Bela Lugosi

Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, known professionally as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian-American actor born on October 20, 1882, who died on August 16, 1956. He is most famous for playing Count Dracula in the 1931 horror film *Dracula*, as well as Ygor in *Son of Frankenstein* (1939) and *Ghost of Frankenstein* (1942), and for starring in numerous other horror movies between 1931 and 1956.

The youngest of four children, Lugosi was born in Lugos, Kingdom of Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania). His father, István Blaskó, worked as a baker before becoming a banker; his mother, Paula de Vojnić, was Serbian. Raised Catholic, Lugosi quit school at age twelve and left home for manual labor, his father dying while he was away. He began acting on stage in 1902, with his earliest known performances in provincial theatres during the 1903–04 season, playing small roles in plays and operettas. He adopted the surname "Lugosi" in 1903 to honor his birthplace, later performing Shakespearean roles. After moving to Budapest in 1911, he acted with the National Theatre of Hungary from 1913 to 1919, though many of his parts there were small or supporting. This led him into the Hungarian film industry.

During World War I, Lugosi served as an infantry lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army’s 43rd Infantry Regiment from 1914 to 1916, earning the Wound Medal for injuries on the Russian front. After the war, he acted in Hungarian silent films under the stage name Arisztid Olt. Because of his activism in the actors’ union and participation in the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, he fled the country when the government changed, first escaping to Vienna with his first wife, Ilona Szmik, then settling in Berlin. During these moves, Ilona miscarried and left him, filing for divorce and remarrying. Lugosi arrived in New Orleans in December 1920 as a merchant ship crewman, then traveled to New York City, where he acted in and directed stage plays from 1921 to 1922, and worked in the New York silent film industry from 1923 to 1926. In 1921, he married his second wife, Ilona von Montagh, a Hungarian stage actress he had known in Europe; they lived together only weeks, divorcing in October 1925.

In 1927, Lugosi starred as Dracula on Broadway in an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, then toured with the play to the West Coast in 1928, settling in Hollywood. He later starred in the 1931 film version directed by Tod Browning for Universal Pictures. Throughout the 1930s, he was a significant figure in horror films, but his iconic role as Dracula and thick Hungarian accent limited his opportunities, and he struggled for years to escape typecasting. He co-starred with Boris Karloff in *The Black Cat* (1934), *The Raven* (1935), and *Son of Frankenstein* (1939). For sciatic neuritis, Lugosi took prescribed medication and became addicted to morphine and methadone, with his drug dependence and worsening alcoholism becoming noticeable to producers. After *Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein* (1948), his career declined, and he mostly appeared in low-budget films, some directed by Ed Wood, including a brief role 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. He eventually had four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, but did not live to meet any of them. He became a U.S. citizen in 1931, shortly after the film *Dracula* was released. He once claimed to have performed the Dracula stage play about 1,000 times. His first film appearance was in the 1917 Hungarian silent *Leoni Leo*, and he made at least ten films in Hungary between 1917 and 1918 before leaving for Germany.