The Black Sleep (United Artists, 1956)

One Sheet Poster

United Press, February 15, 1956

Drama Behind The Camera

ORDEAL OF BELA LUGOSI

Hollywood (UP) – Hollywood’s top bogey men are making a super-colossal horror film, but behind the cameras is a rea-life drama that’s more startling.

While the cameras rolled, a slender old man watching on the sidelines said softly, “I used to take five or six needles a day. And when I took the cure they took it all away from me. It was horrible, just horrible…”

Bela (Dracula) Lugosi is back in the movies for the first time since he confessed he was a narcotics addict and committed himself to a state hospital.

In the old days Lugosi was the star, the mad scientist who stirred bubbling concoctions. But on this set Basil Rathbone is playing the looney doctor. Lon Chaney, John Carradine and Akim Tamiroff also are in The Black Sleep, Lugosi plays Rathbone’s butler, a mute servant “who just lets people in and out.”

Tells His Story

“There is Basil playing my part,” Lugosi said. “I used to be the big cheese. Now I’m playing just a dumb part. I have no dialogue because I was a bit worried whether I could do justice to the expectations. I’m still recuperating.”

On the gloomy set, Rathbone was reviving a man in the coffin. But I shivered more from the off-screen horror story Lugosi told me.

“I began using narcotics to kill the pain of sciatica,” he said. “Finally the doctor said I used so much I would die in six months if I didn’t stop.”

“I couldn’t afford the sanitarium. The only solution was to volunteer to enter the county hospital. There was no sense in trying to hide my problem.”

“The cure was very painful, terrible:

“I was able to get out in three months because of the kind letters from all over the world. I even got a telephone call from Japan. It was hell, to go through what I went through. I didn’t know I had so many friends—so many people who knew about me and gave a damn about my situation. They helped cure me.”

“A Terrible Thing”

I asked Lugosi what he thought of the controversial film about addicts, The Man With The Golden Arm. The 73-year-old actor began to cry.

“The movie made it so easy for the dope victim to get out of it,” he wept. “The youth of our country did not get the impression of what a terrible thing it is. I have a son who is 18. He watched how I ruined my life.”

“Oh, if only the young people could see me, the result…”

On the movie set, old friends came up to shake Lugosi’s hand on his first day back at work. The cast presented him with a black leather bound script book.

“I was once nice to them. It all comes back to you,” the actor said.

United Press Telephoto, February 17, 1956

Hollywood: Bela Lugosi(C), who several years ago was a top star in horror movies, is welcomed back to Hollywood by co-actors Basil Rathbone (L), and Lon Chaney, Jr., as Lugosi returned to horror films at United Artists Studios where he will appear in “The Black Sleep.” Lugosi, who recently recovered from the use of narcotics, was given a black leather-bound script book bearing his long list of screen credits by the producers, cast and crew of the new horror film.