Trivia of Bela Lugosi

 Trivia of Bela Lugosi (20 October 1882 - 16 August 1956)

*Lugosi began acting on the Hungarian stage in 1902. After playing in 172 productions in his native Hungary, Lugosi moved on to appear in Hungarian silent films in 1917.His first stage role in the US was "The Red Poppy". Unable to speak English, he was forced to learn the role by rote. He was rewarded with excellent reviews and earned his first American film role, a villainous part in The Silent Command (1923).

*In 1927, he starred as Count Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. He later starred in the 1931 film version of Dracula directed by Tod Browning and produced by Universal Pictures. Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in horror films, but his notoriety as "Dracula" and ominous thick Hungarian accent greatly limited the roles offered to him.Lugosi claimed he performed the Dracula play around 1,000 times during his lifetime.

*White Zombie (1932) was a personal favorite of his films, for which he stepped in and did some of the directing, according to his son, Bela Lugosi Jr.

*Lugosi making a rare appearance in an A-list motion picture: he was a stern Soviet commissar in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer romantic comedy Ninotchka (1939) starring Greta Garbo and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Lugosi was quite effective in this small but prestigious character part and he even received top billing among the film's supporting cast, all of whom had significantly larger roles.

*Appeared with Lon Chaney Jr. in five films: The Wolf Man (1941), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) and The Black Sleep (1956).

*At the time of his death, Lugosi was in such poor financial straits that Frank Sinatra was rumored to have paid for his funeral. Actually, his widow Hope and ex-wife Lillian paid it; Sinatra's only connection to the aging actor was sending him a $1000 check during his drug rehabilitation. The rumor that Boris Karloff attended the funeral was also an urban myth, as he wasn't in California at the time.

*His Los Angeles home was purchased by Johnny Depp, who potrayed his friend Edward D. Wood Jr. in biopic movie Ed Wood (1994).