76 Facts About Bela Lugosi

Bela Lugosi had to suddenly emigrate to Germany after the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919 because of his former socialist activities, leaving his first wife in the process.

Bela Lugosi later starred in the 1931 film version of Dracula directed by Tod Browning and produced by Universal Pictures.

Bela Lugosi co-starred in a number of films with Boris Karloff, who was able to demand top billing.

Bela Lugosi was kept employed by the studios principally so that they could put his name on the posters.

Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko in 1882 in Lugos, Kingdom of Hungary to Hungarian father Istvan Blasko, a baker who later became a banker, and Serbian-born mother Paula de Vojnich.

At the age of 12, Bela Lugosi dropped out of school and left home to work at a succession of manual labor jobs.

Bela Lugosi took the last name "Lugosi" in 1903 to honor his birthplace, and went on to perform in Shakespeare plays.

Bela Lugosi was awarded the Wound Medal for wounds he sustained while serving on the Russian front.

Bela Lugosi later moved to California in 1928 to tour in the Dracula stage play, and his Hollywood film career took off.

Bela Lugosi claimed he performed the Dracula play around 1,000 times during his lifetime.

Bela Lugosi eventually became a US citizen in 1931, soon after the release of his film version of Dracula.

Bela Lugosi made at least 10 films in Hungary between 1917 and 1918 before leaving for Germany.

Bela Lugosi was proscribed from acting due to his participation in the formation of an actors' union.

Bela Lugosi left Germany in October 1920, emigrating by ship to the United States, and entered the country at New Orleans in December 1920.

Bela Lugosi made his way to New York and was inspected by immigration officers at Ellis Island in March 1921.

Bela Lugosi only declared his intention to become a US citizen in 1928; on June 26,1931, he was naturalized.

On his arrival in America, the 6-foot-1-inch, 180-pound Bela Lugosi worked for some time as a laborer, and then entered the theater in New York City's Hungarian immigrant colony.

Bela Lugosi acted in several Hungarian language plays before starring in his first English Broadway play, The Red Poppy in 1922.

In 1928, Bela Lugosi decided to stay in California when the play ended its first West Coast run.

Bela Lugosi's performance had piqued the interest of Fox Film, and he was cast in the Hollywood studio's silent film The Veiled Woman.

Bela Lugosi appeared in the film Prisoners, believed lost, which was released in both a silent and partial talkie version.

Bela Lugosi remained in California where he resumed his film work under contract with Fox, appearing in early talkies often as a heavy or an "exotic sheik".

Bela Lugosi continued to lobby for his prized role in the film version of Dracula.

Bela Lugosi had played the role on Broadway, and was considered before director Tod Browning cast him in the role.

The film was a major hit, but Bela Lugosi was paid a salary of only $3,500, since he had too eagerly accepted the role.

Bela Lugosi did attempt to break type by auditioning for other roles.

Bela Lugosi lost out to Lionel Barrymore for the role of Grigori Rasputin in Rasputin and the Empress ; C Henry Gordon for the role of Surat Khan in Charge of the Light Brigade, and Basil Rathbone for the role of Commissar Dimitri Gorotchenko in Tovarich, a role Lugosi had played on stage.

Bela Lugosi played the elegant, somewhat hot-tempered General Nicholas Strenovsky-Petronovich in International House.

Karloff himself in interviews suggested that Bela Lugosi was initially mistrustful of him when they acted together, believing that the Englishman would attempt to upstage him.

When this proved not to be the case, according to Karloff, Bela Lugosi settled down and they worked together amicably.

Bela Lugosi did get a few heroic leads, as in Universal's The Black Cat after Karloff had been accorded the more colorful role of the villain, The Invisible Ray, and a romantic role in producer Sol Lesser's adventure serial The Return of Chandu, but his typecasting problem appears to have been too entrenched to be alleviated by those films.

Bela Lugosi developed severe, chronic sciatica, ostensibly aggravated by injuries received during his military service.

The problem first manifested itself in 1937, when Bela Lugosi was forced to withdraw from a leading role in a serial production, The Secret of Treasure Island, due to constant back pain.

The combination was so successful that Umann scheduled extra shows to accommodate the capacity crowds, and invited Bela Lugosi to appear in person, which thrilled new audiences that had never seen Bela Lugosi's classic performance.

Bela Lugosi was third-billed with his name above the title alongside Basil Rathbone as Dr Frankenstein's son and Boris Karloff reprising his role as Frankenstein's monster.

Bela Lugosi was quite effective in this small but prestigious character part and he even received top billing among the film's supporting cast, all of whom had significantly larger roles.

Bela Lugosi went to 20th Century-Fox for The Gorilla, which had him playing straight man to Patsy Kelly and the Ritz Brothers.

Bela Lugosi was finally cast in the role of Frankenstein's monster for Universal's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

Bela Lugosi kept busy during the 1940s as a screen menace.

Bela Lugosi accepted the lead in an experimental, economical feature, shot in the semi-professional 16mm film format and blown up to 35mm for theatrical release, Scared to Death.

Bela Lugosi played Dracula for a second and final time on film in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which was his last "A" movie.

In September 1949, Milton Berle invited Bela Lugosi to appear in a sketch on Texaco Star Theatre.

Bela Lugosi memorized the script for the skit, but became confused on the air when Berle began to ad lib.

Bela Lugosi appeared on the anthology series Suspense on October 11,1949, in a live adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado".

In 1951, while in England to play a six-month tour of Dracula, Bela Lugosi co-starred in a lowbrow film comedy, Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, released the following year.

Independent producer Jack Broder took Lugosi at his word, casting him in a jungle-themed comedy, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, starring nightclub comedians Duke Mitchell and Jerry Lewis look-alike Sammy Petrillo, whose act closely resembled that of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Bela Lugosi enjoyed a lively career on stage, with plenty of personal appearances.

Bela Lugosi took over the role of Jonathan Brewster from Boris Karloff for Arsenic and Old Lace.

Bela Lugosi made plenty of personal live appearances to promote his horror image or an accompanying film.

Producer Alex Gordon, knowing Bela Lugosi was in dire need of cash, arranged for the actor to stand outside the theater wearing a cape and dark glasses, holding a man costumed as a gorilla on a leash.

Bela Lugosi later allowed himself to be photographed drinking a glass of milk at a Red Cross booth there.

When Bela Lugosi playfully attempted to bite the "nurse" in attendance, she overreacted and spilled a glass of milk all over his shirt and cape.

Late in his life, Bela Lugosi again received star billing in films when the ambitious but financially limited filmmaker Ed Wood, a fan of Lugosi, found him living in obscurity and near-poverty and offered him roles in his films, such as an anonymous narrator in Glen or Glenda and a mad scientist in Bride of the Monster.

Mason was noticeably taller and thinner than Bela Lugosi, and had the lower half of his face covered with his cape in every shot, as Bela Lugosi sometimes did in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Tor Johnson said in interviews that Bela Lugosi kept screaming that he wanted to die the night they shared a hotel room together.

In June 1917, Bela Lugosi married 19-year-old Ilona Szmik in Hungary.

The couple divorced after Bela Lugosi was forced to flee his homeland for political reasons and Ilona did not wish to leave her parents.

Bela Lugosi took his place in Hollywood society and scandal when he married wealthy San Francisco resident Beatrice Woodruff Weeks, widow of architect Charles Peter Weeks, on July 27,1929.

Bela Lugosi complained of her excessive drinking and dancing with other men at social gatherings.

Bela Lugosi claimed he slapped her in the face one night because she ate a pork chop he had hidden in their refrigerator.

On June 26,1931, Bela Lugosi became a naturalized United States citizen.

In 1933, the 51-year-old Bela Lugosi married 22-year-old Lillian Arch, the daughter of Hungarian immigrants living in Hollywood.

Lillian's father was against her marriage to Lugosi at first as the actor was experiencing financial difficulties at the time, so Bela talked her into eloping with him to Las Vegas in January 1933.

Lillian and Bela Lugosi vacationed on their lakeshore property in Lake Elsinore, California, on several lots between 1944 and 1953.

Lillian's parents lived on one of their properties, and Bela Lugosi frequented the health spa there.

Bela Lugosi called the police one night after Lillian left him and threatened to commit suicide, but when the police showed up at his apartment, he denied making the call.

Bela Lugosi married Hope Lininger, his fifth wife, in 1955; she was 37 years his junior.

Bela Lugosi had been a fan, writing letters to him when he was in the hospital recovering from his drug addiction.

Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16,1956, in the bedroom of his Los Angeles apartment while taking a nap.

The rumor that Bela Lugosi was clutching the script for The Final Curtain, a planned Ed Wood project, at the time of his death is not true.

Bela Lugosi was buried wearing one of the "Dracula" capes and his full costume as well as his Dracula ring in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Bela's fourth wife Lillian paid for the cemetery plot and stone, while Hope Lugosi paid for the coffin and the funeral service.

Hope told Sheffield she had searched the apartment for several days looking for $3,000 she suspected Bela Lugosi had hidden there, but she never found it.

The cape Bela Lugosi wore in Dracula was in the possession of his son until it was put up for auction in 2011.

In 1979, a song called "Bela Lugosi's Dead" was released by UK post-punk band Bauhaus and is a pioneering song in the gothic rock genre.

In Tim Burton's Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi is portrayed by Martin Landau, who received the 1994 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the performance.