Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (October 20, 1882 – August 16, 1956), better known by his stage name Bela Lugosi was a Hungarian–American actor. He was best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the horror film classic Dracula (1931), Ygor in both Son of Frankenstein (1939) and Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.
Lugosi began acting on the Hungarian stage in 1902, appearing in more than 170 productions. Beginning in 1917, he performed in Hungarian silent films. During World War I, he served as an infantry officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 to 1916. After the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919, Lugosi was forced to immigrate to Germany due to his Socialist party activities. He acted in several films in Weimar Germany, before arriving in New Orleans as a seaman on a merchant ship, then making his way north to New York City and Ellis Island.
In 1927, he starred as Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, moving with the play to the West Coast in 1928 and settling down in Hollywood. He later starred in the 1931 film version of Dracula directed by Tod Browning and produced by Universal Pictures. Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in horror films, but his notoriety as Dracula and thick Hungarian accent greatly limited the roles offered to him, and he unsuccessfully tried for years to avoid typecasting.
He co-starred in a number of films with fellow horror icon Boris Karloff, including The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939).
By this time, Lugosi had been receiving regular medication for sciatic neuritis, and he became addicted to doctor-prescribed morphine and methadone. This drug dependence (and his gradually worsening alcoholism) was becoming apparent to producers, and after 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Lugosi experienced a career decline and mostly appeared in low-budget films, some of which were directed by Ed Wood. His collaborations with Wood include a brief appearance in Plan 9 from Outer Space, released posthumously in 1957.
Lugosi married five times and had one son, Bela G. Lugosi (with his fourth wife, Lillian). Lugosi would eventually have four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, although he did not live long enough to meet any of them.
Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in 1882 in Lugos, Kingdom of Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania) to Hungarian father István Blaskó, a baker who later became a banker, and Serbian mother Paula de Vojnić (Serbian: Паула де Војнић). He was raised in a Catholic family.
At the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school and left home to work at a succession of manual labor jobs. His father died during his absence. He began his stage acting career in 1902. His earliest known performances are from provincial theatres in the 1903–04 season, playing small roles in several plays and operettas. He took the last name "Lugosi" in 1903 to honor his birthplace, and went on to perform in Shakespearean plays. After moving to Budapest in 1911, he played dozens of roles with the National Theatre of Hungary between 1913 and 1919. Although Lugosi would later claim that he "became the leading actor of Hungary's Royal National Theatre", many of his roles there were small or supporting parts, which led him to enter the Hungarian film industry.
During World War I, he served as an infantry officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army Imperial and Royal 43rd Infantry Regiment from 1914 to 1916, with the rank of lieutenant. He was awarded the Wound Medal for wounds he sustained while serving on the Russian front. Returning to civilian life, Lugosi became an actor in Hungarian silent films, appearing in many of them under the stage name "Arisztid Olt".
Due to his activism in the actors' union in Hungary during the revolution of 1919 and his active participation in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was forced to flee his homeland when the government changed hands, initially accompanied by his first wife Ilona Szmik. They escaped to Vienna before settling in Berlin (in the Langestrasse), where he began acting in German silent films. During these moves, Ilona lost her unborn child, after which she left Lugosi and returned home to her parents, where she filed for divorce and soon after remarried.
Lugosi eventually travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, in December 1920 working as a crewman aboard a merchant ship, then made his way north to New York City, where he again took up acting in (and sometimes directing) stage plays in 1921–1922, then worked in the New York silent film industry from 1923 to 1926. In 1921, he met and married his second wife, Ilona von Montagh, a young Hungarian emigree and stage actress whom he had worked with years before in Europe. They only lived together for a few weeks, but their divorce was not finalized until October 1925.
He later moved to California in 1928 to tour in the Dracula stage play, and his Hollywood film career took off. Lugosi claimed he performed the Dracula play around 1,000 times during his lifetime. He eventually became a U.S. citizen in 1931, soon after the release of his film version of Dracula.
Lugosi's first film appearance was in the 1917 Hungarian silent film Leoni Leo. When appearing in Hungarian silent films, he mostly used the stage name Arisztid Olt. Lugosi made at least 10 films in Hungary between 1917 and 1918 before leaving for Germany. Following the collapse of Béla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, leftists and trade unionists became vulnerable, some being imprisoned or executed in public. Lugosi was proscribed from acting due to his participation in the formation of an actors' union. Exiled in Weimar-era Germany, he co-starred in at least 14 German silent films in 1920, among them Hypnose: Sklaven fremden Willens (1920), Der Januskopf (1920), and an adaptation of the Karl May novel Caravan of Death (1920).
In October 1920, Lugosi left Germany for the United States and entered the country at New Orleans in December. He made his way to New York and was inspected by immigration officers at Ellis Island in March 1921. He 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 (1.85 m), 180-pound (82 kg) Lugosi worked for some time as a laborer, and then entered the theater in New York City's Hungarian immigrant colony. With fellow expatriate Hungarian actors, he formed a small stock company that toured Eastern cities, playing for immigrant audiences. Lugosi acted in several Hungarian language plays before starring in his first English Broadway play, The Red Poppy in 1922. Three more parts came in 1925–26, including a five-month run in the comedy-fantasy The Devil in the Cheese. In 1925, he played an Arab Sheik in Arabesque which premiered in Buffalo, New York at the Teck Theatre before moving to Broadway.
His first American film role was in the silent melodrama The Silent Command (1923), which was filmed in New York. Four other silent roles followed, villains and continental types, all in productions made in the New York area. A rumor circulated for decades among film historians that Lugosi played an uncredited bit part as a clown in the first film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, He Who Gets Slapped (1924) starring Lon Chaney, but this has been heavily disputed. The rumor originated from the discovery of a publicity still from this film found posthumously in Lugosi's scrapbook, which showed an unidentified clown in heavy makeup standing near Lon Chaney in one scene. It was thought to be evidence that Lugosi appeared in the film, but historians agree that is very unlikely, as Lugosi was in Chicago (appearing in a play called The Werewolf) and New York at the time that film was in production in Hollywood.
Lugosi was approached in the summer of 1927 to star in a Broadway theatre production of Dracula, which had been adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. The Horace Liveright production was successful, running in New York City for 261 performances before touring the United States to much fanfare and critical acclaim throughout 1928 and 1929. In 1928, Lugosi decided to stay in California when the play ended its first West Coast run. His performance had piqued the interest of Fox Film, and he was cast in the Hollywood studio's silent film The Veiled Woman (1929). He also appeared in the film Prisoners (also 1929), believed lost, which was released in both a silent and partial talkie version.