Béla Lugosi, Jr. has been among those who felt notorious filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. exploited his father's stardom, taking advantage of the fading actor when he could not refuse any work.
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (20 October 1882 – 16 August 1956) commonly known as Béla Lugosi, was an actor of stage and screen. He was best known for playing Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version. In the last years of his career he was featured in several of Ed Wood's low budget films.
Through his association with Dracula (in which he appeared with minimal makeup, using his natural, heavily accented voice), Lugosi found himself typecast as a horror villain in such movies as Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Raven, and Son of Frankenstein for Universal, and the independent White Zombie. His accent, while a part of his image, limited the roles he could play.
Lugosi did attempt to break type by auditioning for other roles. He lost out to Lionel Barrymore for the role of Rasputin in Rasputin and the Empress; C. Henry Gordon for the role of Surat Khan in Charge of the Light Brigade; Basil Rathbone for the role of Commissar Dimitri Gorotchenko in Tovarich (a role Lugosi had played on stage). He did play the elegant, somewhat hot-tempered Gen. Nicholas Strenovsky-Petronovich in International House.
It is an erroneous popular belief that Lugosi declined the offer to appear in Frankenstein due to make-up (other roles he desired which also required make-up were Cyrano de Bergerac and Quasimodo the bell ringing hunchback). Lugosi may not have been happy with the onerous makeup job and lack of dialogue.
Regardless of controversy, five films at Universal — The Black Cat, The Raven, The Invisible Ray, Son of Frankenstein, Black Friday (plus minor cameo performances in 1934's Gift of Gab) and one at RKO Pictures, The Body Snatcher — paired Lugosi with Boris Karloff. Despite the relative size of their roles, Lugosi inevitably got second billing, below Karloff. Lugosi's attitude toward Karloff is the subject of contradictory reports, some claiming that he was openly resentful of Karloff's long-term success and ability to get good roles beyond the horror arena, while others suggested the two actors were — for a time, at least — good friends. Karloff himself in interviews suggested that Lugosi was initially mistrustful of him when they acted together, believing that the Englishman would attempt to upstage him. When this proved not to be the case, according to Karloff, Lugosi settled down and they worked together amicably (though some have further commented that Karloff's on-set demand to break from filming for mid-afternoon tea annoyed Lugosi).
Universal tried to give Lugosi more heroic roles, as in The Black Cat, The Invisible Ray, and a romantic role in the adventure serial The Return of Chandu, but his typecasting problem was too entrenched for those roles to help.
Lugosi addressed his plea to be cast in non-horror roles directly to casting directors through his listing in the 1937 Players Directory, published by the Motion Picture Academy, in which he (or his agent) calls the idea that he is only fit for horror films "an error."
Mr Bela Lugosi, Jr was kind enough to send me a photo of his father in the role of Dracula, signed by him.
