Bela Lugosi

Bela Lugosi, born Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko on October 20, 1882 and dead on August 16, 1956, was a Hungarian and American actor best remembered for playing Count Dracula in the 1931 film Dracula, directed by Tod Browning for Universal Pictures, and for the character Ygor in Son of Frankenstein and The Ghost of Frankenstein. He began on the Hungarian stage in 1901, appeared in Hungarian silent films from 1917, and after the failed Hungarian revolution of 1919 left for Germany and then the United States, where he starred in the 1927 Broadway Dracula and settled in Hollywood. Through the 1930s he held a place in horror cinema, sometimes beside Boris Karloff in The Black Cat and The Raven, but typecasting and a thick accent limited his roles. Dependence on prescribed morphine and methadone and alcoholism followed, and after Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948 he mostly took low budget parts, including work with Ed Wood and a brief appearance in Plan 9 from Outer Space.