The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi

4. The Fateful Decision

4Tht Fattful Dtcision The future career of Bela Lugosi depended not solely on his own decisions -often not wise ones-but also on a number of complex factors . Among them were the monetary disagreements between Irving Thalberg and Lon Chaney at MGM, the opposing artistic and managerial views ofCarl Laemmle Jr. and Sr. at Universal, the complicated and sometimes contradictory desires of the owners of the copyrights of the play and novel ofDracula, and the ramifications ofwhat was proving to be a worldwide Depression. On April 28, 1929, the five-foot-three founder of Universal-feisty yet kindly Carl Laemmle-placed his equally diminutive son Carl Jr. in charge ofproduction at the studio as a present for his twenty-first birthday. Junior was a high-strung hypochondriac who wanted to be a boy genius like the all-seeing and all-knowing Irving Thalberg, who at a similar age had run Universal for Carl Sr. before moving to better-paying MGM. It has long been fashionable to laugh at Junior. Starlet Lucille Lund, noting that "his father had scratched his way up to the top, but Junior had it handed to him," called him "a little Napoleon," "a spoiled rich man's son," and "not capable of running a studio." She vividly remembered that "he was after all the girls, and ifyou didn't 'cooperate,' you didn't last too long at Universal."] Three other actresses, leaving the sexual issue aside, have also cast aspersions on Junior's managerial abilities: Gloria Stuart believed he "really wasn't qualified to produce pictures," Rose Hobart asserted that he "didn't know his ass from a shotgun," and Mae Clarke bluntly declared, "Junior was retarded."2 The derision would persist well after his permanent retirement from films in 1936. During World War II, when Junior entered the army, Vttriery noted, "Private Carl Laemmle, Jr., not only is an ex-hypo75 THE IMMORTAL COUNT chondriac, but looks fitter than ever. He's at Astoria with the Signal Corps."3 Although Junior became an army private, a decade earlier he had been Universal's general. True, he may not have been the best commander, but generally his decisions were more right than wrong. Without him there would have been no Dracula or Frankenstein, no horror cycle that soon followed at Universal and other major studios, and probably no Bela Lugosi as we know him. Junior Laemmle was far more adventurous than his father, who, except for a few major films, was mostly content making westerns and "B" productions. "Quantity not quality" could well have been his motto. Occasionally Universal ventured into the big time, as with Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives (1922) and Merry-Go-Round (1923), and Lon Chaney's The Hunchback ofNotre Dame (1923) and The Phantom ofthe Opera (1925). When the studio lost Chaney to MGM, Universal did not entirely abandon its "horror" mode, and made The Cat and the Canary (1927) and The Man Who Laughs (1928), both directed by German import Paul Leni. Junior wanted to make more of these expensive and prestigious pictures, for only through them, he felt, could the studio achieve big profits. Junior initiated his new plan in the late summer of 1929 byabandoning mass-produced minor films in order to make major ones. In 1928, Universal had issued twenty-three westerns out ofan overall total offiftyeight films; one year later, the numbers were fifteen westerns out offortynine . In 1930, only nine westerns were issued among the forty films shot. In 1931, only one western was produced of the twenty films released.4 With the advent ofsound, a new genre came into being-the musical. Other studios had already made several, but Junior wanted more than to rival them. He intended to surpass their efforts by producing a lavish film, a musical to end all musicals. Envisioned as more than just a revamped operetta or a simple story containing some songs, The King ofJazz was to be outrageously modern. Itwould be a kind ofbiography ofPaul Whiteman, America's leading bandleader, whose phonograph records sold in the millions . Junior was anxious to begin on this new project and rashly hired Whiteman and his orchestra at $8,000 a week. Upon their arrival at the studio in the summer of 1929, there was nothing for them to do because there wasn't yet a script! They enjoyed what turned out to be a highly paid vacation...