Alex Gordon, Bela and Lillian Lugosi, Richard Gordon, and film historian William K Evereson in the Tokay restaurant in New York

Born in London on September 8, 1922, Alex Gordon, like his younger brother and fellow film producer Richard, developed a love for films, especially westerns and horror, at an early age. They started fan clubs for their favourite stars, Gene Autry and Buster Crabbe while still at school, and pursued careers in the film business at the end of World War II. While Richard worked in the publicity department of Pathe Pictures, the distribution arm of Associated British, Alex became the one-man publicity department for Renown Pictures, a small film distributor which later moved into film production. They supplemented their earnings by writing film reviews and articles for fan magazines. Both brothers dreamed of becoming film producers, but it soon became apparent that they were unlikely to realise their ambition in the austere economic climate of  post-war Britain. Deciding to try their luck in the American film business, they emigrated to America in November, 1947 . 

Richard and Alex shared a life-long passion for films

Setting up in New York, Alex became a booker for Walter Reade theatres, while his brother worked as an assistant sales manager for Jack Hoffberg’s distribution company while freelancing as a representative for several British film outlets. They continued to indulge their passion for the cinema by interviewing film stars for British film magazines. Learning that one of their idols, Bela Lugosi, was scheduled to star in a summer stock production of Arsenic and Old Lace in nearby Sea Cliff  in August, 1948, they set out to meet and interview him. Lugosi not only consented to the interview, but also invited the brothers to dine with him and his wife at a local restaurant. Bela, who fostered hopes of  starring in a Broadway or West End revival of Dracula was intrigued when Alex told him that many fans in England had been disappointed at the cancellation of his proposed eight-week English stage tour of Dracula earlier in the year. Contacting them several months later, Bela asked Alex and Richard to take over the management of his business affairs and to try find him film and theatre work in Britain. Having recently started working for his childhood hero, Gene Autry, Alex was too busy to devote his energies to helping Bela, so Richard took on the task of trying to interest West End producers staging a production of Dracula with Bela in the lead. He found it much harder than he had anticipated, and it was not until 1951 that he was able to negotiate a British revival tour of Dracula, followed by Bela’s appearance in Mother Riley Meets The Vampire. 

Alex with his childhood hero Gene Autry

When Bela and Lillian returned to America from England in December, 1951, Richard missed the opportunity to see them upon their arrival in New York before they quickly headed for California. He never met them again. Alex, who had relocated to Hollywood, took up the quest to find work for Bela. They developed a script together for a film entitled The Atomic Monster, which was intended to be the first of three Lugosi films Alex would produce and release through Jack Broder’s Realart. Instead of going ahead with the project, Broder stole the title for a Realart re-release of the 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. film Man Made Monster. Although Alex and Broder reached a financial settlement, Bela was left without work. The script was taken up and rewritten by Edward D. Wood Jr., who filmed it as Bride of the Atom (later retitled Bride of the Monster) with Bela. Alex had introduced Wood to Bela when the two were sharing an apartment. Although Alex went on to produce many films, including genre favourites The Day the World Ended (1955), The She Creature (1956), Voodoo Woman (1957), and The Atomic Submarine (1959), he was unable to get a studio to greenlight a film with Bela. Later in his career, Alex worked at 20th Century Fox, where he was responsible for rediscovering over 30 Fox films that had thought to have been lost and instituting a film restoration project. He left the studio in 1976 to take up the post of vice-president of the Gene Autry Organisation. Alex died in Los Angeles on June 23rd, 2003.

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In 1963, Alex shared his memories of Bela in an article entitled My Favourite Vampire in issue number 5 of Fantastic Monsters of the Films.

What Bela Lugosi was really like – as revealed by the Vampire Man’s close friend, Hollywood Personality, Alex Gordon

My Favorite Vampire By Alex Gordon

When I was a boy in England, I was a very frustrated youth. Under the British movie censorship classification, horror pictures cannot be seen by anyone under the age of sixteen. Therefore, it was not until many years later that I was able to see the Bela Lugosi films. The first time I ever saw Bela on the screen was in Postal Inspector, a 1936 picture in which he played a gangster. I was also able to see The Invisible Ray, which he did with Boris Karloff, and which somehow escaped the adult horror classification. And ever since those early days, I had hoped that some day I would have the opportunity to meet Bela in person. This did not happen until 1950(1), after I had come to the United States and was living in New York. At the time, Bela was doing Arsenic and Old Lace on the stage at the Sea Cliff Summer Theatre, and my brother Richard and I went down to try and meet him. We waited near the theatre for hours and finally Bela – with his wife Lillian – drove up. We went up and introduced ourselves. They were both extremely pleasant and suggested we join them for dinner. They took us to an excellent Hungarian restaurant(2) where Bela was the center of attraction, the owner and other patrons being thrilled to see him. After dinner, we went back to the theatre and saw the show; and afterwards spent more time with the Lugosis and made a date to see them later.

Richard Gordon, Bela and producer George Minter on the set of Mother Riley Meets the Vampire

One of the things Bela wanted most to do was tour England with a new production of Dracula. He had made movies in England –The Mystery of the Marie Celeste(3), Dark Eyes of London – but had never appeared on the stage there. Happily, my brother, who represents British movie producers (such as the makers of the “Carry On” pictures) was able to arrange not only such a tour, but also for Bela to make another movie in England. Soon after that, in 1953, I became an independent producer in Hollywood after years of work in publicity and writing, and of course wanted to make a picture with Bela. We spent much time together, finally evolving a script entitled The Atomic Monster. For various reasons, however, the picture did not get off the ground. Meanwhile, American distributors were reluctant to buy Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire(4) – because of the British humor which they considered unsuitable for American audiences. Therefore, we put a new title on the picture, Vampire Over London(5), but still no one wanted it. I cut out all of Bela’s scenes and tried to make a new movie to be called King Robot, using all the scenes Bela was in and shooting new ones to match for the rest of the story. However, Bela had been very ill for a while and was very thin and haggard looking, and he did not match the original footage anymore. So we had to scrap that idea. While I was trying to set up a new picture, to star Bela and Boris Karloff, an independent producer (Edward D. Wood Jr.) rewrote my “Atomic Monster” script and made a very low budget picture vaguely based on it called Bride of the Monster. Poor Bela looked so very old and ill in it, that a double had to be used for many of his scenes.

Alex with Bob Steele, Warren White, an unknown man, and Edward D. Wood Jr. at Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant in 1952.

 Courtesy of http://www.westernclippings.com/treasures/westerntreasures_gallery_3.shtml

One of his great hopes was to make Dracula in color and widescreen, and he thought the resurgence of horror movies in Hollywood after House of Wax in 1953 would mark a comeback for him. But the studios seemed to prefer other actors, like Christopher Lee when they made Horror of Dracula in color in England. The premiere of House of Wax, incidentally, was quite an event. Warner Brothers thought up a publicity stunt to have horror stars attend the premiere at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. They called Bela and asked him if he would go. Bela did not want to, but I persuaded him, as I thought it would be good publicity for our projected new picture with him and Karloff. Warners sent a limousine to pick us up at Bela’s apartment, and Bela was dressed in his Dracula cape. What he did not know was that the publicity boys wanted him to lead a gorilla (a man in a skin) on a chain into the lobby of the theatre – and I was afraid to tell him. The limousine made a stop at a large hotel, and Bela immediately asked what the stop was for. I timidly told him it was to pick up a gorilla. At first it seemed he hadn’t heard right, then he roared, “Gorilla?!” It took all my powers of persuasion to keep him from taking a taxi home.

Bela’s arrival at the House of Wax premier with Steve Calvert in a gorilla suit was captured in a Pathe newsreel

Courtesy of http://microbrewreviews.blogspot.com/

When we drove up at the Paramount, there was a mass of photographers, newsmen, TV cameras, and hundreds of people milling around. Bela was, of course, the center of attention when he exited from the car with the gorilla on the chain. The gorilla chased after some girls while Bela shouted to me what we wanted him to do. We manipulated him over to a Red Cross stand where two nurses were selling milk for the Red Cross. The idea was to have a shot of Bela drinking milk instead of blood, but in all the bedlam he thought they wanted him to do a Dracula bit, and he suddenly grabbed the nurses by the necks. They were so surprised and shocked that they threw the milk all over him! Finally I got him inside the lobby, where a female radio-TV interviewer grabbed hold of him. I should explain here that Bela was a little hard of hearing in one ear, and he had asked for a list of questions ahead of time so that he could memorize the answers when they brought him up to the microphone. With all the noise and confusion, he felt he might not be able to hear the questions properly. Needless to say, the interviewer had mislaid her copy of the questions and started asking Bela the questions out of context with his prepared answers. I think I can leave the results to your imagination. By the time I had him seated in the auditorium, we were both completely exhausted, though the photographers had enjoyed an absolute field day. Bela did not want to stay for the film, so we left by a back door after it had started. I did not hear the end of THAT adventure for a long time.

Vampira and Bela on the Red Skelton show

Another incident I remember well was when Bela was to do the Red Skelton Show, on which Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr were to appear in a sketch with him. Bela was worried about the show because he knew that Red Skelton did not stick to the script, but adlibbed most of the show. And Bela was a stage actor who had to learn his lines and was not used to adlibbing. Red treated him well, but he did use adlibs which almost threw Bela. But the comedian managed to fill in so well that the audience never knew. However, it was an unhappy experience for Bela. He always preferred to work from a prepared script.

A publicity shot for Dracula

When the original Dracula was reissued once more, as it was at regular intervals, we went to see it, and Bela enjoyed it again. Actually, he almost lived the part at times. When he was on tour, he could not stand the hard mattresses in most of the hotels as he had trouble with his back. So he would place his beautiful silk-lined coffin from the theatre in the middle of his hotel room and sleep in it. This is absolutely true and no publicity story. It was not done for effect, just plain comfort.

Bela was a delightful companion, gracious and kind and with a good sense of humor. He was also a man of many moods, and sometimes he would sink into deep despair. Bela loved cigars, and he also became interested in religion, hypnosis, and philosophy. He was very particular about many little things. He once asked me to sort out his desk and papers, and I found receipted bills and other statements going back twenty years, which he thought he should keep for tax and book-keeping purposes. He also kept a large collection of stills from his movies in scrapbooks.

Bela in November 1955

When he lived in his small Hollywood apartment, he would call me to walk up to the corner with him at 11pm to pick up the next morning’s LA Times. It had to be the 11pm edition, and he was quite upset if he did not get it. He liked to keep up with all the latest news and was extremely well-informed about world events. But his daily dream was to make a good comeback, and he, like so many other former great stars, found it impossible to realize that Hollywood did not want him anymore. It is so ironic that stars like Bela Lugosi are so fondly remembered by audiences the world over, and yet were unable to get a job right here in Hollywood. It is something I have always found hard to understand. Since I became a movie producer, I have always tried to use as many old-timers in my pictures as possible, despite enormous resistance from distributors, financiers, and exhibitors who consider them “has-beens.”

 At the peak of his stardom with other members of the Universal family. Bela can be seen in the back row along with Boris Karloff and James Whale. Carl Laemmle Jr., Carl Laemmle Sr., and cinematographer Karl Freund are in the front row

In a way, I think Bela regretted having turned down the role of the Frankenstein Monster in the original movie that made Boris Karloff famous. Not many remember that Bela was actually a Shakespearean actor and a romantic star before he did Dracula and became typed in horror pictures. He played Hamlet and even Uncas in The Last of the Mohicans(6), among many other roles. I always thought the old Universal film, The Raven, was one of Bela’s best roles, as well as The Invisible Ray, and of course his role of Ygor in the later Frankenstein pictures was unforgettable. It is strange for me now to see and hear Bela on TV in his old movies. It is as though he is still around and as though that friendly, uniquely unforgettable voice is still calling. His friends and fans will never forget him.

Notes: (1) Alex and Richard Gordon first meet Bela in 1948, not 1950. He performed in Arsenic and Old Lace at the Sea Cliff Summer Theatre from August 9 – 14, 1948. (2) Richard Gordon later recalled that the restaurant was a seafood restaurant. (3)Although several contemporary sources listed the film’s title as “The Mystery of the Marie Celeste,” it was released as “Mystery of the Mary Celeste.” (4) Pre-release publicity listed the title as “Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire,” but the film was released as “Mother Riley Meets the Vampire.” (5) According to an article printed in The Cinema News And Property Gazette of August 22, 1951, two months before filming began, the title “Vampire Over London” had already been selected for the American release of Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. (6) Bela played Chingachgook.

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1951 British Dracula Tour – Exclusive Interviews With The Cast & Company

Mother Riley Meets The Vampire

Bela Lugosi At The House Of Wax Premiere

Actress And Songwriter Dolores Fuller Dies At 88

Frank J Dello Stritto

Beginning his writing career in the pages of the 1960s amateur magazine, Photon, Frank J. Dello Stritto has built up an enviable reputation as one of the “most eloquent chroniclers of horror films.” His many articles in Cult Movies Magazine, as well as his chapters in Bob Brier’s Egyptian Mummies, Bob Madison’s Dracula – The First 100 Years, Gary Don Rhodes’ Lugosi, and, of course, our own Vampire Over London: Bela Lugosi In Britain have earned him a dedicated following among both his peers and fans of vintage monster and horror films. In addition to his writing, Frank is a popular speaker on the film convention circuit, a frequent guest on Joe Viglione’s Visual Radio and appeared in Gary Don Rhode’s documentary Lugosi – Hollywood’s Dracula..

For A Quaint & Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore – The Mythology & History of Classic Horror Films (Cult Movies Press), his follow-up to Vampire Over London, Frank has collected together revised and updated versions of eight of his best articles from Cult Movies Magazine, The Vampire Strikes Back from Dracula – The First 100 Years, the transcript of his talk at the 1997 Dracula Centennial Conference in Los Angeles, and four previously unpublished essays.

The book highlights Frank’s talent for combining meticulously researched historical detail with incisive interpretation of hidden meanings. The films covered are the 1930s and 1940s monster and horror films that he saw on TV as a young boy. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that he sees parallels in them with fairy tales and classical mythology. Many writers have found themselves getting carried away when analyzing the subtexts of vintage horror films, but Frank is too skilled a writer to fall into that trap. Where one viewer sees Count Dracula as the personification of eternal evil which each new generation must defeat and all that he represents, Frank wisely concedes that he may indeed be nothing more than “a count in a cape sleeping in a coffin.”

In the introduction to his book, which is reproduced in full below, Frank traces the origin of his lifelong fascination with vintage horror films and Bela Lugosi. He also recounts how the unlikely duo of Abbott and Costello were unwittingly responsible not only for initiating the after-school TV addicts of the 1950s and 60s into the mythology of those horror films, but also for priming a whole generation for life.

Just a count in a cape sleeping in a coffin?

For anyone interested in the films and the personalities, both in front of and behind the cameras, of the golden age of horror movies, Frank’s book is essential reading. The book itself is as physically impressive as the writing. Hardbound and wonderfully illustrated throughout, with cover art by renowned artist and filmmaker Haig Demarjian, it is of a quality seldom seen these days.

To order an individually numbered and signed copy of A Quaint & Curios Volume of Forgotten Lore – The Mythology & History of Classic Horror Films, please contact Frank at: fdellostritto@hotmail.com

ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT DREARY…

I can date the birth of my fixation on horror movies almost exactly. In the fall of 1957 Screen Gems, which had purchased broadcast rights for Universal Pictures, packaged some of Universal’s 1930s and 1940s horror movies into Shock Theatre, which it leased to television stations across America. My family lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, and our television broadcasts came from New York City where Shock Theatre played late on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, well after the bedtimes of seven year-olds like myself. Some Fridays, while I slept soundly, my nine year-old brother crept out of bed and talked my parents into letting him stay up. On Saturday mornings, he would tell me the wonders that he had seen.

On January 14, 1958 Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man aired, and the next morning I listened in awe to my brother’s description of the two monsters’ climactic battle. At that moment—sometime before lunch on Saturday the 15th—I knew that I must see this movie and all the late-night horrors for myself. I did not know that I would see them over and over again, read all that I could about them, write about them, lecture about them. And still, like Frankenstein’s Monster, The Wolf Man and Count Dracula, I would find no rest. At the time I could not appreciate that my mission had a few of the trappings of the gothic melodramas that would captivate me: a nocturnal quest driven by familial tensions, a search for arcane lore, and an obsession with a terrifying and fascinating past.

Until that Saturday morning, I was not a likely candidate to be a “monster boomer,” one of the post-World War II generation obsessed with old monster movies. Four years earlier my mother had taken me to a matinée of War of the Worlds. Science fiction was then the rage and had temporarily pushed the gothic monsters out of the limelight. When the aliens zapped a few locals with a death ray, I screamed. I continued screaming and crying for the rest of the film. This outburst led to a decree in our household that I not be exposed to such terrors in the future, either at the movies or on television. Dismissed out of hand was my request a short time later to see Rodan, a Japanese epic about gargantuan flying reptiles.

My scheme to master the lore of movie monsters took some time to launch, and I received help from an unexpected quarter. In my earliest years, my favorite television program was The Abbott & Costello Show. In their comic banter, Lou Costello—the short, fat, stupid one—is constantly browbeat and conned by Bud Abbott. Circumstances often let Costello triumph, but only after Abbott had either berated the hapless little man or done his best to explain the real world to him. Abbott in his exasperation with Costello became one of the unsung educators to my generation. Week after week, Abbott parried with Costello on topics as diverse as playing baseball or craps, paying or dodging the rent, dealing with lawyers, judges and police, visiting doctors and dentists, caring for the very young and the very old. Poor Lou never quite grasped what Abbott was talking about, but we kids did. For their young audiences, the genius of Abbott & Costello was that explaining their jokes was part of telling them.

By 1960 Abbott & Costello’s television series had long been in re-runs, but the comedy team’s feature films from the 1940s were regularly shown on Saturday afternoons at 2:00. On one such afternoon—I believe it was a sunny day and I felt some guilt that I was not outside playing—I first saw Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein. Bud and Lou deliver two large crates to McDougal’s House of Horrors. The crates contain “the remains of the original Count Dracula and the body of Frankenstein’s Monster.” The first crate is opened; Abbott pulls away a canvas shroud to reveal a coffin. “The Dracula Crest!” he says on seeing the emblem on the coffin lid. Did everyone know this insignia except Costello and me? Was this something I was supposed to recognize?

Lou understands enough to be terrified. Exhibit posters in the museum tell him a bit more. With a few fits and starts, he and Abbott work through the first one:

Dracula’s Legend

Count Dracula sleeps in this coffin but rises every night at sunset. Dracula can change himself at will into a vampire bat flying about the countryside. He keeps himself alive by drinking the blood of his victims. Count Dracula must return to his coffin before sunrise where he lies helpless during the day.

Abbott then reads the second poster:

 Frankenstein’s Monster

A scientist named Frankenstein made a monster by sewing together parts of old dead bodies. He gave the Monster eternal life by shooting it full of electricity. Some people claim it is not dead even now—just dormant.

 Purists might argue with the wording, but I had at last all the information I needed to start my quest. Even at this early point in the movie, Lawrence Talbot had already transformed into The Wolf Man. A few scenes later he explains: “Years ago I was bitten by a werewolf. Now, when the moon is full, I become a wolf, too.” The eternal question about vampires and werewolves—if you have to be bitten by one to become one, how did the first one become one—already nagged at me, but I left that issue to later musings.

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein was once dismissed as juvenile fare. Into the 1960s it became a guilty pleasure, and as the years pass it is increasingly acknowledged as the witty thriller it is. Whatever its merits, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein introduced many baby boomers like myself to American horror and monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s. This brilliant little movie encapsulates all the virtues of far more ambitious gothic tales: a quest for eternal life, a tortured protagonist, a death struggle between intractable foes, a forbidden text with unholy knowledge. And even this movie blatantly aimed at a young audience has a curious subtext, especially in relation to the monster films that precede it.

“Lugosi’s Dracula was the most awesome and magical figure I had ever seen”

In the film, soon after Abbott & Costello read the primers for the two great movie monsters, came the moment which sealed my fate. The pivotal character in the story is Count Dracula, whose plot to revive Frankenstein’s Monster drives the other characters’ actions. I did not know then that Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Dracula was legendary, or that his long association with the role had come to dominate his career and his legacy. All I knew as I watched Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein was that Lugosi’s Dracula was the most awesome and magical figure I had ever seen. Lugosi’s first scene in the film is without dialogue. From his coffin, Dracula locks on Costello a stare more than human, rises and waves his hand and fingers with amazing fluidity. The vampire gently taps Costello’s chest to be sure that his victim is fully under his spell, and steps back to admire his handiwork. Costello was literally dumbfounded and so was I. The comedian shakes off the trance in a few minutes. I proved not so strong—more than 40 years later I am still under Lugosi’s spell. I had yet to hear him speak, to hear that magnificent voice.

By the time that I saw Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, I had television programming on my side in my plot to see all the old horror films. By the early 1960s, the old black & white horrors were no longer deemed a threat to the young, and the airwaves were flooded with them at all times. Saturdays were saturated with 1930s and 1940s monster movies. Before the weekly Abbott & Costello movie at 2:00 on Channel 5 came a horror film at 1:00. At 7:30 on Channel 11 came Chiller Theater, and late night Saturdays usually had at least one horror. I first saw the early horrors of Universal and the German expressionists on Silents Please, a short-lived television series that played abbreviated versions of old silent films. The less specialized movie anthology programs had their share of monsters. Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9 played a single film repeatedly for a week—twice or three times each week night, and almost continuously on Saturday and Sunday—and gave the pre-video generation the opportunity to watch the same movie over and over.

“The first hardcover book I ever bought”

Within a few years I was something of an expert on 1930s and 1940s monster movies. I read all the monster movie magazines. The first hardcover book I ever bought was William K. Everson’s The Bad Guys, about movie villains. The first poems and short stories that I read of my own volition were the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The first novels I chose to read were Dracula and Frankenstein. My first sojourns from New Jersey to New York City were to museum auditoriums and revival theatres to see obscure horror movies that had yet to be released to television. My first use of a reference library was to lookup reviews and articles of horror movies in old newspapers. Horror movies, in short, were always there as I grew up, and shaped my first forays into the world beyond my home.

 By the late 1960s, I had written a few articles on old horror films for Photon, an amateur magazine. In the late 1970s, I drafted five essays on Bela Lugosi, with the intent of collecting them into a book for his centennial in 1982. But adult life caught up with me—marriage and family, a house, a lawn to mow, a career—and I abandoned the project. I remained a fan of old monster movies, but nothing more.

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“The Man of 1,000 Faces”

Fast forward to Christmas morning, 1991. Like countless divorced dads, I puttered around my apartment, waiting for my assigned time to gather up my sons. As I ironed my shirts, I watched a documentary about philosopher and historian Joseph Campbell, author of Hero With A Thousand Faces. I pondered as I folded a shirt that the great silent movie star and master of makeup, Lon Chaney, was known as “The Man of 1,000 Faces.” Campbell explained that everyone believes in a mythology, whether its basis is historical or folklore, religious or political. He described how a mythology is necessary to fit the real world into a comprehensible pattern based on some values and tenets. I believed Campbell, but could not identify my own mythology. Time had come to fetch my sons, and I tossed the question into the heap with the unironed shirts.

*          *          *

About a year later, I first saw a copy of Cult Movies Magazine. Inside was an ad for a video, On the Trail of Bela Lugosi. The Cult Movies gang had taken a video recorder and visited “Lugosi sites” around Los Angeles: homes and apartments where he had lived; theatres where he had appeared; studios and outdoor locations where he had filmed. Not bad for $9.95, so I ordered one. The video soon arrived, and on its heels came a letter from Mike Copner, editor of Cult Movies:

I remember your name as a Lugosi fan who wrote a Karloff/Lugosi piece for Photon magazine about 20 years ago or so. I thought that was a great piece, and hope that some of our stuff will live up to your high standard…Are you doing any writing these days? I haven’t seen your name lately, but then I don’t read all the zines available, since there are so many out there these days. We don’t pay much, but if you had an article or something related to any variety of cult films, I’d sure be honored to run it in our magazine.

Cult Movies #27: The Lugosi Curse

I was stunned. The article he remembered so well had been published in Photon more than 20 years before. In my job—I was then an engineer in the oil industry—my memos and reports were forgotten almost immediately, as were the dozen or so technical articles I had co-written. Mike vividly remembered something I had written a generation before. I dug out my draft articles on Lugosi—four of the five had survived, all handwritten—and read them for the first time in many years. Still pretty good, I thought. I sent one to Mike, telling him that I would type it into a word processor after I had revised it. I was sure some of its ideas and information would be dated. After perusing recent writings on Lugosi and horror films, I was surprised that my articles still seemed rather fresh. Over the next year, Mike had published all of them in Cult Movies Magazine. In the meantime, I had recreated my fifth article on Britain’s so-called ban of horror films in 1937. Unlike the first four pieces, which are basically historical—new facts that I had unearthed on Lugosi’s life and career—the fifth article strayed into horror films’ subtext, into what may lurk just beneath the surface. Or, perhaps more accurately in the case of 1930s horrors, into what the filmmakers might have included in their works that censorship pressures of the day forced them to mask. 

Karloff  “The Uncanny” in The Mummy

I had no plans to do anything more until a friend, Egyptologist Bob Brier, asked me to look at his chapter on mummy movies in a manuscript for his new book. I had little to offer until a strange epiphany came over me. A co-worker had just returned from a business trip to China, carrying with him the latest strain of influenza. I caught it and for a week had no strength for anything more demanding than downing cold remedies and popping videos in my home machine before collapsing in bed to watch them. Universal’s four Kharis movies of the early 1940s have a combined running time of just over four hours. I watched them in sequence, again and again. Perhaps it was my near-delirium, perhaps I was unconsciously looking for something fresh to offer Bob, but I found meanings and themes that I had never seen before. It occurred to me that this is how Poe might have conceived his stories—half-asleep and half-demented from drugs. At last I had something unique to give Bob. Bob loved my rewrite. His publisher and editor did not, and deleted it. Mike Copner thought it manna from heaven and printed it immediately. I recovered from the flu, but perhaps not from the delirium. Since then, about 1994, whenever I watch an old horror film I think of something I want to write about. Some of my ideas are in the pieces which follow.

 *          *          *

In the late 20th century, interest in old horror and monster movies rapidly grew into a legitimate field of study. Renewed interest in horror films gained momentum long before I re-entered the field. In the 1960s, histories of horror films rarely rose above juvenile fare. By the 1990s, research into the making of the old horror films and the lives of the people associated with them was well established. Thanks to many dedicated film lovers, dozens of people who worked on the old monster movies have had their memories recorded; old newspaper features, trade journals and diverse documents have been digested; “lost” and unavailable films have been brought to light.

Carl Denham’s map of Skull Island

As the history behind the films was slowly documented, speculations on what might be within the films themselves multiplied rapidly. The growth of home video made such musings inevitable. For the first time, a wide viewership could watch movies often and closely, could freeze frames to study minute details (such as the contents of Dr. Frankenstein’s journal, or Carl Denham’s map of Skull Island in King Kong), and could replay garbled dialogue until it was deciphered (such as the German-accented Latin read by Van Helsing’s assistant in Dracula). In short, thanks to video, film could be studied as thoroughly as painting. And just as some meaning could be found in every detail of a Renaissance masterpiece, so could film students search for some overlooked gem in a film frame.

Many 1930s and 40s horror films have proven particularly fertile ground for interpretative analyses. Is Frankenstein’s Monster a stand-in for the unwanted child; is the doctor a classic case of womb envy? Is Dracula’s duel with Van Helsing actually between the devouring and the nurturing parent? Is King Kong the avenging black man who has broken his chains, or the natural world lashing out against technology? Or perhaps, as King Kong’s creator once said, “sometimes a black gorilla is just a black gorilla.”

Just a black gorilla?

Over the past 30 years, horror and monster films have been proposed as allegories for sexual and gender anxieties, intergenerational and familial tensions, racial and class struggles, economic and political instabilities, and fears over aging—both growing up and growing old. Whether a viewer sees any such ideas in the shadows or just a big black gorilla is entirely a personal choice. But whether one relishes the subtexts or simply cannot accept them, these films achieve a rare blend of entertainment and myth.

*          *          *

The popularity of 1930s and 1940s horror films with the post-war baby boomers may be an accident of timing. Universal’s old monster movies hit the ariwaves en masse just as the boomers began to outgrow children’s fairy tales. The monster boomers replaced one set of myths with another. Fairy tales and monster movies can be cast as sequential mythologies for young people. In their original forms, neither was intended primarily for the young. In time target audiences for fairy tales became those not too far from the womb, and for horror movies those not too far from puberty.

Target audiences for horror movies were those not too far from puberty

Fairy tales and horror both invite a wide range of interpretations, but at the cores of the perennial favorites are familial dramas. Long before the 1950s, those dramas might be quite diverse. In early variants of Cinderella’s tale, the villain is as often the father as the stepmother. Tallies of 19th century vampire stories show undead women outnumbering men. By the time the baby boomers arrived, the evildoers in fairy tales were mostly women, while in horror movies they were almost exclusively men. Portraying fairy tales as basically about bad mommies and horror movies as about bad daddies is a simplification, but not one that is trivially dismissed.

Many fairy tales open with a family in crisis. Snow White lives with a murderous stepmother; Cinderella with a sadistic one. Rather than feed Hansel and Gretel, yet another stepmother drives them from their home. By the end of the tales, the evil stepmothers are dead or vanquished, and the children are living happily everafter. Not quite, for horror movies then pick up their stories. The movies often begin with young people somewhat older than in the fairy tales, living in that promised everafter. But young Dr. Frankensteins and Dr. Jekylls are compelled to abandon comfortable lives to pursue strange and dangerous quests. The happy unions of young Mina Sewards to young Jonathan Harkers are threatened when Count Draculas come a-calling. Evil is again defeated, but not all the young people find a new happy-everafter, and some do not survive.

“compelled to abandon comfortable lives to pursue strange and dangerous quests”

Persistent themes in fairy tales are that obstacles in life must be confronted, and that young people must master their weaknesses and summon their strengths to prevail. The same is true of horror movies, but with a new concern. The dangers often include actually becoming the evil that must be destroyed. Those who confront vampires and werewolves may join their ranks. Universal’s mummy series begins and ends with the same plot: a young woman learns she is the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess and may become a living mummy. Anyone can become a Mr. Hyde or an Invisible Man. Frankenstein’s Monster is literally an amalgamation of victims. Four of the eight Universal Frankenstein movies involve a new brain going into The Monster. Only one comes from a willing donor.

Varied and scholarly interpretations abound, but fairy tales are essentially a mythology for those entering adolescent life and horror movies for those entering adult life. Horror films with their more varied plots and complex characters may be much more. Just as fairy tales are not great literature, most 1930s and 40s horror films are not great cinema. Taken as a whole, they are a rich and detailed mythology.

*          *          *

Makers of Monsters, Makers of Men…and Women!

The subtitle of this book is “The Mythology & History of Classic Horror Films.” History and mythology are inseparable. Delving into what is on screen means delving into what happened off it. All the chapters in this book combine mythology and history. A few, such “Makers of Monsters, Makers of Men,” and “Monstrous Ambition” are primarily histories. Each chapter has a historical postscript with an anecdote in some way related to the main text: incidents in the lives of the people how made the films, events from outside the world of film that either influenced the movies or were influenced by them.

Movie horror’s first surges in popularity coincide with the Great Depression and World War II, when real-life presumably offered terrors that more than matched those in the movies. The early horror films owe as much to the coming of sound films in the 1920s and the aftermath of World War I as to the headlines of their own decades. Horror and monster films certainly appeared before the advent of sound in the late 1920s; but the first sustained craze for the genre came a short time after the cinema found its voice. Sound also brought increased outcries from the reformers on the evils of the movies. Pressures from the censors soon followed. Some studio bosses ignored or opposed the objections of the watchdogs, but most eventually ceded the fight.

Peter Lorre in Mad Love, pushing the boundaries to the limit

Horror films were sometimes in the forefront of the never-ending debates on film content, but by any measure of explicit content they were hardly the most daring. Yet movie censors, particularly in Britain, singled out horror for special scrutiny. That scrutiny led to a virtual ban on movie horror from 1936 to 1938. The next-to-last essay in this book, “‘H’ Is For ‘Horrific’,” deals with the protracted battle in Britain over horror films.

Many of the movie monsters—Dracula, Frankenstein, Jekyll & Hyde, Svengali, The Invisible Man—were born in 19th century novels. The 19th century saw the Industrial Revolution, the Darwinian revolution and the Freudian revolution. The horror novels reflect anxieties over technology, and over questions of what is man and what is self. Each of the monsters embodied the new tensions introduced by the then-modern world. Horror movies took those characters, simplified them, and served them up to the movie-going public of the 1930s and 1940s.

“..somewhere in the world, all the animals known only through fossil records must thrive.’

Among the advances in 19th century science was the inescapable conclusion that the earth had seen the extinction of countless species. “Science” long resisted the notion of extinction. Many scholars of the time, Thomas Jefferson among them, contended that somewhere in the world, all the animals known only through fossil records must thrive.  Science would drop the idea, but popular culture never did, and conjured mythical lands over the horizon.  Thus literature produced The Lost World, and the movies produced King Kong.

*          *          *

This book collects my essays on the horror and monster films that I first saw on television in my youth. Most of the pieces have been previously published in Cult Movies Magazine, but I have never stopped writing them. None of the movies that I write about ever frightened me, but they captivated me at an early age, and have never let go. Like my obsession with old black & white horror films, the writing of my essays never ends. The essays may be read individually, but have been sequenced and edited to allow a smooth progression and to remove unnecessary repetition.

The collection begins with the character and the actor who for me started it all.

“The Dracula That Never Ends”

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Related articles

Three Tales – One Story by Frank J. Dello Stritto

Dracula’s Coffin: The Story of Bela Lugosi’s Steamer Trunk by Frank J. Dello Stritto

During the Second World War, the public’s taste for escapist entertainment, particularly horror films, bolstered Bela Lugosi’s career. The war years saw him appearing in 22 films of varying quality. When the War ended and service personal, who’d had their fill of real-life horrors, began to return home, the public’s demand for screen monsters waned rapidly. Bela made just two films in 1946, Genius at Work and Scared to Death. After completing work on the later in April 1946, he received no further offers of film roles. His meagre earnings came from one-night stands in spook shows and capsule versions of Dracula. In early 1947 his prospects seemed to improve when he was given top billing in Three Indelicate Ladies, a mystery-farce that, according to the play’s publicity, would return Bela to Broadway. Critics, however, found numerous faults with the play, including Bela’s “almost criminal” miscasting as an Irish gangster. The production folded long before Broadway beckoned, leaving Bela forced to fall back on short provincial runs of Dracula and Arsenic and Old Lace.

Bela and Elaine Stritch in Three Indelicate Ladies

Often cited as a key factor in Bela’s career woes was his failure to secure adequate representation. Although the prestigious William Morris Agency represented him from 1940 – 1942, he went through five agents in the following five years. By September 1947, with next to no offers of work being made, Bela decided it was time to change agents once more. He chose to inform his current representative, Virginia Doak, that he had signed a new exclusive contract with the Don Marlowe Agency by letter on October 8th, three weeks after the event.

*          *          *

“My darling friend Virginia,

The reason why I am putting on the sugar so thick in addressing you is to make you accept the bad news that on Sept. 18th I signed an exclusive contract with Don Marlowe, which naturally means that if he can’t realize even one of his promises in four months that contract expires.

It is easy for people that have a steady income from some source to be able to wait for help and achievement of their friend who is in the managerial business. But it is close to two years that have had some many projects in view which unfortunately – naturally not your fault – did not realize. That would have been alright if I would have had money to cover my overhead expenses – which I didn’t – and especially that I was not working for two years and getting very deep in the red. I had to borrow money on my last collateral to escape from Hollywood and try to cash in on my popularity and box office value in the east.

I couldn’t help signing with him for a year which means four months if he can’t deliver. But I signed for motion pictures only and the radio field is still free for you. So as far as motion pictures are concerned he is entitled to full commission for anything he knows and is able to deliver but if you should know of anything of which he does not – naturally you should receive full commission regardless of my obligations to Marlowe.

So I would suggest, my dear, to cooperate with Marlowe for the time being and believe me I would not disappoint you. I need a job very badly and am just human when I say that I do not mind who helps me to get my bread and butter I have to take it. So when I return to make a picture arranged by whom-ever I can make the radio recording platters and finally try to get out of the red.

Please answer by air mail and believe me, we are your sincere but desperate friends.

Truly,

Bela”

*          *          *

Don Marlowe Agency publicity material

Exactly when and where Bela and Marlowe met is unclear, but it was unlikely to be in 1939, as suggested by Marlowe in his quasi-autobiography. Prone to exaggeration and outright lies, Marlowe falsely claimed to be Porky of the Our Gang comedies in his publicity material, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction in his recollections. Described as having more enthusiasm than talent as an agent, he did work hard on behalf of Bela and achieved something that his predecessor failed to do – he got Bela working. On November 19th, only one month after signing Bela, the two set off on a tour of The Tell-Tale Heart, written and produced by Marlowe, who also provided the sound effects. In the absence of complete records, the extent of the tour is unknown. Posters do survive from a handful of dates. The production, a 40 minute dramatic reading by Bela supported by a reissue of the film Dracula, appears to have played in sleepy backwaters, but it gave Bela work, and more importantly a pay cheque. His contract for the tour guaranteed him $1,000 per week against 10% of the top gross plus, hotel accommodation, transportation from New York to the engagements and return transportation to his choice of New York or California.

Bela relaxes on the set of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

Bela must have felt that his decision to sign with Marlowe was justified when Universal cast him as Dracula in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in January of the following year.  What part Marlowe actually played in securing the role for Bela is unknown, but his own account is known to be grossly exaggerated. He claimed that he stormed into the Universal offices just days before filming began and used moral blackmail to shame executives into giving Bela the part, reminding them that Dracula had saved the studio from ruin in 1931. However much Marlowe overstated his role, Bela did receive his most prestigious, critically acclaimed latter-day role under his representation. The return to the limelight, however, proved to be short-lived. The critical and financial success of the film mysteriously failed to rejuvenate Bela’s career. Whether it was a measure of Marlowe’s true ability as an agent or, as Frank Dello Stritto has suggested in his article Lugosi in Politics, the result of a secret blacklisting due to Bela’s unwitting involvement in the Communist-backed Hungarian American Council for Democracy during World War II, Bela found himself once more cast professionally adrift. He did not make another film until Mother Riley Meets The Vampire at the end of his 1951 British tour of Dracula.

Bela almost found himself performing Dracula on a British stage in 1948. Although details are scant, Marlowe’s plan for an eight-week run of Dracula in London seems to have come close to taking place, but fell through at the last minute. He had many other ideas for new projects for Bela, including The Bela Lugosi Show with CBS, The Return of Dracula and an Invisible Man film at Universal, The Inner Sanctum at MGM, and a Chandu serial at Columbia. All failed to materialise.

Marlowe placed this ad in Mad Monsters #3 in 1963

By 1950, Bela had moved on to another agent in search of the elusive comeback which he never quite gave up on. Whether as a true mark of respect or an attempt to publicize himself, Marlowe placed a memorial advertisement in Variety when Bela died. He showed his true colours at the funeral. As Bela’s casket was being taken from the Utter McKinley Mortuary to the waiting hearse, he pushed aside official pallbearer Richard Sheffield, one of Bela’s teenage friends, so that he would be photographed carrying the casket by the assembled members of the press.

Marlowe, back left, looks into the camera. The other pallbearers, including Edward D. Wood Jr., back right, concentrate on their footing as they descend the steps of the mortuary.

During the 1960s, Marlowe cashed in on his relationship with Bela by selling items such as copies of Bela’s memorial service card, Screen Actors Guild membership card, photos, a recording of Bela’s rendition of The Tell-Tale Heart and one of Bela’s personal scrapbooks through monster magazines. In September 1970, he set the film collecting world alight when he placed the following ad in Classic Film Collector magazine and Midi Minuit Fantastique in France:

*          *          *

“Bela Lugosi – For Sale: Screen test Bela Lugosi made for the original Frankenstein. 35mm sound, running time 21 minutes; same scene is shown twice with change in lighting, etc. Between scenes camera was left running and Carl Laemmle Junior, James Whale, Colin Clive and Lugosi can be seen and heard discussing test and wardrobe Lugosi was wearing. Film can be examined and screened before purchase is made. Price: $4,000. Don Marlowe. Hollywood, Calif. 90028″

*          *          *

What made the advertisement so astounding was the mention of James Whale. It was well known that Frankenstein’s original director, Robert Florey, shot test footage with  Bela on the Dracula set, but it had always been assumed that Bela’s involvement in the film ended with Florey’s when James Whale took over as director. Could Whale have made his own screen test with Bela or was it just another of Marlowe’s tall tales? Unless the film resurfaces, we will never know because, despite financial inducements, he did not allow anyone to see the footage, subsequently claiming that he had sold it to Carl Laemmle Jr. for $3,500 dollars.

A duplicate of Bela’s memorial service card sold by Marlowe

Time has not been kind to Marlowe’s reputation. His often questionable behaviour, such as secretly taping a telephone conversation with Stan Laurel and marketing the recording as a “lost” interview, and the unmasking of his many false claims have left him discredited. Although it should perhaps be approached with caution, the following extract from  The Hollywood That Was, Marlowe’s 1969 account of his “mis”adventures in Hollywood, does provide a rare first-hand account of a period of Bela’s life and work which has not yet been fully documented, and, until researchers are able to shed more light on the Marlowe years, remains our primary source of information.

One of the best friends I have ever had was Bela Lugosi. We were devoted friends for almost thirty years, until the day he died. I doubt there has ever been an actor in the history of motion pictures or the theatre who has been more misquoted by the press than this gentleman…and gentleman he was…a true continental with manners to match. I could write a book on Lugosi alone recording the very many interesting experiences I have had with him over the years. Besides being his close friend, I had worked at various times as his manager, agent, producer, director and frequently worked with him as an actor.

Lugosi had very few English-speaking friends because he preferred to speak in his native tongue, Hungarian, and the few friends he did have, other than myself, were Hungarian. Bela and I seemed to hit it off quite well from the first time we met. During the many years I knew him I never once heard him raise his voice or use any profanity. He had manners which never left him regardless of circumstances. As an example, we were playing Green Bay, Wisconsin one night many years ago in his great stage success, Dracula. In addition to producing the play, I was playing a part in this production. Although he had performed his role in this play hundreds of times before, on this particular night, as happens once in a while with all actors, he forgot his lines. I happened to be on the stage in a scene with him the night this happened. I had quite a long speech and Lugosi’s line followed my dialogue. As I looked at him expecting the line I could see that he could not think of it. I adlibbed a line to try to get him back on the track. However, this did not seem to help. Mrs. Lugosi was working as a prompter, offstage, and she threw him the correct line. She did not speak quite loud enough for Bela to pickup the exact words. Without flinching, Lugosi said, as though it were a line in the play: “I beg your pardon?”

Mrs Lugosi repeated the line loud enough this time so that Bela got it right and proceeded with the scene as though nothing untoward had occurred.

Bela and Don Marlowe (right) at a performance of Dracula

I produced several road companies of the play Dracula with Bela Lugosi playing the lead. On one of these tours we opened at the Coronado Theatre in Rockford, Illinois. To get the show off to a good start, we flooded the town with publicity. Lugosi’s picture could be seen on almost every fence and telephone pole in town.

We arrived in Rockford the night before the opening. Bela, his wife Lillian, and I had enjoyed a late, festive dinner in the hotel dinning-room. We toasted each other several times to the success of the tour and all of us left the table in high spirits. As we were walking through the hotel lobby, Mrs. Lugosi said she wanted to retire early and went to her room. Bela and I decided to walk downtown to take a look at the theatre where we were to appear the following night.

It was about ten o’clock and practically all of Rockford’s inhabitants were indoors on this cold November night. As Bela and I walked briskly along the street, we noticed a brightly lighted stretch ahead of us. This turned out to be a long bridge, right in downtown Rockford. In the distance, we could make out the lone figure of a young boy about ten, coming toward us from the opposite direction.

Lugosi, usually a modest man, but now in an elated mood, turned to me with a twinkle in his eye, and said:

“He will spot me any minute, watch.”

As the boy approached us we could both see his expression of disbelief as he recognised Bela Lugosi. Bela was smiling and as we got near to the boy he said in a gentle voice:

“Good evening, my young man.”

The astonished boy timidly returned the smile and managed to blurt out:

“Could I have your autograph, please?”

“Certainly,” said Lugosi, turning to me with a triumphant grin.

The boy took a piece of paper out of his pocket and I offered my pen to Bela. As he was about to sign his name, Bela paused momentarily and said to his young fan:

“And, young man, what is my name?”

Without hesitation, the boy said: “Boris Karloff.”

The Tell-Tale Heart playbill

On another Lugosi tour we were running his original picture Dracula with a forty-minute stage presentation. For part of the show I had written a short, modern version of the Edgar Allen Poe story, The Tell-Tale Heart.

After the first night, I dreamed up the idea  that it would add realism to the play if we could reproduce the sound of a beating heart, which was what the play was about. The Tell-Tale Heart story is about a murderer who imagines that he hears his victim’s heart beating after the murder. The lines: “And the heart kept beating louder, and louder, and louder,” were repeated many times throughout this sketch.

I knew that it would be impossible to get sound recording in this part of the country. In a second-hand store I found an  old drum which seemed to have just the right sound.

Because we carried no stage-hands, I handled the sound effects on the drum myself. I did this until we reached the city of Racine, Wisconsin. I always stood as close to the stage as I possibly could without being seen, in order to be able to hear Bela’s dialogue. As I have already mentioned, the drum I was using was in poor condition and as Lugosi was going through the lines of  The Tell-Tale Heart that night, I was beating the drum softly at first, as usual. When Bela got to the part, “and the heart kept beating louder and louder and louder,” I began to hit the drum harder and harder and harder. As we came to the climax of this vignette, my mallet broke into the drum. This threw me completely  off-balance and I fell over the drum, past the curtain and landed on the stage, practically at Lugosi’s feet in full view of the audience.

Bela looked down at me with an expression I had never seen before on his face, then very calmly announced:

“Ladies and gentlemen…my manager, Mr. Don Marlowe.”

I quickly recovered my composure and walked off-stage. Lugosi, undaunted trooper that he was, went on with the performance as though nothing unusual had taken place.

Don Marlowe Agency publicity material with characteristic exageration. When, where or if this “eveing of character sketches” took place is unknown

In the course of his lifetime, Bela Lugosi earned hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was, however, always in one of two extreme predicaments…either incalculably wealthy or completely broke. The actor never worried about money. He spent it faster than anyone I have ever known. He lived luxuriously in a stately mansion with lavish furnishings…wore elegant clothes and entertained in superlative taste. He owned a priceless stamp collection and his only other hobby, to which he devoted his leisure time, was reading books mainly dealing with scientific subjects and world history.

One morning we were having breakfast at the old Gotham Restaurant in Hollywood. There were only four of us in our party, yet the check came to almost three hundred dollars. Bela had ordered Eggs Benedictine. He liked the way this restaurant prepared this gourmet dish and he ordered two cases of imported champagne for the chef to show his appreciation. For the excellent services rendered by the waitress, he ordered two dozen red roses for her. He had a second thought…it might hurt the feelings of the other waitresses to overlook them, so he ordered the same token of his appreciation for each of the other girls. It was in this kind of whimsical extravagance that the actor frequently indulged himself.

One of the few confirmed performances of The Tell-Tale Heart

Bela was with me one afternoon when I was giving writer Henry Lawrence a lift home. Harry lived only a short distance from my home. Lugosi and Lawrence had one thing in common which they discussed during the ride. Neither of them had ever learned to drive.

Several months later, when Lugosi was in one of his many financial crises, he had urgent need for a small amount of cash. He went to my house late one night hoping to borrow some money from me, but I happened to be out that night. Remembering that Harry Lawrence lived only a short distance from me, Lugosi went to his home. He asked the writer to lend him ten dollars. Harry good-naturedly handed him the money. Then, recalling that Lugosi did not drive, Harry asked: “But how will you get back home?”

Bela shrugged and said: “Oh, I have a cab waiting.”

 A duplicate of Bela’s Screen Actors Guild membership card sold by Marlowe

I was visiting with Bela Lugosi one afternoon and got into a serious talk with him about his main problem in life…the important matter of the way he mishandled his finances. He listened thoughtfully and did not interrupt me. When I had finished, he looked at me and said:

“Don, give me one good reason for saving money.” Then he went on to say: “Isn’t the real purpose of money to spend  on things that one enjoys? When I don’t have it I can’t spend it.”

To convince me that his own philosophy was not unique, he produced a paper on which was written the following:

In 1923, a very important meeting was held at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. Attending this meeting were nine of the world’s most successful financiers. Those present were:

The president of the largest independent steel company:

The president of the largest utility company:

The president of the largest gas company:

The greatest wheat speculator:

The president of the New York Stock Exchange:

A member of the president’s cabinet:

The greatest “bear” in Wall Street:

Head of the world’s greatest monopoly:

President of the Bank of International Settlements.

Certainly we must admit that here were gathered a group of the world’s most successful men. At least men who had found the secret of “making money.”

Twenty-five years later let’s see where these men are:

The president of the largest independent steel company – Charles Schwab – died a bankrupt and lived on borrowed money for  five years before his death.

The president of the largest utility company – Samuel Insull – died a fugitive from justice and penniless in a foreign land.

The president of the largest gas company – Howard Hobson – is now insane.

The greatest wheat speculator – Artur Cutton – died abroad insolvent.

The president of the New York Stock Exchange – Richard Whitney – was just recently released from Sing Sing Penitentiary.

The member of the president’s cabinet – Albert Fall – was pardoned from prison so that he could die at home.

The greatest “bear” in Wall Street – Jesse Livermore – died a suicide.

The president of the Bank of International Settlements – Leon Fraser – died a suicide.

All of these men learned well the art of

Making money, but none of them

LEARNED HOW TO LIVE.

When I had finished reading these very stirring accounts of famous men, Lugosi said: “Don – happiness to me is contentment, and spending money gives me contentment.”

Such was the philosophy of Bela Lugosi…the only man I ever knew who lived life to the fullest.

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Related articles

When Dracula Did Jersey…

 Bela Lugosi On The Stage 

Reviews of Three Indelicate Ladies , Dracula and The Tell-Tale Heart

Bela photographed by Florance Vandamm in the December  1927 issue of Vanity Fair

Some of the most interesting stories about famous people—and not just movie stars—are based on the recollections of a single person. Truly impartial eyewitnesses are rare, and human memory is never to be fully trusted. As often as not, when new corroborating facts are discovered, old legends fall apart. But sometimes, the great little stories indeed seem true.

Robert Cremer’s 1976 biography, Lugosi The Man Behind The Cape, includes an anecdote (on pages 102-103) about the first American production of Dracula, which opened on Broadway in October 1927. Bela Lugosi, so the story goes, did not impress producer Horace Liveright and director Ira Hards in the first days of rehearsal:

{Liveright} was greatly disturbed that the weak link in the play appeared to be none other than Bela Lugosi…The cast grew edgy at Lugosi’s nonchalance on stage…Just a week before the dress rehearsal, Hards suggested that Liveright have a long talk with Lugosi.

Behind closed doors with his boss, Lugosi slipped into character as he explained his approach to his acting. “For the first time Liveright sensed the power and sheer terror Lugosi could produce even in an innocuous line.” Cremer cites no source for his anecdote. The tale almost certainly came to him indirectly from Lugosi himself, who would have told it to one of his many friends and relatives that the author interviewed years later for the biography. Lugosi died in 1956: so at least 20 years separate the actor telling the story first-hand and Cremer hearing it second-hand. And an almost 50-year gap between the actual event and its first printed account. Plenty of reason to question its accuracy.

Tod Browning, Bela Lugosi, Horace Liveright, and Dudley Murphy pose for a publicity shot in a break during the filming of Dracula

In the many interviews that Lugosi gave later, he sometimes claimed that he was fired from the production for a few days, and then brought back. In his interviews on the West Coast in 1928, where Dracula created the sensation it never did on Broadway, Lugosi had harsh criticisms for the American style of acting: too much emphasis on flash and not enough on the basics. Lugosi’s recorded interviews do not directly support the Cremer anecdote, but they are certainly consistent with it.

A tale later in Cremer, based on better evidence, is quite similar to the Liveright anecdote. In early 1954, Lugosi was rehearsing for his opening at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas. Again, he was unimpressive in his first go-throughs, and again the producer had grave doubts. Cremer interviewed Ed Wood at length for Lugosi The Man Behind The Cape; and Lugosi’s sometime agent relates his confrontation with the night club’s publicity director, Eddie Fox (page 222):

Sipping a scotch, Fox watched the rehearsal the afternoon before the premiere and motioned for Ed to come over to his table…“I’m going to cut Lugosi’s contract. The man just doesn’t have it for a comedy scene. His lines are flat and unimaginative. Why, he’ll put everyone to sleep. Pack your bags and I’ll have the cashier make out a check for your severance pay.

A very rare photo of the Silver Slipper sign advertising the Bela Lugosi Revue

Wood begged for patience, and when the show opened the next night, Lugosi set the house aroar with laughter. Ed Wood, the infamously bad movie director, is also an infamously unreliable source. But quite believable is the simple fact that in early rehearsals, Lugosi strove to get the basics right, and saved the charisma for later.

In 1999, while researching AndiBrooks’ and my book, Vampire Over London – Bela Lugosi in Britain, I interviewed John Mather. Mather produced the 1951 stage tour of Dracula, where Lugosi gave his last performances in his great role. During the interview, the last thing on my mind was 1927, and with no provocation from me, John said:

I met Bela and Lillian when they landed in Southampton. Bela looked as if he were going to die. He always looked that way…For the first 2 or 3 days of rehearsals, he only walked through his part. I was wondering about canceling the whole thing. On the third day, Dickie Eastham asked the cast to do their read-throughs in character. Bela stood straight and awed everyone. Bela had always looked like a tired old man, very gray, very old and bent, years older than his actual age. He spoke very slowly, softly and mumbled a bit. This all changed when he was onstage. The transformation was complete: he looked 40 again, erect and towering. When he was Dracula, he had this twinkle in his eye. He was so charming, and then so evil. It was magnificent.

Here, quite unexpectedly, came a first-hand story almost identical to Cremer’s Liveright and Silver Slipper anecdotes.

Joan Harding and Bela Lugosi on stage in Britain in 1951

My personal opinion is that Lugosi’s almost being fired from Dracula in 1927 is true. What cannot be verified is whether, after Liveright closed his office door, Lugosi stared him down and crooned in a menacing tone (according to Cremer, page 103):

I understand your concern, but the performance is not until a week from tomorrow ev-e-nink. Now, we work for position. Our lines must be perfect. Yes, we save the atmosphere for a week from tomorrow ev-e-nink.

In the 1931 film version, when Dracula tells Renfield, “we will be leaving tomorrow evening,” Lugosi draws out the last two words with particular relish. Perhaps he was remembering the moment that he bested Liveright—but I can’t prove it.

*          *          *

Frank J Dello Stritto’s critically acclaimed new book, A Quaint & Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore - The Mythology & History of Classic Horror FIlms is available exclusively from: http://www.thegraphictouch.com/cultmoviespress/

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Dracula’s Coffin: The Story of Bela Lugosi’s Steamer Trunk by Frank J. Dello Stritto

A Quaint And Curious Volume Of Forgotten Lore by Frank Dello Stritto

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicolas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.

And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave lustre of mid-day to objects below

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick

I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.

A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

The Dracula cape worn by Bela Lugosi in the 1931 Universal classic film failed to sell in the first session of the Icons of Hollywood auction at Profiles in History on December 16th. The starting price of $1,200,000 may have been overly optimistic, but the cape wasn’t the only iconic Hollywood artifact that priced itself out of a sale. A pair of Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz scared off potential buyers with its starting price of $2,000,000.

The surprise announcement that Bela Lugosi Jr. was auctioning his father’s cape caused consternation amongst fans. Not only were they mystified by his decision to sell such an important heirloom, which was left him by his mother, Lillian, upon her death in 1981, they also feared that the cape would disappear into the vault of an investor or be buried away in a private collection. 

The cape (Lot 589) wasn’t the only item to be put up for auction by Lugosi Jr. Among various photographs, posters and lobby cards, two were of such a personal nature that his desire to sell them seems even more surprising than his wish to sell the cape. Inscribed, “To the Sweetest Good Mother of  Mine,” a 1905 Hungarian portrait of Bela failed to reach its starting price of $1,000, while a 1940s portrait inscribed by Bela to his wife Lillian sold for $2,250. The highest selling lot was Bela’s own jumbo lobby card from Dracula, which sold for $22,500.

In addition to the lots from Bela’s estate and family, five other items, including photographs from Bela’s own collection, were offered for sale. The most interesting lot, however, was a pair of Bela’s 1930s wingtip shoes, which fetched $1,600.

In remarkable condition, Bela’s wingtip shoes

Bela wearing the shoes at the Hollywood Athletic Club sometime during the 1930s

*          *          *

Below is a full list of the lots from Bela’s family and estate, with catalogue descriptions and starting and selling prices.

Lot 585

Starting price $1,000 – unsold

Hungarian cabinet portrait ca. 1905. Silver-bromide matte print 4 ¼ “ x 7 ½”on photographer’s imprinted  card-mount. A very early original-period reprint, as it bears Lugosi’s  inscription in the print itself in Hungarian, “To the Sweetest Good Mother of  Mine.” 

*          *          *

Lot 586

Starting price $800 – unsold

Two vintage ca. 1920 Hungarian 3¼”x 5¼” photo-portrait postcards  of Bela Lugosi in striking poses with his facsimile signature, by “Angelo” of  Budapest. From the estate of Lugosi himself, and passed down to his heir. Cards  of this type were marketed to the public as promotions for Lugosi’s early film  and stage work in Europe, where he had already made a significant mark in the  public esteem. Tiny spot of age browning at one corner, else both Very Fine.

*          *          *

Lot 587

Starting price $1,000 – sold for $1,000

Vintage oversize portrait of Bela Lugosi in his Hollywood study,  ca. 1930 - Silver-bromide 11”x 14” double-weight custom matte print, being a  contemplative portrait of  Bela Lugosi contemporaneous with his role in Dracula,  in the study of his Hollywood home, replete with the infamous nude painting of  Clara Bow which Lugosi kept close at hand until his dying day. This photograph  is from Lugosi’s estate, and passed down to his heir. Excellent condition with  virtually no trace of handling or age.

*          *          *

Lot 588

Starting price $600 – unsold

Vintage profile portrait of Bela Lugosi, ca. 1930 - Silver-bromide 8”x 10” double-weight custom matte print, being a  stern profile portrait of Bela Lugosi ca. 1930. Print is of an exceptional  photographic quality for its lighting and sharpness of grain. Excellent  original condition; from Lugosi’s estate, and passed down to his heir.

*          *          *

Lot 590

Starting price $20,000 – sold for $22,500

Dracula near-mint unrestored original Jumbo lobby-card  from Bela Lugosi’s own collection - (Universal, 1931)  14” x 17”original release Jumbo lobby-card  depicting Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, surrounding Helen Chandler with his  signature cape, about to anoint her with his very special “kiss”. This is not  only one of the most vital and essential images to perfectly distill the true  nature of the film, in virtually mint, totally unrestored condition, it was  also for decades, possibly even from the beginning, the property of Bela Lugosi  and passed down to his heir where it has resided to this day. Remnant trace of  scrapbook adhesive on verso margins, and very faint and insignificant handling  lines and background crease are the only signs this extraordinary artifact was  ever touched. Colors are rich and totally unfaded (the jumbo set was printed with  softer colors intentionally than the 11 x 14 set). We are not aware of another  example of this remarkable scene coming to auction previously, let alone an  original poster item of this caliber from Lugosi’s own collection. Authenticity  is beyond question on this exceptional piece. Very Fine to Near Mint.

*          *          *

Lot 591

Starting price $1,000 – unsold

Vintage oversize portrait of Bela Lugosi full figure in white  linen suit, ca. 1930 - Silver-bromide 11”x 14” double-weight custom matte print, being a  standing portrait of Bela Lugosi in white linen suit with hat and cigar, and a  mischievous “Mona Lisa”smile. From Lugosi’s estate, and passed down to his  heir. Excellent condition with virtually no trace of handling or age.

*          *          *

Lot 593

Collection of (16) Bela Lugosi portrait stills from his estate and  family’s collection - Mix of original and reprint portrait stills, primarily head-shots  in 8” x 10” size, all from either the estate or family of Bela Lugosi. Majority  are from the 1940’s-1950’s with the William Morris Agency credit slug in lower  margin. All in Very Fine condition.

*          *          *

Lot 594

Starting price $2,000 – sold for $2,250

Vintage portrait of Bela Lugosi ca. 1940 inscribed by him to his  wife Lillian  - Silver-bromide 8”x 10” double-weight custom matte print being a  very personal, smiling portrait from the 1940’s which Bela Lugosi inscribed in  green fountain pen, “To Lillian- Bela”.  In 1933 Bela married 22-year-old  Lillian Arch, the daughter of Hungarian immigrants.  They had a son, Bela  G. Lugosi, in 1938.  From Lillian’s estate, and passed down to Bela Jr.  Very Fine condition.

*          *          *

Lot 595

Starting price $300 – sold for $325

Bowery at Midnight original folded U.S.  one-sheet poster from the Bela Lugosi family collection - (Monogram, 1942)  27 x 41 in. U.S. one-sheet poster folded,  for one of Lugosi’s better low-budget “programmers”. He is ably supported here  by a sexy Wanda McKay and a tough, juvenile pre-Detour Tom Neal.  Condition is Good only overall, though it benefits greatly from its provenance  of the Bela Lugosi family collection.

*          *          *

Lot 596

Starting price $600 – sold for $950

The Return of the Vampire original U.S. Title-card  from the Bela Lugosi family collection - (Columbia, 1943)  Original unrestored U.S. 11 x 14 in. Title  lobby-card for one of Bela Lugosi’s last roles worthy of his talent and  dignity. Good only condition, though colors are rich, with light soiling and  tape around rear margins; its strength is the provenance of Lugosi’s estate.

*          *          *

Lot 597

Starting price $500 – sold for $550

The Return of the Vampire original U.S. portrait  lobby-card from the Bela Lugosi family collection - (Columbia, 1943) 11 x 14 in. U.S. lobby-card, best portrait  in the set with Bela Lugosi in his signature cape, about to bite the neck of a  lovely young woman. Very decent unrestored condition (handling, and tape on  rear); its great strength is the provenance of Lugosi’s estate.

*          *          *

Lot 598

Starting price $600 – sold for $850

 Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein original  U.S. Title-card from the Bela Lugosi family collection - (Universal, 1948)  Original unrestored U.S. 11 x 14 in. Title  lobby-card for Lugosi’s finest late-career appearance. Very light soiling from  handling, one pinhole; VG to Fine. From the estate of Bela Lugosi.

*          *          *

Lot 599

Starting price $300 – sold for $400

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla original  U.S. half-sheet poster from the Bela Lugosi family collection - (Jack Broder Productions, 1952)  22 x 28 in. U.S. half-sheet  poster, one fold. Film is remembered only for the presence of Bela Lugosi.  Poster is unrestored, in Good to VG condition, and is from the Bela Lugosi  family collection.

*          *          *

Lot 600

Starting price $300 – sold for $550

Son of Frankenstein 1953 reissue portrait  lobby-card from the Bela Lugosi family collection - (Universal, 1938/ R’53)  Near-mint unrestored 11” x 14”  portrait lobby card of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff from the 1953 Realart  reissue. From the estate of Bela Lugosi.

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Richard Gordon – December 31, 1925 – November 1, 2011

Film producer Richard Gordon died on November 1st at New York Presbyterian Hospital after suffering from heart problems over the last six months. He was 85.

Born in London on December 31st, 1925, Richard, “Dick” to all who knew him, shared a life-long love of films with his elder brother, and fellow producer, Alex, who died aged 80 in 2003. While schoolboys, the brothers started fan clubs for their favourite stars, Gene Autry and Buster Crabbe. During World War II, Dick joined the Royal Navy. His knowledge of German, acquired at school, led to him heading a translation and interrogation unit. During his war service, he was still able to indulge his passion by organising film programmes for enlisted men. His particular affection for horror films earned him the nickname “Dracula.”

Dick, Bela and Alex

Courtesy of http://www.moviemonstermuseum.com/

After being demobbed in 1946, the brothers pursued careers in the film industry. While Alex handled publicity at Renown Pictures, a small film distributor which would later move into film production, Dick worked in the publicity department of Pathe Pictures, the distribution arm of Associated British. They supplemented their earnings by writing film reviews and articles, but their opportunities were hampered due to post-war paper shortages, which limited print runs of the fan magazines they were targeting. Realising that their ambition to become film producers were unlikely to be realised in their homeland, they pooled their savings and emigrated to America in November, 1947. Setting up in New York, Dick found work as an assistant sales manager for Jack Hoffberg’s distribution company and freelanced as a representative for several British film outlets, while Alex became a booker for Walter Reade theatres.

Bela and Dick on the set of Mother Riley Meets The Vampire (1951)

They also interviewed film stars for British film magazines. When they learned that Bela Lugosi would appear in a summer stock production of Arsenic and Old Lace in Sea Cliff, twenty miles outside of New York, in August, 1948, they determined to meet and interview him. Lugosi not only consented to the interview, but also invited the brothers to dine with him and his wife at a local restaurant, where he regaled them with stories of his glory days and confided his current career woes. 

Bela, intrigued by the brothers’ talk of his continued popularity in Britain and their contacts within the British film industry, contacted them several months later and asked them to try find him film and theatre work in Britain. He also offered them the opportunity to take over management of his affairs. Alex, having recently started working for his childhood hero, Gene Autry, was too busy to devote his energies to helping Bela, so Dick set to trying to generate interest in Bela in a production of Dracula among West End producers. Despite his growing network of contacts within both the film and theatre industries, Dick found selling Bela and Dracula to British producers to be an almost impossible task. It would not be until 1951 that he was able to negotiate a British revival tour of Dracula and Bela’s appearance in Mother Riley Meets The Vampire. Much to Dick’s consternation, the production of Dracula proved to be fraught with difficulties and failed to secure a planned run in the West End. Whenever he recalled the tour in later life, he would lament his lack of experience at the time and express his frustration at getting Bela involved in what Dick viewed as a disastrous venture.

Dick’s two films with Boris Karloff

Dick had more success with his other enterprises. In 1949 he set up Gordon Films Inc., which imported and distributed British and other foreign films. After moving into setting up co-production deals, Dick decided that “If I was going to do it for somebody else, I could do it myself!” From 1958 he produced a string of films now regarded as cult classics, including Boris Karloff’s The Haunted Strangler and Corridors of Blood, both made in 1958. In the same year he produced Fiend Without a Face, followed in 1959 by First Man Into Space. His last credit as a producer was for Inseminoid in 1981. He continued to run Gordon Films until his death. Dick always remained at heart a film fan who, as his friend, the writer Tom Weaver said, “lived and breathed movies.” In his later years, he became a popular guest at film conventions in America and Britain.

Tom Weaver’s book-length interview with Dick (BearManor Media, 2011)

Despite his feelings about the British tour of Dracula, when Frank Dello Stritto and I wrote the story of 1951 in “Vampire Over London – Bela Lugosi in Britain,” almost 50 years later, he was an enthusiastic collaborator. His memories and his insights were invaluable to our research. Without him, the book would have been much different. Frank last met him in June at this year’s Monster Bash. “He’d had some recent health issues and was using a cane, but he was as alert and witty as ever. It never occurred to me that it would be the last time that I would see him. I wish that I had spent more time with him then.” Summing up his personal feelings, Frank said, “Dick could be mercurial and opinionated, but also caring and funny and generous. All were part of his charm. ‘Charm’ is a carefully chosen word; I saw it in many ways as I came to know him. I was always captivated by him, and I shall miss him.”

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In a move that has taken fans by surprise, Bela Lugosi Jr. has put his father’s iconic Dracula cape up for auction. Worn by Bela in the 1931 Universal classic, the cape has a pre-sale estimate of $1,500,000 – $2,000,000. Among 16 other lots being put up for sale by Bela’s son are vintage photos and lobby cards from Bela’s own collection, including a Dracula jumbo Lobby card and title cards for The Return of the Vampire and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Speculation is rife as to what has prompted the 73 Lugosi Jr. to part with his father’s treasured cape, but he has so far not made an official statement. His mother, Lillian, who divorced Lugosi in 1953, left him the cape upon her death in 1981. Although it has often been reported that Bela was buried in the cape from the 1931 film when he died in 1956, he was actually buried in a lighter weight version which he wore when making personal appearances.

The cape and the other Lugosi lots will join a pair of Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz in Profiles of History’s “Icons of Hollywood” auction, which will be held at the Paley Center For Media, Beverly Hills from December 15th – 17th, 2011.

Full details of the auction are available at:

http://www.profilesinhistory.com/highlights/icons-of-hollywood-auction

Watch Andrew Schmertz’s report on the sale 

http://uk.reuters.com/video/2011/10/31/bela-lugosis-dracula-cape-up-for-auction?videoId=224062869

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The Star-Ledger, October 14, 2011

When Dracula Did Jersey…

By Lisa Rose

Bela Lugosi, who won fame in “Dracula” (1931), performed in New Jersey, with shows in Trenton (above) and Newark (below).

Eyeing necks and stretching syllables, Bela Lugosi established himself as a Hollywood horror giant in 1931 with “Dracula.”

The Hungarian actor reveled in the dark romance of the role, delivering a portrayal that continues to influence depictions of lonely immortals, from “Twilight” to “True Blood.”

Lugosi’s monster movies are legend, but lesser known are his travels as a live performer. The star lurked around New Jersey stages during his pre-vampire days and toured the local summer stock circuit after fangs went out of fashion post-WWII.

Between Tinseltown and Transylvania, the Garden State is spattered with Lugosi landmarks.

The classically trained actor joined a Hungarian drama troupe in Newark after immigrating to the United States in 1920. His English-language stage debut was in Atlantic City at the now-closed Apollo Theatre. Lugosi led the cast as a conquistador named Fernando during a test run for a 1922 off-Broadway play, “The Red Poppy.”

When the drama moved to a downtown Manhattan theater, the New York Times noted: “Bela Lugosi is a newcomer of quite splendid mien, romantically handsome and young. Hungarian though he is said to be, he looks every inch the Spanish pirate of romance.”

Later in his career, he returned to the Jersey footlights in traveling productions of the black comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace.” On stages in Trenton, Newark and Landing, he vamped in a role that poked fun at his own murderous movie persona. (Boris Karloff created the character on Broadway).

Film historian Frank Dello Stritto says Jersey audiences of the era saw a different side of the actor, a man who knew little of vampires before first embracing the cape on Broadway in October 1927.

“He would bring nuances into roles that movies couldn’t capture,” says Stritto, co-author of “Vampire over London: Bela Lugosi in Britain.” “There was no time to get a great performance out of him in some of the cheaper movies he made. People like me write about his films as great events, but they would be just a week out of his life sometimes.”

Writer and film professor Arthur Lennig saw Lugosi onstage in “Arsenic” and in a revival of “Dracula.”

“I fell in love,” says Lennig, author of “The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi.”

Lennig continues, “I’m a heterosexual, but I fell in love. He was aristocratic, aloof, mysterious. He was seemingly more intelligent than other people. He had all those arrogant qualities that are so ingrained in me. He just had that image of a bad guy. If he worked at the local candy store, he would look like he was handing out poisoned chocolates.”

Lugosi’s son, Bela Jr., vividly remembers visiting Lake Hopatcong during an “Arsenic” tour in July 1949. Father and son bonded while boating, sinking paddles into the blue on a perfect summer day.

“It was my first experience canoeing,” says Bela Jr., 73, a lawyer in Los Angeles, who is working on a book with Lugosi scholar Gary D. Rhodes. “I was upsetting my father a bit because I kept rocking the canoe and he thought we were going to tip over.”

The actor’s last Garden State jaunt was considerably less idyllic as his health declined and his marriage fell apart. Film gigs were scarce during the tail end of the Truman years, when aliens and robots eclipsed vampires and zombies on the big screen.

“The industry died in terms of old-time horror films,” says Lennig. “They were making films about giant ants or giant rabbits, atomic bombs. The mad scientist working in his basement, that was gone. It was over. The conventional horror films, even the bad ones, they weren’t making.”

Six years before Lugosi died at age 73, he struggled to win over a new generation of cynics with an ill-fated revue. The “Big Horror & Magic Show” premiered on Dec. 26, 1950, at the RKO Capitol Theatre in Trenton and closed abruptly at the Stanley Theater in Camden on March 15, 1951.

The Gothic spectacle promised chills with 13 vignettes featuring a “carload of scenery.” Advertisements screamed “See vampire maidens and voodoo magic! See the bat man and the monster in death struggle! See a beautiful girl burned alive! See ghosts, goblins and imps of darkness fly through the air!”

Lugosi initially got a hero’s welcome in Trenton. The mayor handed him the key to the city. The actor was a special guest at a Christmas celebration hosted by the Trenton Evening Times, which printed a photo of him in a Santa suit surrounded by paperboys.

For all its promise of eeriness, the “Horror & Magic” presentation was built around a sketch co-starring Lugosi and an actor in a gorilla costume.

“The audience was wise-assed teenagers who wanted to see whether they’d get scared or not,” says Lennig. “A lot of the people who showed up didn’t even know who he was. The teenagers weren’t scared, so they started hooting. Bela wasn’t a quick responder who could play with it. He’d pause until the audience settled down. When the catcalls stopped, he went on with it until there were more catcalls and he’d stop again. It was humiliating.”

New medium

A preview story for the “Horror & Magic Show” included a Lugosi quote. He declared that the introduction of television was creating new challenges for performers who specialized in ghoulish characters.

“When you walk right into a person’s living room through the medium of his television screen, you have to use the subtle approach,” Lugosi said. “The old-fashioned horror actor would evoke nothing but gales of laughter.”

The tour lurched from Trenton to Paterson to Newark before its final night in Camden, where the crowd was particularly hostile. Lugosi never performed on the East Coast again. He left for England, trying to make a comeback at age 68, dusting off his coffin and cape to revive his signature role on the British stage. The goal was for “Dracula” to play the West End in London, but the road show sputtered in provincial venues.

“For a man his age, touring was tough,” says Stritto. “And this was postwar England. The train system was just starting to get back in shape. The trip really drained him. He wasn’t able to work onstage like that again. He went straight back to the West Coast, and that’s where he spent his remaining five years.”

Back in Hollywood, Lugosi got work from an ambitious fan, Ed Wood, who recruited the aging star to play a doctor in the sex-change tale, “Glen or Glenda.” They teamed up again for a no-budget thriller, “Bride of the Monster.” Footage of Lugosi turned up in the sci-fi flop, “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” released three years after he died of a heart attack in 1956.

The making of the misguided films was chronicled in the 1994 biopic “Ed Wood,” starring Johnny Depp as the title character and an Oscar-winning Martin Landau as Lugosi.

Bela Jr. feels his father was inaccurately portrayed in the movie.

“He wasn’t alone,” says Bela. “There were a lot of things in the ‘Ed Wood’ that are not true, and that’s just one of them.”

Lennig says the film inaccurately depicts Lugosi’s sentences with expletives. In real life, the actor did not swear, according to multiple historians.

Still, the picture moved Lennig to tears.

“I wasn’t crying, I was sobbing,” says Lennig. “Bela was very serious about acting, but he had that accent and he was so identifiable as Dracula. To be narrowed down to just being a spooky man is limiting. Somebody said to him, ‘In all of your movies, you’re always dying.’ He said, ‘Well, dying is a living.’ ”

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In 2001 collector David Wentink acquired a steamer trunk once owned by film legend Bela Lugosi, and has since worked to document its authenticity and history. David contacted me after reading a fleeting mention of the trunk in Andi Brooks’ and my book, Vampire Over London – Bela Lugosi in Britain. I was glad to be able to help him track down a bit more information. With David’s permission, below is a summary of his considerable labors to date.

The History of the Trunk

The trunk was made by the Oshkosh Trunk Company of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Trunk restoration expert Marvin Miller is fairly certain it was manufactured during the late 1920s or early 1930s, the heyday of steamer trunks (also called “cabin trunks” and “wardrobe trunks”). The trunks were meant to stand upright, with wooden hangers on one side, and drawers on the other. Some of the larger trunks (not Lugosi’s, however) sported a fold-down desk, and offered their owners a portable office. A common practice was, at the time of purchase, to have the owner’s name painted on the trunk. BELA LUGOSI appears on the end of the trunk in large, yellow letters.

Bela in the Broadway production of Dracula

When Lugosi acquired the trunk is unknown; but from the late 1920s onward, the actor would have had something very special to put in it: his Dracula costume and cape. He first played Dracula on stage in 1927, in tryouts in Connecticut in September, and then opening on Broadway on October 5. Dracula ran 261 performances, closing in May 1928, when Lugosi and a good many of the New York cast headed to the West Coast for the play’s Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland premieres. Lugosi saw the trip not as a theatre tour but as a career move from New York to California, and he may have purchased the trunk at this time. The cape and formal evening suit would have been neatly folded and hung on one side of the trunk.The large drawers on the other side were big enough to hold Lugosi’s bulky scrapbooks, which he usually kept with him.

After the California tour of 1928, Lugosi settled in Hollywood and found stardom with the 1931 film version of Dracula. During his years of peak popularity he was often on the road and the trunk would have always been with him. He played Dracula on stage in West Coast cities again in 1929 and 1932. In 1933-1934, he toured the East Coast in an abbreviated version of the play. He made trips to Britain in 1935 to film Mystery of the Mary Celeste, and again in 1939 to film Dark Eyes of London. He made many stage and personal appearances in San Francisco; and whenever his travels brought him east, he stopped in Chicago, hometown of his wife Lillian. The World War II years brought lengthy stage tours in Dracula (the East Coast) and Arsenic & Old Lace (the Gulf and East Coasts). The post-war years saw his career in decline, and he made frequent, scattered appearances in stock summer theatre and in midnight spook shows. He played Dracula for the last time in 1951, in a six-month stage tour in Britain.

Bela in Arsenic and Old Lace

Lillian and Bela returned to Los Angeles in late 1951, and divorced in 1953 after 22 years of marriage. In 1954, Lugosi did a week of stage work in St. Louis, and 4 weeks at the Silver Slipper Casino in Las Vegas; but otherwise never left southern California again.

Lugosi married for the fifth and last time in 1955. Hope Lininger Lugosi inherited the steamer trunk when Lugosi died in 1956. Hope moved to San Francisco in the early 1960s where she remained until her move to Hawaii in 1976. In 1964 she donated the trunk to public radio station KQED in San Francisco for a fund raising auction. Hope often gave Lugosi mementos to friends and Lugosi fans that gained her favor. Most likely she met someone who worked for the station, who learned of Hope’s association with Bela, and asked if she could donate something of his.

The successful bidder kept the trunk until November 1999 when he consigned it to Butterfield & Butterfield auction house in Los Angeles. The description of the trunk in the auction catalogue is:

1136A Bela Lugosi Steamer Trunk

A large steamer trunk that horror master Bela Lugosi used while travelling. Originally sold at a 1964 auction that benefited San Francisco public radio station KQED, this piece is painted brown, has various railway and passenger ship stickers affixed to the outside and has the ownership name of Bela Lugosi painted in large yellow block letter along the bottom left-side surface. When opened, the interior space has three shelves on one side and a clothes rack on the other, and though the condition is poor (outside brass hinges and locks broken, paint is chipped and surface dents are evident), this is still a great vintage trunk reminding us of sophisticated travel from a by-gone era.

26 inches by 42 inches by 22 inches.

The trunk sold for more than ten times its estimate to Randy Burkett’s Hollywood Museum, which was being formed in Branson, Missouri. Branson, tourist mecca of the Ozark Mountains, has many such attractions, and the new museum spent lavishly to build a collection, that included at least three vintage automobiles used in various movies. In late 1999, the economy was flying high; but within a few months, the stock crashed, and tourism and financing were down. The fledgling museum, located in a strip mall, declared bankruptcy. David Wentink, a bidder at the 1999 auction, was contacted by the liquidators, and bought the trunk directly from them.

The Angels Are in the Details

The trunk’s new owner set out to document its history. David contacted me when he noticed a brief mention of the trunk in Vampire Over London. In a description of the day-to-day routine of the traveling Dracula stage company, he read:

Bela in the 1951 British tour of Dracula

After Saturday night’s performance, the actors would deposit their costumes into the “skips”—large wicker hampers—one for the men and one for the women. Janet Reid had the costumes cleaned and pressed, and hanging in the assigned dressing rooms of the next theatre in time for Monday night’s performance. She did not handle Bela’s cape and wardrobe. He kept his effects in a large steamer trunk, which was shipped directly from theatre to theatre. He took particular care in looking after the cape. A “Bela Lugosi Dracula Cape” was not yet the prized collectible it is today, but he was mindful that it might go astray. It traveled between engagements in his stage coffin. After every performance, he carefully folded it into the trunk, which he kept locked. During the company’s ill-starred week in Lewisham, he left the key in his hotel room. The desk clerk retrieved it, and dispatched it to the theatre in a taxi, which arrived just in time for Bela’s prologue

At David’s behest I contacted the eight surviving members of the company that Andi and I had located. Several remembered the trunk. Richard Eastham, the play’s director who worked closely with Lugosi through April 1951, recalls:

“Although I never saw it, I remember the mention of it. He made a point of saying he had his own “full dress”—“tails” in our jargon—and he could just “take it out of his trunk without pressing.” All my family had these “cabin trunks,” which meant we could have extensive wardrobe in one’s cabin. My family’s trunks were covered with ship’s line labels.”

Joyce Wilson, who traveled with her husband, Ralph Wilson, the tour’s second Van Helsing, remembers seeing the trunk often in Bela’s dressing room, but “that type of wardrobe trunk was very popular both before and after the second world war, but nobody has them now.” Joan Harding, the tour’s second Wells the Maid, has a clear memory:

“I would say it was Bela’s without a doubt, though I remember it more when it was open standing on its end with the drawers and wardrobe showing I can’t remember much else about it apart from seeing, for the first time, a photograph of their son standing on top of it.”

Bela performing at a 1950s spook show.

Photo courtesy of Jim Knusch/Professor Kinema

Probably, Bela kept the photo of his son in one of the trunk drawers, and always had it handy to set up in his dressing room. John Mather, the Dracula tour’s producer, has no memory of the trunk, but clearly recalls the scrapbooks that Bela carried with him even to England.As Andi and I relate in our book:

“John arrived at the Lugosi’s flat early one evening for a brief chat about the production. As Lillian hurried to dress for dinner, Bela sat John on the sofa, left and returned with a large scrapbook of ancient newspaper clippings, 40 or 50 years old. John could not read a word of them except “Lugosi” and play titles like Romeo & Juliet. From what John could divine, they were theatre notices from Hungary, printed long before he was born. They were rave reviews. Bela always impressed John as humble and quiet, not at all conceited; but he could see the actor’s pride as Bela patiently guided him through the scrapbook, describing each page, conjuring a distant memory for each.”

The Lugosis returned to Los Angeles in late 1951, about the same time as his young writer and producer friend Alex Gordon moved to the West Coast. Alex’s brother Dick had arranged Bela’s stage and film appearance in England (after the Dracula tour ended, Lugosi appeared in Mother Riley Meets The Vampire), and in California Alex too worked as Bela’s sometime agent. After viewing photos of the trunk, Alex clearly remembered it in Bela’s apartment on Carlton Way, and seeing the cape and scrapbooks in it. Alex planned to write David a longer reminiscence, but passed away in June 2003.

In 1952 Alex introduced Bela to the infamously inept film director, Edward D. Wood, with whom Lugosi would make three of his last films, Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster (co-written by Alex), and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Wood’s “company of players” included actor Paul Marco, who would appear as “Kelton the Cop” in Plan 9 From Outer Space (though Bela never heard that title—he appeared in test footage for an unmade film which, after Bela’s death, Wood incorporated into his opus). The most elaborate memory of the trunk unearthed to date is Marco’s tale of Bela’s and Hope’s wedding night. Marco’s story appears in both Robert Cremer’s Lugosi – The Man Behind The Cape and Arthur Lennig’s The Immortal Count. David sent Marco photos of the trunk, and the actor repeated his reminiscence to David over the telephone. Hope and Bela married in Los Angeles on August 24, 1955. Bela, Jr. was the best man, and in attendance were a few friends of Hope and some of Bela’s co-workers. Lennig quotes Marco:

“After it was over, all of the photographers left, and eventually the only ones there were Bela, Hope, Eddie, Jo (Ed Wood’s girlfriend) and me. So, here we were, driving Bela and Hope to their wedding apartment. We were coming down Western Avenue when Bela spotted this big Italian deli and cried out, “We gotta stop here!” Eddie stayed in the car with Jo and Hope while Bela and I went into the store. There were half a dozen people in there, everyone started congratulating Bela on his marriage and he was felling good. We walked out carrying jugs of wine, long loaves of French bread, long salamis, jugs of olives, provolone cheese—my arms were full! They were giving us this, giving us that—I don’t think we paid for much of anything, everybody was giving us things to congratulate Bela on getting married.

Hope and Bela

We arrived at Bela’s apartment and walked in—pitch black! Either they hadn’t had the electricity turned on yet or they didn’t have enough bulbs, but there was very little light in this huge, old-fashioned Spanish living room. There was practically nothing in the room except a huge trunk right in the middle of the floor—it looked like a coffin, it was that big! We moved some boxes and chairs around the trunk while Hope got some kind of a tablecloth to spread over the top. Then we brought out all the wine and bread and cold cuts, and we all sat around this trunk like picnickers, laughing and telling stories. That was Bela’s wedding dinner.”

Countless fans have personal items that once belonged to movie stars, and many of Bela Lugosi’s former possessions now reside in various collections. One of them is even the subject of a recent “mockumentary” (Gary Don Rhodes’ hilarious Chair, included on his otherwise serious DVD documentary of Lugosi’s life and career). Few of these almost holy relics compare to the steamer trunk, which Lugosi kept close by him for decades, and which held some of his most prized possessions. He owned the trunk for perhaps as long as he “owned” Dracula. As he opened it each evening, he would see his whole life captured in its contents: Dracula cape and costume on one side, scrapbooks of cherished memories on the other, and a photo of his son in one of the large drawers. He would place the framed photo on top of the trunk, don his cape and submerge himself in his character as he prepared yet again to mesmerize his audience.

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Frank J Dello Stritto’s critically acclaimed new book, A Quaint & Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore - The Mythology & History of Classic Horror FIlms is available exclusively from: http://www.thegraphictouch.com/cultmoviespress/

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