Bela Lugosi

Born Béla Blaskó in Hungary in 1882, he worked the stage there for 15 years before the failed Communist Revolution of 1919 sent him west as a political refugee. He landed in New Orleans as a seaman, worked his way to New York, and in 1927 starred as Dracula on Broadway. The 1931 film version, directed by Tod Browning, made him a star and a prisoner: his thick accent locked him into horror roles through the '30s, opposite Boris Karloff in The Black Cat and The Raven. Sciatic pain led to morphine, morphine to addiction, and by 1948 the work dried to B-pictures and Ed Wood cheapies. He died in Au…