HUNGARIAN STUDIES 11. No. 1. Nemzetközi Magyar ... - EPA

116 KEVIN E. KELLYfilms Lugosi made in the 1930s via television distribution vaulted him back intoviewer appreciation, sometimes for the "camp" value of his passionate actingstyle, but more often for his unique personality and presence, "the indéniableforce of his simple presence on screen, which, supported by studio publicity,made him into perhaps the only great movie villain whose existence as a villainseemed so tangible and consistent," film historian Gary Collins noted. 2The man Lugosi always considered his rival in the horror film arena, theBritish-born, unassuming and understated Boris Karloff, would enjoy newpopularity for more than a decade after young people were exposed to his andLugosi's films on TV in the late 1950s. Lugosi died before the revival occurred,robbed of the professional vindication he desperately sought in his later years,the final outrage in a career that became another casualty of the Hollywood mill."Always it is the same," Lugosi resignedly told a British interviewer in 1951while staging a London revival of Dracula. "When a film company is in thered they come to me and say, 'Okay, so we make a horror film.* And so thatis what we do. It is what I will always do." 3Lugosi's treatment by film and stage producers later in his life was evenmore demoralizing given his status in the Hungarian theatrical community inthe first two decades of the 20th century. While biographer Arthur Lennigargues that Lugosi was not considered a "great" actor at this stage of hiscareer, 4 he was a busy and at times popular thespian, essaying everything fromShakespeare to commercial comedy and melodrama.Béla Ferenc Dezső Blasko was born on October 20, 1882 at Lugos, on theTemesvár River, in the Bánát region that was at the time part of Hungary, andlater, Rumania. 5Lugosi adopted the name of his hometown when he decidedto embark on a professional acting career shortly after the turn of the century.The son of a baker who later turned to banking, Lugosi, an average ifindifferent student, at first apprenticed to a locksmith but was drawn to thestage, and joined a theatrical troupe in Lugos in 1901. "In Hungary," hegrandly told an interviewer later in life, "acting is a career for which one fitshimself as earnestly and studiously as one studies for a degree in medicine, lawor philosophy. In Hungary acting is a profession. In America it is a decision." 6Legend - one perpetrated by either the publicity-hungry actor or throughhis willing cooperation with an equally sensation-bent press agent, particularlyfollowing his success in Dracula - has Lugosi making his debut in Lugos as noless than the male lead in Romeo and Juliet, although Lennig's exhaustiveresearch of Hungarian theatrical history while preparing his biography ofLugosi has effectively debunked the claim. The truth is that Lugosi's earlystage career has been lost in the mists of time, and in all likelihood the aspiringthespian essayed small roles in the first few years of his stage period. Lennig's