One of Hollywood most tragic downfalls was experienced by Bela Lugosi, who remains iconic to this day for his portrayal of Dracula in the 1931 film of the same name. Lugosi was a Hungarian immigrant, who moved to the United States before the Great Depression, to escape persecution. He served in World War I, and worked in theatre after moving to America. Along with Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, he became synonymous for playing supernatural horror icons on the big screen. But Lugosi was never able to bear the baggage that came with playing Dracula, and his career spiralled after his early success. Towards the end of his life, he was reduced to the peripheries of Hollywood, playing parody versions of Dracula and working in cheap B-movies. Lugosi reportedly died with less than $2000 in his bank account, and a drug addiction that he had been trying to kick for decades.
“He didn’t answer me when I spoke to him, so I went to him. I could feel no pulse, but apparently he must have died a very short time before I arrived,” his fifth wife, Hope, told The Los Angeles Times in 1956, after his death. “We have been very happy together. He seemed to be getting much better month by month, and it was a great shock to me to find him dead when I entered the house.”
A year prior, Bela Lugosi had tried to have himself committed to an asylum, claiming that he’d been addicted to narcotics for as long as two decades. “He was already a broken, dying man,” British author Thomas Wiseman wrote in the Evening Standard, recalling his meeting with Lugosi the year he died. “The money he had made from his films, about $200,000, had gone. The famous hypnotic eyes were vacant. His hands trembled uncontrollably… He was ready to talk frankly about his degeneration as a human being. He spoke in a dead, flat, comatose voice about how he’d become an alcoholic and a drug addict. Last year, when all his money had gone, he had to leave the private sanatorium where he was being treated.”
Wiseman continued, “He pleaded with the court to be ‘put in restraint’, which meant being committed to a state institution. He told the court, ‘I have been addicted to narcotics for 20 years. I need help’. In newspapers and on TV, he revealed the sordid details of his decline, and by recounting the miseries of his life, he became a prominent campaigner against drug-taking.”
Bela Lugosi as Dracula.
The Associated Press made note of his stint in rehab, and mentioned in its obituary of the star, “He was admitted to hospital to begin a three-months rehabilitation course and when he was released he said he was convinced that he had been cured forever.” But Bela Lugosi was a carefree sort of person, at least according to Arthur Lennig’s book, The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi. The author noted the attitude to money and success that Lugosi had, and what he told his fourth wife Lillian. They were married for 20 years. “Lugosi often said to Lillian that she should not worry about financial matters, that money should be spent and enjoyed, and that somehow more of it would always arrive when needed. The young girl trusted this attractive, flamboyant, and confident man. True, while dating her, he had gone bankrupt in October 1932, but he assured her that it was only a temporary problem. His optimism had proved correct, for his film work soon picked up again. In the spring of 1935, Lugosi bought a new Buick Straight 8 Deluxe seven-passenger sedan,” the author wrote.
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Bela Lugosi remained attached to Lillian even after their divorce in 1953. “The divorce from Lillian in 1953 devastated him,” writer Robert Cremer explained. “He was a very proud man, and he took his marriage seriously. He took his responsibility for his family very seriously. And in those years, between 1948 and… through the early 1950s, he was just on the road constantly. This is a man who was well beyond retirement age with sciatica problems that caused him a great deal of pain on the road endlessly. He felt this responsibility that he wanted to provide adequately for his wife and his son.”
Recalling his meeting with Lillian, Cremer said, “I brought boxes of Kleenex to Lillian’s place when we talked about [the divorce]. The tears flowed endlessly. She really loved him, but Bela could not conquer his jealousy. And because there was a 30-year difference in age, he always felt that he was inadequate as a husband and was very jealous. For that reason, he felt Lillian must be looking around for younger men, which was absolutely not the case. Because of the jealousy, Lillian finally felt that she could not expose her son Bela Jr. to the tension, the arguments, his accusations any longer.”
Bela Lugosi as Dracula.
Their only son, Bela Jr, said that his father advised him to stay away from the world of acting. “I actually took my dad’s good advice and stayed away from the camera because he thought actors were too dependent on producers and agents,” he told the Mansfield News Journal in 2019. “He hoped I would follow some other career path, so I went to law school and worked in the area of celebrity rights.” Bela Lugosi’s son reflected on his father’s career, and said that he was never able to escape from under the shadow of Dracula. “He was such a versatile actor before that movie and it typecast him, but he was proud to have made the character his own,” he said. “I’m sure he’d be totally amazed to know his popularity today and how fondly he’s still remembered.”
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His granddaughter spoke about his relationship with Dracula as well, and said that it might not have been as heavy a burden as it had been made out to be. “Though there has been discussion of his being typecast and how it affected his career, it obviously was a special piece for him. He had a trunk that he carried it in, and my grandmother cared for it to make sure it was always in top condition,” she told the Hollywood Reporter.
Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack at the age of 73, leaving behind just $1,000, which was shared between his fifth wife and Bela Jr. His wife believed that Lugosi had kept $3,000 hidden away in their home, but was never able to find it. One of his friends remarked, “Lugosi had probably spent it all on alcohol.”
