Has it really been 143 years?! Time does fly! Bela Lugosi was born on 20 October 1882.
You know what that means? Lugosi was almost 50 years old when he starred in Dracula.
Over the years, I’ve done a lot of research on Bela Lugosi — including reading a couple of biographies. He’s one of those people I’ve long thought I should love.
But here’s the thing: I don’t. I mean, he’s good. And I enjoy seeing anything that features him. The truth is, he lived a fascinating life. He started as a political radical fleeing the right-wing Horthy government in Austria-Hungary. Then he saw success for his acting in the US. Next came his inevitable decline and work in low-budget horror his final years. And I love all that!
But on screen? He was no Boris Karloff! And I own that. I’m a Karloff fan. The voice? The look? Whatever it is, it works for me.
But Lugosi’s accent really hurt him. Sadly, he doubtless never would have become a star outside of horror. This was strange! The man was seriously good-looking (see the photo above). And in Austria-Hungary, he played leading roles. But once in America, he was limited to “European ambassador” type roles.
I guess what this all means is that horror is best for the facially delinquent. As such, Lugosi was kind of a tragic figure. I think it is sad that his decline is so often dismissed as due to his addictions. In fact, this is backwards. His drug use was the result of the decline.
Today, we tend to think everything worked out well for Karloff. But it didn’t! By the 1960s, he was making AIP films, going to Europe to make films, doing spoken word recordings, and working in TV. That’s all fine but hardly what would happen today to such a culturally important actor.
But the two men made 8 films total (every one of them pretty good):
- The Black Cat (1934)
- Gift of Gab (1934) — cameos
- The Raven (1935)
- The Invisible Ray (1935)
- Son of Frankenstein (1939)
- Black Friday (1940)
- You’ll Find Out (1940) — supporting roles
- The Body Snatcher (1945).
So the worse outcome for Lugosi is more an issue of timing. Ten years younger, and he would have fared like Karloff. Forty years later, he would have died on a beach in Anguilla surrounded by supermodels.
Bela Lugosi added so much to film history — psychotronic film history most of all! As with Karloff, much of his best work was done because of the decline of his career. But I think we should celebrate his birthday by watching a film from his prime, White Zombie.
Bela Lugosi via Wikipedia. It is in the public domain.
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Both Karloff and Lugosi were talented. I wonder if Lugosi was hurt by having much more experience acting in silent films; it’s a different style of acting. Not a bad style, just different.
Plus Karloff spoke English beautifully (he WAS English), and you’re right about Lugosi’s thick accent; it would have so limited his options. And he was sick. He had terrible sciatica pain. In Ninotchka (1939) he looks old, and tired, and miserable (he was in pain and already broke).
I never knew he was such a looker, though! Good for him!
I read a biography years ago. What I mostly remember is the time before he came to America. And the accent was a huge issue. But it was only in writing this little article that I learned about Karloff having such a hard life. It’s sad. But that’s pretty typical of the time. It was especially bad for women actors.
Yeah, that’s something I’ve been learning, too… you’ll see these gorgeous, smart, funny women in old movies and then learn that they got totally robbed by Howard Hughes or Daryl Zanuck or another of those crooks. Infuriating!
There’s also this thing (that applied to men as well, but much more to women) where they made a ton of money from an actor but are fine watching them die in poverty — often following treatable medical problems they couldn’t afford to treat. I don’t have a high opinion of humans. But humans with a lot of power? They are the worst.