Béla Lugosi - ©Theda Bara

The name I bring in this post is Béla Lugosi, an actor born in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the Banat region, and based in the United States. He was the protagonist of several horror films from the 1930s onwards, being one of the most famous “Counts Dracula” in cinema to date.

Because he was not American, Lugosi ended up being passed over for having a star on the Los Angeles Walk of Fame. And he also never received any Hollywood awards.

Béla Lugosi was played in the cinema by Martin Landau (1928-2017), who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1995, in the film: “Ed Wood” (1994), by American filmmaker Tim Burton (1958-).

Born Béla Ferenc Dezsõ Blaskó, on October 20, 1882, Lugoj, Romania, and died on August 16, 1956, Los Angeles, California, United States, aged 73.

The actor was married five times. His first marriage was to Hungarian housewife Ilona Szmick (1894-1921) from 1917 to 1920; his second marriage was to the Hungarian actress Ilona Von Montagh (1899-1024) from 1921 to 1924, of whom he was widowed; After five years of mourning, he married a third time, to a wealthy San Francisco widow who worked as a corporate spy, Beatrice Woodruff Weeks (1897-1931). This was a union that, interestingly enough, lasted just three days in 1929; the fourth marriage of “Count Dracula Lugosi” was to Lillian Arch Lugosi Donlevy (1911-1981) from 1933 to 1953. With Lillian, the actor had his only child, the American lawyer Mr. Béla G. Lugosi (1938-); and, Finally, he married the American nurse and his fan Hope Louise Lininger Lugosi, known as: Esperança Forro (1919-1997), who took care of him when he was admitted to the Metropolitan State Hospital, in Norwalk, United States. The marriage lasted almost a year, from August 24, 1955, to August 16, 1956, when Lugosi died of a heart attack.