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.

Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It

William Shatner – idol of millions (billions?) of science fiction fans and would-be pitchmen – comes to Broadway in a one-man show, Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It.  To witness this spectacle among the true-believers is not quite the same as attending a straight play; rather, it has all the flavor of an old fashioned tent meeting.  Whatever one might say about the show, Shatner has more dedicated, demonstrative, supportive and clinically obese fans than any Broadway actor I have ever seen.

Before going into Shatner’s performance, we should make clear that this is not a “one man show” in the accepted sense.  Do not expect Vincent Price as Oscar Wilde or Julie Harris as Emily Dickinson; this is a personal appearance, where Shatner tells anecdotes detailing how famous he is and how much fun he has had at the expense of a doting public.  Celebrity confessional seems to be a new focus on Broadway – Carrie Fisher, another science fiction icon, made hay (and money) with a recent “one-woman show” where she detailed her problems of addiction and told some moldy Hollywood anecdotes.  However, I do find it specious to bill a fan event a “one-man show,” particularly when the actor involved does little other than natter about the past.

Even within that framework, though, Shatner’s World is slim pickings indeed.  In a mix of anecdotes and film clips, Shatner takes pot shots at past co-stars, talks about the glories of live television, and tells interesting stories about people as diverse of Christopher Plummer and Lon Chaney, Jr.  Some of these stories are interesting and amusing, but Shatner also tells too, too many borscht belt jokes that were stale when Eddie Cantor did them.  As an actor there is nothing that can be said of William Shatner that hasn’t been said of George Hamilton or Robert Wagner – men who are largely famous for having become famous. 

Shatner’s prowess as an actor is something we are expected to take on faith.  In detailing a triumphal turn as Shakespeare’s Henry V (when he understudied a sick Christopher Plummer), Shatner ends the story with showing us his press clip.  An actor, rather than a celebrity, would’ve provided a snippet of Henry (a part rich in monologs) for our delectation, but that’s never the point in Shatner’s World.  The point is he did it, by jingo, and now on to the next triumph…

One must, however, applaud Shatner for his robust energy and extreme vigor.  A man of 80, he prances up-and-down the stage for an hour and 40 minutes, sometimes shouting, sometimes whispering, and even dancing here and there.  He plays largely against an office chair, which doubles as everything from a car to a bed to a horse, and takes much-needed pauses during film clips.  As an act of endurance, it is a formidable feat for both the actor and the audience.

Shatner also tells a great many personal stories, including the death his third wife, and how using his prized horse as a stud ruined that animal, and his guilt at having to put it down.  Surprisingly, the horse story goes on for some 10 minutes, and his wife is largely mentioned in passing.  Even as a confessional, the show also lacks depth-of-feeling.

And if one were to sum-up Shatner -- the show and the man -- that would be the key complaint.  Many are engaged by Shatner’s innate hamminess and the fact that he happily embraces the joke that he has become.   But it is this lack of depth-of-feeling, this sense of a barren interior, that differentiates a fan icon from an actor of any real sensitivity or warmth.  Shatner has become the exemplar of our ego-centric age: we seem enamored of people who disproportionally love themselves.  I had the sense that the audience ovation was also self-reflective – by cheering Shatner, we applaud the neediest part of ourselves.  Shatner comes off as a strange mix of ego-maniacal manchild and wide-eyed innocent: that might be enough to fill the outer reaches of space during Prime Time, but not nearly enough to inhabit the even greater vastness that is the theater.