CHAPTER 6 Dracula Comes to Life

While Mrs. Stoker did not approve of the German film version of her husband’s book, she did let Bram’s novel be turned into a play. That version of Dracula meant fans could get their thrills and chills seeing the count “live” onstage.

Before Bram Stoker died in 1912, he wrote several more books filled with horror and the supernatural.

The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903): This time, the scary creature is a mummy.

The Lady of the Shroud (1909): A young woman named Teuta sleeps in a coffin and pretends to be a vampire. Teuta wants to scare away people who dislike her father.

The Lair of the White Worm (1911): A tall, thin noblewoman is actually the human form of a giant flesh-eating snake.

Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories (1914): In the title story, an unnamed Englishman travels to Transylvania and is caught in a storm. He seeks shelter by a large tomb. After a bolt of lightning destroys the tomb, he learns that the person he had traveled to Transylvania to meet is Count Dracula. This story was a part of the original Dracula book that Stoker did not use.

The play Dracula was first performed in 1924 in London. An actor named Hamilton Deane helped shape the image of Count Dracula that is so well known today. Stoker only once mentions Dracula wearing a cloak, which is like a cape. Onstage, Deane had the count wear a black cape with a high collar. The cape could sweep out on either side, making it look like bat wings. Deane also played Dracula as a gentleman wearing a tuxedo. And this count did not have hairy palms, pointed fingernails, or fangs. Onstage, Count Dracula looked like a true nobleman.

Deane had to trim much of the action from the original book so that the story would work as a play. His version takes place only in London, and the character of Mina Harker is a combination of the book’s Mina and her friend Lucy. But the changes didn’t hurt the play’s success. Audiences across England loved Deane’s version of Dracula. It was so popular, he had three different groups of actors performing it in different theaters at the same time! At some shows, people screamed in horror or fainted as they watched the vampire approach his victims. Hamilton Deane hired a nurse to come to the theater to take care of anyone who got sick.

In 1927, New York theater producer Horace Liveright saw Dracula in London. He decided to bring the play to the United States. To play Count Dracula, Liveright hired an actor named Bela Lugosi. He was not well known then in the United States. And he did not speak English well. But Lugosi was from Hungary, and his accent was perfect for the role. He eagerly agreed to take the part.

Dracula had its first US stage performance on October 5, 1927, in New York City. Liveright also had nurses in the theater to look after anyone who fainted. Some people suspected that not all the fainting was real. They thought that Liveright may have hired people to pretend to be scared—so scared that they fainted.

Many actors have played the role, but to Dracula fans, Bela Lugosi is the one true count. His real name was Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, and he was born in Lugos, Hungary. (The town is now called Lugoj and is part of Romania—and it’s not far from Transylvania!) He became an actor as a young man and changed his last name to Lugosi in honor of his hometown.

Lugosi traveled to New York in 1921 and soon began acting onstage there. He barely knew any English at the time, but he learned his lines by memorizing the sound of the words he spoke onstage. When he played Dracula in the 1931 movie, Lugosi added his own touch to the count’s look. For two scenes, Lugosi wore a star-shaped medallion around his neck. Today, the medallion is still considered an important part of the costume for anyone who wants to dress as Dracula. Lugosi appeared in many movies after he made Dracula, but he is best known for playing the world’s most famous vampire.

The American version of Dracula was a success. It played in New York for more than six months. The show also traveled to theaters across the country. Bela Lugosi sometimes played Dracula onstage, but other actors took on the role as well. Lugosi and some of the other actors also performed part of the play on the radio.

Carl Laemmle Jr., who ran Universal Pictures at the time, saw Dracula while it was still playing in New York. His father had started Universal with other movie producers in 1912, but later the elder Laemmle bought the whole company. Universal had already had two big hits with scary movies: The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. Carl Laemmle Jr. thought Dracula could be another movie success.

In 1930, Universal Pictures bought the legal rights to make a film version of Dracula. Since the filming of the silent movie Nosferatu, studios had started making movies with sound. Dracula would be among the first horror “talking pictures.”