), On June 26, 1931, Lugosi became a naturalized United States citizen. In 1986, the court's decision was, in effect, overturned with the ruling in the California Celebrity Rights Act stipulating that children and spouses of celebrities have jurisdiction over the use of their loved one's likeness up to 70 years after the celebrity's death. In 1933, he married 22-year-old Lillian Arch (1911-1981), the daughter of Hungarian immigrants. When appearing in Hungarian silent films, he used the stage name Arisztid Olt. When is Bela Lugosi Bela Lugosi Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth, Family In September 1949, Milton Berle invited Lugosi to appear in a sketch on Texaco Star Theatre. Bela G. Lugosi - Wikipedia 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. "I was dead, and he brought me back to life." The fact that he was born just 50 miles from where the novel is set made him a natural choice for the part. Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack August 16, 1956. He was tortured by the idea that, after his star-turn in the Dracula movie in 1931, no one saw would see him as a complicated human being or a talented, sensitive artist. [4], Lugosi eventually travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana in December, 1920 working as a crewman aboard a merchant ship, then made his way north to New York City, where he again took up acting in (and sometimes directing) stage plays in 19211922, then worked in the New York silent film industry from 1923 to 1926. The rivalry all started, according to this piece on Bloody Disgusting, when Lugosi turned down the chance to play Frankenstein's monster in the 1931 film version of Mary Shelley's groundbreaking novel. The same can be said for Plan 9 FromOuter Space, whichSmithsonian Magazine describes as Wood's "magnum opus of sci-fi schlock." Whether or not the two men actually disliked each other is a matter of lively debate. By this time, Lugosi had been receiving regular medication for sciatic neuritis, and he became addicted to doctor-prescribed morphine and methadone. )[55], Lugosi married Hope Lininger, his fifth wife, in 1955; she was 37 years his junior. Famous for his thick Hungarian accent, he dominated the screen for two decades until his death. 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! But at the last minute, Lugosi's heavily-accented dialogue was edited out after the film was completed, along with the idea of the Monster being blind, leaving his performance featuring groping, outstretched arms and moving lips seeming enigmatic (and funny) to audiences. Bela Lugosis source of wealth comes from being a movie actor. Below we countdown to Bela Lugosi upcoming birthday. [2] He was 73 and weighed 140 pounds. 58. Itsvan died when Bela was just 12-years-old, throwing the family fortunes into turmoil. According to TheVintage News, 100,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers perished in the battle, and Lugosi was promoted to ski patrol. The film would be Bela Lugosi's last "A" movie. Lugosi eventually grew very bitter over the fact that the general public took him for Dracula. His first marriage, to Ilona Smzik, ended in divorce in 1920, reportedly because his lefty politics upset his Smzik's parents. Bela Lugosi, original name Blasko Bla Ferenc Dezs, (born October 20, 1882, Lugos, Hungary [now Lugoj, Romania]died August 16, 1956, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), Hungarian-born motion-picture actor who was most famous for his sinister portrayal of the elegantly mannered vampire Count Dracula. It was, perhaps, simply the result of admiration and compassion. He was the youngest of four children. 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. In 1921, he met and married his second wife, Ilona von Montagh, a young Hungarian emigree and stage actress whom he had worked with years before in Europe. Lugosi married Hope Lininger, his fifth wife, in 1955; they remained married until his death. His next bride, Ilona von Montagh, divorced him after three years. Gone were Lugosi's middle class parents, his teenage struggles to make ends meet in the mines and rail yards of turn-of-the-century Hungary. Universal took notice of the tremendous business and launched its own national re-release of the same two horror favorites. [8] His earliest known performances are from provincial theatres in the 190304 season, playing small roles in several plays and operettas. Landau won an Oscar for his turn as the Hungarian heartthrob who'd fallen on hard times. . Or Heath Ledger as the Joker. 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. It's enough to make one turn over in one's grave. In 1998, he played Mike McDermott in John Dahl's Rounders. 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. It didn't help matters that money was often tight. He was, to moviegoers and followers of 1930s Hollywood, Dracula. Focusing on Lugosi and his well-documented struggle to escape from the role that had typecast him, the play went on to receive the Hamilton Deane Award for best dramatic presentation from the Dracula Society in 2002. Find out Bela Lugosinet worth 2020, salary 2020 detail bellow. Lugosi's will left several inexpensive pieces of real estate in Elsinore and only $1,000 cash to his son, but since the will had been written on Jan. 12, 1954 (before Lugosi's fifth marriage), Bela Jr. had to share the thousand dollars evenly with Hope Lugosi. Lugosi's life as an actor had begun. He was buried in a Dracula costume, including a cape, but not the ones used in the 1931 film . After moving to Budapest in 1911, he played dozens of roles with the National Theatre of Hungary between 1913 and 1919. It was around this time, on January 31, 1933, that Lugosi married 21 year old Lillian Arch, and despite the almost 30 year age gap and Lugosi's previous marriage record, the pair would remain . Several more silent roles followed, villains and continental types, all in productions made in the New York area. In September 1921, he married Hungarian actress Ilona von Montagh in New York City, and she filed for divorce on November 11, 1924, charging him with adultery and complaining that he wanted her to abandon her acting career to keep house for him. Bela Lugosi Jr. attended the Elsinore Naval & Military School in Lake Elsinore. If Lugosi hoped that the success of Dracula would allow him to emerge from the gentleman vampire's ahem shadow, he was sorely mistaken. He also continued to lobby for his prized role in the film version of Dracula. That honor went to Lon Cheney. Karloff's monster was weak by comparison."[32]. As this piece in American Ghost Stories, points out, Lugosi wasn't always truthful about his past he was prone to exaggeration, claiming in one 1941 interview to have stolen 700 hats as a young boy but his childhood was undeniably cut short by his father's death, propelling him into menial labor jobs that tested his mettle. [80], In 2020, Legendary Comics published an adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula novel, which used the likeness of Lugosi. 2020. Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack August 16, 1956. According to this look at Lugosi's itinerant LA lifestyle, he had to borrow money from the Motion Picture Relief Fund to cover the medical costs. He made his way to New York and was inspected by immigration officers at Ellis Island in March 1921. [43], In 1959, a British film called Lock Up Your Daughters was theatrically released (in the U.K.), composed of clips from Bela Lugosi's Monogram pictures from the 1940s. Attendees included Forrest J. Ackerman, Ed Wood (who was a pall bearer), Tor Johnson, Conrad Brooks, Richard Sheffield, both of the widows (Hope and Lillian), Bela Lugosi Jr., Norma McCarty, Loretta King, Paul Marco and actor George Becwar. 's birthday? It was expected to sell for up to $2 million, but has since been listed again by Bonhams in 2018. [3], Lugosi married five times and had one son, Bela G. Lugosi (with his fourth wife, Lillian). [33] He was finally cast in the role of Frankenstein's monster for Universal's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). Lugosi claimed he performed the Dracula play around 1,000 times during his lifetime. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2022-2023. The film played at midnight with a number of celebrities in the audience that night (Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Rock Hudson, Broderick Crawford, Gracie Allen, Eddie Cantor, Shelley Winters and others). The judge sent Lugosi to a nearby hospital, where he plotted a comeback that would never materialize. Lugosi acted in several Hungarian plays before breaking out into his first English Broadway play, The Red Poppy, in 1922. The Hungarian actor Bla Ferenc Dezs Blask, better known as Bela Lugosi, became known to many as the face of Dracula after his iconic appearance as the famous vampire in the 1931 film adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel. [79], According to Paru Itagaki, the creator of the Japanese manga/anime Beastars, the main character Legoshi was inspired by Bela Lugosi (regarding the similar-sounding names). Hope later gave most of Lugosi's personal belongings and memorabilia to Bela's young neighborhood friend Richard Sheffield, who gave Lugosi's duplicate Dracula cape to Bela Jr. and sold some of the other items to Forrest J. Ackerman. He was buried in a Dracula costume, including a cape, but not the ones used in the 1931 film, contrary to popular--but unfounded--rumors. Bela Lugosi (Actor) - Overview, Biography - Celeb Networth Post Rudolph Grey, Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992). 59. Lugosi died of a heart attack prior to filming. A Trip Down Memory Lane: the Death of Bela Lugosi He died a year into their marriage of a heart attack. Occupation: Actor. trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":" Bela Lugosi ","geo":"","time":"today 12-m"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"q=bela%20lugosi&date=today 12-m","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"}); He performed in many of William Shakespeare s plays when he was younger. Biography. She had been a fan, writing letters to him when he was in the hospital, recovering from addiction to Demerol. Year. . $4 Million. In the same interview he expressed a desire to play more comedy, as he had in the Mother Riley farce. Bela Lugosi is American by birth. (Weeks died 17 months later (at age 34) from alcoholism in Panama, Lugosi never receiving a penny from her fortune. [36] He also appeared on the anthology series Suspense on October 11, 1949, in a live adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado".[37]. Mason was noticeably taller and thinner than Lugosi, and had the lower half of his face covered with his cape in every shot, as Lugosi sometimes did in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. With Lugosi in his Dracula cape, Wood shot impromptu test footage, with no storyline in mind, in front of Tor Johnson's home, a suburban graveyard, and in front of Lugosi's apartment building on Carlton Way. In June 1917, Lugosi married 19-year-old Ilona Szmik (18981991) in Hungary. . The case took 11 years to litigate and went all the way to the California Supreme Court, where, according to FindLaw, the justices ruled that dead people do not have any right to their own likeness and that their heirs are likewise without recourse. The picture was filmed in Cinecolor.The film is historically important as the only color film in which Bela Lugosi has a starring role. He was born in Lugos on 1882-10-20. After Dracula, the bulk of Lugosi's roles were in monster movies of varying degrees of ridiculousness. Interestingly enough, Vlad the Impaler, Broker's inspiration for the count, was likewise a misunderstood man. Bela Lugosi: Dreams and Nightmares by Gary D. Rhodes, with Richard Sheffield, (2007) Collectables/Alpha Video Publishers. Also in 1931, he became a U.S. citizen. 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. Online estimates of Bela Lugosis net worth vary. [20], His first American film role was in the silent melodrama The Silent Command (1923) which was filmed in New York. In some ways, this visit would echo the year his son, Bela Lugosi Jr., was born. The couple divorced in 1920, reputedly over political differences with her parents. Bela Lugosi was born on October 20, 1882 in Lugoj, Romania. During an impromptu interview upon his exit from the treatment center in 1955, Lugosi stated that he was about to go to work on a new Ed Wood film, The Ghoul Goes West. [25], Despite his critically acclaimed performance on stage, Lugosi was not Universal Pictures' first choice for the role of Dracula when the company optioned the rights to the Deane play and began production in 1930. [50] They remained married for 20 years and they had a child, Bela G. Lugosi, in 1938. Karloff himself in interviews suggested that Lugosi was initially mistrustful of him when they acted together, believing that the Englishman would attempt to upstage him. 103. He was 48-years-old when he got the part in the iconic film, and he was already many years into his acting career. The feature is noteworthy as being Bela Lugosi's only color film. Lugosi tried to keep busy with stage work, but had to borrow money from the Actors Fund of America to pay hospital bills when his only child, Bela George Lugosi, was born in 1938. In 1921, he married Ilona von Montagh, and divorced in 1924. He also continued to lobby for his prized role in the film version of Dracula. What's clear, though, is that Lugosi was often on the losing end of Tinsel Town's notoriously flaky attention span. Lionel Atwill was originally slated to appear in the film, but he was too ill to work, so George Zucco replaced him in the cast. There are contradictory reports of Lugosi's attitude toward Karloff, some claiming that he was openly resentful of Karloff's long-term success and ability to gain good roles beyond the horror arena, while others suggested the two actors were for a time, at least amicable. Regardless, it seems safe to say that, when it came to philanthropy, Sinatra did it his way. Bela Lugosi Net Worth. Bela Lugosi Net Worth 2023 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. The studio then rehired Lugosi to star in new films. Lugosi began acting on the Hungarian stage in 1902.