Bela Lugosi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bla Ferenc Dezs Blask (20 October 1882 16 August 1956), better known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian-American actor, famous for portraying Count Dracula in the original 1931 film and for his roles in various other horror films.

He had been playing small parts on the stage in his native Hungary before making his first film in 1917, but had to leave the country after the failed Hungarian Revolution. He had roles in several films in Weimar Germany before arriving in America as a seaman on a merchant ship.

In 1927, he appeared as Count Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, where he was talent-spotted as a character actor for the new Hollywood talkies. He later appeared in the classic 1931 Dracula talkie by Universal Pictures.

Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in popular horror films, with their East European setting, but his Hungarian accent limited his repertoire, and he tried unsuccessfully to avoid typecasting. Meanwhile, he was often paired with Boris Karloff, who was able to demand top billing. To his frustration, Lugosi was increasingly restricted to minor parts, kept employed by the studio principally for the sake of his name on the posters. Among his pairings with Karloff, only in The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939) did he perform major roles again, and even in The Raven Karloff received top billing despite Lugosi performing the lead role.

By this time, Lugosi had been receiving regular medication for sciatic neuritis, and he became addicted to morphine and methadone. This drug dependence was noted by producers, and the offers eventually dwindled down to a few parts in Ed Wood's low-budget movies, most notably Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Lugosi was married five times, and had one son, Bela George Lugosi.

Lugosi, the youngest of four children,[2] was born Bla Ferenc Dezs Blask in Lugos, Kingdom of Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania), to Paula de Vojnich and Istvn Blask, a banker.[3] He later based his last name on his hometown.[2] He and his sister Vilma were raised in a Roman Catholic family.[4] At the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school.[2] He began his acting career probably in 1901 or 1902. His earliest known performances are from provincial theatres in the 19031904 season, playing small roles in several plays and operettas.[5] He went on to Shakespeare plays and other major roles. Moving to Budapest in 1911, he played dozens of roles with the National Theatre of Hungary in the period 19131919. Although Lugosi would later claim that he "became the leading actor of Hungary's Royal National Theatre", almost all his roles there were small or supporting parts.[6]

During World War I, he served as an infantryman in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 to 1916. There he rose to the rank of captain in the ski patrol and was awarded the Wound Medal for wounds he suffered while serving on the Russian front.[2]

Due to his activism in the actors' union in Hungary during the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, he was forced to flee his homeland.[2] He first went to Vienna and then settled in Berlin in the Langestrasse where he continued acting.[2] Eventually, he travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, US as a crewman aboard a merchant ship.[2] He took the name Lugosi, in 1903, to honor his birthplace Lugos in Transylvania.[7]

Lugosi's first film appearance was in the movie Az ezredes (The Colonel, 1917). When appearing in Hungarian silent films, he used the stage name Arisztid Olt. Lugosi made 12 films in Hungary between 1917 and 1918 before leaving for Germany. Following the collapse of Bla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, leftists and trade unionists became vulnerable. Lugosi was proscribed from acting due to his participation in the formation of an actors union. In exile in Germany, he began appearing in a small number of well-received films, including adaptations of the Karl May novels, Auf den Trmmern des Paradieses (On the Brink of Paradise), and Die Todeskarawane (The Caravan of Death), opposite the Jewish actress Dora Gerson (who died in Auschwitz). Lugosi left Germany in October 1920, intending to emigrate to the United States, and entered the country at New Orleans in December 1920. He made his way to New York and was legally inspected for immigration at Ellis Island in March 1921.[8] He declared his intention to become a U.S. citizen in 1928, and on June 26, 1931, he was naturalized.[9]

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Bela Lugosi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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