Status Updates From Bela Lugosi and Boris Karlo...

Ted Gargano saw Bela’s decay, all too graphically: The last time I saw him, he was really in bad shape. When I delivered the Scotch, he could barely stand. He was in his underwear, and he had, excuse the expression, shit all over his leg. He probably had been asleep and had an accident. He was shaking, and he grabbed the bottle of Scotch, opened it up in front of me and drank half the bottle just like that, [...]

At some point—possibly in 1943, and no later than the summer of 1944—Bela appealed for medication for ulcers. A doctor responded unethically, supplying the aging actor with “medicine” which, in time, would bring Bela Lugosi the most garish and cataclysmic publicity of his life. The doctor gave Bela Lugosi morphine.

Midnight, September 11, 1938: The Victory Theater in Salt Lake City offered Dracula and Frankenstein. The New York Times noted the sensation: The house was sold out by 10 a.m. Four thousand frenzied Mormons milled around outside, finally broke through the police lines, smashed the plate glass box office, bent in the front doors and tore off one of the door checks in their eagerness to get in and be frightened.

William K. Everson analyzed Karloff’s acting style in a 1964 issue of Screen Facts magazine: Karloff developed two very distinct approaches to acting. Roles that he obviously respected—through the years these ranged from The Mummy to The Body Snatcher—he played seriously and creatively. Other roles—and The Mask of Fu Manchu and The Raven are key examples—he saw as basically idiotic but grand fun, [...]