The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi

by Arthur Lennig

Overview

Bela Lugosi won immediate fame for his portrayal of the immortal count in the 1931 film Dracula. After a decade of trying vainly to broaden his range and secure parts to challenge his acting abilities, Lugosi resigned himself to a career as the world's most recognizable vampire. His last years were spent as a forgotten and rather tragic figure. When he died in 1956, Lugosi could not have known that vindication of his talent would come—his face would adorn theaters, his image would appear on greeting cards and postage stamps, his film memorabilia would sell for more than he earned in his entire career, and his Hungarian accent would be instantly recognized by millions of people.

Martin Landau's Oscar—winning role as Lugosi in the 1994 film Ed Wood added an ironic twist to a career that had ended in oblivion. In 1974, devoted Lugosi fan Arthur Lennig published a highly regarded biography of the unsung actor. More than twice the length of the original and completely rewritten, The Immortal Count provides deeper insights into Lugosi's films and personality. Drawing upon personal interviews, studio memos, shooting scripts, research in Romania and Hungary, and his own recollections, Lennig has written the definitive account of Lugosi's tragic life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813126616
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	08/01/2010
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Arthur Lennig, emeritus professor of cinema at the University of Albany, is the author of Stroheim and several other books on silent film.

Table of Contents

Preface
Bela
The Early Years
Broadway to Hollywood
The Fateful Decision
Dracula — The Film
Fame
The Peak
The Comeback
The War Years
The Decline
The Final Years
Epilogue
Filmography
Lugosi's Earnings
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

Eleonora Duse, the turn-of-the-century Italian actress who inspired Stanislavsky’s Method, told her company that to play Ibsen’s characters they had to know unhappiness, and, if necessary, they should go looking for it. In Eleonora Duse: A Biography, Helen Sheehy makes it clear that Duse followed her own advice. Duse was a genius at creating misery for herself; her disastrous affair with the poet Gabriele d’Annunzio must have fed her onstage characterizations of Hedda and Marguerite, just as it gave d’Annunzio material for his novel “Il Fuoco.”

As the premier husband-and-wife acting team of the middle of the twentieth century, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne—the subject of Margot Peters’s Design For Living—projected sizzling chemistry onstage. Offstage, their marriage was probably sexless—Alfred was rumored to have been gay—and their domestic arrangements gravitated toward chaste ménages à trois, often with their friend Noël Coward. Did their sexuality, repressed at home, emerge more conspicuously in their performance? One critic wrote that “The Guardsman,” a comedy about a couple who lead each other in sex games, was the true story of the Lunts’ marriage: “They lived to act for each other.”

Bela Lugosi was a sensation as Dracula on Broadway, and the film version made him Hollywood’s leading horror star. But, as Arthur Lennig tells us in The Immortal Count, Lugosi wanted romantic roles and was frustrated that his accent and European mannerisms limited him to playing the heavy. Only in life could he play Don Juan: he married five times and died in 1956 beneath a large nude portrait of Clara Bow, a souvenir of their affair.

(Kate Taylor)

The New Yorker