Bela Lugosi Discusses His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hospital in 1955

In 1955 Bela Lugosi was in a sad state. The once-hand­some, Hun­gar­i­an-born star of Drac­u­la had seen his career degen­er­ate over the pre­vi­ous two decades until at last he was reduced to play­ing a cru­el par­o­dy of him­self in some of the tack­i­est B hor­ror films ever made. Along the way he picked up a drug habit. In late April of 1955 the 72-year-old actor, des­ti­tute and recent­ly divorced from his fourth wife, checked him­self into the psy­cho­path­ic ward at Los Ange­les Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. A few days lat­er, in a hear­ing held at the ward, Lugosi plead­ed with a judge to com­mit him to a state hos­pi­tal. A Unit­ed Press arti­cle from April 23, 1955 describes the scene:

Although weigh­ing only 125 pounds and only a shad­ow of his for­mer self, Lugosi’s voice was clear and res­o­nant as he told the court how shoot­ing pains in his legs led him to start tak­ing mor­phine injec­tions in 1935. With­out mor­phine, he could­n’t work, Lugosi said.

“I start­ed using it under a doc­tor’s care,” he said. “I knew after a time it was get­ting out of con­trol.”

“Sev­en­teen years ago, on a trip to Eng­land, I heard of Metho­d­one, a new drug. I brought a big box of it back home. I guess I brought a pound,” Lugosi said.

“Ever since I’ve used that, or demerol. I just took the drugs. I did­n’t eat. I got sick­er and sick­er.”

The judge com­mend­ed Lugosi for tak­ing action to fight his addic­tion, and com­mit­ted him to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan State Hos­pi­tal in Nor­walk, a sub­urb of Los Ange­les, for a min­i­mum of three months and a max­i­mum of two years. Dur­ing his time in the hos­pi­tal, the old man plot­ted his come­back. In The Immor­tal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi, Arthur Lennig writes:

While at the hos­pi­tal, Lugosi had been giv­en the script of his next Ed Wood pic­ture, The Ghoul Goes West, a strange con­coc­tion in which a mad doc­tor goes out west to car­ry out his scheme to make super-crea­tures out of cow­boys and rule the world. The actor looked for­ward to this forth­com­ing pro­duc­tion, which he believed would begin about ten days after leav­ing the hos­pi­tal, and bran­dished the script as proof that he would start work. “It’s very cute,” he said to the reporters. It prob­a­bly was­n’t, but Lugosi no doubt believed that all the front page pub­lic­i­ty, how­ev­er noto­ri­ous, would aid in his come­back, a come­back that would even­tu­al­ly raise him above the low­ly ranks of Ed Wood’s shoe­string pro­duc­tions. Bela posed for a pho­to­graph with the script in one hand while his oth­er hand was dra­mat­i­cal­ly raised in an assertive fist.

The inter­view above was filmed on August 4, 1955, one day before the actor’s release from the hos­pi­tal. In the clip, Lugosi smiles and declares him­self “a new man.” Less than three weeks lat­er he mar­ried his fifth wife, an obsessed fan who report­ed­ly sent him a let­ter every day he was in the hos­pi­tal. The Ghoul Goes West nev­er mate­ri­al­ized, but Lugosi col­lab­o­rat­ed with Ed Wood on a cou­ple of oth­er projects, includ­ing a movie that some crit­ics would even­tu­al­ly call “the worst film ever made,” Plan 9 From Out­er Space. As his hope of a gen­uine come­back crum­bled, Lugosi drank heav­i­ly. On August 16, 1956–barely over a year after his release from Met­ro­pol­i­tan State Hospital–Lugosi died of a heart attack. He was buried in his Drac­u­la cos­tume.

Sev­er­al Lugosi films appear on our big list of Free Movies Online.


by | Permalink | Comments (48) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (48)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Alex says:

    Drug addic­tion is the worst..it kills..

  • Linda says:

    Real­ly wish things had worked out bet­ter for him, that he’d had again the career suc­cess he want­ed; he deserved more. :(

  • shamrock gamble says:

    Bela was the best at what he do. Nobody plays Drac­u­la bet­ter than Bela!!!!!

  • Larry Talbot says:

    It is a shame that soci­ety dra­ma­tized Lagosi. We should let junkies be junkies, booze is what killed the Count , not dope.

  • Bela lugosi says:

    I love Bu00e9la no mat­ter what any­one says Bu00e9la was the best Drac­u­la ever I’m 12 and I’m lit­er­al­ly addict­ed to Drac­u­la I keep on get­ting it out at the library I’m still read­ing the book on my iPad (it’s free on iBooks) every one thinks I’m weird just because I know a lot about Vlad Tepesh but I can’t help myself Drac­u­la is the best and so is the actor who played

  • Williek says:

    Willie when I was young­ster and a Drac­u­la movie came on TV and the star was Bel­la Lugosi we would all ways say look the real Drac­u­la in on.

  • Justin Swartz says:

    Be’la Lugosi was a few gen­er­a­tions ahead of his time.nToday him and Char­lie Sheen would be Win­ning

  • William Davidson says:

    When we think of the count we pic­ture Bela Lugosi and the fact that this one char­ac­ter has made him immor­tal in the eyes of his fans, he deserved bet­ter being one of the great­est actors of his genre, he lives for­ev­er in the minds of his fans.

  • James ayers says:

    He was the best at what he did peo­ple should not judge him for his drug habit drug use is a sick­ness

  • James ayers says:

    I’m just say­ing I know first hand I watched my best friend destroy his life by using strong pain killers and smack and methadone and in the end he died all alone in a emp­ty house all alone of a over­dose he lost every thing his wife his cars its not just a habit it’s a sick ness and there is no know care

  • Sandra Pinnel says:

    Bela Lugosi was an extra­or­di­nary stage actor pri­or to his Count Drac­u­la role in 1931 — he was large­ly unrec­og­nized and unap­pre­ci­at­ed for the depth and range that he tru­ly pos­sessed. He was grate­ful for, and appre­ci­at­ed, his Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship and val­ued Amer­i­ca’s lib­er­ties. Still, he shined in any role and brought dig­ni­ty and class to the screen any­time he appeared. Women swooned over his Count Drac­u­la role on stage and in movies, as he evoked a kind of sen­su­al charm & savoir faire along with an aris­to­crat­ic air of dig­ni­ty. May he rest in peace.

  • Vivian McAlexander says:

    Oh my! What an extreme­ly sad and unfor­tu­nate end­ing for one of the great­est actors ever to step on stage or infront of the cam­era. Bela Lugosi was a beau­ti­ful, charm­ing, kind, high­ly intel­li­gent, hard-work­ing, brave, tal­ent­ed, and eth­i­cal man. I grew up watch­ing his movies, and as an adult he is like a dear old friend to me. I too suf­fer as Bela did with chron­ic pain as well as addic­tion to opi­ate pain meds. The opi­ates dam­aged my liv­er and breath­ing. Even under a doc­tor’s care pain meds are very seduc­tive and ease the pain. Lat­er they lose their effec­tive­ness so you want more. I’ve always been against drug abuse, and nev­er intend­ed to be a drug addict. Obvi­ous­ly Bela was no strung-out junkie, and nei­ther was I. It can hap­pen to any­one. I will for­ev­er love Bela Lugosi. He was a great man. May Bela be in Heav­en with God’s warm and gen­tle love sur­round­ing him. ‑Vivian McAlexan­der

  • charlie says:

    Dear Mr Lugosi, I grew up watch­ing your Drac­u­la char­ac­ter-No one has & no one will hold that can­dle to your seduc­tive hyp­not­ic inter­pre­ta­tion. That sleek hair combed back and that voice/priceless. Hol­ly­wood for­got to “thank you” for your enter­tain­ment But we the peo­ple in Amer­i­ca will always see you as the one that hyp­no­tized us.. I have nev­er seen a more fan­ta­sy dri­ven moment than when you starred in Abbott & Costel­lo meets Franken­stein.. The scene at the door of the cas­tle when you turn from a bat to human form in my words was unde­ni­able amaz­ing con­sid­er­ing the year it was pro­duced and the spe­cial effect tech that must’ve been used for that lit­tle number..And so you were on drugs and so what.. You had pain killers to cor­rect a per­son­al mat­ter and you became addict­ed.. you had the instinct to go for help and at 74 you tried your best.. thanks for the mem­o­ries Mr Lugosi.. I did­n’t know that you were buried in your Drac­u­la cape.. You are the Count…

  • Amanda Marsh says:

    I am a huge fan of Bela Lugosi espe­cial­ly as Drac­u­la. He still is the Best Drac­u­la to me. No offence against Christo­pher Lee. But to me Bela is and Always be Drac­u­la. “To be dead, to be tru­ly dead why that must be glo­ri­ous” & “There are far worse things await­ing man than death my friend” & many more. My fave line. “I have char­tered a ship to take us to Eng­land, we will be leav­ing, tomor­row evening”.

  • Amanda Marsh says:

    “Excel­lent Mr R Enfield Excel­lent!!”

  • Michael T. Cassidy says:

    Bel­la was the man !!!
    When it comes to scar­ing you out of your boots he could do it !!!
    I’m sad to hear the end of such a bril­liant life !
    His movies will live on for­ev­er !

  • Cindy Legorreta says:

    In a doc­u­men­tary I watched a few years ago on Lugosi, they inter­viewed his son. One of the things I clear­ly remem­ber: Lugosi Jr. men­tion­ing was, HE always thought his father showed extra­or­di­nary courage for can­did­ly speak­ing about his addic­tion, orig­i­nal­ly because of esca­lat­ing pain meds giv­en for an injury. Then he sought treat­ment. (remem­ber this was in…what, the 1950’s, right? Long years would pass before “Celebri­ty Rehab”) Drugs and get­ting clean from them are not viewed today as they were then. In fact, we who have been through the strug­gle to get clean/sober can well appre­ci­ate just how dif­fi­cult that can be. And the stig­ma is nowhere what it was back then. So, my heart goes out to Bela Lugosi. A unique, fine actor who nev­er did resume his career as he should have. For that, all of us are the poor­er!

  • Jam says:

    why dont you pit­ty your­selves instead? This men had it all. What did you gain so far out of your cow­ard mis­er­able lives? ask your­selves before you pit­ty a men for being an addict.

  • Numbers says:

    Great com­ment Jam! I con­cur.

  • bela blah blah says:

    He was a junkie and a drunk and deserved what he got. Boris was king!

  • Michael Harris says:

    I met Lugosi in 1955 at a the­ater in San Bernardi­no Ca. He was charm­ing and polite while sign­ing auto­graphs! He played that great role of Drac­u­la right down to the end. What a pro­fes­sion­al.

  • cwoods says:

    I cant believe so many peo­ple liked those old bor­ing movies.

  • H. Schlitz says:

    To clar­i­fy some mis­in­for­ma­tion and neg­a­tive com­ments above, regard­ing Béla Lugosi’s addic­tion and the pre­sump­tion that there was wealth to be squan­dered.

    Lugosi became inter­est­ed in the­atre while a teenag­er and in 1913, at the age of 31, was accept­ed into The Hun­gar­i­an Nation­al The­atre in Budapest. WWI began in 1914, and although mem­bers of the Nation­al The­atre were exempt from mil­i­tary ser­vice, Lugosi, polit­i­cal­ly active and patri­ot­ic to the extreme, enlist­ed in the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Army as an infantry­man. He was pro­mot­ed to cap­tain in the ski patrol, and one night, while guard­ing the Russ­ian front, had a vio­lent fall, and injured his low­er back. The pain from his lum­bar injury was treat­ed with mor­phine. Lugosi was dis­charged in 1916, dec­o­rat­ed with a Wound­ed Medal, but his lum­bar pain and co-occur­ring addic­tion to opi­ates would plague him for the rest of his life. (Inci­den­tal­ly, Frank Sina­tra helped cov­er Lugosi’s rehab expens­es, and vis­it­ed while he was in treat­ment, much to Lugosi’s amaze­ment, as they didn’t know each oth­er; Sina­tra anony­mous­ly paid for Lugosi’s funer­al costs).

    Addiction/alcoholism is a pro­gres­sive men­tal ill­ness, a dis­ease just as seri­ous and life-threat­en­ing as hav­ing can­cer. When a loved one is diag­nosed with can­cer, it would be ludi­crous to say that some­thing that per­son chose to have or do caused the can­cer. An addict doesn’t choose to be an addict; it’s not a moral con­sid­er­a­tion. Addic­tion is hered­i­tary and once trig­gered, the addict is pow­er­less. In the past 15 years, the top­ics of addic­tion and recov­ery have appeared as nev­er before, fre­quent­ly part of fea­ture films, script­ed TV series, real­i­ty pro­grams, talk­shows, celebri­ty tabloid shows, news­me­dia, and the infi­nite amount of infor­ma­tion found on the inter­net. We’ve seen the con­se­quences: the loss of rela­tion­ships, employ­ment, belong­ings, and finances; the risk of home­less­ness, insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion, and impris­on­ment; the final des­ti­na­tion point due to the body’s inabil­i­ty to phys­i­cal­ly com­pen­sate or recov­er, or due to an acci­dent or over­dose or alco­hol poi­son­ing or sui­cide, when addic­tion kills the addict. How­ev­er, if lucky, an addict can have just enough con­nec­tion to real­i­ty to ask for help and to choose the pur­suit of ongo­ing recov­ery (no such thing as “recov­ered” because when you’re a pick­le, you can’t go back to being a cucum­ber).

    Fur­ther­more, Béla nev­er “had it all” even from his start in the USA. Although Lugosi’s seduc­tive, refined, authen­ti­cal­ly Tran­syl­van­ian por­tray­al in the Broad­way pro­duc­tion & U.S. tour of Drac­u­la from 1927 through 1929 cre­at­ed the buzz for the prop­er­ty, when Carl Laemm­le Jr. optioned the rights from Bram Stoker’s wid­ow, he intend­ed to make it a vehi­cle for Lon Chaney, who died dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions. Despite Lugosi’s dili­gence in cam­paign­ing, using his influ­ence to per­suade Wid­ow Stok­er to give the rights to Laemm­le, and his will­ing­ness to pro­vide time and tal­ent gratis, for oth­er Uni­ver­sal-relat­ed projects, Laemm­le did­n’t offer Lugosi a con­tract until the film was already in pro­duc­tion. AND, to add insult to insult, the con­tract offered Lugosi $500 per week for sev­en weeks. He didn’t try to nego­ti­ate, even though the offer was less than that being made by actors in the film’s minor roles. He even­tu­al­ly made some mon­ey in the mid to late 1930’s, but suc­cess as an actor elud­ed Lugosi, due to being type­cast as Drac­u­la or as vil­lain from East­ern Europe, the change in pub­lic taste, the ban­ning of hor­ror films in the UK, and the gos­sip about his addic­tion. With inter­mit­tent­ly few offers of film roles in the 40’s and ear­ly 50’s, and with the respon­si­bil­i­ty of being the provider for his wife and their only child, Béla Jr., he diver­si­fied, often spend­ing months away from home, doing sum­mer stock or region­al the­atre on the east coast, or appear­ing as Drac­u­la at screen­ings or pro­mo­tion­al events. But as hard as he worked, he lived the major­i­ty of his adult life deeply mired in debt, due to Uni­ver­sal’s type­cast­ing and ruth­less com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem and his own care­less spend­ing.

    With­out con­sid­er­a­tion of tax­es with­held, Lugosi grossed $3500 for Drac­u­la, the equiv­a­lent of $54,672 in infla­tion-adjust­ed 2014 dol­lars. Mean­while, Béla’s image and voice earned Uni­ver­sal untold mil­lions, from the film’s ini­tial release in 1931, through the ensu­ing decades of domes­tic re-releas­es, tele­vised air­ings, 16mm rentals, for­eign dis­tri­b­u­tion, mer­chan­diz­ing, and as a promi­nent fea­ture lur­ing SoCal vis­i­tors to The Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Tour. Béla Jr. grew up to be an attor­ney, and in 1966, brought Lugosi v. Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures to the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court, suing Uni­ver­sal for using per­son­al­i­ty rights with­out the heirs’ per­mis­sion (and with­out com­pen­sa­tion). In 1979, after ELEVEN YEARS of lit­i­ga­tion, Jr. won the case. The court award­ed him a small set­tle­ment of $70,000, ordered Uni­ver­sal to cease any mer­chan­diz­ing or pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als in Lugosi’s like­ness, and set a prece­dent for oth­er fam­i­lies. Universal’s legal cabal appealed and with­in months, the court over­turned the deci­sion, rul­ing that per­son­al­i­ty rights did not pass to heirs as a copy­right would, and that any rights of pub­lic­i­ty, includ­ing the right to his image, ter­mi­nat­ed with Lugosi’s death: “the right to exploit one’s name and like­ness is per­son­al to the artist and must be exer­cised, if at all, by him dur­ing his life­time.” Amaz­ing­ly, there IS a hap­py end­ing and Team Lugosi’s eth­ic ulti­mate­ly pre­vailed. Because of Béla Jr.’s efforts, the Lugosi v. Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures case pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion for the Cal­i­for­nia Celebri­ties Rights Act of 1986, a civ­il code that makes a person’s name or like­ness an inher­i­ta­ble right, up to 70 years after death.

    Béla Lugosi kicked ass as the under­paid-yet-ulti­mate­ly-icon­ic Count Drac­u­la. But maybe even more ass was kicked with the trans­paren­cy, hon­esty, courage, and enor­mous degree of humil­i­ty he had, in dis­cussing addic­tion and recov­ery with the media in 1955, mov­ing that skele­ton from the clos­et to the spot­light. Béla left a lega­cy of Drac­u­la, of addic­tion and recov­ery, and with his son, of respect and finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion giv­en to a celebrity’s fam­i­ly when the celebri­ty is used for cor­po­rate prof­it.

    “The bats have left the bell tow­er, the vic­tims have been bled. Red vel­vet lines the black box. The vir­ginal brides file past his tomb, strewn with time’s dead flow­ers, bereft in death­ly bloom, alone in a dark­ened room, The Count. Béla Lugosi’s dead. Undead undead undead.”

  • Sh3p says:

    Sir. Bela Lagosi is Drac­u­la and always will be. He has that on lock down. Off hand I can’t think of any oth­er actor that has played good ole Vlad… even though theres been tons.… ok thats a lie, I guess I remem­ber Gary Old­man. Mr. Lagosi was a phe­nom­e­nal actor who could play a vari­ety of roles that nev­er were tak­en advan­tage enough.
    Any­way, I hate how much the arti­cle tears down Eddie Wood (Ed. Wood Jr.). Ed wood was the only direc­tor giv­ing Mr. Lagosi work. After hol­ly­wood milks Mr. Lagosi and kicks him to the curb Ed took care of him and played a big part in con­vinc­ing him to get com­mit­ed. He even had a car­rot at the end of the stick being a script ensur­ing that Mr. Lagosi had some­thing to look for­ward to as well pur­pose to defeat­ing his addic­tion to opi­ates. I have been clean for years now, so I know how tough it can be, and could­n’t even imag­ine how it would be in the fifties and I com­mend him beat­ing the narcs…

  • Don Richter says:

    his best line spo­ken to Jonathon at the Bul­gar Pass in ref­er­ence to the howl­ing wolves, lis­ten to them “the chil­dren of the night”

  • And says:

    And you’re a bad per­son. They get worst fates of all. Maybe you should get what you deserve, too, then eh?

  • And says:

    That was in reply to the dude who said “he got what he deserved.” Sheesh.

  • Samuel Mazzini says:

    This is tru­ly sad,burying him in his Drac­u­la cos­tume was dis­re­spect­ful, u pay Homage to the man not the char­ac­ter, they essen­tial­ly made a mock­ery of this man

  • Sandra Pinnel says:

    Char­lie … your kind words to Bela are well-put; and I agree with every­thing you said. Bela’s per­for­mance as Count Drac­u­la was tru­ly mes­mer­iz­ing — and I agree that no one will hold a can­dle to his inter­pre­ta­tion and deliv­ery
    of that char­ac­ter quite the way he did. Like I’ve already said in my post above, Bela pos­sessed a depth of char­ac­ter and integri­ty that few folks are aware of. You can get an insight­ful feel for that in a rare inter­view that is still avail­able on YouTube that I’m cer­tain you’d enjoy — here’s the link to it:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXNAHOnwwZY
    This ver­sion con­tains span­ish sub­ti­tles — you can find the same video with­out the sub­ti­tles, but for some rea­son, the res­o­lu­tion in this ver­sion is much bet­ter.
    Just want­ed to let you know I was moved by what you said.

  • Alan Wilde says:

    I don’t know. I was real­ly impressed by Christo­pher Lee’s straight ver­sion

  • c. curzio says:

    Hel­lo,

    Bela was a great actor, I also feel that he was one of a few who came out front with his addic­tion prob­lem in a time it was shunned. IN those days, there were few places one could go to kick. Fed Hos­pi­tal Lex­ing­ton, Forth Worth, or jail most­ly. atti­tudes like ’ He did it to him­self ” or’ own fault ” is one of the rea­sons why many don’t want to seek treat­ment. I am glad I am in my mid 60’s and peo­ple are start­ing to change their lame atti­tudes and thoughts regard­ing addic­tion and men­tal health. Since 1914 [ Har­ri­son Act] this coun­try help cre­ate this quick­sand of trou­bles and dealt this thru incar­cer­a­tion . We now have mil­lions locked away from non- vio­lent drug crimes, with­out mak­ing head­way in ” war on drugs ’ thanks Rea­gan and Bush.

  • trey Rozier says:

    Bela was the best Drac­u­la ever Vivian hru doing now

  • Steven Charles says:

    I know the whole fam­i­ly per­son­al­ly, I took care of there aunt for16yrs. They are the most uncaring,most self­ish fam­i­ly I have ever seen. They only care about mon­ey and what they can steal from their aunt. They Will not let any of her friends vis­it her cause they are scared they they will tell aunt jen­ny the truth. Bela jr is also addict­ed to painkillers like his father, he has the same phys­i­cal prob­lems like his father. They live most­ly off the lugosi name IN the var­i­ous prod­ucts THEY sell IN the lugosi name. The family,they made sure that they we’re IN charge of Jen­ny’s estate so THEY could milk her mon­ey FROM the vast prop­er­ty she owns,the rest of the fam­i­ly are scared of the lugosi ‘s cause they don’t have enough mon­ey TO take THEM on. She lives in her house at the top of altade­na alone with­out her friends and alone cause the lugosi are blood suck­ing vam­pires

  • James says:

    …PULL THE STRING…

  • Karloff hack says:

    No one com­pares to Bela Lugosi! Karloff? HAHA! What a joke, the hack could­n’t act. Get your facts straight, pedo-wor­ship­per! Bondage Boris was into BDSM and lit­tle kid­dies. Some idol! Google The Truth About Boris Karloff or ser­ach Bondage Boris or Frankenpe­do You’re wel­come LOL!

  • Senmut says:

    Sure does. A sink of evil.

  • Kimberly says:

    Thank you H. Schlitz! Appre­ci­at­ed the few facts I did­n’t already know. Bela was awe­some. Peri­od.

  • Andyroo says:

    Bela Is and will always be a true LEGEND and I will always love his gen­uine spir­it as it moves us and lives on in our hearts when­ev­er I we see his films.

  • MELODY gay DIGREGORIO says:

    H. Schlitz
    Too Right! Except one thing..Bela was also wound­ed three times dur­ing the war in addi­tion to his fall. Lugosi was an incred­i­ble actor and a man of many tal­ents and strengths. How­ev­er, some­times younger gen­er­a­tions have no clue of “real sac­ri­fice ” or “the real world and hard work” the found­ing fathers/mothers of the Stars of the Sil­ver Screen had to accom­plish to pave the way for their gen­er­a­tion.

  • Bilbo ballbagen says:

    I love Bela Lugosi!! Long live the King!

  • Kevin Connolly says:

    Peter Lorre and Vin­cent Price attend­ed the wake, and on view­ing the body laid out like the Count, Price burst out in uncon­trol­lable parox­ysms of laugh­ter. Bela’s wid­ow had him thrown out and nev­er spoke to him again. Lat­er, it was explained that Peter Lorre told Vin­cent “We should stake him any­way. It’s the only way to be sure.” The laugh­ter is quite under­stand­able.

  • Van Helsing says:

    Its a shame i heard sto­ries that he was a addict but you could walk in any phar­ma­cy and buy mor­phine, Hero­in, methadone,and any nar­cot­ic you real­ly cant blame him and today the worst drug of all Alco­hol you can get any­where thers more liquor stores in my city then church­es and drugs on any cor­ner… so now they took per­fect­ly good hero­in off the streets and replaced it with fen­tanyl car Fen­tanyl which can put down an ele­phant this is the new epi­dem­ic I don’t know how it hap­pened it look like just overnight it went from hero­in to Fen­tanyl who has the pow­er to do that you know who the gov­ern­ment you know they call it Chi­nese fen­tanyl yes I’m sure that the Chi­nese start­ed mak­ing it found the recipe for it but how to get into Unit­ed States overnight in weird all the hero­in go now I am not an advo­cate for hero­in or fen­tanyl but the less­er of two evils would have been keep the hero­in on the streets because fen­tanyl Nar­can does not work on fen­tanyl at all it’s become a seri­ous prob­lem in my city so the rea­son why they replaced the hero­in with fen­tanyl is because car Fen­tanyl will kill you so how do we get rid of mil­lions of addicts we kill them with fen­tanyl pop­u­la­tion con­trol just about any­thing I eat or drink says in the state of Cal­i­for­nia there’s some­thing in what­ev­er a meet­ing or drink­ing I should say that in the state of Cal­i­for­nia is con­sid­ered can­cer caus­ing and just about every­thing I look at or read that is on it so what do you think is going on peo­ple wake up only a gov­ern­ment could stop the flow of per­fect­ly good hero­in and turn it into fen­tanyl the next day they’re try­ing to kill every attic this is my belief and I’ll stand by it and stick to it but like I said I will go see could walk in any phar­ma­cy at the time and buy any nar­cot­ic he want­ed includ­ing hero­in which Sears and robark sold as new blue mor­phine and hero­in look it up Sears and Roe­buck sold two syringes of hero­in which actu­al­ly means stronger hence stronger Mor­phine it was labeled under White doves pow­der and they sold you two huge syringes full for a dol­lar 75 cents and most women were addict­ed to the hero­in or mor­phine most women at that time of the cen­tu­ry were addict­ed to hero­in which they walked into a phar­ma­cy and bought because the women were home doing all sorts of chores clean­ing the house ten­don to the ani­mals why their hus­bands were killing them­selves at work for five cents a day so if I was born at that time and killing myself for 5 cents a day I be prob­a­bly spend­ing my mon­ey in a phar­ma­cy too and com­ing home with all the hero­in I could pur­chase when I got my check for prob­a­bly $5 and they work 7 days a week so it’s not too hard to fall prey to drug addic­tion when in any phar­ma­cy you walk in you could pur­chase any class a nar­cot­ic includ­ing hero­in I def­i­nite­ly would have got a job in the phar­ma­cy and robbed every sin­gle Class A drug I could get my hands on and if I could­n’t do it that way I’d be rob­bing every Phar­ma­cy a few Banks and then just go buy it but I real­ly believe that they should bring the old laws back you should be able to walk into any drug store and buy what you want and you would see how fast. The ille­gal drug trade goes away quick­ly just like you can buy booze cig­a­rettes and mar­i­jua­na is legal now in my city it has been for some time so if you’re going to make mar­i­jua­na legal then you should just make every­thing else legal as well give it a lit­tle time that will hap­pen cuz that’s the only way you’re going to stop the ille­gal drug trade and at least when you went into the phar­ma­cy you got what you were sup­posed to get you don’t know what you’re get­ting off the streets today so the way I look at it legal­ize every­thing and we won’t have car­tels Com­ing to Amer­i­ca killing peo­ple destroy­ing peo­ple’s lives you go to a phar­ma­cy can’t what you need that’s it and if that’s your choice that you want to stay home and get high all day while we live in a free coun­try you made mar­i­jua­na or legal now let’s go for the gus­to let every­thing else be ille­gal and you’ll see how fast the vio­lence stops ille­gal aliens com­ing into the coun­try there will be no rea­son to send them here those are the mules don’t you get it Amer­i­ca they’re not com­ing here because they like it here they’re com­ing here to sell drugs and make mon­ey so if you stop that you stop the ille­gal drug trade legal­ize all class A’s for god sakes booze has killed more peo­ple than the com­bined Wars the Unit­ed States has fought in and the same thing with cig­a­rettes they kill more peo­ple a year then the peo­ple on both sides in World War I and World War II what killed well good night ladies and gen­tle­men The Count Drac­u­la has to go take a shot of mor­phine blah blah blah

  • Nancy pants says:

    Arti­cle states Sina­tra paid for treat­ment costs, but ex wives paid for his funer­al.

  • Paul says:

    I am watch­ing the return of cham­du right now
    .…the great Bela Lugosi

  • Vinny Amatucci says:

    I’m still laugh­ing at the remark Peter Lorre made to Vin­cent Price! If you think about it, that’s quite a com­pli­ment he paid to Bel­la Lugosi! It shows his skills and ded­i­ca­tion as an actor.

  • Johnny says:

    I’m watch­ing him in Drac­u­la right now and I think he was a hel­lu­va man and a great actor

  • Robert Hamill says:

    I saw what you did there. Lar­ry Tal­bot was the char­ac­ter in “The Wolf­man”, played by Lon Chaney,Jr., who turned into that crea­ture upon the ris­ing of a full moon. He even­tu­al­ly played both Drac­u­la and Franken­stein, mak­ing it a tri­fec­ta. His booz­ing was also his weak­ness, and in his final years, he took what act­ing jobs were offered, most often just as embar­rass­ing to his lega­cy as Lugosi’s choic­es were.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.