Bela Lugosi

film poster, promoting Bela Lugosi's genre-defining turn as Dracula.]]

Bela Lugosi was the stage name of Blaskó Béla Ferenc Dezső (October 20, 1882–August 16, 1956).

He was born in Lugos, Transylvania, Austria-Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania), the youngest of four children of a banker.

Lugosi started his acting career on the stage in Europe in several Shakespearean plays. He however, became most notably known for his portrayal of Dracula in a stage production of Bram Stoker's classic vampire story.

During World War I he served as an infantry lieutenant for the Central Powers.

He left from his native Hungary for Germany in 1919 after persecution following his complicity in the forming of an actor's union, and emigrated to the United States in 1921.

He was most famous for his title role in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) (building on the stage role). The film was a success, but Lugosi was typecast as a horror heavy with such movies as White Zombie and Scared to Death. Later on, the acting jobs dried up and he became addicted to morphine.

Late in his life, he again got to star in movies, albeit lousy ones. Ed Wood, a long-time fan of Lugosi's, offered him numerous roles in his films, always playing some variant of a mad scientist/vampire type, even in movies in which such a role made no sense — such as Glen or Glenda. The biographical film Ed Wood, by Tim Burton, portrayed Wood's relationship with Lugosi, who was played by Martin Landau.

He died of a heart attack, aged 73, in Los Angeles, California.

One of Lugosi's most infamous roles was in a movie that was released after he was dead. Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space featured footage of Lugosi — who died during filming — interspersed with a double who looked nothing like him, and Lugosi got top billing for the movie.

He was also the subject of a song by gothic rock band Bauhaus entitled Bela Lugosi's Dead.

Truth being stranger than fiction sometimes, Bela Lugosi was buried in his full Dracula costume, as per the request in his will, in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.