Bela Lugosi

Birth Name: Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko
Birth Date: October 20, 1882
Deceased: August 16, 1956

Biography

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Bela Lugosi was a Hungarian-American actor famous for portraying Count 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 Communist Revolution of 1919. He had roles in several films in Weimar Germany before arriving in the United States as a seaman on a merchant ship. In 1927, he appeared as Count Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bran Stoker's novel. He later appeared in the classic 1931 film Dracula by Universal Pictures. Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in popular horror films, with their East European setting, but his Hungarian accent limited his repertoire, and he tried unsuccessfully to avoid typecasting. Among his pairings with Karloff, he performed major roles only in The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939)