With his aristocratic accent, distinctive profile, slicked dark hair, spidery fingers, mesmerizing eyes, and swirling black cape, Hungarian-born actor Bela Lugosi helped to create cinema's definitive Dracula, the vampire as sexual and charming as he is villainous. Born Béla Ferenc Dezsö Blaskó in Lugos (the town from which he derived his stage name) near Transylvania, Lugosi came to the United States in late 1920 and, over the next few years, appeared in small film and theater parts. His break came with the title role in the play Dracula, which ran for 33 weeks on Broadway in 1927 and successfully toured the West Coast in 1928-29; this led to the 1931 Universal film, whose romantic settings and sexual undercurrents revolutionized the horror film genre and established Lugosi's place in Hollywood history.

Bela Lugosi

Lugosi, however, quickly became the victim of his own success. Despite the stardom that Dracula...