Bela Lugosi’s Life As Reported In The Press
1931
Reading Eagle, June, 1931
FILM ACTOR NOW CITIZEN
Los Angeles, June 27 (AP) – Just to make certain, Bela Lugosi, film actor, who took a leading role in the screen thriller “Dracula,” renounced his allegiance yesterday to both Rumania and Hungary so he could become a citizen of the United States.
Lugosi said in Federal Court that he was not certain whether his home town, Lugos, formerly of Hungary, still is in that country or in Rumania, so he would renounce both countries and take the oath of allegiance to the United States.
Bela’s petition for U.S. citizenship
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1933
Los Angeles Evening Herald And Express, January 31, 1933
‘DRACULA’ WEDS BEAUTY
Bela Lugosi and Lillian Arch in Surprise Wedding
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The Norwalk Hour, February 1, 1933
BELA LUGOSI, ACTOR MARRIES BOOKKEEPER
Hollywood, Cal. – News of the marriage yesterday in Las Vegas, Nev., of Bela Lugosi, film actor, and 21-year-old Lillian Arch, a bookkeeper, was received today by Mrs. Stephen Arch, the girl’s mother.
Mrs. Arch said Lugosi and her daughter had been keeping company for two years, but she was unaware of their plans to elope. The romance of the screen actor and his bride, a slender brunette who also is an accomplished singer, was born at parties at the Magyar Athletic Club, where Miss Arch’s father serves as president and manager of the club’s athletic teams.
Both Lugosi and his bride are of Hungarian descent. The creator of the screen role of “Dracula,” before becoming an American citizen two years ago, was an Hungarian subject, the son of Baron Lugosi, whose ancestral estates are at Lugos, Hungary.
Lugosi’s former wife was Mrs. Beatrice Weeks, San Francisco, who lived with him only four days. Mrs. Weeks obtained a divorce at Reno.
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Warsaw Union, February 4, 1933
Bela Lugosi, Hungarian actor known for his role of Dracula on stage and screen, is shown with his bride, 21-year-old Lillian Arch of Los Angeles, a beauty of Hungarian descent. They are living in Hollywood. (Associated Press Photo.)
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The Pittsburgh Press, February 6, 1933
The Show Shops
Concerning Mr. Lugosi’s ‘Surprise Elopement’ and Mr. Cantor’s Views on Censorship
By KASPAR MONAHAN
DID YOU read about that “surprise elopement,” quoting the United Press, of Mr. Bela Lugosi and Miss Lillian Arch one day last week?
“Surprise elopement,” my eye! That’s putting it far too mildly. It’s positively astounding. At least it’s astounding to this column and to a certain Hollywood press agent. If Mr. Lugosi had been King Tut’s mummy this elopement couldn’t have been more amazing. It completely upset what the sports scribblers so blithely call the dope bucket.
That certain Hollywood press agent, now. What a whizzer he pulled a few months ago when Mr. Lugosi was busy turning human beings into animated cadavers in that horrendous “White Zombie,” on a local theater screen. The enterprising p.a. wanted folks to get the idea that in real life Mr. Lugosi was not so far remote from the evil oafs he created for the screen – the kind of fellow who’s completely home among screeching vultures, brooding owls and bats on the wing while a ghastly gibbous moon makes monstrous shadows of the mountain crags near his eerie retreat.
Quoth the enterprising one: “He (old Dracula Bela, himself) remains in his inaccessible retreat in the Hollywood Mountains and his constant companion is a half-breed malamute dog which howls at night just as if it were more wolf than domestic pet.”
What a Courtship!
WHICH conjures up the spectacle of Mr. Lugosi a-wooing bent, whispering sweet nothings to Miss Arch to the accompaniment of the howls of the distraught malamute. Maybe they muzzled the malamute. But the p.a. at the time didn’t touch on this angle. Instead he pictured Mr. Lugosi as one who would have no truck with Cupid. He quoted Mr. Lugosi as saying:
“People – thousands of them – chained by monotony, afraid to think, clinging always to certainties and terrified by the unknown. I am going into the mountains completely away from people to study. I must analyze all my theories and be alone to think.”
Swell pronouncement that is – coming from a bridegroom! But you’ll have lots of time in which to analyze, Bela – not theories but grocery, coal and gas bills. And it’ll take a lot of coal to keep that mountain bungalow warm when the blizzards sweep the landscape. And don’t forget the ear muffs for the vulture.
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1936
The Meriden Daily Journal, February 29, 1936
HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP
BY PAUL HARRISON
Hollywood – Dracula is dead, and the chief celebrant at the obsequies is Bela Lugosi.
Dracula is dead, and Lugosi, who created the monster, hopes that all memories of Dracula will die, too. Dracula made Lugosi famous and then, in true Frankenstein fashion, ruined him. The actor hopes now that he can go on being just an actor and not a horror-master.
With the movies’ genius for re-incarnation, nobody was sure that Dracula had drawn his last evil breath until Universal began filming “Dracula’s Daughter.” Lugosi isn’t even in it. The picture will show a Draculanean dummy on its bier, deader than a doornail.
So Lugosi looks ahead, as he did in the days when he was a leading man in the Hungarian National theatre, playing Ibsen, Shakespeare and such. At 48, his days as a romantic star are over, but at least he can do a variety of roles – most of them sympathetic ones.
He wants to justify the fan mail that Dracula used to receive. A sample: “We women can see in your eyes that you are really a good man. You should play sympathetic parts, too.”
Own Life a Trial
There has been horror enough in his own life. When the war interrupted his acting he was wounded, gassed, shell-shocked, and invalided home a captain. Later he became identified with the wrong side of one of several revolutions which followed the collapse of the Central powers, and fled for his life.
He appeared in German movies and sailed for America on a ship that tried its best to sink all the way across the Atlantic. He knew scarcely a word of English when he landed in New York and started out to rebuild his career.
His heavy accent might have been an insurmountable handicap if a producer hadn’t seen him in a Hungarian play and recommended him for the role of “Dracula.” It played three years, grossed $1,900,000, and later was made on the screen.
But the play typed Lugosi as a heeby-jeeby man. His part in the English “Mystery of the Marie Celeste” was his first return to a straight drama. Recently came his part as the “good” actor, opposing Boris Karloff in “The Invisible Ray,” and two more sympathetic roles will follow. So Lugosi seems to have shaken off Dracula’s ghost.
He lives in a big house surrounded by a wall and five menacing dogs. To see them and the master’s private arsenal, you’d think he still feared reprisal by his Hungarian political enemies of 1919.
He doesn’t, though. Lugosi is an American citizen, and really a very friendly fellow. He’ll show you his stocks of imported wine, and the nauseous sulphur water that he drinks, and his treasured books and oil paintings. His fourth wife is a pretty girl of Hungarian descent who formerly was his secretary. She washes his shirts.
Keeps In Condition
The actor’s remarkable physical condition wasn’t attained without a good deal of self-discipline. He rises early, at 5 or 6 a.m., drinks fruit juice and sulphur water, calls his dogs and hikes 10 or 15 miles in the hills. Returning, he has a bit more fruit juice, or maybe some raw vegetable juice. No solid food until night; then he has raw vegetables and a pound of meat, rare.
Lugosi is a cover-to-cover reader of a dozen leading national magazines. He’s one of the few Hollywoodsmen who takes citizenship seriously; conscientiously registers and votes in every election. Methodical, too; his days are charted to the minute.
Not Like Hollywood
His parties consist mostly of music, a little rare wine, and conversation. Lugosi hasn’t a single close friend in the movie business. He’s voluble about his love for America, but doesn’t care much about Hollywood.
Recently, on the occasion of their fourth wedding anniversary, he took his wife to the Trocadero. It was their first turn at night clubbing.
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1937
The Spartenburg Herald, May 29, 1937
Nice Monsters
Of the leading horror merchants, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Bela Lugosi, only the latter is scary out of make-up. Lorre has a macabre sense of humor but doesn’t succeed in scaring much of anybody with it.
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1938
The Evening Independent, January 7, 1938
“DRACULA” FATHER OF SON
Hollywood, Jan. 6 – (AP) – Bela Lugosi, “Dracula” of the screen, and Mrs. Lillian Lugosi are the parents of a 7 1-2 pound son born last night.
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Reading Eagle, January 7, 1938
Hollywood, Jan. 7 (AP) – Bela Lugosi, “Dracula” of the screen, and Mrs. Lillian Lugosi are the parents of a 7 pound son born Wednesday night.
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January 8, 1938
Bela Lugosi Jobless
by Louella Parsons
What’s the matter with Hollywood producers when a fine actor like Bela Lugosi can’t get a job? I happen to know that Bela has been so down on his luck that he has been well-nigh desperate. His wife just had a baby and there was no money to pay for the doctor until the Motion Picture Relief Fund came to the rescue. One of the largest auto concerns in Hollywood, and one to which the industry has paid thousands of dollars, instead of being charitable-minded threatened to take the unpaid tires from his car, and he was in a state of near collapse expecting the child to be born and no way to get the expectant mother to the hospital.
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1939
Pittsburgh Press, Aprill 11, 1939
By ALEXANDER KAHN
HOLLYWOOD, April 11 – Bela Lugosi waited two years for the telephone to ring, but when it did the noted Hungarian actor felt that he had hit the movie jackpot.
On the set of the 20th Century Fox picture, “The Gorilla,” the horror man of the movies looked back on the two-year Lugosi “drouth” and sighed his thanks that it was over.
“For 24 months I did not get a single call from the studios,” he said. “Not understanding the whims of Hollywood and caught unprepared, I was hit doubly hard.
“It was then that I first learned what Hollywood means when it says a person is ‘on the wrong side of the fence.’ Mind you, no personal reasons were attached. It was simply that I suddenly founsd myself a type not in demand.
“It was a disheartening experience after so many years as a star in Europe and a recognized figure on the American stage and screen.
“In the middle of those anxious months, our first baby, Bela Jr., arrived. I would have been willing to fight for a job. But there was no one to fight, no one had anything against me personally.”
But Hollywood relented as it always does in the case of actors with real talent. But it was two years between telephone calls for Lugosi. The party on the other end of the telephone was a casting director at Universal Studios who asked if Lugosi was available for a role in “Son of Frankenstein.” Available! Lugosi was willing to be at work in 10 minutes.
The success of the horror picture re-established Lugosi in the minds of casting directors and Universal signed him to a three-year contract.
He also signed a separate contract to appear with the Ritz Brothers in “The Gorilla.” And to top it all off, Lugosi is making 37 transcriptions for a radio mystery serial in which he is starred. He also considering a deal to go to England and make a picture for British International Pictures.
Is it any wonder that Lugosi sits around humming snatches of songs and grinning happily at everyone?
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Reading Eagle, June 11, 1939
Hollywood Shots
By Jimmie Fidler
Idol Chatter: Wish some film factory would give Bela Lugosi another of those vampire roles – they always knock me for a ghoul.
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1941
St. Petersburgh Times, January 28, 1941
IDOL CHATTER
Bela Lugosi won’t seem so terrifying if you’ll just remember he’s a stamp collector.
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 2, 1941
By Frederic C. Othman
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 1 - Everything’s all right again with Bela Lugosi, our favorite spook; he’s just bought a special spook house, so he’ll feel comfortable after spooking hours.
B-r-r-r-r.
This home of Lugosi’s features dark crannies, beamed ceilings, split doors, green glass windows, iron balustrades, high walls, trick buzzer systems, and similar details to delight the heart of a professional Dracula. It cost him a pretty penny, too. And that’s all the more surprising because Lugosi was on relief four years ago, drawing $15 a week from a Government which decided that though jobless, ghosts had to eat.
How the human monster, the firnd who chopped his cinema enemies into small pieces gradually so they’d suffer the most, happened to be broke and without a spooking chore anyplace makes one of those Hollywood stories. How he got back into the bogey-man groove again is more surprising still.
Dracula Tells His Story
Spook Dracula sat in the green light of his living room and sucked on his pipe until it gurgled and told us the story thus:
“I came to the United States from Hungary in 1923,” he said, “and almost before I could learn to speak English, I was playing in romantic comedies on Broadway. I was the big, tall, leading man, with the great big smile. I made love to the ladies and solved the predicaments in the stage and I was doing fine, I felt, when I was offered the part of ‘Dracula.’ It ran for a year at the Fulton Theater and when finally it closed Bela Lugosi was a monster in human form. Only work I could get was monstering.
So He Was Zombie
So he was a zombie in the movies, Frankenstein’s boy friend, the black cat, the bloody phantom, the hungry ape, the Oriental murder man, and the vampire with the steel claws. He starred in dozens of horror pictures.
“I was doing fine again, ” Lugosi continued. “I bought myself a $30,000 home in the Hollywood hills. I had not one automobile, but two, and money in the bank, and then four years ago an utterly horrible thing happened.
“The British censors decided there would be exhibited in England no more horror pictures. The Hollywood producers decided that if they couldn’t gat British profits, they’d simply stop making horror films. So they stopped.
“The mortgage company got my house. I sold one car and then the other. I borrowed where I could, but who considered a jobless spook a good risk? By the end of 1937 I was at my wits’ end. My wife was about to have a baby and we didn’t have anything to eat. I was forced to go on relief.”
A Triple Horror Show
When things were at their blackest for Lugosi, so were they for the Regina Theater, a neighbourhood house on Wilshire boulevard. It was an independent theater and it couldn’t get good pictures. Audiences wouldn’t pay to see the kind of films it did get. The Regina was about to close its front door when the manager drcided on a desperate expedient.
He installed a triple horror bill, consisting of films featuring Spooks Lugosi, Karloff, and others. To the amazement of all Hollywood, customers, intent on being scared to death, mobbed the place. Other theater owners in other towns repeated the stunt with the same results.
The spook market boomed. Universal and other studios rushed new horror films into production and there was Spook Lugosi again, trying to decide which film offer to take. He started horrifying folks all over the place and he’s been giving ‘em goose pimples ever since.
When he finished “Spooks Run Wild” for Monogram the other day, he was ready to pay cash for his spook castle, erected some 30 years ago by an eccentric and since deceased German count. Lugosi’s spending several thousand dollars to modernizing it (leaving in the spooky atmosphere, of course) and all looks well again for one of the pleasantest human monsters we know.
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The Pittsburgh Press, November 22, 1941
Dad’s Horror Role Pleases Lugosi Jr.
HOLLYWOOD – Bela Lugosi’s horror performances on the screen have been so convincing that more than one woman who sees him on the street faints, but he is not scaring his four-year-old son, Bela Jr.
The youngster for months, eversince the meaning of his father’s profession penetrated, has been after Lugosi to let him see one of his pictures, but the actor decided the shock might be harmful to him.
However, little Bela finally had his way and the family went to a revival of “Dracula” after Lugosi again and again warned the lad in order to cushion the horror of the film.
Bela Jr. thought his daddy was funny, and ever since has been rushing about the house impersonating Dracula instead of Superman.
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1942
St. Petersburg Times, January 28, 1942
IDOL CHATTER
In-a-phrase description of Bela Lugosi: Creeper of the B’s.
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St. Petersburg Times, March 11, 1942
Mutterings
Dream-disturbing thought: Bela (Dracula) Lugosi turned loose in a blood bank.
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Hollywood magazine, July, 1942
The House That Horror Built
by Hoyt Barnett
Dracula! That harbinger of horror, that salacious, sadistic high seer of low slaughter….
Who is this sleek, slithering merchant of madness in white tie and tails who kills with a kiss?
Bela Lugosi.
And where does he live?
The North Hollywood real estate board gives the same publicity to his address as it does to earthquakes, for if it were generally known where Dracula lives the board fears nearby house-holders might flee the neighborhood and a panic ensue.
But even Dracula must live somewhere, and the house in which Lugosi lives fits the character he has made famous on stage and screen as a musty attic fits a spook.
A high brick wall runs around the house, and top of this wall, embedded in cement, is enough broken glass to cut the pants off a veteran cavalryman. A huge car gate in the wall is studded with heavy bolts, and beside the gate is a dark stained booth so dim inside that even in broad daylight the single filament bulb casts a glow so low that it but dimly outlines telephone by which visitors make their presence known.
If you are expected , the suave yet icy voice of Lugosi greets you. A buzz only a little less deadly than the whirr of a rattle snake sounds in the region of your kidneys. Your head pivots toward the sound as a spotlight illuminates a doorknob you have not seen before.
Thrusting this small door open cautiously, you stick your head beyond for it is better to lose a head than an entire bodyand peer into a jungle of banana trees. The cement driveway splits inside the car gate to the left. The little door closes behind you with a click as final as the plop of a guillotine.
You step a few paces to the left and peer along this fork of the concrete drive. A building in the distance, a square jail-like thing, is just right for holding prisoners. So you turn to the right and in the distance is a roof-top sticking above the trees.
Huge leaded windows, some of the panes of varied color, give the house an ancient air which is made more ancient still by the low-key of the exterior.
Stepping through the heavy doorway to greet you is a man in shirt sleeves, smoking a heavy pipe. He is taller than six feet and retains the grace of movement coming from well-developed muscles. He smiles slowly, and slowly waves a greeting. He is Dracula – no, I mean Lugosi. There is none other with such expressive hands, such mobile features.
”You want to see my house?”
My summer kitchen. Lugosi points with a householders pride to a barbecue pit beside a low, square building, one side of which is entirely open. I like it particularly in the Spring.
We step closer to the main entrance or the house. Now we are beyond the jungle rim. The concrete drives come together here and you see that the building which resembles a jail is in reality a garage.
The house is tall, yet seems to twist and turn as you walk along its front. This effect is due to the design of the entrances, the large central window and the numerous small ones made of colored bottle bottoms.
At the left is the secondary entrance but instead of being normal doorway it is covered by a roof sloping up from near the ground.
The main entrance is to the right and goes into a circular hall, the interior of which carries a winding stairway. This hall opens into the large living room. At the left end of the living room is a huge stone fireplace that might have been lifted from a mountain lodge in the Black Forest.
As the master craftsman of a hundred horror pictures stands beside the fireplace and carefully lights his pipe, your eyes rest on a huge, pillow piled couch behind him, and you realize it would make a good hiding place for anything, even a body. Then you recall that his latest Monogram picture is The Corpse Vanishes, and it seems the air is more chilly than it was.
At the opposite end of the living room is a sprawling piano finished in rough, iron-bound wood harmonizing perfectly with the fireplace. Lugosi touches the keys gracefully, and his large, strong hands seem somehow like those of a surgeon as he plays.
Next to the piano is a huge Dutch door, divided so the top may be opened independently. You step from the doorway into a jungle crowded angle where two tawny beasts stalk toward you, their lips curled back from gleaming fangs.
“Dont move,” a voice cautions. Then a word is spoken sternly in Hungarian and the two German shepherds speculatively look to their master as though asking, What shall be our nourishment today?
Back in the high-ceilinged living room you notice a balcony above the piano. The effect is weird, for a stream of light from the steeple to the right slashes across it at an angle. You look away for an instant. A board creaks above you and the hair on your neck suddenly seems too short. Then a low voice – Lugosi is standing on the balcony explaining that this is the passageway to the bed chambers, which just now seem unworthy of your investigation.
The dining room opens from the living room. You step through a large, arched doorway into the gloom where a hand hewn table, flanked by heavy, iron-bound chairs, makes you think of a Gargantuan operating table from the Middle Ages. A wall switch clicks and the scene is flooded with a gentle light that wipes out the note of a torture chamber.
A long, low hall leads from the dining room, and opening from it is a bar, complete even to cash register. A lantern the sort you buy if you live far from electric lines, illuminate this replica of a rustic dive. The blue steel of a grim gun barrel reflects this light and since the barrel is sleek and graceful it seems also to reflect the ominous tone of genteel horror that is the keynote of Dracula.
As you walk about the house you are impressed by the almost eerie stillness of the place. Except for a rare squeak of a board that protests your tread, there is no noise. You find you are beginning to feel serene and you almost like the house that horror built.
Then Lugosi remarks with pride, ”I love this house. It fits my personality perfectly.”
You shiver a bit as you realize all of Draculas victims fell under this spell before he slaughtered them.
* * * * *
1944
The Evening Independent, August 18, 1944
Bela Lugosi’s Wife Seeks Divorce
Los Angeles, Aug. 18 – AP – A divorce suit against Film Actor Bela Lugosi, portrayer of monster roles, has been filed by his wife., actress Lillian Arch. She says he was “a cruel and inhumane husband.”
Miss Arch asks custody of their son, Bella Jr., 6. She said they separated Tuesday after 11 years of marriage.
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The Pittsburgh Press, August 18, 1944
Wife Sues Bela Lugosi
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 18 – Bela Lugosi, who made a fortune out of being inhuman on the screen, gave her such inhuman treatment at home that it ruined her health. Mrs. Lillian Arch Lugosi charged today in a divorce suit.
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Army News, August 22, 1944
Bad Man Bela
LOS ANGELES, Sunday. – Bela Lugosi, portrayer of monster roles (“Dracula,” etc.) on the screen, was a “cruel and inhuman husband.”
So declares his former wife, an actress, in her suit for divorce.
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Sunday Times (Perth), September 3, 1944
Grounds for divorce advanced by horror-actor Bela Lugosi’s wife are those of being “cruel and inhuman.”
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The Pittsburgh Press, October 22, 1944
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The Desert News, October 30, 1944
Two Hollywood Couples End Quarrels
HOLLYWOOD -(AP) – Love blooms again today in two Hollywood homes.
Jack Lurue, exponent of gangster roles, and his socialite wife, the former Constance Deighton-Simpson, announced their reconciliation over the weekend. They separated Oct. 18 after six years of marriage.
Bela Lugosi, specialist in horror characterizations, said his flowers, candy and regular shaving have re-won the affections of Mrs. Lugosi, who filed for divorce recently. The suit will be dismissed, he added.
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1946
Prescott Evening Courier, May 20, 1946
Hollywood Sights and Sounds
By GENE HANDSAKER
HOLLYWOOD – Calling all fiends! Want really to scare the living daylights out of somebody? The secret, says Bela Lugosi, is sincerity – to feel a deep conviction that you are actually about to throttle or stab or poison or shoot your victim.
“Of cor-r-rse, don’t do it!” rumbled this Hungarian-born stage and screen Dracula, towering menacingly over me, “but you must believe you are going to; the minute you play it with tongue in cheek, the effect is dead.”
Lugosi’s formula for chilling spines includes also a dash of hypnosis, he told me on the “Scared to Death” set.
“I HAVE stoddieed heepnosis and always made it a practice to half or quarter heepnotize my fellow actors on the stage so they would respond properlee.”
Dracula’s heavy-lidded, intense little blue eyes bored hypnotically into mine. I backed away and shook myself like a dog leaving a pond.
Lugosi, a tall, well-built man with distinguished-looking graying hair, a hawk beak and creased, sinister features, could pass, in a feather headdress, for an Indian chief. He said he got the Dracula stage role in New York in 1927 not only because both he and the fictional Count Dracula were Hungarians but also because of some hair-raising business he worked out with his hands. I asked him to demonstrate.
One of his hands slowly approached, then rested its thumb and fingers lightly about my neck. The other turned into a misshapen claw that pawed menacingly toward my left eye. That was enough, thanks, I said.
After “Dracula” on stage and screen (A story, you may remember, about a fiend who turned into a wolf or a bat and sank his fangs into terrified maidens’ jugular veins), Lugosi was typed as a monster. He finds the niche not always satisfying artistically but pretty steadily rewarding monetarily.
LUGOSI committed sundry atrocities on Broadway in “The White Zombie” and in movies like “Murder in the Rue Morgue,” “The Black Cat” and ” The Bat.” What’s the most bizarre manner in which he ever committed murder?
“In ‘The Black Cat,’ I guess,” Dracula said, “where I skinned Boris Karloff alive. Cute, isn’t it!”
Off the screen, Lugosi is a harmless, courtly individual who dwells quietly with his wife and reads books on social problems and economics.
When an automobile knocked a piece out of his German shepherd’s skull, veterinarians fitted in a plastic patch and grieving Count Dracula sat patiently in his pet’s hospital cage while the dog convalesced.
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1948
The Billboard, May 1, 1948
Brumett & Marlowe Added to McConkey, Hypo Biz Potentials
NEW YORK, April 24. – With the addition of Dave Brumett in the Southwest territory and Don Marlowe on the West Coast, the McConkey Music Corporation has increased its business potentials by no small amount.
Brumett, formerly with Monk Arnold in Atlanta, does a considerable one-night business in the South and Southwest. He has little bands all thruout the territory who get anywhere from $275 to $400 for a one-nighter.
Marlowe’s addition to the office means that McConkey will now have Eddie Bracken, Bela Lugosi, Zasu Pitts, Charles Ruggles and Edgar Kennedy for everything except pictures. Marlowe will head the McConkey West Coast theater department which will take in pictures and television as well.
It is also understood that McConkey may make an outright buy of the Chicago office of Frederick Bros.
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1950
Spokane Daily Chronicle, April 21, 1950
No Bela Laugh as Writers Spotlight Fearsome Lugosi
By ED CREAGH
NEW YORK, April 21. (AP) – The Mystery Writers of America held their annual clambake last night in an atmosphere of fluttering bats’ wings, corpses in the broom closet and a dagger in every chest.
Fun? There hasn’t been so much mock mayhem since the late Mr. Bluebeard started using his wives’ necks for meat cleaver practice. Bluebeard, of course, wasn’t kidding. These whodunit authors were – or so they said, anyway.
Take the menu for instance. It led off with chilled hemlock cup (hemlock being a deadly poison), got down to business with a soup called “witches’ broth,” came through with bared breast of duck euthanasia for the main course.
After the dessert (creme de la crime) the annual awards were presented. “Edgars,” they’re called – in honor of Edgar Allan Poe, a fair hand at the horror business himself. Then came the stage show, in which the crime writers kidded the goose-pimples off their industry and each other.
Why did Poe take to drink? One of the skits explained it: He had a premonition of the radio horror programs that send 20th century children into nightmares.
What does a bride do when she finds her husband is trying to poison her? A skit disposed of that problem in no time. The bride killed several birds with one flask and fed the poison to her mother-in-law.
These mystery writers – who supply gore and suspense to the magazines, book publishers, movies, radio and television – really are gentle souls at heart. Or so they said, anyway.
Their clubhouse is in the heart of the slaughterhouse district. To get in, you elbow your way through a forest of carcasses. Beef carcasses. Don’t wear your best clothes. Bloodstains are hard to remove.
Bela Lugosi, the screen spine-chiller, was on hand as guest of honor – only the program called him “ghost of honor.”
Somebody suggested that he should make a speech. Lugosi, who makes like vampires and assorted creeps before the cameras, paled.
“A sweet family man…a henpecked husband like me…stand up in front of theses writers?” he quavered.
The blood-and-thunder brigade got no speech from Bela Lugosi.
* * *
Billboard, April 22, 1950
Bright Boner
NEW YORK, April 15. – Jackie Bright, mad auctioneer act, was home with a sick baby, resentful at phone callers, when the phone rang again.
“Hello? Jackie Bright? This is Bela Lugosi. Can you tell —” “Lugosi, eh! Why doncha drown yourself.” And hung up. A few minutes later the phone rang again. “Mr Bright? This is Bela Lugosi. I was told to call you…”
“Look, Lugosi,” roared Bright.”I got news for you. I saw you in Dracula and you still stink. Now get off and stop bothering me.”
Two days later Bright was told it wasn’t a rib, that the caller was Bela Lugosi, who was referred to him for some information. Bright immediately sent off a letter of apology and explanation. He’s now wondering what to say if he meets Lugosi
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The Southeast Missourian, December 7, 1950
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1952
The Tuscaloosa News, May 26, 1952
About Hollywood
Horror-Man Bela Lugosi Grateful For Interview
BY BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD – (AP) – You’d never guess the only actor who has ever thanked me profusely for interviewing him. It’s bogeyman Bela Lugosi.
Many stars figure they’re giving you a break to allow themselves to be interviewed. Others merely put up with it as an evil necessary to their profession. Many are nice enough about it, but none has seemed so pleased about being interviewed as Lugosi, who soared to fame as the vampire, Dracula.
Like his fellow horror expert, Boris Karloff, Lugosi is a courteous, soft-spoken fellow who takes his craft seriously. He fell into the horror line quite by accident. He was a romantic star of the Royal Theatre in Hungary, playing the original roles in such Feienc Molnar plays as “Liliom” and “The Guardsman.”
But he came to New York in the chiller-diller, “Dracula.” When he re-created the role in films, he was destined to a career of scaring people. Since he had played everything from Shakespeare to Byron, I asked if he objected to being typed.
“No, not at all,” he replied. “The main thing for an actor is to keep working. And I have managed to do so for a good many years. It is a kind of security, this being a horror man. I have just returned from playing ‘Dracula’ in England for eight months. I also made a picture over there.”
“I have appeared on television with Milton Berle and a dozen other shows. Now I am filming “Bela Lugosi Meets the Gorilla Man,” which is not bad publicity. I am to return to England for another picture, and I am talking about a television series. So you can see I have been busy.
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The Milwaukee Journal June 2, 1952
Kindly Lugosi Is Star Boogey Man, Finds It’s Fine for the Bank Roll
By BOB THOMAS
Hollywood, Calif. – (AP) – Like his fellow horror expert, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi is a courteous, soft spoken fellow who takes his craft seriously. He fell into the horror line quite by accident.
He was a romantic star of the Royal theater in Hungary, playing the original roles in such Ferenc Molnar plays as “Liliom” and “The Guardsman.” But he came to New York in the chiller “Dracula.” When he re-created the role in films, he was destined to a career of scaring people. Since he had played everything from Shakespeare to Byron, I asked if he objected to being typed.
“No, not at all,” he replied. “The main thing for an actor is to keep working. And I have managed to do so for a good many years. It is a kind of security, this being a horror man. I have just returned from playing ‘Dracula’ in England for eight months. I also made a picture over there.
“I have appeared on television with Milton Berle and a dozen other shows. Now I am filming ‘Bela Lugosi Meets the Gorilla Man,’ which is not bad publicity. I am to return to England for another picture and I am talking about a television series. So you can see I have been busy.
Far from regretting his horror tag, Lugosi is even sorry he didn’t sew up the field. He had the chance after he made his hit in “Dracula.”
“They wanted me to play the part of Frankenstein’s monster,” he recalled. “I even did a test for it. The make-up was terrible, with the rubber mask and putty and the padding choking my body. Then I saw the script. I didn’t have a line in the whole picture!.
“I didn’t want to do it. I figured they could get any truck driver to put on all that stuff and grunt through the part. So I told them I wouldn’t do it. At first they were angry, and then I told them my doctor advised against such a strenuous part.
“They said they would let me out of the part if I could dig up someone to do it. So I looked around and found Boris Karloff. He did the role, and of course it was a hit. I created my own Frankenstein monster by turning down the part.”
Lugosi stayed at Universal for several years, playing in other horror films and co-starring with Karloff in many of them. He said that several years ago the studios weren’t making horror films, so he went to the east to live. He performed in plays and in vaudeville. Now horror seems to be blossoming forth in Hollywood again, and Lugosi is again a California resident. He may build a home for himself, his wife and their 14 year old son.
I asked him if people expect him to scare them in private life.
“Sometimes,” he answered, “But they are generally good natured about it. For instance, children will come up and say, ‘Hello, bogey man.’ But they aren’t really frightened. Children know when someone is gentle, no matter what he is made out to be.
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The Palm Beach Times, September 25, 1952
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1953
The Miami News, June 3, 1953
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Sarasota Herald-Tribune, June 3, 1953
Star Of Horror Films Now Seeking Divorce
LOS ANGELES, June 2 (AP) – Bela Lugosi, star of horror movies, was sued for divorce today.
Mrs. Lugosi, the former actress Lillian Arch, charged cruelty. She and Lugosi, 68, have been married 20 years. They were estranged in 1944 but in 1945 she dropped a divorce suit. This time the separation occurred last May 1.
Mrs. Lugosi asked custody of their son, Bela George, 15, and $50 a month support for him, plus $1 a month token alimony. Her attorney said the couple is attempting to work out a property settlement.
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The Evening Gazette, June 3, 1953
CONDUCT INHUMAN
HOLLYWOOD, June 3 (INS) – Bela Lugosi, noted for his roles in horror movies, today faces divorce suit by former actress Lillian Arch for “cruel and inhuman conduct.”
The action brought yesterday marks the second time in recent years that Mrs. Lugosi has sought divorce. She filed similar action in 1944, but dismissed the suit a year later after a reconciliation.
In her recent suit she stated the couple separated last May 1. They have been married for 20 years.
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Barrier Miner, June 4, 1953
FILM HORROR STAR SUED
Los Angeles, Wed.: The wife of Bela Lugosi, star of many horror film, including “Dracula,” has sued for divorce on the ground of cruelty. Mrs. Lugosi, the former actress Lillian Arch, and Lugosi (68) have been married 20 years.
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Spokane Daily Chronicle, July 18, 1953
Divorce Granted
LOS ANGELES, July 18. (AP) – Actor Bela Lugosi, portrayer of horror roles in the movies, was pictured as jealous by his third wife when she obtained a divorce yesterday.“He kept me under his thumb 24 hours a day,” testified Lillian Arch Lugosi, 41, former actress. “He checked up on me when I went to the dentist’s office; he charged me with infidelity.” They were married 20 years ago and have a 15-year-old son, whose custody was given to the mother.
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The Sunday Herald, July 19, 1953
Bela Lugosi Divorced
LOS ANGELES, July 18 (A.A.P.) – Lillian Arch Lugosi, 41, the third wife of “horror” actor Bela Lugosi, 68, won a divorce yesterday on the ground of cruelty.
She said that he was jealous and listened in on his mother-in-law’s telephone calls.
“He kept me under his thumb 24 hours a day,” Mrs. Lugosi said. “He also checked up on me when I went to the dentist. He charged me with infidelity.”
Mrs. Lugosi filed an earlier divorce suit in 1944, but withdrew it after a reconciliation.
The Lugosis were married 20 years ago and have a son, Bela junior, aged 15.
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Sunday Times (Perth), July 19, 1953
Nasty Man
Los Angeles, Sat.: Third wife of “horror” actor Bela Lugosi, 68, won a divorce today, testifying he was jealous and had even listened in on his mother-in-law’s telephone calls. “He kept me under his thumb 24 hours a day,” said former actress, Lillian Arch Lugosi, 41. “He also checked up on me when I went to the dentist. He charged me with infidelity.” She charged cruelty. Once before, in 1944, she filed a divorce suit, but withdrew it when they were reconciled a year later. Lugosis were married 20 years ago and have a son, Bela jnr., aged 15.
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The Canberra Times, July 20, 1953
Odd Stories On World News Front
LOS ANGELES: The third wife of “horror” actor Bela Lugosi, aged 68, won a divorce here after testifying he was jealous and even listened in on his mother-in-law’s telephone calls. “He kept me under his thumb 24 hours a day,” said former actress, Lillian Lugosi, 41. ”He also checked up on me when I went to the dentist.” The Lugosis were married 20 years ago and have a son, Bela junior, aged 15. Mrs. Lugosi won her divorce after charging cruelty. Once before, in 1944, she filed a divorce suit, but withdrew it when they were reconciled a year later.
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Townsville Daily Bulletin (Queensland), July 22, 1953
Lugosi Divorce
LOS ANGELES, July 21. – Horror actor, Bela Lugosi, 68, was so jealous he eavesdropped when his wife telephoned her mother.
His third wife, Lillian, said this in the Divorce Court. She won her case on cruelty grounds.
Mrs. Lugosi said, “He kept me under his thumb 24 hours a day. He also checked up on me when I went to the dentist, and charged me with infidelity.”
She filed a divorce suit in 1944, but withdrew it when they were reconciled a year later.
Lugosis were married 20 years ago. They have a son, Bela jnr., 15.
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The Portsmouth Times, August 15, 1953
So They Say
He kept me under his thumb 24 hours a day. – Mrs Lillian Lugosi divorces Bela (Dracula) Lugosi.
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Reading Eagle, October 30, 1953
By BOB THOMAS
Hollywood, Oct. 30 (AP) – Tonight being the night before Halloween and all that, I decided to pay a call on that famed menace, Bela Lugosi.
As I approached his residence, I thought I recognized the place. It was a dark old house of the kind you see in Charles Addams’ cartoons. But I was doomed to disappointment. Lugosi lived next door in a modern apartment.
I rang the bell and Lugosi answered. Another disappointment. No cloak, no devilish appearance. In fact, he was amazingly handsome for his 65 years. He was attired in a dressing robe and puffed a cigar. He ushered me into the apartment, just like inner sanctum.
“Hey, what are you going to do Halloween?” I asked eagerly.
“I have no plans,” he replied wearily. “I told my agent to find me a TV job, but I haven’t heard from him. I’m open to suggestions – if there is money involved.”
“How about the house next door? It looks nice for haunting.”
“Oh, yes, that.”
“What about holding a wake with Boris Karloff? Are you two on spooking terms?”
Friend of Karloff
“I haven’t seen Boris for two or three years. Yes, we are friends. I started him out on his career as a boogeyman. After I did ‘Dracula’ at Universal, they wanted me to do the monster in ‘Frankenstein.’
“But when I tested the makeup, it was heavy and painful. Then I read the script. I didn’t have a word of dialog. I got out of the role by having my doctor say it would be bad for me. I suggested Karloff for the role. You might say I created my own Frankenstein monster – competition for horror roles.”
“But you’ve been able to scare up a good living, haven’t you?”
“I’ve managed to get by. But it is tough being typed only as a boogeyman. Ever since I did ‘Dracula’ on the New York stage in 1927, I have been able to do nothing else but menace. Yet I played romantic leads before that. I was the John Barrymore of Hungary.
“Alas, producers cannot see me in anything but horror roles. They say they know I can do other things, but they fear the public will not accept me as anything different.”
Some of Lugosi’s worldly goods went at public auction a couple of days ago, fittingly enough in Halloween week. I asked him about this.
“As you know, I was divorced a few weeks ago,” he explained. “My wife took what belongings she wanted, and I took enough for this three-room apartment. I auctioned the rest.”
Nothing Spooky in Apartment
His belongings were strewn about the apartment, into which he had just moved. There was nothing spooky about them at all. There were many paintings, including a willow nude and a life-size portrait of Lugosi as a young actor.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you a drink,” he remarked. “I’m a member of A.A. You know – alcoholics anonymous. No, I was never a problem drinker; I never missed a performance or got involved with the police. But I found drinking was bad for my health.
“So I joined A.A. to find help through God. I attend meetings three or four times a week and get a great deal of benefit from them: You’d be surprised how many well-known actors, producers and directors attend, too.
“I tried to give up drinking three or four times before, but I never succeeded. Now I’m free of it. And I’ve thrown out all my medicine and dismissed my doctor.”
Lugosi added that the horror circuit is on the upbeat. His future films include “The Atomic Monster,” “The Vampire’s Tomb” and “The Ghoul Goes West.” Say – I like that last one.
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1955
St. Joseph News-Press, April 22, 1955
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Bela Lugosi, who won fame in the role of Dracula on the stage and screen, was scheduled for a hearing today in psychopathic court on his application for commitment to a state hospital.
The 71-year-old Hungarian actor, who ranked with Boris Karloff as the foremost purveyor in horror movies, voluntarily signed himself into Los Angeles General Hospital yesterday as a drug user.
Psychiatrists at the hospital said Lugosi is not a narcotic addict, however, and that he has been using a narcotic off and on over a period of perhaps 20 years as medication.
Lugosi, if his papers are approved today, can be committed to a state hospital, ostensibly for the purpose of breaking the drug habit. A mental hygiene counselor at General hospital said, however, that the former actor told him he had not followed his profession for years, and that the private sanitarium where he had been informed him that he should go to the county institution for free help.
Lugosi began his movie career in Hollywood in 1931. He would be eligible for the Motion Picture Relief Fund, Inc., hospital in Woodland Hills except that he has not performed in a film in the last five years, thus is disqualified.
Lugosi’s fourth wife divorced him in 1953, charging he was cruel to her.
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Associated Press Wirephoto, April 22, 1955
ACTOR SEEKS DRUG CURE
Bela Lugosi, 71, former screen star, discusses his condition in a ward of General Hospital today while awaiting a hearing to determine if he may be committed to a state hospital for treatment as a chronic user of narcotics for sedation. He signed himself into the hospital yesterday saying he had been using a drug for medication purposes over a period of years.
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St. Joseph News-Press, April 24, 1955
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The Windsor Daily Star, April 25, 1955
Trail’s End For Lugosi
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, (UP) – Bela Lugosi, committed to a hospital as a narcotics addict, was famed for frightening people. But in real life he ia a quiet, gentle man who got into horror movies by mistake and was haunted by the stigma.
Lugosi was once a romantic leading man on the stage. But after he achieved fame as “Dracula,” the fine actor’s career was dependent upon playing the mad scientist who pours evil potions into smoky test tubes and keeps a monster locked up in his laboratory.
He had four unhappy marriages. Once during a lull in the monster fad he was on relief.
Now, at 72, the man who used to send chills up fans’ spines does not appear frightening. Calling himself a “broken, old man,” Lugosi is in a state hospital at his own request after 20 years of addiction.
Lugosi came to the United States in 1923 to appear in romantic comedies on Broadway. He was a heart throb until he accepted the hit play, “Dracula.”
“When it closed, Bela Lugosi was a monster in human form. The only work I could get was monstering,” he sadly said in an interview.
He played Frankenstein’s monster, after once turning down the role in favor of Boris Karloff because the make-up was uncomfortable. Lugosi also played the monster’s sidekick with the broken neck. In 63 horror films he killed more than 300 characters. He was hanged, burned, frozen, smothered by lava and drowned in swamps on the screen. He was a zombie, a bloody phantom, a hungry ape and a vampire with steel claws.
“I didn’t know if you were a success in one character in this country you were branded,” he said. “Unfortunately they haven’t let me play decent characters since.”
In the early ’30′s the monster man had a mansion, two cars and a fat bank account. Then British censors laid down the law on horror pictures. Hollywood stopped making them. By the end of 1937 Lugosi and his wife were collecting $15 a week relief.
But in 1941 a new horror movie cycle started and Lugosi worked again. Then came more lean years. Recently the one-time leading man did a cruel satire of his monster self in a Las Vegas burlesque house.
He admits now “I gambled all that salary away.”
Lugosi came home to an empty house as his fourth wife divorced him two years ago. He admits he has been eating for the last few weeks because of generosity of friends.
The busy-browed actor actually was afraid of newspaper reporters, child actors, noise of any kind and, he told me, of dying.
“Death is the only thing that really is frightening to me,” he said. “The calendar turns, and eventually you have to go.”
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Spokane Daily Chronicle, July 30, 1955
Medics to Decide if Lugosi’s O.K.
LOS ANGELES, July 30. (AP) – A board of physicians will decide next week if Bela Lugosi can be released from the state hospital where he voluntarily sought aid in fighting a drug addiction.
The 72-year-old film menace, pale, worried and thin, committed himself last April. He asked for help in breaking a drug habit he said had plagued him for two decades.
He was sent to the Metropolitan State hospital at near-by Norwalk for a minimum of three months and a maximum of two years. Lugosi, now 20 pounds heavier, expects to be released after next week’s hearing.
After his release the Hungarian-born actor hops (sic) to resume his acting career, which brought him his greatest fame in the film version of “Dracula,” Bram Stoker’s novel.
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The Sunday Sun, July 30, 1955
Drug Cure ‘Greatest,’ Says Bela Lugosi After Treatment
LOS ANGELES (AP) – “The greatest thing that ever happened to me.”
That was actor Bela Lugosi’s comment Friday as he prepared to end next Friday a three month stay at Metropolitan State Hospital, where he says he has been cured of narcotics addiction.
The veteran of dozens of horror movies told a Los Angeles reporter:
“I am leaving here with a philosophy of life. All my life I was not used to rules…the regimen of hospital life has shown me there must be certain rules for all.”
Ten days after leaving the hospital he will start work in a new movie.
Last April the 72-year-old star of “Dracula” and other screen shockers signed himself into the county’s general hospital and told doctors, “I need help to overcome the drug habit.”
Too ill to go into court, the emaciated actor was given a hearing in a hospital ward. He said he started using morphine to deaden leg pains 20 years ago, later gave up morphine but used various other drugs thereafter.
Lugosi said he hadn’t a dime left of the half million dollars he said he had made in films.
He said his hospital stay was brightened by thousands of letters from all over the world, including Egypt and South Africa.
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Daytona Beach Morning Journal, August 3, 1955
Bela Lugosi To Leave Hospital
NORWALK, Calif. (AP) – Physicians said yesterday Bela Lugosi, former film actor, will be released from a state hospital where he underwent three months treatment for drug addiction.
Officially, Lugosi will be on leave of absence from Metropolitan State Hospital. Tests conducted there showed he had improved “remarkably” his doctor said.
The onetime actor who played in such movies as “Dracula,” “Chandu” and “Frankenstein,” passed a hospital examination yesterday. He had committed himself to the hospital on April 22.
Lugosi will remain under the jurisdiction and supervision of the Dept. of Mental Health for a year. He has indicated he hopes to resume his acting career.
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The Argus (Melbourne), August 4, 1955
Front page news abroad
DOCTORS SAID YESTERDAY that Bela Lugosi, former film actor, will be released on Friday from a California hospital, where he underwent three months of treatment for drug addiction.
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Kentucky New Era, August 4, 1955
Treatment For Drug Addiction Nears End
Norwalk, Calif. (AP) – Rehabilitated Bela Lugosi will leave Metropolitan State Hospital Friday and start work on a new movie in two weeks. He was treated for three months for drug addiction.
The 66-year-old actor, his step firm, his voice firm, and his eyes as piercing as ever, has come a long way back from the emaciated addict who could barely walk when he was committed to the hospital at his request.
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Bela preparing to leave hospital
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Associated Press Wirephoto, August 24, 1955
BELA LUGOSI TO WED
Hope Lininger, 40, movie studio cutting room clerk, lights the pipe of former horror actor Bela Lugosi, 73, as they make final plans for their marriage tonight. In a copyrighted story, the Los Angeles Mirror-News said today the wedding will climax a strange romance which began when Miss Lininger wrote Lugosi daily anonymous letters while he was being treated for drug addiction in a state hospital. When he was released as cured he found her after a long search and the romance followed.
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A letter from Bela to Hope shortly after leaving hospital
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The Victoria Advocate, August 24, 1955
Horror Actor To Take Wife
SANTA MONICA, Calif., Aug. 24 (AP) – Horror-movie actor Bela Lugosi, 73, today obtained a license to wed a film studio employe who wrote him letters of encouragement recently while he was in a state hospital for treatment for drug addiction.
The bride-to-be is Miss Hope Lininger, 40, who says she was a Lugosi fan as a little girl in Johnstown, Pa. It will be her first marriage and the fifth for the veteran actor.
Miss Lininger said the wedding may be “today, tomorrow or Friday.” They plan to honeymoon in New York.
Lugosi was released last Aug. 5 from Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, Calif., to which he was sent three months earlier at his own request. He said he “licked a habit of 20 years.”
Lugosi said Miss Lininger sent him letters every day at the hospital and signed them “just a dash of hope.” The actor said he located the woman from a return address on one of the envelopes.
The Hungarian-born actor has been twice widowed and twice divorced. His fourth wife, former actress Lillian Arch Lugosi, 43, divorced him two years ago.
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The Miami News, August 24, 1955
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Spokane Daily Chronicle, August 24, 1955
She Chooses Him as Hero
Anonymous Notes to Actor Result in Lugosi Wedding
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 24. (AP) – Bela Lugosi will be married tonight to a movie studio employee who wrote him daily letters of encouragement while he recently was hospitalized for drug addiction, the Mirror-News said today.
The copyrighted account identified the bride-to-be as Miss Hope Lininger, 40, a cutting room clerk at RKO studios. It said she and the 72-year-old Hungarian actor will be married at the home of Manley P. Hall, writer-publisher of books and pamphlets, before a small group of close friends.
Lugosi, famed for portrayals of horror roles, was divorced two years ago by his third wife, former actress Lillian Arch Lugosi, 43.
Lugosi was released last August 5 from Metropolitan state hospital in suburban Norwalk, to which he was committed three months earlier at his own request. He said he was “no longer an addict to drugs” and “I’ve licked a habit of 20 years.”
The Mirror-News account quoted Miss Lininger as saying that when she was a little girl in Johnstown, Pa., she chose Lugosi as a screen hero when other girls picked Clark Gable or Gary Cooper because she wanted someone to herself and -
“I knew the other little girls would never be Lugosi fans.”
She had seen the sharp-featured actor as the star of “Dracula.”
The paper said she wrote Lugosi daily letters when he was hospitalized, signing them “just a dash of hope.” Lugosi was quoted as saying he became intrigued by the anonymity and got her telephone number through the return address.
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The Bulletin, August 25, 1955
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Associated Press Wirephoto, August 25, 1955
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 25—BELA LUGOSI AND BRIDE—Bela Lugosi, the 73-year-old horror-movie actor, and his bride, Hope Lininger, 40, drink a toast beside their wedding cake after their marriage here last night.
The bride, who had never met him, sent him letters of encouragement while he recently was a drug addiction patient at a state hospital. He was released Aug. 5 and looked her up. Their romance followed. She is a film studio worker.
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Bela and Hope married by Manly P. Hall
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The Free Lance-Star, August 25, 1955
Actor Is Married To His No. 1 Fan In Calif. Last Night
HOLLYWOOD, (AP) – Bela Lugosi, the horror movie menace, and his No. 1 fan, a woman who wrote him encouraging letters during his stay for drug addiction treatment, were married last night.
The 73-year-old actor and Hope Lininger, 40, a fan of Lugosi’s since her girlhood in Johnstown, Pa., were wed in a ceremony performed by Manley P. Hall at his Hollywood home.
The marriage was the first for the blonde film studio employe. It was the fifth for Lugosi, freed Aug. 4 from a state hospital where he had admitted himself three months earlier for treatment.
He said that his bride wrote him daily letters while he was in the hospital. She didn’t sign her name, but Lugosi learned her phone number from her address and later met and wooed her.
The couple said they would take a honeymoon trip to New York next month. The actor described as rehabilitated by state physicians, said he would start a new film soon.
Hall, a long-time friend of Lugosi, identified himself as a writer, philosopher and an ordained minister. He married the couple in front of a huge hearth, flanked by Chinese devil dogs, amid the odor of burning incense. Lugosi’s son Bela Jr., 17, was best man, and Mrs. Pat Delaney, a city jail employe, was matron of honor.
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The Argus (Melbourne), August 26, 1955
Bela marries the girl who wrote
In Hollywood yesterday Bela Lugosi, 73, horror actor of stage and screen, who has just finished treatment for drug addiction, was married, in a simple ceremony, to Hope Lininger, 39, a film studio cutting clerk.
The marriage was the first for the bride and the fifth for Lugosi, who said his bride wrote him daily letters while he was in hospital.
She did not sign her name, but Lugosi learned her telephone number from her address, and later met and wooed her.
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Bela Jr. with Hope and his father
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The Age, August 26, 1955
Macabre wedding for Horror Actor
HOLLYWOOD, California, August 25 (A.A.P.). – Bela Lugosi, 73, horror actor of stage and screen, who admits he was a drug addict, was married last night to Hope Lininger, 39, a film studio cutting clerk.
The best man was Bela Lugosi, junior, 17-year-old son of the bridegroom and the matron of honor was Mrs. Pat Delaney, a city goal employe.
The marriage, the first for the bride, was the fifth for Lugosi.
The couple said they would take a honeymoon trip to New York next month. The actor described as rehabilitated by State physicians, said he would start a new film soon.
The couple were married in front of a huge hearth, flanked by Chinese devil dogs, amid the odor of burning incense.
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The Windsor Daily Star, November 16, 1955
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Bela bought a new cane to add a theatrical touch to his testimony
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Warsaw Times-Union, December 2, 1955
SO THEY SAY
Whether they are dressed as angels or not, they are real devils in disguise – murderers. – Actor Bela Lugosi on drug pushers, who try to enlist aid of young people.
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1956
United Press Telephoto, February 17, 1956
Hollywood: Bela Lugosi(C), who several years ago was a top star in horror movies, is welcomed back to Hollywood by co-actors Basil Rathbone (L), and Lon Chaney, Jr., as Lugosi returned to horror films at United Artists Studios where he will appear in “The Black Sleep.” Lugosi, who recently recovered from the use of narcotics, was given a black leather-bound script book bearing his long list of screen credits by the producers, cast and crew of the new horror film.
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For reports on Bela’s death, please visit our Bela Lugosi Obituaries page.
