Product Description
This item is a 9" X 12", black and white photo of actor Bela Lugosi in a scene from the 1931 Horror Classic-"Dracula".
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (October 20, 1882 – August 16, 1956), known professionally as Bela Lugosi (was a Hungarian-American actor best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 film, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956. After playing small parts on the stage in his native Hungary, Lugosi gained his first role in a film in 1917. He had to leave the country after the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919 because of his socialist activism. He acted in several films in Weimar Germany, before arriving in New Orleans as a seaman on a merchant ship, then making his way north to New York City. 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, settling down in Hollywood. He later starred in the 1931 film Dracula directed by Tod Browning and produced by Universal Pictures. Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in horror films, but his Hungarian accent and notoriety as "Dracula" limited his potential casting, and he unsuccessfully tried for years to avoid the typecasting.Meanwhile, he was often paired with Boris Karloff, who was able to demand top billing. To his frustration, Lugosi, a charter member of the American Screen Actors Guild, was increasingly restricted to minor parts because of his inability to speak the English language more clearly. He was kept employed by the studio principally so that they could put his name on the posters. Among his pairings with Karloff, he performed major roles only in The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939); even in The Raven, Karloff received top billing despite Lugosi performing the lead role. By this time, Lugosi had been receiving regular medication for sciatic neuritis, and he became addicted to doctor-prescribed morphine and methadone. This drug dependence (and his gradually worsening alcoholism) was becoming apparent to producers, and after 1948, the offers eventually dwindled to a few parts in low-budget films directed by Ed Wood, including a brief (posthumous) appearance in Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). The photo has been autographed on the front by Bela Lugosi with a fountain pen in black............................BOTH PHOTO AND AUTOGRAPH ARE IN EXCELLENT CONDITION.
