Trivia: At the peak of his career in the early '30s, actor Bela Lugosi was the screen's most notorious personification of evil; the most famous and enduring Dracula, he helped usher in an era of new popularity for the horror genre, only to see his own fame quickly evaporate. Béla Ferenc Dezsõ Blaskó was born in Lugos, Hungary, on October 20, 1882. After seeing a touring repertory company as they passed through town, he became fascinated by acting, and began spending all of his time mounting his own dramatic productions with the aid of other children. Upon the death of his father in 1894, Lugosi apprenticed as a miner, later working on the railroad. His first professional theatrical job was as a chorus boy in an operetta, followed by a stint at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts. By 1901, he was a leading actor with Hungary's Royal National Theatre, and around 1917 began appearing in films (sometimes under the name Arisztid Olt) beginning with A Régiséggyüjtö. Lugosi was also intensely active in politics, and he organized an actors' union following the 1918 collapse of the Hungarian monarchy; however, when the leftist forces were defeated a year later he fled to Germany, where he resumed his prolific film career with 1920's Der Wildtöter und Chingachgook. Lugosi remained in Germany through 1921, when he emigrated to the United States. He made his American film debut in 1923's The Silent Command, but struggled to find further work, cast primarily in exotic bit roles on stage and screen. His grasp of English was virtually non-existent, and he learned his lines phonetically, resulting in an accented, resonant baritone which made his readings among the most distinctive and imitated in performing history. In 1924, Lugosi signed on to direct a drama titled The Right to Dream, but unable to communicate with his cast and crew he was quickly fired; he sued the producers, but was found by the court to be unable to helm a theatrical production and was ordered to pay fines totalling close to 70 dollars. When he refused, the contents of his apartment were auctioned off to pay his court costs -- an inauspicious beginning to his life in America, indeed. Lugosi's future remained grim, but in 1927 he was miraculously cast to play the title character in the Broadway adaptation of the Bram Stoker vampire tale Dracula; reviews were poor, but the production was a hit, and he spent three years in the role. In 1929, Lugosi married a wealthy San Francisco widow named Beatrice Weeks, a union which lasted all of three days; their divorce, which named Clara Bow as the other woman, was a media sensation, and it launched him to national notoriety. After a series of subsequent films, however, Lugosi again faded from view until 1931, when he was tapped to reprise his Dracula portrayal on the big screen. He was Universal executives' last choice for the role -- they wanted Lon Chaney Sr., but he was suffering from cancer -- while director Tod Browning insisted upon casting an unknown. When no other suitable choice arose, however, only Lugosi met with mutual, if grudging, agreement. Much to the shock of all involved, Dracula was a massive hit. Despite considerable studio re-editing, it was moody and atmospheric, and remains among the most influential films in American cinema. Dracula also rocketed Lugosi to international fame, and he was immediately offered the role of the monster in James Whale's Frankenstein; he refused -- in order to attach himself to a picture titled Quasimodo -- and the part instead went to Boris Karloff. The project never went beyond the planning stages, however, and in a sense Lugosi's career never righted itself; he remained a prolific screen presence, but the enduring fame which appeared within his reach was lost forever. Moreover, he was eternally typecast: Throughout the remainder of the decade and well into the 1940s, he appeared in a prolific string of horror films, some good (1932's Island of Lost Souls and 1934's The Black Cat, the latter the first of many collaborations with Karloff), but most of them quite forgettable. Lugosi's choice of projects was indiscriminate at best, and his reputation went into rapid decline; most of his performances were variations on his Dracula role, and before long he slipped into outright parodies of the character in pictures like 1948's Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, which was to be his last film for four years.As Lugosi's career withered, he became increasingly eccentric, often appearing in public clad in his Dracula costume. He was also the victim of numerous financial problems, and became addicted to drugs. In 1952, he returned from exile to star in Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, followed later that year by the similarly low-brow My Son, the Vampire and Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. By 1953, Lugosi was firmly aligned with the notorious filmmaker Ed Wood, widely recognized as the worst director in movie history; together they made a pair of films -- Glen or Glenda? and Bride of the Monster -- before Lugosi committed himself in 1955 in order to overcome his drug battles. Upon his release, he and Wood began work on the infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space, but after filming only a handful of scenes, Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 15, 1956; he was buried in his Dracula cape. In the decades to come, his stature as a cult figure grew, and in 1994 the noted filmmaker Tim Burton directed the screen biography Ed Wood, casting veteran actor Martin Landau as Lugosi; Landau was brilliant in the role, and won the Oscar which Lugosi himself never came remotely close to earning -- a final irony in a career littered with bittersweet moments.

Trivia: In films from 1941, the hauntingly beautiful American actress Elizabeth Russell seemed predestined for psychological horror films. After an unforgettable one-scene appearance as one of the title characters in producer Val Lewton's Cat People, Russell became a fixture of the Lewton unit at RKO until 1946. Her best performance during this period was as the spiteful daughter of genially crazy old recluse Julia Dean in Curse of the Cat People (1944). Outside of her work for Lewton, Elizabeth Russell was seen as Bela Lugosi's wife in The Corpse Vanishes (1942) who, despite being dead for 25 years, gives Lugosi quite a tongue-lashing whenever she sees him and is the model for the portrait of the ghostly Mary Meredith in the Paramount chiller The Uninvited (1944).

Trivia: In bit roles from 1932, American leading lady Luana Walters made the first of several movie-serial appearances as the exotic Sonya in Shadows of Chinatown (1936). Walters also starred in the infamous anti-marijuana tract Assassin of Youth (1938). A Columbia contractee in the 1940s, she was seen in everything from the Andy Clyde two-reeler Lovable Trouble (1942, as a lady baseball player) and the 15-chapter serial Superman (1948, as Lara, Superman's real mom). Luana Walters continued essaying character roles in such low-budgeters as The She-Creature until 1959.

Trivia: Actress Minerva Urecal claimed that her last name was an amalgam of her family home town of Eureka, California. True or not, Urecal would spend the balance of her life in California, specifically Hollywood. Making the transition from stage to screen in 1934, Ms. Urecal appeared in innumerable bits, usually as cleaning women, shopkeepers and hatchet-faced landladies. In B-pictures and 2-reelers of the 1940s, she established herself as a less expensive Marjorie Main type; her range now encompassed society dowagers (see the East Side Kids' Mr. Muggs Steps Out) and Mrs. Danvers-like housekeepers (see Bela Lugosi's The Ape Man). With the emergence of television, Minerva Urecal entered the "guest star" phase of her career. She achieved top billing in the 1958 TV sitcom Tugboat Annie, and replaced Hope Emerson as Mother for the 1959-60 season of the weekly detective series Peter Gunn. Minerva Urecal was active up until the early '60s, when she enjoyed some of the most sizeable roles of her career, notably the easily offended Swedish cook in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) and the town harridan who is turned to stone in Seven Faces of Dr. Lao (1964).

Trivia: American actor Kenneth Harlan possessed the main prerequisite to succeed as a silent-movie leading man: he looked as though he'd just stepped out of an Arrow Collar ad. The nephew of rolypoly character actor Otis Harlan, Kenneth was on stage from the age of seven. He signed with D.W. Griffith's production company in the mid teens, though he was never actually directed by Griffith. Taking to the Roaring Twenties like a fish to water, Harlan spent as much time partying as he did acting; he also was quite a ladies' man, toting up seven marriages. Harlan's popularity was already on the wane when sound came in, so it didn't really matter that his voice had a surly edge to it which precluded future romantic leading roles. He remained in films as a supporting and bit actor in major features, and as a leading player in serials (Dick Tracy's G-Men [1937]) and short subjects (The Three Stooges' Movie Maniacs [1936]). It was clear that he couldn't muster much enthusiasm for the roles assigned him in the '30s; whenever appearing as a western villain, Harlan seldom bothered to dress the part, generally showing up on the set with a stetson hat and a modern business suit. Kenneth Harlan left acting in 1944 to become a reasonably successful actor's agent and restauranteur.

Trivia: Vince Barnett was the son of Luke Barnett, a well-known comedian who specialized in insulting and pulling practical jokes on his audiences (Luke's professional nickname was "Old Man Ribber"). Vince remained in the family business by hiring himself out to Hollywood parties, where he would insult the guests in a thick German accent, spill the soup and drop the trays--all to the great delight of hosts who enjoyed watching their friends squirm and mutter "Who hired that jerk?" The diminutive, chrome-domed Barnett also appeared in the 1926 edition of Earl Carroll's Vanities. He began appearing in films in 1930, playing hundreds of comedy bits and supporting parts until retiring in 1975. Among Vince Barnett's more sizeable screen roles was the moronic, illiterate gangster "secretary" in Scarface (1931).

Trivia: Gravel-voiced, granite-faced former heavyweight boxer Frank C. Moran made his film debut as a convict in Mae West's She Done Him Wrong (1933). Though quickly typecast as a thick-eared brute, Moran was in real life a gentle soul, fond of poetry and fine art. Perhaps it was this aspect of his personality that attracted Moran to eccentric producer/director/writer Preston Sturges, who cast the big lug in all of his productions of the 1940s. It was Moran who, as a cop in Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), halted a tirade by an argumentative Jewish storeowner by barking, "Who do ya think you are, Hitler?" And it was Moran who, as a tough truck driver in Sullivan's Travels (1942), patiently explains to his traveling companions the meaning of the word "paraphrase." On a less lofty level, Frank Moran shared the title role with George Zucco in Monogram's Return of the Ape Man (1944).

Trivia: Diminutive American actor Angelo Rossitto was a fixture in American movies for more than 50 years, usually in highly visible supporting and extra roles. Born Angelo Salvatore Rossitto, he entered movies in his teens during the height of the silent era, making his first known appearance in The Beloved Rogue, starring John Barrymore, in 1926. Standing less than four feet tall, with dark hair and a grim visage, and billed at various times as Little Angie, Little Mo, and Little Angelo, Rossitto was a natural for pygmies and circus dwarves, often of a sinister appearing nature; his presence could help "dress" a carnival set or the setting for a fantasy film. He played the dwarf Angeleno in Tod Browning's Freaks at MGM, a pygmy in Cecil B. DeMille's The Sign of the Cross at Paramount, and one of the Three Little Pigs in the Laurel & Hardy-starring vehicle Babes in Toyland. Off camera, he was also a stand-in for Shirley Temple in several of her films. Rossitto didn't become a well-known figure, even among movie cultists, until he went to work for Monogram Pictures during the early '40s, in a series of low-budget horror films and horror film spoofs starring Bela Lugosi, often cast in tandem with the Hungarian-born actor as a kind of double act. His presence added to the bizarre, threatening nature of the films and he became as well known to fans of these low-budget movies as Lugosi, George Zucco, or any of the other credited stars. His role in the first of those Monogram productions with Lugosi, Spooks Run Wild, also starring the East Side Kids, deliberately played off of Lugosi's and Rossitto's sinister seeming images. In between his Poverty Row Monogram productions, the actor fit in small parts at Universal, including Preston Sturges' The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, and he was one of the jesters tormenting the blinded Samson in DeMille's Samson and Delilah. Rossitto, along with his younger contemporaries Jerry Maren, Frank Delfino, and Billy Curtis, was one of Hollywood's busier little people in the years after World War II. Rossitto can be spotted in carnival scenes in Carousel, appeared as the smallest of the "Moon Men" in the low-budget Jungle Jim movie Jungle Moon Men, and played the leader of the aliens in the late-'50s sci-fi satire Invasion of the Saucer Men. Many of Rossitto's appearances were in roles without character names, constituting highly specialized, uncredited (but highly visible) extra work, and he may have been in as many as 200 movies.On television in the late '60s and early '70s, he portrayed a life-sized puppet in the series H.R. Pufnstuf and played a hat in Lidsville. Rossitto was a sideshow huckster in the cheap cult horror movie Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, and as late as the mid-'80s was seen in a small role in Something Wicked This Way Comes and in the featured role of the Master-Blaster in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Although work in 200 movies and television shows sounds like a lot, most of those appearances involved only a single day's or a single week's work, rather than full-time employment. He made his regular living from the 1930s through the 1960s at a newsstand in Hollywood just outside the gate of one of the studios; he joked that when he was needed for a film, they would simply pass the word directly to him on the street and he would report.

Trivia: American actor George Eldredge began surfacing in films around 1936. A general hanger-on in the Universal horror product of the 1940s, Eldredge appeared in such roles as the village constable in Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and the DA in Calling Dr. Death (1943). His bland, malleable facial features enabled him to play everything from tanktown sheriffs to Nazi spies. Devotees of the "exploitation" films of the 1940s will remember Eldredge best as Dan Blake in the anti-syphilis tract Mom and Dad (1949). George Eldredge was once again in uniform as a small-town police chief in his final film, Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)

Trivia: The long-reigning king of Hollywood horror, Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt on November 23, 1887, in South London. The youngest of nine children, he was educated at London University in preparation for a career as a diplomat. However, in 1909, he emigrated to Canada to accept a job on a farm, and while living in Ontario he began pursuing acting, joining a touring company and adopting the stage name Boris Karloff. His first role was as an elderly man in a production of Molnar's The Devil, and for the next decade Karloff toiled in obscurity, traveling across North America in a variety of theatrical troupes. By 1919, he was living in Los Angeles, unemployed and considering a move into vaudeville, when instead he found regular work as an extra at Universal Studios. Karloff's first role of note was in 1919's His Majesty the American, and his first sizable part came in The Deadlier Sex a year later. Still, while he worked prolifically, his tenure in the silents was undistinguished, although it allowed him to hone his skills as a consummate screen villain.Karloff's first sound-era role was in the 1929 melodrama The Unholy Night, but he continued to languish without any kind of notice, remaining so anonymous even within the film industry itself that Picturegoer magazine credited 1931's The Criminal Code as his first film performance. The picture, a Columbia production, became his first significant hit, and soon Karloff was an in-demand character actor in projects ranging from the Wheeler and Woolsey comedy Cracked Nuts to the Edward G. Robinson vehicle Five Star Final to the serial adventure King of the Wild. Meanwhile, at Universal Studios, plans were underway to adapt the Mary Shelley classic Frankenstein in the wake of the studio's massive Bela Lugosi hit Dracula. Lugosi, however, rejected the role of the monster, opting instead to attach his name to a project titled Quasimodo which ultimately went unproduced. Karloff, on the Universal lot shooting 1931's Graft, was soon tapped by director James Whale to replace Lugosi as Dr. Frankenstein's monstrous creation, and with the aid of the studio's makeup and effects unit, he entered into his definitive role, becoming an overnight superstar. Touted as the natural successor to Lon Chaney, Karloff was signed by Universal to a seven-year contract, but first he needed to fulfill his prior commitments and exited to appear in films including the Howard Hawks classic Scarface and Business or Pleasure. Upon returning to the Universal stable, he portrayed himself in 1932's The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood before starring as a nightclub owner in Night World. However, Karloff soon reverted to type, starring in the title role in 1932's The Mummy, followed by a turn as a deaf-mute killer in Whale's superb The Old Dark House. On loan to MGM, he essayed the titular evildoer in The Mask of Fu Manchu, but on his return to Universal he demanded a bigger salary, at which point the studio dropped him. Karloff then journeyed back to Britain, where he starred in 1933's The Ghoul, before coming back to Hollywood to appear in John Ford's 1934 effort The Lost Patrol. After making amends with Universal, he co-starred with Lugosi in The Black Cat, the first of several pairings for the two actors, and in 1936 he starred in the stellar sequel The Bride of Frankenstein. Karloff spent the remainder of the 1930s continuing to work at an incredible pace, but the quality of his films, the vast majority of them B-list productions, began to taper off dramatically. Finally, in 1941, he began a three-year theatrical run in Arsenic and Old Lace before returning to Hollywood to star in the A-list production The Climax. Again, however, Karloff soon found himself consigned to Poverty Row efforts, such as 1945's The House of Frankenstein. He also found himself at RKO under Val Lewton's legendary horror unit. A few of his films were more distinguished -- he appeared in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Unconquered, and even Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer -- and in 1948 starred on Broadway in J.B. Priestley's The Linden Tree, but by and large Karloff delivered strong performances in weak projects. By the mid-'50s, he was a familiar presence on television, and from 1956 to 1958, hosted his own series. By the following decade, he was a fixture at Roger Corman's American International Pictures. In 1969, Karloff appeared in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets, a smart, sensitive tale in which he portrayed an aging horror film star; the role proved a perfect epitaph -- he died on February 2, 1969.

Trivia: The namesake nephew of American journalist Tris Coffin, actor Tristram Coffin set his stage career in motion at age 14. By 1939, the tall, silver-mustached Coffin was well on his way to becoming one of the screen's most prolific character actors. Generally cast as crooked lawyers, shifty business executives, and gang bosses in B-pictures, Coffin projected a pleasanter image in A-films, where he often played soft-spoken doctors and educators. In 1949, he essayed his one-and-only film starring role: heroic Jeff King in the Republic serial King of the Rocket Men. Even busier on TV than in films (he was virtually a regular "guest villain" on the Superman series), Tristram Coffin starred as Captain Ryning of the Arizona Rangers in the weekly syndicated Western 26 Men (1957-1958).