RKO's You'll
Find Out (1940, David Butler) is a horror comedy that unites
Lugosi and Karloff with fellow screen villain Peter Lorre [Peter
Lorre bio - click here], but basically the film is little
more than a showcase of popular bandleader Kay Kyser and his band.
In 1941, Bela starred in a film that would over the years become a
recognized B-horror classic, and a film, that is actually better than its
reputation: The Devil Bat
(Jean Yarbrough [Jean
Yarbrough bio - click here]), a low budget cross between
gothic horror and science fiction of the mad scientist variety produced by
PRC [PRC
history - click here]. In this film, Bela plays a plays physician
who thinks the bosses of a perfume company have tricked him out of the
gains for a shaving lotion he has developed - and thus develops another
shaving lotion that drives the giant bat he keeps in his basement mad and
makes it kill whoever wears the lotion. Of course, the plot is silly as
can be, but Lugosi plays his role with an absolute gusto, and makes simple
lines like "Rub it here, at the tender part of
your neck" memorable and a simple "good bye" even
menacing. Now this is one film no Bela Lugosi- and/or 1940's horror fan
should miss out on !
The Devil Bat
was the only film Bela ever did with poverty row studio PRC,
unfortunately, judging from the film, but with another poverty row studio,
Lugosi had a way longer association: Monogram.
In all, from 1941 onwards, Bela made 9 films with the studio, which
were overall of varying quality, but none of them was too good:
- Invisible Ghost
(1941, Joseph H.Lewis) featured Bela as a man who believes his wife
(Betty Compson) has died many years ago, while actually she is kept in
his own basement by his gardener. And time and again, she visits him,
and he, believing she's a ghost, goes bananas everytime and kills
someone. Confused ? To be honest, so was I, but weird plot aside, this
is one of the more atmospheric Monogram-shockers.
- Spooks Run Wild
(1941, Phil Rosen) on the other hand is a horror-comedy that pits
Lugosi against the East
Side
Kids (later Bowery
Boys) and that paints everything in broad strokes. And
essentially the film isn't very funny. Bela Lugosi merely plays a red herring
role in this one.
- Black Dragons
(1942, William Nigh) is a rare departure from the horror genre (of
sorts), actually, as this film is an espionage drama made as a World
War II propaganda effort. In this one, Bela plays a
plastic surgeon getting revenge on a group of Fifth Columnists. The
whole thing is pretty weak though, an uneven mix of murder mystery,
old dark house story and espionage tale. Reportedly, the film was rushed
into production to producer Sam Katzman could be the first to make a
propaganda movie - and it shows.
- The Corpse Vanishes (1942, Wallace Fox)
is pure horror again. In this one, Bela plays a scientist who needs to
kidnap brides about to be married and kill them to restore the beauty of his wife.
As stupid as this film is, it's quite enjoyable in a trashy sort of
way though.
- Concerning pure outrageousness, Bowery
at Midnight (1942, Wallace Fox) might take top honours: In it
Bela plays a benign doctor by day - who is a philanthropist by night
who feeds the poor. But on the side, he also runs a crime ring and
routinely kills his accomplices at crime scenes. And unbeknowest to
even himself, he also has a bunch of zombies in his basement (!). A
bad film, sure, but also a laugh riot.
- The Ape Man (1943,
William Beaudine) sees Bela playing a mad scientist who has injected
simian spinal fluid into his body, which causes him to slowly turn
into a gorilla, which is why he looks himself into a cage with a real
gorilla. But Bela figures he can get his own human self back if he
injects human spinal fluid into his own body to counteract the simian
spinal fluid - but spinal fluid can only be obtained
by way of murder ...
- Ghosts on the Loose (1943, Willliam Beaudine) pits Bela
against the East
Side
Kids once again, and again the film is a rather lame horror
comedy. An early part for Ava Gardner might be the most interesting
thing about this film as such, while Lugosi is rather wasted as the
leader of a Nazi spy ring.
- In Voodoo Man
(1944, William Beaudine), Lugosi tries to revive his long-dead wife by
a combination of voodoo and hypnotism, and to make the film more
horror-like, he also needs the corpses of several young women. Horror
regulars John Carradine [John
Carradine bio - click here] and George Zucco [George
Zucco bio - click here] also in this one.
- John Carradine is also Return of the Ape Man (1944, Phil
Rosen), which is a sequel to The Ape Man
only in title. Here, Lugosi plays a scientist (mad, of course), who
wants to revive an ape man (Frank Moran) found in the Arctic via brain
transplantation - though it eludes me why.
Generally speaking, Monogram
in the 1940's had some of the most muddled up horror screenplays out
there. What the films lacked in the script department though - and indeed
in the budget department - they tried to make up with sensationalist plot
ideas and colourful casting, like Lugosi as mad scientist of course,
midget actor Angelo Rossitto in various sidekick roles, and Minerva Urecal
playing some old hag or other, no matter if the plot demanded it. This all
made Monogram's
horror output enjoyable in a trashy sort of way, even if all their
shockers were far from being classics. Bad movie lovers like myself though
have fond memories of them ...
Films Bela made in the first half of the 1940's not yet mentioned above
also included yet two more efforts for Universal
- the horror comedy The Black Cat
(1941, Albert S.Rogell) and the
shocker/murder mystery Night Monster (1942, Ford L.Beebe) -, and a
film produced by Columbia,
The Return of the Vampire (1944, Lew
Landers).
The Return of the Vampire
deserves special attention because
it returned Bela to the role he has become most famous for and - if I dare
say so - he plays the best, that of the vampire. The vampire he plays in
this movie is essentially Dracula
in all but name, an Eastern European nobleman who seems to be seductive
and dangerous at the same time and who has a very commanding aura. And
even though Bela was visibly scarred by arthritis and drug addiction and
was by now (at 62) a bit too old for the part, he still pulled off his
performance like a charm and smoothed out the weaker parts of the film,
like plotholes, leaps of reason and a silly looking werewolf.
While Lugosi's role in The Return of the Vampire
had an almost
iconic quality to it, his part in One Body too Many (1944, Frank
McDonald) was a mere supporting character, a butler who also serves as the
film's running gag. On the whole though, this Paramount-produced
film is actually pretty entertaining, a horror/murder mystery leaning
strongly towards comedy starring Jack Haley and Jean Parker.
While One Body too Many
has comedic undertones, RKO's
Zombies on Broadway (1945, Gordon Douglas) is an outright comedy
starring Wally Brown and Alan Carney as sort of ersatz-Abbott
& Costello (who in turn were of course nothing more than
ersatz-Laurel
and Hardy), with Lugosi playing it straight as a mad scientist
(yes, another one) relishing in putting people into suspended animation.
Another RKO-film
from 1945 featuring Lugosi was much more serious and subtle than Zombies
on Broadway, the Val Lewton-production The Body Snatcher
(1945,
Robert Wise). In this one, which is based on a story by Robert Louis
Stevenson, Boris Karloff (in his last film with Lugosi) [Boris
Karloff bio - click here] plays a soft
spoken and benevolent cabman, who to augment his pay in order to help a
crippled kid, doesn't shy away from graverobbing and eventually even
murder. Compared to Karloff's meaty role, Lugosi's supporting character of
the blackmailing servant of the Doctor Karloff delivers his corpses to is
relatively small, and actually it was created especially for him as it isn't
crucial to the plot. But still, Lugosi makes the most of it (even if he does not
manage to upstage Karloff as it is).
While Val Lewton's contributions to the horror cinema in general are
cherished by genre fans even today (and with good reason), Bela's
next film, Genius at Work (1946, Leslie Goodwins), another movie
starring Wally Brown and Alan Carney is less so. Actually, the film is
only memorable because it starred horror great Lionel Atwill [Lionel
Atwill bio - click here] in his last role before his death,
playing a crime lord Brown and Carney as inept detectives try to track
down. Lugosi has the rather thankless role of Atwill's sidekick.
Scared to Death
(1947, Christy Cabanne) is Bela Lugosi's only colour film - but apart from
that and a nice framing plot, the film, a horror/murder mystery in which
Bela plays a weird Doctor whose main function seems to be to attract
suspicion, has little to offer, it's as routine on one hand as it's badly
written on the other, and not even Bela and fellow horror star George
Zucco [George Zucco bio -
click here] can do all that much to save it.
As mentioned above, Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein effectively ended the Universal's
horror cycle, and when Universal
stopped producing shockers, other studios were quick to follow, and for
Bela Lugosi it was pretty much history repeating, as just like in 1937/38,
when horror had fallen out of favour with the audiences, he once again
found it impossible to find cinematic work. Add to this the fact that Bela
turned 66 in 1948, his health was failing and he was by then addicted to
morphine, and you get an idea about his situation.
The Long Good-Bye
With no filmwork coming his way, Bela turned to television for
occasional appearances, starting with the Edgar Allen Poe-adaptation A
Cask of Amontillado (Robert Stevens) for the series Suspense
in 1949, in which Lugosi gave quite a memorable performance. Guest spots
on other then popular shows like the Colgate
Comedy Hour, You Asked for It and the Red
Skelton Show soon followed, but Bela's image as a horror man
combined with his way of (over-)acting prevented him from ever getting
regular work on TV. Instead he appeared in a few more plays on stage and in 1950, he was
doing a horror act in movie theatres around the country where he would do
a little routine with a man in a gorilla suit in the intermission of a Bela
Lugosi Double Feature (usually these double features consisted of his
lesser films).
Finally, in 1952, he was stranded in England after a tour of Dracula
through the country had failed commercially. Desperate for work and money,
Lugosi landed another film role,
that of a mad scientist in Old
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire/My
Son the Vampire (1952, John Gilling), in which he is pitted
against Arthur Lucan, then a popular comedian in his native England who
has played his character Old
Mother Riley, an elderly woman who just can't help getting
into trouble, in a total of 16 films from 1937 onwards, and always in
drag. Lugosi tries his best to keep his dignity in the rather broad comedy, but
the film as such might suggest how desperate Lugosi really was.
(Truth to be told though, despite the humiliating turn it provided Bela
Lugosi's career with, Old
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire is actually slightly amusing in all
its silliness.)
Back in the US, Lugosi starred as another mad scientist in another
horror-comedy, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952,
William Beaudine). Basically the film was supposed to be a launching pad
for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis impersonators Duke Mitchell and Sammy
Petrillo (and truth to be told, while Mitchell ain't no Dean Martin, Sammy
Petrillo is every bit as annoying as Jerry Lewis), but their career
quickly faltered when they were sued for plagiarism by the real Dean
Martin and Jerry Lewis. The film itself is a badly written South Seas
comedy with Bela Lugosi as mad scientist turning Mitchell into a gorilla
thrown into the mix, nothing to write home about, really.
In the 1950's, Bela Lugosi found it increasingly hard to get screen
work not so much because there were no more horror flicks, but because
horror has taken a different form and direction, that of the science fiction thriller,
produced primarily for drive-ins. And films of this kind, be it of the
alien invasion or the mad scientist variety, did not need stars of
Lugosi's charisma and ham acting style. The film were more
down-to-earth (also for budgetary reasons), and despite of often silly and
utterly unbelievable scripts, they were more rooted in current events
(namely the Cold War as such) than shockers from any previous
period.
In the light of this, Bela must have been grateful when he was hired by
notorious director Ed Wood [Ed Wood
bio - click here] for his first feature film, Glen
or Glenda (1953), a film about cross-dressing - something Wood was
very much into in private life. In the film, a wonderfully messed up story
about a crossdresser (Ed Wood) and the people around him (especially his
wife Dolores Fuller) trying to come to terms with his predilection, Lugosi plays a
godlike character, the pseudo-narrator of the film, who mumbles all sorts
of weird lines as the movie proceeds, including "Beware of the green
dragon that sits on your doorstep, he eats little boys, puppy dog tails,
and big fat snails."
Basically, Bela took the role in Wood's film because he needed the
money - badly -, and it is not known what he thought about the content of
the film (you must remember, when he made this little film about
transvestitism, a pretty much taboo subject in the 1950's, Bela was
already in his early 70's), it is however a fact that Bela Lugosi and
weirdo director Ed Wood quickly grew rather fond of each other, and
eventually in 1953 Wood would produce, write and direct The Bela Lugosi
Review, a Las Vegas show playing at the Silver Slipper that at the
same time celebrated and spoofed Lugosi's
Dracula
image and that was quite a hit with the audiences. Wood would also help
out Bela in many other capacities (besides directing him in films) over
the last years of his life, including management duties and dialogue
coaching.
In later years, many people including Bela's own son Bela jr claimed
that Wood just exploited Lugosi, but in my eyes that's not entirely true
since Wood during Lugosi's last years was one of the few people who saw
that he had (paid) work when big-name Hollywood almost uniformly turned its back
on him.
In 1955, Ed Wood directed Lugosi in yet another film, Bride
of the Monster, in which Bela Lugosi plays the more familiar role
of a mad scientist, and this time his thing is growing humans into
giants, with only limited success though. Lugosi's assistant is played by
Swedisch wrestler Tor Johnson [Tor
Johnson bio - click here], a quite impressive and scary guy in his own
right, but the most memorable thing about Bride
of the Monste is a giant
octopus sitting in a puddle which Bela has to fight in the movie's finale
- despite the fact that the octopus is totally inanimate, and poor Bela
has quite a hard time making the tentacles seem alive while fighting
it ... and of course he ultimately fails, simply because not all the
acting talent in the world could have brought this thing to life.
Compared to the at times almost surreal Glen
or Glenda, Ed Wood's most personal film, Bride
of the Monster was much more down-to-earth and stayed firmly
within genre confines, and apart from Bela's octopus fight and a round of
wrestling with Tor Johnson (in which Bela wears platform shoes to appear
to be a giant), it is no better or worse than your average underbudgeted
drive in sci-fi flick from its time. However, generally speaking, Wood's
films are usually much more entertaining (if for all the wrong reasons)
than films from the competition.
In 1955, Bela underwent treatment for his morphine addiction, and he
came out of rehab not only a healed man, but also with a new woman at his
side, Hope,
his (already) fifth wife, a longtime fan of his who was 34 years his
junior.
After rehab, Lugosi was anxious to start working again as soon as
possible, and Ed Wood already had him lined up for a new project of his, The
Ghoul Goes West, a horror Western with a decent budget to be shot in
colour which would pit Lugosi against legendary singing cowboy Gene Autry
... but then Autry backed out for dubious reasons, leaving the film
without its main selling point, and thus the movie never saw the light of
day.
Instead, Bela
started working on yet another Ed Wood film, Graverobbers
from Outer Space, but this film ran into continuous difficulties and
wasn't completed and released until 1959, well after Lugosi's death. By
then, the film's title had changed to (the notorious) Plan
9 from Outer Space, and in many scenes, Bela - who plays a vampire-like being - is doubled by one Tom Mason, who
sonstantly covers his face with his
cape to look more like Lugosi.
To this day, Plan
9 from Outer Space, which also stars bad taste-populars Tor Johnson [Tor
Johnson bio - click here] and Vampira, can be found on many a worst movie list, but that's
neglecting the film's unbeatable (if unintentional) entertainment value.
Simply put, Plan
9 from Outer Space is a laugh riot from start to finish, not so
much because of Wood's ineptitude as a director (as is commonly believed)
but because of his failure to see the discrepancy between what he wanted
to achieve and what the limited budget would allow him to achieve - which
provides the film with some of the funniest special effects in movie
history.
However, for once fate was good to Bela Lugosi, as it allowed him one
more decent production before his death, The Black Sleep (1956,
Reginald Le Borg), a decently budgeted old school gothic horror film with
quite a stellar cast, including Basil Rathbone [Basil
Rathbone bio - click here], Akim Tamiroff, Lon Chaney jr [Lon
Chaney jr bio - click here], John Carradine [John
Carradine bio - click here], and Tor Johnson [Tor
Johnson bio - click here]. In this respect,
it's just such a shame that the film as such turned out to be such a
boring piece of genre cinema ...
In 1956, Bela Lugosi also made his final appearance on stage in Devil's
Paradise by
James B. Leong, a play about the evils of drugs.
Bela Lugosi died from a heartattack
later that year while shooting some more scenes for Plan
9 from Outer Space. He was 74 years old, but not yet ready to slow
down as the script for his next film, The Final Curtain by Ed Wood, a movie about an aging horror actor, was already
waiting
on his night table. Eventually, Wood filmed the script as a TV-pilot with
Duke Moore in the Lugosi-role, but it soon vanished into obscurity.
A ham to the last, Bela was buried - according to his own wishes - in
his Dracula-cape,
the role that brought him so much fame, but that eventually also proved to
be a curse. Due to lack of work in the later years of his life, Bela died
a poor man, and allegedly it was Frank Sinatra who quietly paid for his
funeral (though that might be nothing more than a rumour).
Lugosi was married five times and had one son, Bela Lugosi jr, who was
born in 1938 with his fourth wife Lillian Arch, with whom he was married
from 1933 to 1953, when she could no longer bear his morphine
addiction.
It should also be mentioned that Bela Lugosi was one of the charter
members of the Screen Actors Guild, and he also did much charity
work - until he needed charity himself.
The Legacy

Flix.com
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Even though Bela Lugosi has died more than half a century ago, he is
still with us in many ways, almost all of his films from Dracula
onwards,
even the lesser ones, have been released on DVD, many a box set even use
his name as a sales point, numerous books have been written about him, Halloween masks with his iconic Dracula-image
are sold to this day, snippets from his old movies have made it into the
B-horror-hommage/spoof Terror
in the Tropics (2005, A.Susan Svehla), in 1997 the US-mail issued a commemorative stamp
bearing his image (as Dracula
of course) as part of their Famous Movie Monsters-line, and in
1995, Martin Landau got an Oscar for his role in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994)
- playing Bela Lugosi ... it's almost ironic in that respect that
nowadays, Bela seems much more popular than at the tail end of his career,
but it is also proof of his charisma as an actor and the strengths of his
performances, and it also proves his status as the horror icon.
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