vampire
In early 1927 an American theater promotor named Horace Liveright traveled to London to see Dracula. He enjoyed it so much that he saw it again three more times. "Although it was badly produced," he recalled later, "I got a kick out of it each time."
Liveright wanted to bring Dracula to Broadway....But he didn't think Hamilton Deane's adaptation was writen well enough for New York audiences. So he got permission from Mrs. Stoker to write another adaptation, one that retained Deane's theatricality but improved his amateurish dialogue.
Liveright offered to take Raymond Huntley to the U.S., too, and Huntley agreed to go...providing Liveright agreed to raise his pay to $125 a week. No deal-Huntley stayed in London. The part of Dracula went to a Hungarian expatriate actor named Bela Lugosi.
Lugosi, 46, had established himself in Hungary and Germany by playing romantic parts and an occasional villain. But his American career was burdened by the fact that he could speak barely a word of English, and rather than work on his English, he preferred to memorize his lines phonetically.
The reslut of Lugosi's inability to speak English, Skal writes, "was the oddly inflected and deliberate style of speech now forever associated with the role of Dracula-and a professional albatross that would forever limit the roles offered to him."
it's better off this way...
Liveright wanted to bring Dracula to Broadway....But he didn't think Hamilton Deane's adaptation was writen well enough for New York audiences. So he got permission from Mrs. Stoker to write another adaptation, one that retained Deane's theatricality but improved his amateurish dialogue.
Liveright offered to take Raymond Huntley to the U.S., too, and Huntley agreed to go...providing Liveright agreed to raise his pay to $125 a week. No deal-Huntley stayed in London. The part of Dracula went to a Hungarian expatriate actor named Bela Lugosi.
Lugosi, 46, had established himself in Hungary and Germany by playing romantic parts and an occasional villain. But his American career was burdened by the fact that he could speak barely a word of English, and rather than work on his English, he preferred to memorize his lines phonetically.
The reslut of Lugosi's inability to speak English, Skal writes, "was the oddly inflected and deliberate style of speech now forever associated with the role of Dracula-and a professional albatross that would forever limit the roles offered to him."
it's better off this way...