A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of February
Sports Attire
On February 14, 1931, the film “Dracula” directed by Tod Browning is released throughout the United States.
“Dracula”, starring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, was produced by Universal Studios and is based on the 1924 stage play “Dracula” written by Hamilton Deane and John L Balderston. The play was based loosely on the novel by Bram Stoker.
Bram Stoker’s novel had already been filmed without permission as “Nosferatu” in 1922 by the German expressionist film maker F.W. Murnau. Bram Stoker’s widow sued for plagiarism and copyright infringement, and the courts decided in her favor, essentially ordering that all prints of “Nosferatu” be destroyed. Enthusiastic young Hollywood producer Carl Laemmie, Jr. also saw the box office potential in Stoker’s gothic chiller, and he legally acquired the novel’s film rights.
Decision on casting the title role proved problematic. Initially, Laemmle was not at all interested in Lugosi, in spite of good reviews for his stage portrayal. Lugosi had played the role on Broadway, and to his good fortune, happened to be in Los Angeles with a touring company of the play when the film was being cast. Against the tide of studio opinion, Lugosi lobbied hard and ultimately won the executives over, thanks in part to him accepting a paltry $500 per week salary for seven weeks of work.
Due to the limitations of adding a musical score to a film’s soundtrack during 1930 and 1931, no score had ever been composed specifically for the film. The music heard during the opening credits, an excerpt from Act II of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, was re-used in 1932 for another Universal horror film, “The Mummy”. During the theatre scene where Dracula meets Dr. Seward, Harker, Mina and Lucy, the end of the overture to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Numberg can also be heard.
Today, “Dracula” is widely regarded as a classic of the era and of its genre. In 2000, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. It was ranked 79th on Bravo’s countdown of The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. To many film lovers and critics alike, Lugosi’s portrayal is widely regarded as the definitive Dracula.