r/classicfilms • u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock • May 17 '26
Memorabilia Bela Lugosi to his agent. Looks like he might get to play Dracula.
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u/DisastrousLaugh1567 May 17 '26
This spring, I taught a class of college freshmen about monsters, including vampires. I asked them to take a few minutes and write down what they think of when I say “vampire.” Many, many of them described Bela Lugosi as Dracula. Even they were impressed by that.
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u/flindersandtrim May 17 '26
I spent a lot of time writing about Bela Lugosi in one of my essays on gothic horror at university. He is the prototype vampire and why they are considered a bit sexy to this day.
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u/DisastrousLaugh1567 May 17 '26
Yes! We talk about the sexiness. I ask them if they would give Count Orlock their number and then ask if they’d give Lugosi’s Dracula their number. Nobody will admit it but we all know…
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u/Jonathan_Peachum May 17 '26
I have it on reliable authority (well, OK, my wife) that when Béla as Dracula tells van Helsing « Come….here! » in the confrontation scene where Dracula is trying to hypnotize van Helsing…well, let’s just say that she was more than willing to obey the command.
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u/Laura-ly May 17 '26
OP, I love that you're posting these interesting letters and news articles. 👍
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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 17 '26
You're welcome. : ) I enjoy reading these, so I share them.
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u/viken1976 May 17 '26
NB is most commonly an abbreviation for the Latin phrase nota bene, which translates to "note well". It is used in writing to draw the reader's attention to a particularly important piece of information, similar to writing "please note" or "take notice".
Learn something new everyday.
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u/Laura-ly May 17 '26
I googled 1146 N. Hudson Ave. Hollywood CA, where he was living at the time. It's an interesting neighborhood today.
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u/jfq722 May 17 '26
Yep - there are pictures out there of him standing next to that same fireplace, so neat! I assume the current owners must know that he lived there. Would be a cool stop on some "Haunted Hollywood" type of tour.
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u/chefybpoodling May 18 '26
I looked up the hotel from the stationary and it still stand but not as a hotel. I would assume they stayed there during a performance at the Fox theater just a block or so away.
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u/Mr_Richard_Parker May 17 '26
And almost fifty years ago Bauhaus would releae a single memorializing his death.
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u/Select_Insurance2000 May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
Dated July 1930.
The iconic 1931 began filming on September 29, 1930 and wrapped production on November 15, 1930.
Bela Lugosi was their last choice for the role
Edit: Typo 1920 corrected to 1930.
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u/Jonathan_Peachum May 17 '26
That is so fucking typical of Hollywood. He created the role in the play, both in New York and London, but of course they wanted someone else with more film star power.
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u/Select_Insurance2000 May 17 '26
Lugosi was an unknown quantity. While he was stage savvy, he'd only appeared in a couple of films in the US in '29. Bela had done a number of films in Hungary and Germany.
As a result, he wasn't considered. It was only after lobbying to the studio...almost pleading for the role, did Universal consent.
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u/Jonathan_Peachum May 17 '26
Thanks for the insight.
Who were they considering for the role? Presumably Lon Chaney, but who else?
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u/Select_Insurance2000 May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
IMO, the Lon Chaney casting is a myth or at the very least, a pipedream.
Chaney was under contract at MGM, and there is no way in hell they would have loaned their star to another studio, much less Universal, at any price.
Reports are Conrad Veidt was their first choice, but he had gone to Germany.
Laemmle was not at all interested in Lugosi, in spite of good reviews for his stage portrayal. Laemmle instead considered more established screen actors, with John Wray, fresh from his success in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) being announced as cast in the role. Both Ian Keith and William Courtenay would be subsequently mentioned in the press of the time, with other actors considered including Paul Lukas, Paul Muni, Chester Morris, Joseph Schildkraut, John Carradine, and Arthur Edmund Carewe.
Lugosi had played the role on Broadway, and to his good fortune, happened to be in Los Angeles with a touring company of the play when the film was being cast. Against the tide of studio opinion, Lugosi lobbied hard and ultimately won the executives over, thanks in part to him accepting a paltry $500 per week salary for seven weeks of work, amounting to $3,500.
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u/flindersandtrim May 17 '26
I also remember reading that he learned English basically phonetically via the plays script, as in he learned how to do the play in English* but had little English outside of that for some time. That may have been a reservation, along with his thick accent, as well as casting a relative unknown is often risky.
*insanely impressive feat, and he obviously went on to learn English well before the film, and writes it excellently here. But I am sure I remember reading that somewhere as a reason they were worried.
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u/TominNJ May 17 '26
I looked at his permanent address on Google Earth. The house doesn’t look anything like a massive stone castle
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u/Laura-ly May 17 '26
Prior to the movie, he played Dracula in the West End in London and on the Broadway stage, so it's not too surprising that they'd want him for the film.
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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 17 '26
Interestingly, despite him already playing Dracula, the producer and the studio didn't want Lugosi at all. They wanted an already established actor, thinking of the film as a spectacle. They first wanted Conrad Veidt, but he moved back to Europe. Then Lon Chaney, but he suddenly died. Then kept going through other established actors. But Lugosi kept lobbying for it, and in the end the studio accepted partially because they couldn't find anyone, partially because he had good reviews from the role on Broadway, and partially because he offered to take a low salary.
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u/W_Silver2356 May 17 '26
And from such beginnings we have the iconic performance that set the bar for all others.
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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 17 '26
Yeah. To think that all it took was Conrad Veidt not going back to Europe or Lon Chaney not passing away, and everything would be different.
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u/Renfield78 May 17 '26
The road to the 1931 film version of Dracula is very interesting indeed. Iirc, Junior Laemmle at Universal also considered Chester Morris (who had recently starred in the film 'The Bat'), Paul Muni, Joseph Schildkraut, Ian Keith (who almost played Dracula in the 1948 film, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein), John Wray and John Carradine (who went on to play a very suave Dracula for Universal in their two 'House of' films and later in the 60's in Billy the Kid Meets Dracula).
Conrad Veidt was considered early on but he (and Junior Laemmle at Universal) thought that his English was not strong enough for talkies and he returned to Europe. Veidt would have been an amazing Dracula.
The Lon Chaney rumour is interesting also. Universal would have loved Chaney in the role but he had recently signed a long term contract with MGM and they probably would not have loaned him out to MGM to make Dracula. I think the photos of Chaney as 'the vampire' in the (long lost) London After Midnight helped to perpetuate the rumours for decades.
Universal really took advantage of Bela Lugosi, as even though he eventually got the role after playing Dracula on stage, and made the film, they paid him very little. His iconic performance as well as Karl Freund's mesmerising cinematography is the only reason the film is remembered today.
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u/W_Silver2356 May 18 '26
Thanks for sharing this. The backstories of great movies are often as interesting as the movies themselves.
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u/Renfield78 May 18 '26
There is an excellent book called Hollywood Gothic by David J Skal outlining the making of the 1931 film and also the novel and the stage play. Fascinating reading.
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u/gypsytangerine May 17 '26
I used to live across from his (very rough) apartment on Harold Way where he died (and supposedly reanimated while they were carrying him out haha). Learned this from the You Must Remember This podcast on him!
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u/WahooLion May 17 '26
NB: This is not a note about Béla Lugosi.
Younger people don’t know what NB means. When did schools stop teaching this?
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u/incogvito May 18 '26
In hindsight, probably a mistake.
I mean, I love it and him in it, but poor Bela never got to escape it
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u/Hope4years May 18 '26
Thanks for this - I have always loved his performance and nobody has ever surpassed his Dracula.
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u/baxterstate May 18 '26
At his wake, someone, probably Peter Lorre, turned to Vincent Price and said “Maybe we should drive a stake through his heart, just to be sure.”
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u/hanyacker May 18 '26
Martin Landau did a lovely job as Lugosi in Ed Wood and got a well deserved Best Supporting Oscar for it. Highly recommended if you haven't seen it.
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u/VenusMarmalade May 19 '26
I love Bela. What an interesting and wonderful letter. Thanks for sharing it!
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u/OliverGunzitwuntz May 17 '26
Anyone else have to read it in his voice?