American Cinematographer - May 1988 - 37

Bela Lugosi on the
stairway in Carfax
Abbey.

authors of Gothic novels, and the historical accounts of
a Wallachian war lord whose
cruelty had earned him a

reputation of being in league with Satan. From these
sources
emerged a remarkable work in which the
vampire, instead of being a crawling graveyard crea¬
ture, is a Transylvanian voyevoda possessing fantastic
strength and the magical ability to transform himself
into a wolf or bat or wisp of vapor, to command
animals and storms, and to hypnotize humans and
animals at a gesture. He can walk only by night, casts

reflection, and is practically immortal so long as he
regularly on the blood of the living, stays in his
grave during the daylight hours, and doesn't encounter
anyone so unkind as to drive a stake through his heart
no

feasts

during

a nap. He is a withered ancient with white hair
and foetid breath, but after feasting he takes on a

younger, less forbidding appearance. He
Christian Cross and is violently allergic to

fears the
garlic and

wolfbane.
In

Germany in 1921, the brilliant F. W. Mura
highly effective unauthorized version
titled Nosferatu, but released in England as Dracula.
The vampire - Baron Orlok in Germany, Count Drac¬
ula in England - was a rat-like, ghoulish creature.
Stoker sued, but the production company (Prana Film)
had gone broke and the plaintiffs had to be content
with having prints destroyed. Fortunately, the picture
survives as an excellent example of the German Ex¬
pressionist school.
In 1924 an English provincial play producer
nau

directed

and actor, Hamilton Deane, wrote an authorized

production which proved

stage

popular that he soon had
the road. He didn't muster
the courage to present it to a London audience until
1927, when he opened it at the Little Theatre on Febru¬
ary 14 with Raymond Huntley as Dracula and himself
as the
vampire's nemesis, Professor Van Helsing. De¬
spite a drubbing from the critics, the play ran for 391
performances. An American producer, Horace Liveright, saw it in March and purchased rights to pro¬
two

touring companies

duce it in the United States.

John L. Balderston, London

correspondent for the New York World and a noted
playwright, adapted the show for Broadway It opened
at the Fulton Theater on

October 5 to mixed reviews

and enthusiastic audience response.

story contains everything necessary for a weird, un¬
natural, mysterious picture... It will be a difficult task
and

will

up against the censor continually, but
be done. It is daring but if done there can
doubt as to its making money." In October,

one

I think it

run

can

following the opening of the New York play, Universal
reassessed the work. The majority conclusion was that
although it could make "a great picture... from the
angle of the pictorial and the dramatic, it is not picture
material from the standpoint of the box office nor of
ethics of the industry."
In 1929 Universal got a new chief studio
executive: Carl Laemmle Jr., five-foot three, 21-year old
son of the
company's president. Eccentric and hypo¬
chondriacal, Junior Laemmle had some ideas that ran
contrary to those of many of the studio old-timers. One
of them was to put Dracula into production on a grand
scale.

The title role was
played by a young Hungarian emigre, Bela Lugosi,
whose dignified but saturnine appearance and heavily
accented delivery created a romantic, urbane image far
removed from the repulsive ancients envisioned by
Stoker and Murnau. The play ran for 261 performances

Despite the opposition of his advisors, Laemmle
trepidation - okayed the pro¬
ject. Rights to book and play were acquired for $40,000
and in June of 1930 Fritz Stephani completed a 32-page

in New York, then went on

sum

the road with great success.

About four months before the Broadway ver¬
opened, Universal Pictures considered making a
silent screen adaptation. After studying the Stoker
sion

book, most of the studio readers concluded in their

Sr.

with considerable

treatment. It was announced that

would be

from

"almost $400,000"

spent on the production
a

- an impressive
studio in financial trouble at a time when

half that amount constituted

an "A' budget.
including Louis Stevens,
Louis Bromfield and Dudley Murphy, contributed to
the evolution of the shooting script, which eventually
was
completed by Garrett Fort.

Other writers

reports of June 15 that as screen material Dracula was
"... out of the question... it would be an insult to every
one of its audience...
passes beyond the point of what
the average person can stand or cares to stand.'' A
minority opinion averred that "For mystery and blood¬
curdling horror, I have never read its equal. For sets,
impressionistic and weird, it cannot be surpassed. This

have been an almost
but it was rejected as
being vulnerable to censorship as well as difficult to
produce as a sound film because of the considerable
outdoor action. The final script restricts most exterior

May 1988

American

The Bromfield

screenplay, which

was

based

primarily

upon the book, could
definitive version of the subject,

Cinematographer

American Cinematographer - May 1988

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