Vampire Over London: Bela Lugosi in Britain (Revised 2nd Edition), by Frank Dello Stritto and Andi Brooks

Some months ago, we had so much fun reading Frank Dello Stritto’s masterful I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It, his memoir of growing up during the Golden Age of Television, that we decided to dip further into his corpus.  My interest happily coincided with the new, revised 2^nd edition of Vampire Over London: Bela Lugosi in Britain.  For those who love Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) or Dracula, and you know who you are, this book is essential.

It is a strange quirk of history and cinematic fanaticism that the great figures of the age often sink into obscurity and people less respected in their own time find greater posthumous importance.  Such is certainly the case with Bela Lugosi; more books have been written about Lugosi than Clark Gable (1901-1960) or Jimmy Stewart (1908-1997) or Gary Cooper (1901-1961) or Bing Crosby (1903-1977) combined, though those luminaries worked in the upper echelons of the movie industry while Lugosi toiled on Poverty Row.

What is it about Lugosi that makes him so potent a figure nearly 60 after his death, while greater stars (and much better actors) fade into obscurity?  Perhaps it has something to do with the medium of film itself.  Though the camera moves very close, it loves the large gesture, the show of big personality and individuality.  Smaller, more subtle actors are applauded by the critics, but the movie-goer loves people who take it big.  And few actors took it bigger than Lugosi.

Lugosi’s legacy to motion pictures remain a handful of interesting performances, a generous number of truly bad B films, and a legend that has lost none of its potency.  Lugosi first played Dracula on Broadway.  When Dracula premiered at the Fulton Theater, neither the critics nor the audience realized that they were witnessing the creation of one of modern theater history's great signature roles.  Typecast as Dracula forever after his 1931 film appearance, actor and role merged for eternity when the actor requested that he be buried in his vampire costume.

Like many jobbing actors, Lugosi strove to go where the money was.  He made two trips to Great Britain – the 1930s and 1950s, respectively – and little is known of his activity there.  Legends among Lugosiphiles suggest that his 1950s tours of Dracula throughout the English countryside were a dismal failure.  However, research by Dello Stritto and Brooks suggest that the tour was wildly successful, and that it was the last great triumph of Lugosi’s tumultuous life.

Dello Stritto and Brooks interviewed many of the survivors of tour, and also unearthed a great deal of previously unpublished material to make this a rich history indeed.  But a book full facts could be deathly dull – despite the inherent interest of the topic – if the historian cannot make them come alive.  Dello Stritto and Brooks do not drown in his own research.  They are scintillating raconteurs, and this 300+ page book moves along as breezily as a fascinating dinner conversation.

This is not just a chronicle of a once-respected actor trying to recapture former glories, but a wonderful evocation of English provincial theater in the 1950s.  It reflects a lost world of interest to theater buffs, movie buffs, Dracula and Lugosi mavens, and people drawn to the nascent English film industry.  It is all there, from train travel and one-night stands in the sticks, to alliances and challenges among a small company of players, to hoping to open big in London’s West End.  (Sadly, that was a triumph denied Lugosi and company.)

In addition to a lively and inviting text, Dello Stritto and Brooks have managed to uncover dozens of photos never-seen-in-print.  Your Correspondent has spent decades reading about Bela Lugosi, with little hope of anything new on the horizon.  Vampire Over London is crammed with photos I have never seen, that provide a greater understanding of both Lugosi the theatrical presence and Lugosi the man.  This is a terrific book, not to be missed.

Vampire Over London: Bela Lugosi in Britain can be ordered directly from Cult Movies Press at: http://www.cultmoviespress.com/.

I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It, By Frank Dello Stritto

We had so much fun reading books by Baby Boomers Bill Bryson and Stephen King that we decided to have one more summer lark, I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It: Growing Up in the 1950s and 1960s With Television Reruns and Old Movies, the new book by film historian Frank Dello Stritto. 

Dello Stritto has written two excellent books of film history, Vampire Over London and A Quaint and Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore.  The first was the only in-depth examination of actor Bela Lugosi’s time in the UK and was essential reading for Lugosi completists; the second was a series of essays on the mythology of classic horror films.  Forgotten Lore was one of the most interesting and thought-provoking tomes on the meanings behind many of the classic horror films I had ever read, and it comes highly recommended.

So clearly, Dello Stritto has a deep affection for the classic monster films that were such an integral part of the Baby Boomer experience.  Fortunately, he takes a different track in I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It, writing, instead, about how a member of the first television generation learned about the world around him by watching television, and how those images became the template by which he judged everything else.  For anyone with an interest in Pop Culture and the influence of television, this book is a must.

Talking about television viewing is always, to one degree or another, an exercise in self-flagellation, and Dello Stritto spares himself nothing.  It seems that every Pop touchstone of the 1950s is here, from Howdy Doody and The Twilight Zone, to his love of Abbott and Costello.  (The title is a line from one of Dello Stritto’s formative experiences, viewing Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.  His lengthy dissection of this film, which could be dismissed as a simple comedy from two clowns at the beginning of their decline, is nothing short of masterful.)

And while he manages to put a great deal of the era’s television into historical context, I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It is a surprisingly personal and appealing narrative.  We cannot understand or appreciate what television meant to young Dello Stritto unless we understand the boy himself, and the author provides an in-depth look at his growing up, his family, and his friends.  It is all curiously affecting because any Baby Boomer, interested in television or not, can pick up this book and nod, yes, this was me, too.

Here is a brief excerpt from the Preface:

This book is about growing up in America—in New Jersey to be exact—in the 1950s and 1960s. It is a personal history, but one which, with some variations, is shared by many Americans of my age. It is a marginal history, and might be a trivial history but for a coincidence of timing. The postwar baby-boom generation and television—two of the pivotal components of 20th-century American culture—came of age together, and each helped shape the other. Watching television, and later going to the movies, certainly shaped me.

Much of a young person’s life is … an ongoing struggle simply trying to figure things out. We tend to imitate what we see, by watching our parents, family and friends, or by watching television.

Imitation starts early, and we have no memory of learning the most basic skills. I have vague recollections of learning to read and write, none at all of learning to talk or walk. I have no memory of first crawling to our old television set and turning its channel dial. On most 1950s televisions, the dials and knobs stand maybe two feet above the floor and pose some challenge to a very small child. Perhaps the need to reach up accelerates my ability to stand erect.

Among the early tasks that I have no memory of first learning is reciting the Lord’s Prayer. At the start of every school day, I and my classmates, like millions of children across America, struggle through the King James phrases. We learn the prayer long before we can read, and never think much about what we are saying. Only years later do I come to understand “hallowed be thy name,” or “forgive us our trespasses.” Reciting the phrases is a daily ritual, something that I do each day. The prayer always ends with a phrase I do not understand, “lead us not into temptation.”

There once was a boy—maybe an urban legend, but I believe in him—who like the rest of us recited The Lord’s Prayer every day. He always said “lead us not into Penn Station.” He never knew his daily error. I believe in him because asking protection from such places makes more sense to a child than fending off whatever “temptation” is. When I am a very young boy, my parents take me through the old Pennsylvania Station in New York City. Awesome and scary place; huge beyond belief; alternately chaotic and hauntingly empty; noisy, then silent. Strange sounds echo from far off. I think of that day whenever I see the 1931 Dracula. Doomed Renfield, looking like a beleaguered commuter who has missed the last train home, enters the cavernous halls of Castle Dracula, wondering what to do next.

I believe in the Penn Station boy because I see someone like him every day. He takes various forms. The two most common incarnations through most of my early years are Stan Laurel in airings of his 1930s comedy shorts and Lou Costello in reruns of his television series. They try to imitate the world as best they can, never really figuring it out, never quite getting it right. In every show, they do something akin to confusing “temptation” with “Penn Station.” Hilarious but spot on. As a child, and now often enough as an adult, I have exactly the same experience every day.

The Lord’s Prayer, via a Supreme Court ruling on prayer in public schools, and the old Penn Station, via relentless urban development, disappear from my life at about the same time. By then, both had done their job, exposing me to old world eloquence and elegance, to the power of words and image, of sight and sound. I may not have appreciated what I was saying or what I was seeing, but the memories are still with me.

One of the many fascinating things, to this reader, is Dello Stritto’s tacit recognition that pop cultural currency was a very fluid thing to the Baby Boomers.  Thanks to television’s new-found need for content, classic movies were broadcast almost incessantly.  To many of us, Laurel and Hardy, for example, were as famous in the 1960s as they were in the 1930s.  That kind of pop catholicism is missing in contemporary culture, and it saddens me to see generations share so few cultural touchstones.  A child of the 1970s myself, we were as interested in the Marx Brothers as we were in the television show Happy Days.  I’m no longer sure that such a thing would be possible in these days of Balkanized cultural consumption.

To be sure, I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It is not without some piddling problems: it is, perhaps, just a hair too long, and Dello Stritto may linger a little too long on the origin of his obsession with actor Bela Lugosi.  But these are quibbles.  I Saw is a book of tremendous resonance and sweetness, and it does something no other book of film history has done:  it made me feel young again. 

I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It can be ordered directly from the publisher, Cult Movies Press, at: http://www.cultmoviespress.com/.  You will not regret it.

Why I’m a Marxist Part I: Groucho

Okay, I’ll admit it – I’m a Marxist.  I’ve been a Marxist for as long as I can remember, dating back to my earliest years of grade school.  And I don’t see it changing any time soon.  I’m a Marxist for life.  (Note to the NSA: this is an old, venerated American tradition called humor.  Just go with it.)

Hard as it is to believe now, but at one time it was possible to be young in the US and have aesthetic and emotional attachments to cultural artifacts of previous generations.  When I grew up in the 1970s, it was just as easy to be a rabid fan of The Marx Brothers or, say, Bela Lugosi, as it was to appreciate Elton John or The Beatles.  Culture was a more amorphous stew of new and old, good and bad, the tried-and-true and the newly emerging.  Radio dramas from the 1940s could still be heard in reruns on radio along with Top 40 programs, and late night television was awash in classic American cinema.  It was a wonderful time to grow up, if one was awake, because the great kaleidoscope of American culture was spread out before you.

That has largely changed.  Our culture has become too fragmented, our viewing and listening habits too balkanized, and our deep and abiding suspicion of anything remotely challenging has shrunken the offerings of our cultural landscape.  It is, I believe, the sneaking suspicion that something not contemporary may be too challenging -- too slow, too much story, not loud enough – that has consigned so much of American culture, both high and pop, to the contemporary dustbin.

Not so just a few decades ago.  And no figures from the Golden Age of American pop culture loomed larger – in college campuses or grade school playgrounds – than the comedy team The Marx Brothers.  It is arguable that the Marx Brothers were more popular in the 1970s than they were in their heyday of the 1930s.  It is a success story that has no real equal in American entertainment, except, of course, for the continuing popularity of the more proletarian Three Stooges.

During this reclamation, the aging and increasingly frail Groucho Marx (1890-1977) managed a one-man show at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and appeared on just about every television venue that would have him.  It was a wonderful coda to a remarkable career, and one that, we hope, made up for many real-life disappointments and setbacks.

Born Julius Henry Marx in New York, Groucho was pushed into show business by his mother, Minnie.  She was convinced that a family act would be a hit, and all five brothers would eventually work onstage as a team or separately.

Chico, the oldest brother, was a compulsive gambler and womanizer who seemed, oddly enough, to be mother’s favorite.  Things came easily to Chico, and Groucho resented that.  Harpo, who clearly had some kind of undiagnosed learning disability, was often the subject of Groucho’s most condescending jokes.  However, Harpo was a genuinely happy man – he had a talent for happiness that Groucho lacked.  (Indeed, Groucho was deeply suspicious of happiness.)  The two younger brothers, Zeppo and Gummo, never really embraced show business, but Groucho felt a responsibility towards them, and often made arrangements to further their careers and businesses.

In fact, Groucho played father to his brood of brothers, something that their real-life father Sam could never quite pull off.  It is perhaps this early imposition of responsibility and obligation that soured Groucho so early in life, and made his private relationships so fraught.  He married three times, twice to women young enough to be his daughter, and spent his sunset years with a conniving adventuress who sucked away his energy and cash while trying to establish herself as a Hollywood player.

But, whatever messiness of his private life, Groucho was probably the most gifted comedian of the 20^th Century.  He had all the gifts: he looked funny, his voice was funny, his walk and mannerisms were funny; he was a gifted physical comedian and a comedic lord of language.

Groucho’s métier was the insult; this has been much degraded of late, but with Groucho it was an art form.  Groucho’s insults relied on real wit, not merely funniness, which is, in the final analysis, the ultimate indication of intelligence.  We could easily fill up multiple pages with examples, but here is one delirious scene from Horse Feathers (1932).  Groucho, as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, romances college widow Connie Bailey (Thelma Todd) in a rowboat while she tries to steal information on the upcoming college football game:

Wagstaff:   This is the first time I've been out in a canoe since I saw The American Tragedy.

Connie:       Oh, you're perfectly safe, Professor, in this boat.

Wagstaff:   I don't know. I was going to get a flat bottom but the girl at the boat house didn't have one.

Connie:       Well you know, Professor, I could go on like this, drifting and dreaming forever. What a day! Spring in the air.

Wagstaff:   Who, me? I should spring in the air and fall in the lake?

Connie:       Oh, Professor, you're full of whimsy.

Wagstaff:   Can you notice it from there? I'm always that way after I eat radishes.

The football team's signals fall out of Wagstaff's coat pocket into the water and drift by Connie. He boasts that he has a second set of signals in his other pocket: Luckily, I've got a duplicate set in my pocket. I always carry two of everything. This is the first time I've only been out with one woman. Then, she attempts to use baby talk on him to divulge Huxley's football signals:

Connie:       Do you know, Professor, I've never seen football signals? Do you think a little girl like me could understand them?

Wagstaff:   I think a little girl like you would understand practically anything.

Connie:       Is gweat big stwong man gonna show liddle icky baby all about the bad footbawl signals?

Wagstaff (startled): Was that you or the duck? 'Cause if it was you, I'm gonna finish this ride with the duck.

Connie:       If icky baby don't learn about the footbawl signals, icky baby gonna cwy.

Wagstaff:   If icky girl keep on tawking that way, big stwong man gonna kick all her teef wight down her thwoat.

The Marx Brothers made some 13 films in all; some brilliant (Duck Soup, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races), some awful (At the Circus), but all worth seeing, even if for only occasional glimpses of genius.

In the 1950s, Groucho became a solo act, serving as quiz master for You Bet Your Life on both radio and television.  Here was Groucho in his element – talking to a broad cross-section of people and deploying his killer wit.  Oddly enough, this was Groucho’s most celebrated star turn before his great revival in the 1970s, and though amusing, You Bet Your Life was never as inventive, transgressive or fall-down funny as his classic films.

If you have not seen the early Marx Brothers films – particularly the films made at Paramount: The Coconuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup – do so without delay.  They are among the most wonderful artifacts of American pop culture.

HE WAS THAT MASKED MAN: PART I

Clayton Moore -- AKA The Lone Ranger -- And His Fan Base

Welcome back to The Jade Sphinx – we took a short hiatus at the end of the summer and have returned for what is, I hope, the start of an interesting Fall Season.

First up, a special treat for Jade Sphinx readers – an interview with Clayton Moore (1914-1999), who played The Lone Ranger on television from 1949 to 1957;  I originally conducted this interview more than 15 years ago, when Moore released his autobiography, I Was That Masked Man (1996).  Since its initial magazine publication, the interview has been buried in my files.  Here is the first of three parts.

James Abbott

Actor Clayton Moore was forever changed by a part he played.

When offered the part of the Lone Ranger in 1949, television's first western program, to Moore it was just another heroic role, much like the heroes he had played in the classic Republic serials.

But it changed him.

After a brief hiatus from the part, he returned to it with a renewed appreciation.  He had remembered listening to The Lone Ranger with his father in his native Chicago, and as he began to explore who the Lone Ranger was and what he represented, he realized that the Lone Ranger was more than a character for an actor to play.  To Moore, the Ranger came to embody a way of living and thinking, of realizing the heroism inherent in every man.  And as he grew more and more into the role, the Lone Ranger became a larger part of his life.

Clayton Moore has succeeded in a life well-lived.  The line between this modest actor and the cowboy hero is a thin one:  Clayton Moore is the Lone Ranger.

 Moore has compiled his many adventures in his new autobiography, I Was That Masked Man, which he wrote with Frank Thompson.  Still energetic, unfailingly courteous and stalwart as ever, Mr. Moore has been making appearances at book signings throughout California.  Fans young and old meet him with hushed awe, only to be relaxed by Moore's easy-going charm. 

We honored to have caught up with him at a recent book signing. 

I understand that during your boyhood you wanted to be either a cowboy or a policeman?

Yes.  When I was a kid I was just in awe of men like Tom Mix and William S. Hart.  When my friends and I would go to the movies, it was Westerns that we wanted to see.  There was just something about it, riding the range and living in the West, that excited me.  After the movies we kids would play cowboys and Indians and I always wanted to play the hero.

I thought being a policeman would be the closest I would come to being a Western lawman... so I'm glad I grew up to become the Lone Ranger, because I really got to be both a cowboy and a policeman!

Tell us a little bit about your boyhood?

I had a real nice childhood with my family and my brothers.  My father was quite a hunter, liked duck hunting and geese hunting and pheasant hunting, so we were well brought up in all the stages of duck hunting and all the fun things like that when we were kids.  We lived in Chicago, but we went away every summer and that's where I got my love of the outdoors.

Were you a very athletic child?

Yes, yes.  I had a good athletic training in the old Illinois Athletic Club in Chicago.  One day I was doing some acrobatic work and Johnny Behr saw me.  He asked me if I wanted to try the trapeze and I found I had a real knack for it.  He thought we had the making of an act and we started working on that.

Was being an acrobat your first brush with show business?

Yes, that's correct.  We asked some friends to join us and we were called the Flying Behrs.  We played a lot in the Chicago area, and we even performed in the 1934 World's Fair.

When did you realize that acrobatics might not have been for you?

We started doing stunts an the trampoline as well.  I landed wrong during a workout and bounced off the side of the trampoline, hurting my knee.  Then I starting to think that acting might be safer.

What did you do next?

I did some modeling work with the Robert John Powers Agency in New York.  My older brother Sprague had been modeling for local newspapers and catalogues.  I modeled for a time in Chicago and then went to New York to get acting experience.  It was a fine way to make a living, but not what I wanted.  I didn't think I was doing what I wanted in New York so opted for California to fulfill my life's dream, to be a movie cowboy.  That's what I wanted to be!

I headed for Los Angeles in 1937 and soon got into some pictures.

Once you got to Hollywood you worked with people like Rowland V. Lee?

Rowland V. Lee directed the Son of Monte Cristo.  He was a very nice man to work with and an excellent director.  He stood up for his actors and helped them get a handle on their roles.  It was a very relaxed set and that was a fun picture to work on. 

You also worked with Bela Lugosi?

He and I worked together in Black Dragons.  I tell you, I had a good education at Monogram and Republic Studios working with people like that.  Lugosi seemed a little shy, he would stay in his dressing room most of the time.  I don't think he was stand-offish, just shy.  When the camera was on, though, he was letter perfect.  He had a way with dialogue that was special.  I never worked with anyone like him.

 All those serials and programmers were real work, they put you through the ropes and made an actor out of you.  I'm happy to say that some people considered me to be the King of the Serials, so I like to think that I made good!

More Clayton Moore Tomorrow!

The Pearl and the Pumpkin – A Forgotten Halloween Classic

Your correspondent remembers a time when Halloween was a holiday primarily celebrated by children.  As I dimly recall that era, we kids purchased some great, inexpensive costumes, or, better yet, made our own.  We would trick-or-treat after school and then, if we were especially lucky, television would make the day perfect with a vintage monster movie, preferably something starring Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) or Boris Karloff (1887-1969).

Things have changed quite a bit.

Today, one would be hard pressed to find children celebrating the holiday at all.  Misguided, unimaginative parents fear something “unwholesome” about Halloween, and church leaders and other professional blue noses prate piffle about “satanic influences.”  As if wearing a Capt. America costume before eating a pound of licorice was the fast road to perdition...

But worse than disenfranchising children from the holiday, adults have coopted it as their own, making what was once a childish frolic of skeletons and ghost stories into a sort of demented Mardi Gras.  As if the Baby Boomer generation was not sufficiently infantilized, it continues to make matters worse by taking the very stuff of childhood and perverting it into an extended flight from adulthood.  If your children are home while you are in a Halloween party … then something is seriously wrong.

Not that adulthood means leaving behind the fun of Halloween completely.  Many of the great classics of English literature are ghost stories (Hamlet, anyone?), and the shudder tales of M. R. James and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remain champion reading.  And if, like your correspondent, you have an interest in the children’s literature of the past century, you could do much worse than finding a copy of The Pearl and the Pumpkin by Paul West and W. W. Denslow.

Denslow (1856-1915) is, of course, remembered primarily as the first illustrator of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in 1900.  Denslow was considered to be one of the major contributors to the success of the book, as his illustrations were applauded by critics and children alike.  Baum and Denslow would work on several other books, including Father Goose: His Book, and Dot and Trot of Merryland; jointly holding the copyrights of their collaborations.

However, things went sour when the Wizard of Oz was adapted for the stage.  Baum wrote the show and Denslow designed the sets and costumes – but the two would quarrel when Denslow insisted on 50 percent ownership of the show.  It would be the last time the two worked together – though Denslow earned so much from the book and the show that he was able to buy an island off of Bermuda and crown himself King Denslow I.

Baum would, of course, go on to write 13 more Oz books, and dozens of other classic children’s tales.  Illustrating the Oz stories fell to John R. Neill (1877-1943) who, to this viewer’s eye, surpassed Denslow’s conception to become the finest illustrator of the Oz corpus.

Immediately following the windfall of the Oz book and stage play, Denslow sought to duplicate its success.  He worked with writer Paul West to create The Pearl and the Pumpkin in 1904.  (It would go on to become a successful show in 1905, running in Boston and New York before touring the country.)

For sheer audacious invention, it would be hard to beat The Pearl and the Pumpkin.  The story begins on a farm in Vermont, where Joe Miller has perfected a method for growing perfect pumpkins.  He and his cousin, Pearl, are all set to celebrate Halloween when they are visited by the Ancient Mariner (complete with albatross and crossbow), who contrives to learn the secret of perfect pumpkins because the pirates down in Davy Jones’ Locker (including Long John Silver, Balckbeard, and Capt. Kidd) are hungry for pumpkin pie.

Before too long, Joe is turned into a giant pumpkin boy by a sprite called the Corn Dodger, and they (along with a baker and professional canner) all end up under the sea, battling pirates and contriving to get Joe back to normal. 

The book was clearly designed with a stage extravaganza in mind (the Glinda-like figure, Mother Carey, even has a bevy of chorus girls behind her), but the joyous energy, high spirits and bright good humor make the book a unique experience.  Denslow created illustrations for every page – including some spreads that straddled both open pages.  Fortunately, the book was available in a facsimile of its 1904 edition from Dover Books, and can be found in places like New York’s Books of Wonder.

I could think of no better way to celebrate Halloween.

Important Birthdays: Bela Lugosi

Though no one would seriously argue that Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) was one of the movies’ greatest actors, there is little room for debate that he was one of the screen’s most iconic. 

Perhaps there is something about cinema that is anathema to truly great acting – the medium is too broad, too large, too loud for subtlety.  But those who make the grand gesture or can fill the screen with personality or individuality often become icons.  That Bela Lugosi is recognized now, 130 years after his birth and 56 after his death, is a tribute to the innate genius he brought to the screen.

Lugosi’s legacy to motion pictures remain a handful of interesting performances, a generous number of truly bad B films, and a legend that has lost none of its potency.  Typecast as Dracula forever after his 1931 film appearance, actor and role merged for eternity when the actor requested that he be buried in his vampire costume.

To the popular imagination, Bela Lugosi is Dracula, despite the considerable difference between the actor and the character as described in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel.  Never before -- or since -- has an actor become so defined by a solitary part.  The identification was so great that for the rest of his life, the actor was billed as Bela "Dracula" Lugosi.  No other actor's face, voice, inflections or body language holds greater supremacy over the part than those of the Hungarian expatriate. 

Lugosi first played the role on Broadway.  When Dracula premiered in Broadway's Fulton Theater, neither the critics nor the audience realized that they were witnessing the creation of one of modern theater history's great signature roles.  Though Lugosi was generally praised for his work, the thought of a supernatural protagonist on the Broadway stage was a concept that took a while to settle in.  The passion that Lugosi brought to the part -- he so mesmerized actress Clara Bow at a performance of Dracula that it was the start of a stormy romance between the "It" girl and the undead Valentino -- along with his intensity, strange intonation and charisma, made Dracula acceptable to critics and audiences alike.

Many actors to later play the role found themselves hobbled by the long shadow of Lugosi.  When Martin Landau played Dracula in a revival of the Edward Gorey production of the play, he found that audiences would accept nothing but the Lugosi conception.  (And this, 10 years before Landau won the Academy Award in 1994 for playing Lugosi in Tim Burton's Ed Wood.)  Gary Oldman, a terrific actor who made his mark in challenging roles, frankly admitted that the voice he used in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) was "pure Lugosi."

Dracula distilled for children -- everything from Sesame Street’s Count to General Mills' breakfast cereal Count Chocula -- is simply Lugosi and water.  When George Hamilton played Dracula in Love At First Bite (1979) he portrayed him as a lovelorn Bela Lugosi, caught in a world that had forgotten romance.  Leslie Nielson in Dracula:  Dead and Loving It (1995) also closely studied Lugosi's delivery and mannerisms.  Even Adam Sandler's Dracula in the current Hotel Transylvania imitates Lugosi -- and even makes an on-camera joke about it.

As Dracula, Bela Lugosi has appeared on toys, games, model kits and magazine covers.  Any television or radio commercial employing Dracula also employs Lugosi, for it is the actor and not the part that other players adapt.  Posters, greeting cards, record albums, Halloween costumes, iron-on patches, candy boxes and bubble gum cards have all borne Lugosi' likeness.  Bela Lugosi's face adorned the cover of Bram Stoker's novel as early as 1947, when the Pocket Books edition featured a painting of Lugosi hovering over a sleeping victim.  His association with the novel continues to this day, and Lugosi's visage continues to appear on the covers of many editions of Dracula, including the inexpensive Barnes and Noble reprint sold nationally.

No actor to play the part after Bela Lugosi has achieved the same long-lasting impression or has penetrated as far into popular myth.  Lugosi's Dracula is the yardstick by which all other interpretations are measured, a standard which has not diminished despite the many fine performances that followed in Lugosi's wake.