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Quick Facts
- NAME: Bela Lugosi
- OCCUPATION: Actor
- BIRTH DATE: October 20, 1882
- DEATH DATE: August 16, 1956
- EDUCATION: Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Lugos, Hungary
- PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California
Best Known For
Count Dracula was Actor Bela Lugosi's most famous role. Lugosi played him in stage productions and in the 1931 Universal Pictures film Dracula.
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Bela Lugosi - Horror Movie Legend
Bela Lugosi ran away from home and landed his first acting gig at the age of 12. After fighting in the first World War, he emigrated to New York and landed the leading role in the Broadway production of "Dracula."
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Play NowBela Lugosi. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 08:39, May 21, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/bela-lugosi-9388748.
Bela Lugosi. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/bela-lugosi-9388748 [Accessed 21 May 2013].
"Bela Lugosi." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 21 2013, 08:39 http://www.biography.com/people/bela-lugosi-9388748.
"Bela Lugosi," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/bela-lugosi-9388748 [accessed May 21, 2013].
"Bela Lugosi," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/bela-lugosi-9388748 (accessed May 21, 2013).
Bela Lugosi [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 21] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/bela-lugosi-9388748.
Bela Lugosi, http://www.biography.com/people/bela-lugosi-9388748 (last visited May 21, 2013).
Bela Lugosi. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/bela-lugosi-9388748. Accessed May 21, 2013.
Synopsis
Bela Lugosi was born in Lugos, Hungary on October 20, 1882. He ran away at age 11 and worked odd jobs including stage acting. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1921 and was cast as the lead in a Broadway production of Dracula. He became nationally known when a film version of the play was released in 1931.
Contents
Quotes
"I have never met a vampire personally, but I don't know what might happen tomorrow."
Early Life
Actor. Bela Lugosi was born as Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko on October 20, 1882 in Lugos, Hungary, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His birthplace was only some fifty miles away from the western border of Transylvania and the Poenari Castle, the legendary home of Vlad the Impaler, the historical Dracula, whom Lugosi would portray to great acclaim on both stage and screen. Although descended from a long line of Hungarian farmers, Lugosi's father, Istvan Blasko, broke with family tradition to become a baker and banker. Bela Lugosi was a temperamental and rebellious child. "I was very unruly as a boy, very out of control," he later admitted. "Like Jekyll and Hyde, except that I changed according to sex. I mean, with boys I was tough and brutal. But the minute I came into company with girls and women, I kissed their hands… With boys, I say, I was a brute. With girls, I was a lamb."
Lugosi attended the local grammar school in Lugos and then continued on to the Hungarian State Gymnasium at the age of 11, in 1893. However, Lugosi hated the strict discipline and formality of the State Gymnnasium, and one year later, he dropped out of school and ran away from home. Traveling on foot and relying on the occasional odd job and the charity of strangers for food and lodging, Lugosi finally settled in a small mining town named Resita, approximately 300 miles south of Lugos. He worked in the mines and also as a machinist's assistant. However, Lugosi was captivated by the touring theatrical troupes that came through Resita and set his heart on becoming an actor. "They tried to give me little parts in their plays, but I was so uneducated, so stupid, people just laughed at me," he recalled. "But I got the taste of the stage. I got, also, the rancid taste of humiliation."
In 1897, Lugosi left Resita to join his mother and his sister Vilma in Szabadka. In 1898, he returned to school but dropped out after only four months and took a job as a railroad laborer. Soon after, Vilma's husband managed to land Lugosi a place in the chorus of a traveling theater company. Displaying remarkable raw talent despite his lack of education or training, Lugosi quickly ascended from the back of the chorus into leading roles as he traveled across Hungary performing with the troupe. By the early 1900s, he had been accepted into Hungary's Academy of Performing Arts with a specialty in Shakespearean acting. Adopting the name "Lugosi" as a reference to his birthplace of Lugos, throughout the first decade of the 20th century he toured the Austro-Hungarian Empire performing male lead roles in such Shakespearean classics as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Richard III and The Taming of the Shrew.
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