[Anti-fascists, leftists, socialists, radicals, and
revolutionaries looking for a horror film to watch this October should
seek out one of Bela Lugosi’s classics. But please broaden your
horizons beyond Dracula. You won’t regret it.]
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BELA LUGOSI: THE PEOPLE’S HORROR STAR  
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Hank Kennedy
October 27, 2023
Cosmonaut Magazine
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_ Anti-fascists, leftists, socialists, radicals, and revolutionaries
looking for a horror film to watch this October should seek out one of
Bela Lugosi’s classics. But please broaden your horizons
beyond Dracula. You won’t regret it. _

Headshot of Lugosi c. 1912,

 

There are two popular images of Bela Lugosi. Of the two, to put it
bluntly, one is incomplete. The other is flat out wrong. The first is
to picture him as synonymous with Dracula. While Lugosi did portray
the Count in the first sound film adaptation of the story (Max
Schreck’s Orlock from _Nosferatu_ is the first silent version,
although it was not acknowledged as an adaptation at the time due
to _Dracula_ author Bram Stoker’s litigious widow), he only
reprised the role once more on film, in _Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein_. This image may have been reinforced, however, by his
appearances in the non-_Dracula_ vampire films _Mark of the
Vampire_ and _Return of the Vampire_. 

The other image comes from Tim Burton’s heavily fictionalized
biopic _Ed Wood_, where Lugosi is played by Martin Landau. While
Lugosi’s final work _was_ in Wood’s notorious schlock films,
that fact is one of the few things the film gets correct. Landau’s
Lugosi is profane, sleeps in a coffin, and hates fellow actor Boris
Karloff. None of this is true. Lugosi never swore, slept in a bed, and
while he resented Karloff’s success (which he viewed as having been
at his own expense) he didn’t hate the man. Even the dogs in the
film are inaccurate. Lugosi owned wolfhounds, not the small dogs
depicted on screen.

The real Bela Lugosi was born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in the
Kingdom of Hungary on October 20, 1882. He would take the stage name
“Lugosi” in honor of his birthplace, Lugos, which is now known as
Lugoj. He had already been a stage actor when he volunteered in the
Hungarian army during World War I. Lugosi experienced
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horror of being buried alive under his comrade’s corpses during one
battle. He also served as a military executioner, describing his
experience as a hangman as leaving him “thrilled” but
“guilty.” Lugosi was discharged from the Hungarian Army in 1916
due to “mental collapse,” unsurprising when we consider the
brutality of the war and his experiences.

After the war, Lugosi became an activist in the Hungarian actor’s
union. He was [[link removed]] a staunch
supporter of the 1919 Hungarian Revolution and the short lived
Hungarian Soviet Republic. When Miklós Horthy, a future ally of Nazi
Germany, assumed power, Lugosi had to flee for his life. He ended up
in New York where he acted in Hungarian plays before being cast in the
English language play _the Red Poppy_. In 1927, he was cast in the
role that made him famous: Count Dracula.

One of Lugosi’s earliest supporters was the Communist press.
The _Daily Worker_
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the play _Dracula_ in its October 1, 1927 issue. The February 2,
1928 _Daily Worker_
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his “impressive performance” as Count Dracula. The New York
edition of the paper advertised the play regularly in its Amusements
section, hailing it as “Better than _the Bat_ [a mystery play
later adapted for film].” The bourgeois papers could be much less
supportive. From the _New York Post_: “Mr. Lugosi performs Dracula
with funereal decorations suggesting … an operatically inclined but
cheerless mortician.” The _New York Herald-Tribune_ was of a
similar bent reporting that “the torments of the first American
performance might have been more alarming had the demon been
illustrated less stiffly. … It was a rigid hobgoblin presented by
Mr. Lugosi, resembling a wax man in a shop window more than a suave
ogre bent on nocturnal mischief-making.”1
[[link removed]] It
makes one wonder if the Communist Party press ran favorable notices
for the star as a way to support him due to him being a socialist
political refugee. Lugosi’s charismatic stage performance and his
persistent lobbying of Universal Studios, got him the role in the film
version.

After his star-making film role in _Dracula_, Lugosi became
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founding member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), who are on strike as
of this writing. Another founding member was _Frankenstein_ star,
and frequent Lugosi costar, Boris Karloff. Lugosi additionally served
on the advisory board of SAG from 1934-1936. The two actors worked to
sign up the casts of their films, such as _the Bride of
Frankenstein_, _the Raven_, and _the Invisible Ray_. Their efforts
paid off when SAG signed its first contract with the Hollywood studios
in 1937. Lugosi’s solidarity extended beyond his fellow actors. In
1945 he signed a petition protesting the deportation proceedings
against longshore union leader Harry Bridges.2
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this time, Lugosi expressed a more moderate politics from his previous
revolutionary socialism. He said he was an “extremely liberal
Democrat” and “an avowed Roosevelt disciple.”3
[[link removed]] During
World War II, Bela Lugosi headed the Hungarian American Council for
Democracy. On August 28, 1944 he gave
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keynote speech at a 2,000 strong rally in Los Angeles calling on
President Roosevelt to loosen immigration restrictions and allow in
2,000 Hungarian refugees. Unfortunately, Roosevelt showed his usual
timidity on refugee matters and only allowed in 1,000. To further aid
the war effort, Lugosi (ironically given his roles as blood
suckers), donated
[[link removed]] blood to the Red
Cross to publicize blood donations. 

Lugosi’s political activities caught
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Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI and the
Central Intelligence Agency both opened files on the actor. The House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) appointed a “Dracula
council” to keep tabs on the star. INS even looked into deporting
him, despite the fact that he had held American citizenship since
1931. Lugosi probably did himself no favors in the eyes of Red hunters
when he contributed a favorable piece to the
Communist-affiliated _New Masses_
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the Soviet Union. His work on the Hungarian American Council for
Democracy was cited positively in a 1944 issue
[[link removed]-[not-n04]-may-02-1944-NM.pdf] of
that same publication. The Council was later listed
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a “subversive” group by the United States Attorney General, along
with the Communist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the
Socialist Workers Party.

Lugosi was not the only horror star to be targeted by the red-hunters
for political activism. Peter Lorre, star of _M_, and Vincent Price,
who had appeared in _the Invisible Man Returns_, received scrutiny
for participating in the anti-HUAC radio broadcast “Hollywood
Strikes Back.”4
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two spoke out alongside Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland,
Frank Sinatra, and other stars. Lorre was also investigated due to his
continuing friendship with Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht. Price
was unable to find work for a year due to his outspokenness and under
pressure from the FBI, had to sign
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secret oath that he was not a communist. 

One wonders if Lugosi’s late era career woes could be explained by
the Red Scare and the Hollywood Blacklist. While his name never
appeared on any “official” Blacklist, it’s entirely possible
that his career suffered all the same. It’s also possible that
Lugosi’s career difficulties were unrelated to the Blacklist, but
more due to his age and problems with drugs and alcohol as well as
moviegoers changing taste. We’ll probably never know for certain.
Lugosi did worry about HUAC’s effect on his reputation. In 1951 he
wrote a letter to HUAC’s chair Congressman    

John S. Wood. That Wood, an ex-Klansman who allegedly participated in
the lynching of Leo Frank became the arbiter of “Un-American
Activities,” is surely a testament to capitalist democracy. The
actor proclaimed “Communist totalitarianism has always been
abhorrent to me. I have never knowingly or willfully given it aid or
comfort in any way.” He further declaimed against his involvement in
the Hungarian American Council for Democracy, claiming that he was
unaware that it was a “Communist front.”5
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denials, whether genuine or not, did not revitalize his career and the
actor spent the rest of the 50s in Mystery Science Theater quality
productions like _Bride of the Monster_ and _Glen or Glenda_. 

Some of Lugosi’s films contain political and social themes of
interest to those who consider themselves on the Left.
1932’s _White Zombie_ [[link removed]],
in which he played voodoo master Murder Legendre dramatizes the
exploitation of Black Hatians. Legendre uses his zombie slaves to work
his sugar mill and increase his wealth. He offers zombie laborers to a
plantation owner saying “They are not worried about long hours.”
When one of the zombies falls into the mill and is crushed, work
continues as normal. Nothing must stop the quest for profits. This is
all the more outstanding given that forced labor had been reintroduced
to Haiti during the then-ongoing U.S. military occupation. One
critic said
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the film “provides an important example of the disguised and
suppressed radical critique the horror genre can often manifest.”

Another 1932 horror film, _Island of the Lost Souls _(an adaptation
of _the Island of Doctor Moreau_), contains similar anti-colonial
themes. Lugosi has the small, but memorable role of the Sayer of the
Law, the mouthpiece of Dr. Moreau’s laws for the Beast Men. At the
climax of the film, the Beast Men attack Moreau, after the Doctor has
ordered one of them to commit murder. The purpose of the oppressor’s
laws are not, in this case, to create a just society, but to ensure
control over the masses and he is free to break them when convenient.
Moreau defends himself with a whip, the tool of the slaver. This
climax was so shocking that the film was banned in many countries.
Tellingly, in Australia it was prevented
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being shown to Aboriginal audiences, lest they get any ideas of how to
deal with their colonial overlords.

1934’s _the Black Cat_ was a highpoint in Lugosi’s filmography.
The film was the first to team him with Boris Karloff and both actors
give their all. The plot follows Werdegast (Lugosi) and Poelzig
(Karloff), both of whom fought on the Russian front during World War
I. However, Poelzig betrayed Werdegast and the other soldiers to the
enemy and left them for dead. Werdegast gives a powerful monologue
saying “Did we not both die here in Marmorus fifteen years ago? Are
we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn
asunder? Are we not both the living dead?” According to Paul Buhle,
“[Director Edgar G.] Ulmer himself described the film as allegory.
He had seen the face of the war’s horror and rendered it in
narrative, symbolic form around the twin commanders driven to lunacy
by the consequences of their own deeds.”6
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Even poverty row Lugosi vehicles are of some interest. His Dr.
Carruthers, in the cheaply made _the Devil Bat_
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the businessmen who he feels have exploited him to enrich themselves.
Lugosi certainly drew on his experiences of having been exploited by
Hollywood studios in the role. For Dracula he was paid only $3,500.
For White Zombie the pitiable $800. For Son of Frankenstein, arguably
his best role, $4,000.7
[[link removed]] While
Lugosi was not the driving force behind any of his films, it’d be
interesting to know what he thought of the ideology of the films he
made, particularly _Ninotchka_, a satire of the USSR in which he
played an antagonistic commissar. The _New Masses_
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grouped the film with _Comrade X_ and _Chetniks_ as “putrefying
red herrings.” 

Anti-fascists, leftists, socialists, radicals, and revolutionaries
looking for a horror film to watch this October ought to seek out one
of Bela Lugosi’s classics. Please though, try to broaden your
horizons beyond _Dracula_. If you do, you won’t regret it.

_More articles by Hank Kennedy.
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_Cosmonaut is a Marxist magazine for revolutionary strategy,
historical analyses and modern critiques. We aim to be a platform of
debate and polemic in order to contribute to the formulation of a
Marxism for the 21st century. Make socialism scientific again!_

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* David J. Skal _The Monster Show: A Cultural History of
Horror _(New York: Faber and Faber, 1993) 91.
* Gary Don Rhodes _Lugosi: HIs Life in Films, on Stage, and in the
Hearts of Horror Lovers _(Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 2006) 63.
* Arthur Lenning _The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela
Lugosi _(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003) 337.
* Paul Buhle & David Wagner _Radical America: The Untold Story
Behind America’s Favorite Movies _(New York: New Press, 2002) 437.
* Rhodes 298.
* Buhle & Wagner 120.
* Lenning 492.

* bela lugosi
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* movies
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* Horror genre
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* boris karloff
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