Bela Lugosi Quotes

Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko, better known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor, who is best known for playing the character Dracula in the 1931 film and for his roles in various other horror films. He had been playing small parts on the stage in his native Hungary before making his first film in 1917, but had to leave the country after the failed Hungarian Revolution, and arrived in America as a seaman on a merchant ship. In 1927, he appeared as Count Dracula in a Broadway production, which Hamilton Deane and John Balderston had dramatized from Bram Stoker's novel, where he was talent-spotted as a character actor for the new Hollywood talkies, appearing in the first Dracula film with sound. Due to his activism in the actors' union in Hungary during the time of the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, he was forced to flee his homeland. He first went to Vienna and then settled in Berlin in the Langestrasse where he continued acting. Eventually, he travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, United States as a crewman aboard a merchant ship. Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956, while lying on a couch in his Los Angeles home. He was 73.