He was simply, as he put it in this biography, the boogeyman. In 1955, he checked himself into the psych ward of Los Angeles General Hospital. [2] He was 73 and weighed 140 pounds. According to the Imaginative Conservative, the erasure of Lugosi's actual history was just one unfortunate blow he had to survive, following his star turn as the count. It was thought to be evidence that Lugosi appeared in the film, but historians all agree that is very unlikely, since Lugosi was in both Chicago (appearing in a play called The Werewolf) and New York at the time that film was being made in Hollywood. Sinatra would recall Lugosi's amazement at his visit, since the two men had never met before.[40]. He also appeared in the film Prisoners (also 1929), believed lost, which was released in both silent and talkie versions. his net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. It's worthy of its own movie the love story of two tragically underestimated and maligned men. He also continued to lobby for his prized role in the film version of Dracula. He currently resides in Lugoj, Romania. According to the biography, The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi, Lugosi's father, Itsvan, was a prosperous man who left the baking profession in 1883 to set up, with the help of a few partners, a small savings bank in the town of Lugos. The divorce became final on July 17, 1920 and was uncontested as Lugosi could not show up for the proceedings. 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.[10]. He began his acting career in 1901 or 1902. He began his stage acting career in 1902. Throughout the 1930s, Lugosi, experiencing a severe career decline despite popularity with audiences (Universal executives always preferred his rival Karloff), accepted many leading roles from independent producers like Nat Levine, Sol Lesser, and Sam Katzman. Pg 61. But his victory failed to last. Insult to injury, Karloff was able to move on from his appearances in silly vampire and wolfman and monster flicks to more illustrious roles, whereas Lugosi was stuck in a hall of mirrors of sorts, every new part more ridiculous and broad than the last. In June 1917, Lugosi married 19-year-old Ilona Szmik (18981991) in Hungary. Think Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago, and Jack Nicholson as the Joker. Bela Lugosi: Dreams and Nightmares by Gary D. Rhodes, with Richard Sheffield, (2007) Collectables/Alpha Video Publishers. Exiled in Weimar-era Germany, he began appearing in a small number of well-received films, among them adaptations of the Karl May novels On the Brink of Paradise (Auf den Trmmern des Paradieses, 1920) and Caravan of Death (Die Todeskarawane, also 1920) with Dora Gerson (Gerson, who was Jewish, died in Auschwitz). The bank ultimately foreclosed on the home Lugosi and his then wife, Lillian, were living in at the time. Lugosi plays a character named The Scientist who narrates the hackneyed and often embarrassing but also hilarious exploration of sex and gender identity. Lillian and Bela vacationed on their lakeshore property in Lake Elsinore, California (then called Elsinore), on several lots between 1944 and 1953. [43][71], Pter Mller's 1998 theatrical play Lugosi the Shadow of the Vampire (Hungarian: Lugosi a vmpr rnyka) is based on Lugosi's life, telling the story of his life as he became typecast as Dracula and as his drug addiction worsened. Bela Lugosi was born Bla Ferenc Dezs Blask on October 20, 1882, Lugos, Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania), to Paula de Vojnich and Istvn Blask, a banker. People are becoming more and more interested in Bela Lugosi because of how much money he makes. It appeared on their 1972 album Everybody's in Show-Biz. )[55], Lugosi married Hope Lininger, his fifth wife, in 1955; she was 37 years his junior. Hungarian actor who was immortalized as Dracula in 1931. 2021. Having spent a year acting in silent films in Germany's Weimar Republic, Lugosi traveled to America on a merchant ship in 1920, landing in New Orleans before heading north to New York City. (Bela eventually had four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, although he did not live long enough to meet any of them.)[51]. Much like that of the vampire he brought to life, Lugosi's story is a fascinating one, full of ups and downs and twists of fate. Bela Lugosi. Nationality. pg. His immortal role as the count led him to play roles in 1934's The Black Cat and 1935's The Raven. October 20, 2014. Who is Bela Lugosi Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack August 16, 1956. Following the collapse of Bla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, leftists and trade unionists became vulnerable. Before her death, she gave several (rather downbeat) interviews to the fan press. Bela Lugosi became known as an actor the studios could get on the cheap. His net worth is estimated at about $5 million. 71. Lugosi was proscribed from acting due to his participation in the formation of an actors' union. Nearly 20 years later, Lugosi found himself the beneficiary of an unlikely guardian angel. Without his knowledge, a beloved singer, actor, and fan was helping pay his way through rehab. 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. Lugosi was quite effective in this small but prestigious character part and he even received top billing among the film's supporting cast, all of whom had significantly larger roles. Embarrassed, Lugosi left abruptly, without attending the screening. According to SyFy Wire,he learned the language bit by bit, role by role, reading his lines out loud to himself. Following his return to the United States, he was interviewed for television, and reflected wistfully on his typecasting in horror parts: "Now I am the boogie man". Bela Lugosi is a Libra and was born in The Year of the Horse. The young Bela was born just the year before. Appeared with Lon Chaney Jr. in five films: The Wolf Man (1941), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man . Lugosi will probably forever be remembered for playing Count Dracula in Tod Browning's 1931 film version of Bram Stoker's spooky novel. Play episode. Bela Lugosi Net Worth. She died in 1997 at age 78. Education: Dropped out of school at age 12. Not only did the role take over his life; it subsumed his very identity. If Lugosi hoped that the success of Dracula would allow him to emerge from the gentleman vampire's ahem shadow, he was sorely mistaken. [29] He played the elegant, somewhat hot-tempered General Nicholas Strenovsky-Petronovich in International House (1933). Following a role as a mute in "The Black Sheep" (1956), Lugosi died on Aug. 16, 1956 of a heart attack while lying on his couch in Los Angeles. He currently resides in Lugoj, Romania. When Lugosi's Black Friday premiered in 1940 on a double bill with the Vincent Price film The House of the Seven Gables, Lugosi and Price both appeared in person at the Chicago theatre where it opened on Feb. 29, 1940 and remained for four performances. [12][4] They escaped to Vienna before settling in Berlin (in the Langestrasse), where he began acting in German silent films. [57], Lugosi was buried wearing one of the "Dracula" capes and his full costume as well as his Dracula ring in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Scared to Death is a 1947 thriller Gothic film directed by Christy Cabanne and starring Bela Lugosi. Today is the 134thbirthday of NAME: Bela Lugosi OCCUPATION: Actor BIRTH DATE: October 20, 1882 DEATH DATE: August 16, 1956 EDUCATION: Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts PLACE OF BIRTH: Lugos, Hun, Bela Lugosi: Happy 132nd birthday - Blog - Spokane7. From 1947 to 1950, he performed in summer stock, often in productions of Dracula or Arsenic and Old Lace, and during the rest of the year, made personal appearances in a touring "spook show", and on early commercial television. List of Bela Lugosi It's Dracula's curse.". For the remainder of his life he appeared less and less frequently in obscure, low-budget features.Bela Lugosi died on August 16, 1956 of a coronary occlusion at the age of 73. Dracula (1931) $3,500 : 50 Million Frenchmen (1931) $1,000 : Chandu the Magician (1932) $2,500 : White Zombie (1932) . His only television dramatic role was on the anthology series Suspense on October 11, 1949, in an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado. Following a successful run as Count Dracula in the stage version of Bram Stoker's bloody tale, Lugosi was cast as the lead in the film adaptation. In 1951, while in England to play a six-month tour of Dracula, Lugosi co-starred in a lowbrow film comedy, Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (also known as Vampire Over London and My Son, the Vampire), released the following year. Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein(1948). It ran for three years, and was subsequently, and memorably, filmed by Tod Browning in 1931, establishing Lugosi as one of the screen's greatest personifications of pure evil. During World War I, he served as an infantryman in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 to 1916, rising to the rank of Lieutenant. Instead, he was relegated to the horror genre, written off as a B-movie hack. Veteran Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi, 73, best known for his many Dracula screen roles, died late yesterday in his apartment at 5620 Harold Way, apparently the victim of a heart attack. [61], In 1979, the Lugosi v. Universal Pictures decision by the California Supreme Court held that Lugosi's personality rights could not pass to his heirs, as a copyright would have. Bla Ferenc Dezs Blask (Hungarian:[bel frnts d blko]; October 20, 1882 August 16, 1956), known professionally as Bela Lugosi (/losi/; Hungarian:[luoi]), was a HungarianAmerican actor, best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 horror classic Dracula, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.[1]. [64] In 2019, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced acquisition of the cape via partial donation from the Lugosi family. At Universal, he often received star billing for what amounted to a supporting part. At the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school. Lugosi took over the role of Jonathan Brewster from Boris Karloff for Arsenic and Old Lace. [66], Andy Warhol's 1963 silkscreen The Kiss depicts Lugosi from Dracula about to bite into the neck of co-star Helen Chandler, who played Mina Harker. became famous? Bela's fifth wife was a fan who continuously wrote to him while he was recovering from drugs in a hospital. After almost breaking up their marriage in 1944, Lillian and Bela finally divorced on July 17, 1953,[52] at least partially because of Bela's excessive drinking[2] and his jealousy over Lillian taking a full-time job as an assistant to actor Brian Donlevy on Donlevy's radio and television series Dangerous Assignment. Lugosi played Dracula for a second and final time on film in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), which was his last "A" movie. 58. Lugosi addressed his plea to be cast in non-horror roles directly to casting directors through his listing in the 1937 Players Directory, published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in which he (or his agent) calls the idea that he is only fit for horror films "an error.". The story features Lugosi and John Carradine in a mad tale of love, suspicion, and rabies in the jungle. If you dare Bela Lugosi grew up in a solidly middle class family in Hungary, the son of a baker-turned-banker. In Celebrities Gabrielle Miller Wiki: Wedding, Salary, Nationality, Parents. Lugosi later told reporters that he had no choice but to leave his home to find a job, walking 300 miles to an industrial center where he worked as a miner. She filed for divorce four months later, citing actress Clara Bow as the "other woman". In September 1949, Milton Berle invited Lugosi to appear in a sketch on Texaco Star Theatre. Find out Bela Lugosinet worth 2020, salary 2020 detail bellow. Universal Studios paid him only $3,500 for his work on Dracula, and, as this piece in the Standard Examiner illustrates, he was always paid less than his rival, Boris Karloff, for comparable roles. Although Lugosi would later claim that he "became the leading actor of Hungary's Royal National Theatre", almost all his roles there were small or supporting parts. Lugosi married Hope Lininger, his fifth wife, in 1955; they remained married until his death. His immortal role as the count led him to play roles in 1934s The Black Cat and 1935s The Raven. Not exactly a natural fit for a banker's boy. He had to suddenly emigrate to Germany after the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919 because of his former socialist activities (organizing a stage actors' union), leaving his first wife in the process. Bela Lugosi Jr. attended the Elsinore Naval & Military School in Lake Elsinore. During these moves, Ilona lost her unborn child,[13] after which she left Lugosi and returned home to her parents where she filed for divorce, and soon after remarried. He spent a great deal of money. With fellow expatriate Hungarian actors he formed a small stock company that toured Eastern cities, playing for immigrant audiences. At age 12 Lugosi ran away from home and began working odd jobs, including stage acting. It was expected to sell for up to $2 million,[63] but has since been listed again by Bonhams in 2018. Lillian and Bla divorced in 1953, at least partially because of Bla's jealousy over Lillian taking a full-time job as an assistant to Brian Donlevy on the sets and studios for Donlevy's radio and television series Dangerous Assignment Lillian eventually did marry Donlevy in 1966. [46] The couple divorced after Lugosi was forced to flee his homeland for political reasons (risking execution if he stayed) and Ilona did not wish to leave her parents. In the same interview he expressed a desire to play more comedy, as he had in the Mother Riley farce. A distinguished stage actor in his native Hungary . It turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. It's enough to make one turn over in one's grave. It also guaranteed that he would never work as a serious actor again. [2] He later starred in the 1931 film version of Dracula directed by Tod Browning and produced by Universal Pictures. (Lugosi learned in 1935 that von Montagh and a female friend were both arrested for shoplifting in New York City, which was the last he heard of her.)[49]. The court ruled that under California law any rights of publicity, including the right to his image, terminated with Lugosi's death. Incidentally, Lugosi persuaded Bow to pose nude for a portrait artist friend of his, and, as this article on Nitrateville reveals, he happily hung the painting in his many homes, over the possible objections of Mrs. Lugosi Number Four and Five. In 1920 he emigrated to the US and made a living as a character actor, shooting to fame when he played Count Dracula in the legendary 1927 Broadway stage adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. The rumor that Lugosi was clutching the script for The Final Curtain, a planned Ed Wood project, at the time of his death is not true. He was kept employed by the studios principally so that they could put his name on the posters. The film would be Bela Lugosi's last "A" movie. In 1927, he starred as Count 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. Bela Lugosi is a member of Movie Actor. Despite playing one of the world's most blood-thirsty villains, Lugosi was a lover, not a fighter. Whether or not the two men actually disliked each other is a matter of lively debate. He dropped out of school when he was twelve years old, and began appearing in Shakespeare plays. These low-budget thrillers indicate that Lugosi was much less discriminating than Karloff in selecting screen vehicles, but the exposure helped Lugosi financially if not artistically. He even took top billing on films in which Lugosi was the star. Lugosi acted in several Hungarian language plays before starring in his first English Broadway play, The Red Poppy in 1922. As of 2022, Bela Lugosi's net worth is under review. In Tim Burton's Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi is portrayed by Martin Landau, who received the 1994 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the performance. Continue reading to discover who . 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. ISBN 0977379817 (hardcover), Bela Lugosi: Dreams and Nightmares by Gary D. Rhodes, with Richard Sheffield, (2007) Collectables/Alpha Video Publishers. Unable or unwilling to finish his studies, he supported himself as a miner and railroad worker until the age of 18 when his sister, Vilma, persuaded her husband to secure Bela a place in a traveling theater troupe. Lillian would produce Lugosi's only son, Bella Jr., five years later. Hope told Sheffield she had searched the apartment for several days looking for $3,000 she suspected Lugosi had hidden there, but she never found it. Bela's fourth wife Lillian paid for the cemetery plot and stone (which was inscribed "Beloved Father"), while Hope Lugosi paid for the coffin and the funeral service. Following the collapse of Bla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, leftists and trade unionists became vulnerable, some being imprisoned or executed in public. Itsvan died when Bela was just 12-years-old, throwing the family fortunes into turmoil. As film offers declined, he became more and more dependent on live venues to support his family. On 16 August 1956, Bela Lugosi died of non-communicable . He was born in Lugos, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary in 1882 and died in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1956. ? The article quotes Lugosi as saying, "Never has a role so influenced and dominated an actor's life as has the role of Dracula. It was both the fulfillment of a dream for Lugosi and, as this look at his career in Naked History suggests, the beginning of a nightmare. [20], His first American film role was in the silent melodrama The Silent Command (1923) which was filmed in New York. . [17], On his arrival in America, the 6-foot-1-inch (1.85m),[15] 180-pound (82kg) Lugosi worked for some time as a laborer, and then entered the theater in New York City's Hungarian immigrant colony. Lugosi was also the subject of "Bela Lugosi's Dead", the first single by the English band Bauhaus. Known For: Starring in the iconic role of Count Dracula in the 1931 film Dracula. The growth of his dependence on opiates, particularly morphine and (after 1947, when it became available in America) methadone, was directly proportional to the dwindling of Lugosi's screen offers. Bela Lugosi Net Worth. Bela Lugosi Net Worth is $200,000 Bela Lugosi Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018. . [65] In 2019 it was announced that the cape would be on display the following year. [35] Lugosi memorized the script for the skit, but became confused on the air when Berle began to ad lib. He eventually became a U.S. citizen in 1931, soon after the release of his film version of Dracula.[12][4]. During WWI, he volunteered and was commissioned as an infantry lieutenant, and was wounded three times. 1941. [75], On July 19, 2003, German artist Hartmut Zech erected a bust of Lugosi on one of the corners of Vajdahunyad Castle in Budapest. He was the youngest of four children. BearManor Media, ISBN 1593932855, Arthur Lennig, The Immortal Count, University Press of Kentucky, 2003, the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "From the Archives: Actor Bela Lugosi, Dracula of Screen, Succumbs After Heart Attack at 73", https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XCJB-Z61, "15 Intriguing Halloween-Related Factoids! He co-starred in a number of films with Boris Karloff, who was able to demand top billing. In 2001, BBC Radio 4 broadcast There Are Such Things by Steven McNicoll and Mark McDonnell. (At the end of the previous film in the series, The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Lugosi's voice had been dubbed over that of Lon Chaney Jr. since Ygor's brain was now in the Monster's skull[34].) The studio then rehired Lugosi to star in new films. Lugosi took his place in Hollywood society and scandal when he married wealthy San Francisco resident Beatrice Woodruff Weeks (18971931), widow of architect Charles Peter Weeks, on July 27, 1929. 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). pg. In 1925, he appeared as an Arab Sheik in Arabesque which premiered in Buffalo, New York at the Teck Theatre before moving to Broadway. [21] A rumor has circulated for decades among film historians that Lugosi played an uncredited bit part as a clown in the 1924 Lon Chaney Hollywood film He Who Gets Slapped, but this has been heavily disputed. What is Bela Lugosi While its relatively simple to predict his income, its harder to know how much Bela has spent over the years. The film is lost today, but a March 16, 1959, critical review in the Kinematograph Weekly mentioned that the movie contained new Lugosi footage (intriguing since Lugosi had died in 1956). Bela Lugosi Net Worth. Bela Lugosi is an Actor, zodiac sign: Libra. Historian John McElwee reports, in his 2013 book Showmen, Sell It Hot!, that Bela Lugosi's popularity received a much-needed boost in August 1938, when California theater owner Emil Umann revived Dracula and Frankenstein as a special double feature. [56], Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956, in the bedroom of his Los Angeles apartment while taking a nap. [4] Returning to civilian life, Lugosi became an actor in Hungarian silent films, appearing in many of them under the stage name "Arisztid Olt". "I owe it all to that little man at the Regina Theatre," said Lugosi of exhibitor Umann. His wife Hope discovered him dead, on his bed dressed only in his underwear, when she came home from work that evening, he having apparently died peacefully in his sleep around 6:45 PM according to the medical examiner.
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