Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Dracula

Another masterful graphic novel biography written and illustrated by Shadmi (The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television). In 1955, an ailing 72-year-old Bela Lugosi checks into the hospital hoping to kick a debilitating addiction to morphine. As he hallucinates, charms his nurses, and chats with visitors, his life story unfolds. Born in Hungary, Lugosi first sought stardom on stage in Budapest. Despite winning mostly minor roles, the dashingly handsome actor assumed a lifestyle befitting the leading man he hoped to become. Following World War I, he immigrated to New York, where a critically lauded turn as Count Dracula in a 1927 Broadway production led to his being cast in the film adaptation a few years later. International fame and fortune followed but proved difficult to retain; within just a few years, Lugosi’s lavish spending, combined with poorly considered business decisions and the machinations of Hollywood moguls, resulted in his declaring bankruptcy. Relegated to appearing in shoddy B-movies, Lugosi’s faltering career only exacerbated his personal issues and physical decline; his creative partnership with filmmaker Edward Wood was a lone bright spot in the years preceding his death.