BELA LUGOSI - INVISIBLE GHOST

BELA LUGOSI AROUND THE CORNER NEAR THE CHURCH - ALL SOULS DAY

I met a man recently who was telling me that he was looking on the 1940 census and found out Bela Lugosi lived right around the corner from his present day church...  I dared him to try and find out if the Hungarian was Catholic and if he might have gone to that church, which was in its humble mission church phase but is now a landmark. I thought it was a bit of a coincidence since I'd been looking for Bela Lugosi posters for this blog.


Walking my dog around the neighborhood, some of my neighbors have gone all out with decorations, because they expect trick-or-treaters, or because they are what I call Ghoul School, or because they work for the studios doing sets; one family has Halloween all year long with an evil looking cemetery out front which must save them having to water.  One house in particular was really impressive.  Out on their white wicker setae on the front porch are two loved up human-sized monsters, reminiscent of the couple, both with significant teeth.  That one made me laugh.


But as I'm not at all into the violence and gore that has become part of the celebration that was rooted in spirituality and honoring the ancestors for so long, I refrain from entertainments that are not spiritual.  The Celtic tradition of carving a turnip to hold a candle as symbolic of the soul - the flame of the spirit - in the body, moved to smiling carved pumpkins, and then to demonic ones.  The church that's around the block from where Bela Lugosi once lived is having a special All Souls Day evening Mass, and I may just attend.


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"ED WOOD" FILM BASED ON REAL LIFE HOLLYWOOD PRODUCER WHO LOVED BELA LAGOSI and EMPLOYED HIM AT THE END OF HIS LIFE

Since I'm always interested in how Hungarians and Hungarian- Americans are thought of, stereotyped, and portrayed in the media, including Hollywood films, I decided to watch the film "Ed Wood" a second time.

The film is based on the true life story of a independent producer, the only one in his time who was writing, directing, and producing films other than Orson Wells, named Ed Wood.  Always looking for creative ways to finance films that were B movies - horror - science fiction - he often employed people who were not actors but who had some money to invest.  Many of the early fans of his movies were kids who attended matinees.

A possible exception to that rule of hiring unknowns and the talentless might be Bela Lugosi, known for portraying the menacing Hungarian capable of scaring you to death if not outright murder, a stereotype that stems from the mythologies of Count Dracula, installed in his castle in Transylvania.

In Ed's case he was a Bela Lugosi fan as a kid, met him in Hollywood when he was near 70 and near broke, as well as rumored to have been a drug addict for many years, a "washed up" actor.  Ed was able to give Bela some employment as well as become a friend to the end, and so the actor achieved a brief revival of fame.

Ed himself is portrayed, by Johnny Depp, as endlessly optimistic and inventive, as well as a cross dresser who loves women and befriended and hired many eccentric characters included transsexuals.  He may have never become well regarded or famous, but the wife who married him stayed with Ed 20 years to his death, early, of alcohol.

To give it a Film Noir effect, this film is in black and white, which is extremely effective.

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BELA LUGOSI (Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó ) FIND A GRAVE

Friends, I blogged about Bela Lugosi, known for his horror films in early Hollywood, before and I've posted a link to his official web site before also. (You can find it on the sidebar!) But today I'm linking to his FIND A GRAVE page, where there is some genealogical information for Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko. He is buried in Los Angeles at Holy Cross Cemetery.



I thought Bela yesterday when, for the first time, I saw the film he stared in called "THE RAVEN" in which he acted the part of a doctor who loves Edgar Allen Poe, the poet who wrote the poem called "The Raven" and many other dark pieces. In this movie, which I saw in black and white, the doctor has a prison basement where he has built various torture devices that Poe only imagined in his fiction. The doctor lures a group of people to a party, intent on getting the young beautiful woman he has fallen in love with, his personal torture being that he can't have her. And it goes from there...

FIND A GRAVE - BELA LUGOSI

FIND A GRAVE has been useful in my personal genealogy research.  It started out as a site used to find the burial places for celebrities (I'm linking to BELA LUGOSI's grave!) but you can use it to find regular deceased folks too!


Click on the title of this post to get to the link!

The official BELA LUGOSI web site!

BELA LUGOSI is probably the best known male Hungarian actor who made it to Hollywood. He starred as Dracula.... Count Dracula of legend...  who actually may have been based on a real person VLAD THE IMPALER.


Free Screen Saver at this site.... hmmm... would you like it to be Halloween all year long?