The Bats Have Left the Bell Tower: Notes on the Life and Death of Bela Lugosi

Bela Lugosi lying in his coffin at a Hollywood funeral home 

Photo by David Katzman

 

 

I. 

 

On this night in 1882, a star was born: the Hungarian-American actor Bela Lugosi, best remembered as Dracula in the 1931 horror classic of that title (dir. Tod Browning); the story of the strangest passion the world has ever known.   

 

It was a role that he had previously played on stage in a 1927 Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel and one that both defined him as an actor and limited his future opportunities; eventually giving us a comic turn as the Count in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (dir. Charles Barton, 1948). 

 

This pretty much signalled the end of his career as a serious actor and, addicted to morphine combined with worsening alcoholism, things quickly went from bad to worse and he ended up taking roles in the films of Ed Wood, a filmmaker famously described by critics as the worst director of all time. 

 

 

II. 

 

On August 16, 1956, the news was announced that Bela Lugosi had died, peacefully in his sleep, aged 73.

 

Amusingly, he was typecast to the very end; buried wearing his Dracula costume, including the cape. This was not at his prior request, but done on the instructions of an ex-wife, Lillian, and their son, Bela Lugosi Jr., believing that the old man would've liked it (I'm not entirely sure about that). 

 

Even more amusing is the story of how, when standing by Lugosi's open coffin, Peter Lorre turned to fellow actor Vincent Price and said: 'Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart, just in case?'   

 

III.

  

To be perfectly honest, I can't say I'm a fan: Lugosi certainly had on screen presence as Dracula, but I always thought his performance lacked a little bite. In fact, he didn't even wear fangs for the film, this only becoming a cinematic convention in the 1950s; think Christopher Lee in the Hammer version of Dracula (dir. Terence Fisher, 1958). 

 

And, as a child, I was always more enthralled by other Universal monsters; Boris Karloff's Frankenstein and Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man, for example. Lugosi's Dracula seemed a little too hammy for my tastes; not that his performance was unskilled, just that it was a little too theatrical and reliant on exaggerated gestures and a heavy foreign accent. 

 

Still, it doesn't really matter what I think: Lugosi has his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; Andy Warhol made a 1963 silkscreen print titled 'The Kiss (Bela Lugosi)', inspired by a scene from Dracula; and Bauhaus have immortalised the actor in their classic single 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' (Small Wonder Records, 1979): click here.  

Triple Distilled Horror: In Memory of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing

Three faces of horror: 

Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Vincent Price 

Photo by Terry O'Neill (1983)

 

 

Today is the birthday of both Vincent Price (1911-1993) and Christopher Lee (1922-2015), two legends of the cinema; as is Peter Cushing (1913-1994), who, coincidentally, was born on the 26th of May. 

 

Interestingly, the three men were not just professional colleagues, but very close friends on and off set, as this rather touching short video in which Lee talks about Cushing and Price with obvious affection demonstrates: click here.      

 

As their acting styles and the roles they played were very distinct, it's hard to say which of them I admired most, but - like the Carry On actors - each left an indelible impression on my imagination as a child who grew up watching Hammer horror films on TV in the early 1970s.  

 

And so, I wanted to publish this short post in their memory: if it's very easy to hate many actors, it's impossible not to love these three.

 

 

Notes 

 

Whilst Vincent Price and Christopher Lee shared the screen on only three occasions - and Price and Cushing appeared in just the one film together - Lee and Cushing were cast in over twenty films with each other and their collaborations were a significant feature of their careers: a full list of these films can be found here. 

 

All three actors can be seen in Scream and Scream Again (dir. Gordon Hessler, 1970) and House of the Long Shadows (dir. Pete Walker, 1983).

      The first of these films marks the second teaming - after The Oblong Box (1969) - of actors Price and Lee with director Gordon Hessler, although the iconic stars only share a brief scene in the film's climax, whilst Cushing, unfortunately, shares no screen time with either Price or Lee in his even shorter scene (essentially just a cameo appearance). Click here to watch the trailer. 

      As for House of the Long Shadows, a murderously funny British horror-mystery, it also starred the great American character actor John Carradine, who played Dracula in the Universal horror House of Frankenstein (1944), alongside Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. Click here to watch the trailer.