My editor actually wanted me to cut this entry from the book (I did manage to put it in the chapters on Scary Vampires. It was a request I couldn't honor (it's freakin' Bela Lugosi, for crying out loud). Though in some respects, the request is in keeping with the life that was Bela Lugosi's. He would touch the tiniest corner of fame, and then have it pulled away from him whether through his actions, through timing, or through circumstances.
5. The Star
 |
| The iconic look |
What was it about Lugosi? Was it the regal bearing every bit
the bearing of a count? Was it the strange cadence to his speech as he wrestled
with words so foreign to him? Whatever it was, Bela Lugosi's portrayal of
Dracula left an indelible imprint on the film going psyche and remains the
archetype for the vampire decades after his performance. It seems amazing that
the studio considered several other actors for the role before at last giving
it to Lugosi, the man who played it so successfully on Broadway. He wore the
role like a well tailored suit though in the end, the suit would be in tatters.
 |
| A young Bela Lugosi |
Born Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko Oct. 20, 1882 in
Hungary (not far from Transylvania) he would eventually take as a stage name a
version of his home town’s name Lugos. His father was a banker and the Blasko
children were expected to enter respectable careers as well. His siblings did. He
couldn’t. Perhaps he had too much of the adventurer about him. Eventually he
ran away to escape his father’s ruling ways. In 1913, he joined the National
Theatre Company, after finding work in the back of a chorus with the Szeged
theater and plenty of manual labor before that.
He was not a timid man. In 1914 he enlisted in
the army to fight in the Great War. Once, while under fire from Russians, he left the tree he
was using as cover to help a wounded comrade and then returned only to find
that the tree had been blown away by a mortar in his absence. After his
discharge he went back to the National Theatre Company and was eventually
talked into Hungarian cinema by a friend. It was around this time that he
became very political, trying to create a National Trade Union of Actors among
theater and cinema actors; as well as writing politically orientated articles
for trade journals. Decades later, he would be instrumental in forming such a
union in Hollywood, though then, he did so anonymously perhaps remembering the
turbulent time in Hungary. He backed the wrong horse politically and when Bela
Kun’s communist regime fell, Lugosi was one of the many people fleeing from the
wrath of the new government. He fled to Vienna and eventually to Germany where
he found work in cinema there. In a curious coincidence, one of the people he
found work with was F.W. Murnau, director of that other movie. Eventually, however, he found himself drawn to the
United States and landed in New Orleans after an uncertain voyage across the
ocean on a ship where the crew wasn’t exactly fond of his politics. He found
his way to New York, immersed himself in the Hungarian community, and
eventually found his way on the stage.
 |
| Aspiring star |
His uncertainty with the English language has
been given as one reason for his inability to find work. And it’s true that in
the beginning he had to learn his part phonetically. But while he wasn’t a
formally educated man, he was self-educated; a voracious reader who craved
knowledge, perusing several periodicals daily, Hungarian and English. And he
even sculpted the likeness of his own head that would appear in the 1932 play
“Murdered Alive” that he starred in.
It’s possible that he would have had a more
successful career had he stayed and made films in Germany. In Europe, as he
explained once, an actor was expected to play a variety of rolls and play them
well. In the U.S., the audience wanted to see the same thing over and over. He
often bemoaned his reputation as a bogeyman, but it paid the bills.
 |
| Dracula's hungry |
Dracula was a part that he lobbied for hard
when the movie was being planned, even going so far as to contact Florence
Stoker to help obtain the rights (his lobbying would eventually work against
him with Universal executives who smelled his desperation and weren’t afraid to
play off it). One can understand; he did after all perfect it on Broadway. The
very traits that made him perfect for the role of Dracula, however, may have
spoiled for him others. The distinct features, the mesmerizing stare, the thick
accent; once that was associated with Dracula it was hard for audiences to see
him for anything other than Dracula, or the characters of horror he would be
compelled by financial need to return to throughout his life. Perhaps if the
follow up movie he made to Dracula had been better, he might have been able to
deter the typecasting. “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” based loosely on the Edgar
Allen Poe tale, was given to director Robert Florey who had been scheduled to
direct “Frankenstein” before it was given to James Whale. Lugosi played Dr.
Mirakle, a mad scientist using virgins in an attempt to create a creature that
he could breed with his ape Erik. While Lugosi’s performance was suitably
unnerving, the movie itself left much to be desired thanks to some injudicious
cutting.
After that he would be plagued by having to
compromise, as he did when having to take $500 a week to star in Dracula. Money
did not sit comfortably in Lugosi’s pocket. He was very much a man who lived
for today and was also guilty of giving away money to people who needed it. Yet,
fortune seemed always against him. He worked for a studio that changed hands in
1936 and the new owners were only interested in what they could get from his
decreasing king of horror image. As his money troubles deepened, Universal
would continue to take advantage of him and he would often work in outside, low
budget productions that cemented his image further. When given something to
sink his teeth into, he was perfectly up to the task as he did in the small
budget “White Zombies.”
 |
| (L to R) Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi |
In his movies with Boris Karloff he was more than capable of
holding his own and the common belief is that he stole the movie from him when
he appeared as Ygor in “Son of Frankenstein” a role that was originally much
smaller but grew as filming went on. Later he would play a notable yet small
role in the Greta Garbo film “Ninotchka” which the actor hoped would prove that
he could play something other than horror.
His worsening finances though left him taking
whatever roles that he could. He was an actor after all, this was his craft. But
he had been a star, and that’s what people were seeing; a fading star, taking
whatever roles would pay the bills. And very often, they didn’t. In 1936 a ban
on horror movies in Britain encouraged Universal to take them off their
shooting schedule, leaving even less productions that would be open to Lugosi. When
Bela Lugosi, Jr. was born in 1938, with no work coming in, Lugosi was left
turning to Actor’s Relief to help pay the hospital bills. When a re-issuing to
theaters of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” resuscitated the horror market, the
five-year deal he inked with Universal allowed him to buy back his beloved dogs
after poor finances forced him to give them away. It brought him films, like “Ninotchka” but horror crept back in “Ghost of
Frankenstein” where he reprised his role of Ygor to Lon Chaney, Jr.’s monster
(Karloff had give up the role by this time); and in “Frankenstein Meets the
Wolf Man” he donned the make-up he refused over a decade before and at last
played the Monster.
 |
| Abbott and Costello meet Universal Studio's big three monsters |
Throughout his career, he spoke hopefully of
making the transition to other roles but that reality seemed to slip further
away from him. Back on the stage he saw some success replacing Karloff in the
play “Arsenic and Old Lace” (many say his performance was better than Karloff’s).
He reprised the role of Dracula in the film “Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein,” a film and his performance that was well received with critics
and audiences. As the years went by, however, his body of work seemed heavy
with forgettable movies like “Scared to Death,” “Mother Riley Meets the
Vampire” (a film he agreed to do to collect passage fare back from England) and
“Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla.” It was in the 1950s that he met Ed
Wood, a huge fan of Lugosi’s who tried to help him launch his career in earnest
but poorly made films that Wood directed. It didn’t help.
In 1955, Lugosi entered rehab for a drug
addiction that started during his days with Universal. Divorced from his fourth
wife, he was living in an apartment and relying on the charity of friends to get him through. Upon leaving rehab three months later, he spoke glowingly of his
plans to star in “The Ghoul Goes West” to be directed by Ed Wood. And in an
effort to help people appreciate the danger of drug addiction, he starred in
“The Devil’s Paradise,” a show that ran in a little theater in Hollywood. The
“Ghoul” film never saw the light of day and on Aug. 16, 1956, he was found dead
by his fifth wife. Lugosi made what he could with his career and the chances he
was given. In the end, that might be all that anyone can say about their life.
No comments:
Post a Comment