Joke Issue
On the eve of The Black Cat’s release, Street caught up with Bela Lugosi, who has been a Hollywood sensation since his 1931 performance as Count Dracula. The master spoke in his thick, entrancing accent about fame, Edgar Allen Poe and Boris Karloff. We were at times taken aback by Mr. Lugosi’s rhetoric, which do not reflect the standards of this fine publication. By R. M. Renfield Street: Your next film is entitled The Black Cat. Are you superstitious at all? BL: It’s not superstition if it’s true. I don’t know how many times I’ve forgotten to splash goat urine on my face in the morning and have been hit by an old woman with a tree branch later that day because of it. My wife and I recently bought a castle last week, and I, without thinking, brought a hoe into the house. My poor wife was horrified! I carried the evil omen out of our blessed home by walking backward to avoid the curse of Hurnken, the she–demon of unhappy homes and infected wounds. I don’t want one hoe to ruin our happiness.
Street: This is your first film with the great Boris Karloff. What is it like to work with a living legend? BL: Perhaps you should ask him that! You take his makeup off, and he’s just a beastly, half–human, monster pervert with a repugnant personal stench that attaches itself to his surroundings and becomes a magnet for maggots and prostitutes — God’s experiment in allowing naked id to wander the earth. The Neanderthal isn’t fit to smell my excrement. We had a running joke on set. Every time he would open that cavernous rot–hole and spew his lines in garbled, incomprehensible half–English, we would poke him with a cattle prod. [Ed. Note: Universal Pictures and the cast and crew of The Black Cat wishes the reader to know that they refute this allegation.]
Street: You play larger–than–life roles on screen. Has anyone ever mistaken you for one of your characters? BL: People can’t separate me from my characters. I don’t know how many times I’ve been at the morgue or the cemetery and people have mistaken me for Dracula. Conversely, I don’t know how many times I’ve been caught making whoopee to a horse and been mistaken for Boris Karloff! Zing! Street: You’re in your 50s, and yet your new wife is 19. How did you meet? BL: It was over a decade ago that I first set my eyes on Ilona. She was pulling an ox–cart over the cobblestone streets of our native village of Lugos in the annual female–breaking competition of the fall. As she gritted her teeth and howled like wolf, barreling across the finish line, I knew she would be one day to fit to have my children. Unfortunately, my bosses in Hollywood didn’t understand that women are fit to marry as soon as they can heave a calf over one shoulder and nurse a baby with the other hand (another right of passage in Lugos), and I was forced to wait a decade before I could marry her.
Street: This is your second film adapted from an Edgar Allen Poe short story. What attracts you to his work? BL: I choose my roles in a democratic process. I hold weekly meetings in my castle. 13 black–clad worshippers gather around a pentagram and chant my name, while a company representative pitches a part and presents an animal sacrifice. Votes are tallied on the representative’s bare flesh, using the tooth of a wolverine. Poe’s works always seem to be a big hit. I can’t complain! Poe is a man fit to play me!
Street: You’re often typecast in horror films. Would you like to try something else? BL: I’ve always wanted to work with Busby Berkeley. Dancing is one of my secret hobbies, along with scrapbooking and sadomasochism. I heard that Karloff was up for a role in Gold Diggers of 1933, but Berkeley decided to cast a piece of roadkill instead. He thought it would be a better dancer.
