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DRACULA’S LAST HURRAH

By Frank J. Dello Stritto & Andi Brooks

{The interviews transcribed below were conducted by the authors in preparing their book, Vampire Over London – Bela Lugosi in Britain, which Cult Movies Press is now proud to offer.}

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we report our interviews with the surviving cast members of  Bela Lugosi’s last stage tour of Dracula in Britain in 1951.  Contrary to most published accounts, the tour was not a failure that closed after a few performances.  Lugosi’s farewell to his great role played more than 200 performances as it criss-crossed the British isles for six months.  The tour and Lugosi in particular received generally fine reviews. 

Our interviews with the cast members—Richard Butler and John Martin (who both played Jonathan Harker), Eric Lindsay (Renfield), Sheila Wynn (Lucy Seward), Joan Winmill and Joan Harding (both played Wells the Maid)—provided rich detail on the tour itself and on working with the Lugosis.  To complete the story we wanted to find the decision makers behind the scenes.

Through a letter published in The Stage, the trade journal of British theatre, we managed to locate Richard Eastham, Dracula’s director, living in retirement east of London.  Retirement has not slowed him down at all, and “Dickie,” as everyone calls him, showed the quickness of mind and movement that the cast members recalled.

Dickie Eastham was born in Stockport.  He hailed from a theatrical family; his grandparents were third generation vaudevillians.  As a young boy he was often taken to plays, one of them a 1928 production of Dracula performed by Hamilton Deane’s company.  By then Dickie had decided on a career in theatre.  A small, dynamic man of many talents, Dickie took up directing, and showed a talent for whipping an amorphous company into shape and getting a show into production.  That talent was prized by the many actors he worked with, including by 1951 John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.  Dickie’s wartime stint in the army ended with an assignment in Germany to restore damaged opera houses, and gave him first hand experience in a rich theatre culture cut off from Britain since the 1930s.  On returning to London, Dickie worked as a writer at Rank Studios, and then returned to theatre and his special love, English pantomime.

Frank interviewed Eastham, at his home east of London on July 25, 1999:

Frank Dello Stritto: How did you get involved in Dracula?

Richard Eastham: I had known John Mather, the producer, for some years.  John had been a stage director in the West End.  In the 1940s, I travelled a lot, and whenever I was in London, I shared John’s flat on Percy Street off Tottenham Court Road.  So, when I got back to London in March 1951, John called me right away, and asked if I would direct Dracula. 

FDS: Got back from where?

RE:   Oh, I had been abroad almost a year.  About seven months touring North America as stage director of the Sadler Wells Theatre Ballet.  Then I spent the winter in Halifax and Newfoundland, directing plays and pantomime.     

FDS: Do you remember what you were paid for Dracula?

RE:   A flat £100.  Directors usually received a percentage of the receipts, but I was doing it more out of friendship.  John called and said “You’ll do this for me, won’t you?”   So for £100, I would bring Dracula through rehearsals and its opening.

FDS: Did you have anything to do with the tour after it opened?

RE:   No, not really.  I met with the cast the day after the opening, and went through my notes.  That was pretty much my farewell.  That’s when Bela gave me this picture (a postcard sized portrait, autographed in red ink, “To Dick with appreciation – Bela.”).  He was a lovely man.  Everyone got on well with him.

FDS: What did you think of Deane & Balderston’s play?

RE:   When I read it, I was surprised how old-fashioned it was.  But the big problem is that is was rather short—about an hour and ten to twenty minutes.  Audiences expected a full evening—curtain up at 7:30 and certainly not getting out before 9:00.  I padded it with longer speeches.  I tried to steer it away from Victorian melodrama.  With two very long breaks, the entire performance was about 2:05 minutes.

FDS: Hamilton Deane was still living in London then.  Was he ever asked to play Van Helsing?

RE:   No, it never came up.  He never contacted us, and we didn’t contact him.

FDS: Did you have anything to do with the sets?

RE:   Oh, yes.  Dracula was produced on the cheap.  Bertram Tyrer and I scouted around theatre shops for old scenery.  Bertram was a genius.  He dabbled in many things, set design was only one of them.  He could paint with either hand.  He repainted the sets we bought—they looked very good, but definitely on the cheap.

FDS: There were only two weeks of rehearsals.  Was that enough?

RE:   Two weeks was too short.  But it was an absolute luxury compared to the 6 days or so I usually had to work with in stock companies.  I had to churn out a play a week.  So, two weeks was not too bad.

FDS: Where were the rehearsals?

RE:   They were above a pub on Pont Street.  John and I arranged for Bela and Lillian to have a flat nearby on Chesham Place.  Both were near Routledge & White’s office on Knightsbridge.  That’s where John worked out of.

FDS: Tell me about your first meeting with Bela.

RE:   Oh, that’s a bit of a story.  There was nothing planned for him on his first night in town.  I forget why.  So, the next night, I took Bela and Lillian to dinner.  I wanted to talk to them alone about what I was doing with the play.  Sometimes older actors get very suspicious when someone tinkers with a play they know really well.  We went to my favorite restaurant in London, the Leçu de France.  I noticed for the first time that Bela was a big man, with a big chest, but still he looked rather frail.  He was also hard of hearing—not chronically, but noticeable.  I was wondering how to break the ice, but Bela did it for me.  “Dickie,” he said in that deep accent, “I don’t like the toilet paper in your country—it doesn’t soak up the manure very well.”  We all laughed, and I sensed then that there would be no problems between Bela and me. While we ate, I assured Bela that though I was adding to the play, none of his scenes had been altered.  His entrances and exits would be exactly as they always were.  Bela just ate his dinner.  “No problem, my dear boy” was all he said.  Lillian was not so sure.  She was very protective.  I thought I handled the changes well, lengthening the play but not disturbing Bela’s part.  I wrote a prologue.  Before the first curtain, Sheila stood between two sheets of gauze—a clear sheet and a sheet with a large bat imprinted on it.  Bela would stand behind the sheets in mist.

FDS: What was your opinion of Lillian?

RE:    Lillian was very nice, very quiet.  She was very protective, but very much in the background, not overt.  Lillian was not happy with some things.  She had opinions, but always handled them tactfully.  Appearance-wise, Emma Thompson reminds me a bit of Lillian.  Lillian and John Mather never got along.  Well, while we were eating that night, the sommelier passed.  He was Hungarian—we all thought he was French, but it turned out he was Hungarian.  He all but fell to his knees.  “Mr. Lugosi!”  He had seen Bela on stage in Hungary long, long ago as Hamlet.  I dined with Bela and Lillian a lot during the month we worked together.

FDS: What else did you do to prepare the production?

RE:    As soon as I took the job, I recruited two men specifically: David Dawson as Seward and Alfred Beale as business manager.   They would be the solid backbone of the company.  Alfred Beale was a lovely man.  Alfred was exactly what you wanted in a business manager—solid and by-the-book.  When we first met, he was general manager of the Harry Hanson Corp Players in Peterborough, where I did a turn as resident director.  Alfred always helped me in dealing with Harry.  David Dawson was an Australian, a tall man about 6’2” and in his mid-forties.  I had worked with him in War & Peace at the Unity Theatre.  Between acting jobs, he worked as a “supply teacher” (editor’s note: roughly equal to substitute teacher or adjunct facility in America).  I got him a good salary, £40 per week I think.  But I wanted a good solid actor in that part.  Seward is more important to holding things together in the play than most people realize.  Otherwise, I was involved in casting and had opinions, but left the final decisions to John.  I was not particularly keen on Sheila Wynn as Lucy—her long auburn hair was good for the part, but I would have preferred a leaner girl.  But John and George Routledge were very keen on having her.  Except for Eric Lindsay and David Dawson, I felt the cast did not “believe” in the material.  Of course Joan Winmill was deathly afraid of Bela—both onstage and off.  David played it perfectly straight, and Eric was full-blown into his part.  He pantomimed catching flies in mid-air, and the gimmick worked great.

FDS: What do you remember about the dress rehearsal?

RE:    Dress rehearsal was definitely Sunday, as the theatre had a show in on Saturday. Bela used some Americanisms when he spoke.  I did not always get them at first try.   Bela’s spoke of playing Dracula in “full evening dress.”  I did not know at first that he meant white tie and tails.  But that’s what I had expected anyhow.  Megs Jenkins (editor’s note: a well know stage actress, and wife of John Mather’s business partner, George Routledge) sat next to me through the rehearsal .  I had known her since my days at Rank Studios.  She leaned over and said, “This is pretty poor.”  She was right.  The performance held together but just barely.  It was flat, dull, lumpy.  I was depressed about it.  Opening night was somewhat better.

FDS: Was Bela in the coffin for the final scene?

RE:   He was definitely not in the coffin.  It was a dummy.  We might not have gotten him erect for the curtain calls.  But Bela himself suggested that he do the closing monologue, that Van Helsing is supposed to give.  He said that he always did it when he played in the States.  That worked very well.

After his month with Dracula Dickie Eastham continued his theatre career until the 1960s, when he joined John Mather, who then headed the London office of the William Morris talent agency.  John handled film work and Dickie concentrated on theatre.  He tells wonderful stories of shepherding American stars with their Hollywood-size egos through British and European theatre.

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Dickie provided us with John Mather’s phone number.  John was everyone’s boss on the Dracula tour, and we needed to talk with him to have the complete story of 1951. 

John Chartres Mather had been in theatre since age 12.  Taking his lead from Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musicals, the young man staged local revues in his native Edinburgh.  After a year as stagehand in Dundee repertory, he took on London.  Through the war years, he launched musical revues to entertain British troops.  John also did tenures as stage director on the road and on the West End.  By the late 1940s, still in his mid-20s, John was producing his own musical revues.  John’s tastes in productions tended towards extravaganzas, and he always over-reached a bit, “flying before I could walk” as he described it.  Musicals were expensive undertakings; they lost big when they failed and earned big when they succeeded.  Fine Feathers temporarily made him rich.  His labor of love, Out of This World, folded in previews, a devastating setback financially and personally.  Musicals were John’s first love, but the expense and recent track records of the big productions he favored made them difficult to finance. John needed to get into something new.  With his partners George Routledge and Gordon White, he formed Chartres Productions in early 1951.

Frank interviewed John Mather at his home in south England on August 8, 1999:

Frank Dello Stritto: How did you decide to produce Dracula?

John C. Mather:  I was having drinks with a few friends in London.  Charles Feldman, head of Famous Artists, was there. There were three big talent agencies at the time—William Morris, MCA and Famous Artists.  Charlie had heard that Bela Lugosi’s agent in the US was trying to interest someone in Dracula.  By coincidence, Gordon White had mentioned it to me also a few weeks or months before.  So, that was when I first thought about it seriously.

FDS: How did that work—putting together a production?

JCM: First, I had to make sure I could book it.  I took the idea to the theatre agents.  The West End theatres wouldn’t even talk to me until it had toured.  There were three big theatre circuits for the tours—the Stoll Circuit, Moss-Empire, Howard & Wyndham.  They each had about 10 or so “Number 1” theatres around the country.  Then there were “Number 2” and “Number 3” theatres in the smaller towns.  You could make money even at the #3’s, since there wasn’t much else to do in those places.  Deals with theatres ranged from 50/50 to 60/40 splits, depending on a lot of things: production, stars, publicity budget.  Booking agents wanted to see my budget for publicity posters in detail: 300 double posters, 150 four-crowns, 6,000 throwaways, placards, etc.  The plan was always to get into the West End.  Early in the tour, I had a verbal agreement with the Garrick theatre: the production then playing there was expected to drop below its box office threshold soon.  After 3 weeks below the limit, the theatre could give it a two week notice.  Then “Dracula” could come in.  Tour for 6 to 8 weeks and then into the Garrick Theatre—that was the plan.  I had dates lined up for the tour, and would have cancelled them if the call came from the West End.  It never did.  I never intended to tour for 24 weeks.

FDS: Why were you interested in Dracula?

JCM: In 1951, Americans-in-the-flesh were in vogue.  Danny Kaye had been coming over regularly, and there was a demand for more. I think that’s when Judy Garland started coming over as well.  Just prior to Dracula, George Routledge did “fronting up” for a Jane Russell revue.  And I knew I could pull Dracula together pretty quickly.

FDS: Fronting up?

JCM: Fronting up—supplying the supporting acts that come on before the star attraction.

FDS: What was your budget like?

JCM: I invested about £2,000.  Bill Williams about £1,000, and £2,000 each from other backers.  I don’t remember who they were. I think one of the backers was named “Burton,” in real estate or something like that.  He was dating a “Renee” who was in some of my musical reviews.  I just doesn’t remember their full names.  So, about £7,000.  For that I could get the show started and keep it on the road for as long as I had to.

FDS: What about Routledge & White?

JCM: They were my partners in Chartres Productions, but they never had much to do with Dracula.  George Routledge liked the idea, as I recall, but he wasn’t interested in investing in it or working on it.  Gordon White thought it was a terrible idea—didn’t think it would succeed at all.  He thought we were crazy, but he handled the negotiations to contract Bela.

FDS: All the programs for Dracula mention Routledge & White very prominently.

JCM: Well, they were my partners, and we used the same office, so I put their names on the programs.  But they really didn’t have much to do with it. Gordon White quit the business and worked with Jimmy Hanson when he set up the Hanson Trust.  Gordon died a few years ago in California, a very wealthy man.  George Routledge had some legal and money problems and left the business a few years after Dracula.  He lives in Denmark now.

FDS: Was Lee Ephraim a backer?

JCM: No, he wasn’t.  I knew Lee well, and his partner Betty Farmar.  I had worked for Lee on Waltz Time and Lee had been a backer on Out Of This World.

FDS: How about Nigel Ballantine?

JCM: Oh, no!  Nigel was in jail by then!

FDS: In jail?

JCM: He ran off with the leading lady and all the money from one of his productions, and got caught.

FDS: What was your impression of Bela?

JCM: I met Bela and Lillian when they landed in Southampton.  Bela looked as if he were going to die.  He always looked that way. Bela was very charming, very humble, not conceited in the least.  For the first 2 or 3 days of rehearsals, he only walked through his part.  I was wondering about cancelling the whole thing.  On the third day, Dickie Eastham asked the cast to do their read-throughs in character.  Bela stood straight and awed everyone.  Bela had always looked like a tired old man—very gray, very old and bent, years older than his actual age.  He spoke very slowly, softly and mumbled a bit.  This all changed when he was onstage—the transformation was complete: he looked 40 again, erect and towering.  When he was Dracula, he had this twinkle in his eye.  He was so charming, and then so evil.  It was magnificent.

FDS: Tell me about your first meeting with Bela.

JCM: I think Dickie and me both went to Southampton to meet Bela and Lillian.  I put them into a hired limousine and hurried ahead to London. I had the flat stocked with goodies, and a bottle of champagne waiting.  I had made a reservation at Carlton Towers, a table by the window for 6:00.  Lillian said “No, Bela’s tired and he’s going straight to bed.”  We dined there later, several times, and it became a favorite of theirs.

FDS: I have been warned that you and Lillian didn’t always see eye to eye.

JCM: Oh, she was awful!  Awful!  She loathed me.  It was mutual loathing from the first day.

FDS: Well, I must say that everyone else on the tour speaks well of her.

JCM: Really?  Well, she was an extraordinary woman, but a pain-in-the-ass.  She took notes through the rehearsals, and interfered.  I had it out with her once.  After that, she sat in the back of the stalls; but still kept those notes.  Lillian looked tough and was a strong woman, physically.  At dress rehearsal, a hamper was in the way.  Lillian lifted it and set it on the table.  I went and looked inside—it was filled with books and files.  I was curious and nudged it to check its weight, and wondered if I could have lifted it.  Lillian seemed desperately unhappy.  I think she had a terrible inferiority complex.  She had a strident voice, heavy Chicago accent.  Nothing ever pleased her—in restaurants and the theatre, anywhere.  She browbeat Bela, who just seemed to tune her out and accept it.  She was bitter about how Bela was treated—Hollywood had once been at his feet, studios phoning constantly, but now they shunned him.

FDS: Again, the company members we’ve talked to have quite different memories of her.  If anything, they think Bela controlled her life.

JCM: I think Lillian bullied Bela, a bit—treated him like a child.  At dinner she did  everything but cut his meat.  She sent food back in restaurants.  I think Bela was used to this, since he just munched away.  She was always at the side of the stage—every night.  Something was always wrong that she’d complain about.

{Authors’ Note: In our follow-up interviews, we pressed Dickie Eastham on John Mather’s memories of Lillian.  Dickie stands by his much more favorable memories of Lillian, but strongly confirms that John and Lillian simply never got along. “It was chemical,” Dickie told us, “it started as soon as they met.”  Lillian undoubtedly could be fiercely protective of Bela.  John, as the producer of a tour that was not quite what she and Bela expected, saw a side of that affection that few others did.}

FDS: I have to ask you something directly.  There has always been a persistent claim that Bela was never paid for the Dracula tour.

JCM: Oh, he was definitely paid.  Everyone actor in every show I ever produced was paid.  I treated Bela and Lillian well.  I didn’t want them saying anything negative like that about me.  I couldn’t survive long in this business with people saying I didn’t pay them.

FDS: Any special memories of Bela?

JCM: Bela was always marvelous, once you got to know him. At our first meeting in Southampton, I thought he looked so feeble and I really feared for the production, but he never let us down.  I dined out with them often, especially during rehearsals in April.  I always watched Bela’s intake of alcohol.  I did that with all the stars of my shows.  He never drank that much in front of me.  Lillian saw that he didn’t.  Before dinner, I would go to their flat on Chesham Road to pick them up.  Once, while Lillian got ready, Bela sat me down on the sofa, and brought out a huge scrapbook of old clippings.  They were from his days in Hungary.  They were all in Hungarian of course, and I couldn’t read anything but Bela’s name in the headline.  They were obvious rave reviews.  Bela went through them one by one.  It was very important to him, I think, for me to know about his days before Dracula.

FDS: Do you have any memories of the rehearsals.

JCM: The rehearsals started in bare rooms above the pub on Pont Street.  For the second week, we moved to the Duke of York Theatre.  It had a one-set play on at the time.  So, we could rehearse during the day, and put the set back in place before the performance.  It was a courtesy that theatres extended to productions in rehearsal.  I was at some rehearsals, but only to observe.  Dickie and I would meet afterwards to discuss how it was going.  If there was any problem, I would talk to Bela about it over dinner.  But things went smoothly enough.

FDS: How about the dress rehearsal?

JCM: That’s a different story.  Things didn’t go well.  The effects did not work.  The smoke took seven seconds to get through the pipes.  Too much smoke and the house was filled.  Too little and it had no effect.  Bela had to disappear in the smoke—no smoke and he was left standing there.  It took forever to work out.  Lighting effects were a bit difficult—but nothing compared to the musicals I had produced.  Those were really complex.  So, I thought Dracula would go pretty smoothly.  But it didn’t.  Strand Electric—that’s where I got the equipment from—was supposed to send a man down to Brighton for the week, but never did.  I was very annoyed.  We kept the cast until two in the morning, working through the lighting effects.  We let the cast go to get some rest.  The rest of the company stayed until eight in the morning.  Dickie and I went to breakfast and commiserated.  But we got them straight, and the opening went well.  The reviews were fine.

FDS: You had your own lighting equipment?  Wouldn’t the theatre have that?

JCM: Yes, we had our own.  We had to.  On tour, you never know what the theatres have.  So, we had to able to do it ourselves.

FDS: How did the tour do?

JCM: Dracula had too high a weekly expense to make money on the road.  I had to get it into the West End, and didn’t.  So, I lost money.  Not a lot.  Some weeks, it made money, some weeks it didn’t.  Dracula was not cheap to produce.  There was Bela’s salary.  There were nurses at every performance; so St. John’s Ambulance had to be paid a contribution.  There were 3 or 4 musicians every week to play at the intermissions.  We had long intermissions, and had to fill them with something.

FDS: How was the company to deal with?

JCM: It was a nice company—not much trouble, not many complaints.  Whenever the tour was near London, I would catch the show to check on things.  I’d circulate around the dressing rooms talking to everyone I could.  It was a good cast.  Most of the problems mentioned to me, I referred to Alfred Beale, so as not to usurp his authority.

FDS: So, Beale was in charge on the road?

JCM: Yes, he would call me every night to report on the box office and the performance.  He was a good man and a good business director.  He had a good heart.  He’d be tough with the company when he had to be, but then he’d apologize and undo whatever good he had done.  But he was a good manager and I was glad to have him.

FDS: The programs list a Douglas Bodkin as publicity manager.  We’ve been looking for him.  Do you have any memories of him?

JCM: Not really.  He was the advance publicity man.  He did all his work Mondays and Tuesdays—lining up the publicity, arranging for a few things.  But I didn’t know him well then, and I’ve heard nothing about him since.

FDS: The programs also list a W. H. Williams as your co-producer.  What about him?

JCM: Bill Williams was the head of Merton Park Studios.  He was more of a backer than a producer, but I felt I owed him something, so I billed him as co-producer.  Bill invested in Dracula and has also put money into Out of This World.  He supplied the smoke machine and the bat that you’ve heard so much about.  Honestly, I hadn’t heard any of the stories about them breaking down until I spoke to you.  By the way, I do remember that my sister, Rosemary, attended a theatre garden party with Bela.  For some reason, Lillian couldn’t go, so my sister went with him.

FDS: Theatre garden party?

JCM: There were theatre garden parties and movie garden parties.  They would be held on  large outdoor lawns.  Shepperton Studios lot was a typical place. People would go and meet actors and actresses.  Stars would sit at tables and sign autographs.  Sometimes they would be driven to different sites through the day.  For producers, they were a bit of a nuisance, but a good place to show off actors.  Rank studios always paraded out its starlets.  I remember I saw Honor Blackman and Joan Collins at these parties.  You can speak to my sister about her day with Bela.

FDS: How close did you come to getting Dracula into the West End?

JCM: Very close.  The Garrick wanted us after its current play closed, but that play—I forget what it was—hung on and on. I also had discussions with the Duke of York and The Ambassador, and they were very interested.  If we could have kept the tour going, I would have gotten it into one of them.

FDS: Why did the tour end?

JCM: Touring is hard work, and I never planned that we would tour for six months.  Late in the tour, I received a call from Alfred Beale, “I’m a bit worried about Bela,” he said, “He came on in Act III, and started with Act I dialogue.”  I went and met with Bela, and realized how tired he was.  You see, he always looked so tired offstage but was always so good on stage.  I had just learned to ignore it, but he was really exhausted. We were discussing some details in his dressing room when Lillian came in.  “It’s late,” she said.  She took out some sort of kit, and gave Bela an injection.  “You know, he’s diabetic.”  I knew that wasn’t true.  I had heard about some kind of injections, but didn’t think much about it, since Bela was always so good onstage.

FDS: Is that when you decided to end the tour?

JCM: No, but I didn’t quite know what to do.  I still kept looking for bookings for the tour, and had lined up a few dates near Newcastle & Liverpool, but Lillian said, “Oh, don’t put us up there again.”  She wanted to keep the travelling to a minimum.  Two or three weeks later I visited Bela backstage in Derby.  Lillian wasn’t there.  I told Bela that we had to play those dates or not play at all.  He looked at me a long time.  “John, I can’t go on,” he said, “It’s taking too much out of me.  Please finish it quickly.”  I put up the closing notices that week.

FDS: But you played Portsmouth two weeks later.

JCM: Yes, I had already signed for that week, and I had to give the company two weeks notice.  Those were the rules.  Portsmouth was a bad week at the box office.

FDS: When was the last time you saw Bela?

JCM: I visited them after the tour ended, before he started filming the movie he made.  He still looked very tired.  I had no second thoughts.  He sat in a chair and we just talked.  He said he was glad the tour was over, but that he had enjoyed it.  He told me some anecdotes from the tour, and we said goodbye.  As I was leaving Lillian gave me a hug and thanked me.  I was surprised that she did that.  It was a side of her that I had never seen.

John Mather lost some money on the Dracula tour, but a year later he tried the same formula with a tour of the mystery, Shadow of a Man, starring Sonny Tufts.  The tour did fine until Tufts, battling a drinking problem, came onstage between acts, told the audience who-done-it, and then launched into his own stage act using a piano that was part of the set.  The audience loved the surprise, the theatre management did not.  Any performance on a British stage had to be approved by the censors beforehand, and such improvisation exposed to the theatre to legal action, especially if Tufts’ act contained any adult humor.  Word spread quickly throughout the theatre chains, and the tour soon ended.

In London John worked for the Danziger brothers, producing 26 episodes of Mayfair Mysteries for Paramount.  In the early days of television, many American shows were made in Britain due to the lower costs.  John had 40 days to produce the entire series.  Character actor Paul Douglas flew in for a single day from Los Angeles, filmed all 26 introductions and epilogues, and flew back without staying the night.  Incredibly, filming completed almost two weeks early.  The Danizigers thus had 10 days of paid studio space to use; launching John on his most enduring and infamous achievement.  Devil Girl From Mars was written in a few days, as John telephoned around London for available actors and had the sets prepared.  AtomAge, British suppliers of latex, the latest wonder material, cut him a good deal on the Devil Girl’s costume.  Pat Laffan, in the title role, liked the feel of it and loved how it looked.  John took screenwriting credit for Devil Girl From Mars, but in the chaos of low budget, tight schedule filmmaking, everyone did everything.  A wonderfully awful movie of the type that only the 1950s could sire resulted. Like many early science fiction epics, Devil Girl From Mars’ clumsiness and naiveté gives it a charm that delights its fans and mortifies its detractors.

In 1954, John established a talent agency in Rome, where American movie companies were doing lots of filming due to the low production costs. He ran John C. Mather International, Ltd. for many years, before selling out to the William Morris Agency.  He then ran the London office of the Morris agency.  In 1973, he returned to theatre production.  His extravagant stage version of  The Avengers featured terrific special effects, with a helicopter crashing onstage in the finale.  Audiences loved it, but it closed in London after seven weeks—too expensive to turn a profit.  Following his retirement from show business, John took up writing, and has published several novels to date.  His as-yet unpublished autobiography, Hollywood on the Tiber, focuses on his days as a talent agent in Italy.

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With the interviews of the Dracula company members, and with the ongoing help from Richard Gordon in New York, we had the framework of the complete story of 1951.  We continued researching the tour and searching for people that had worked with Lugosi in Britain.  Andi’s letter writing campaign to British newspapers uncovered many people that had seen Lugosi perform.  A few of these had met Bela and offered us lengthy reminiscences that had never been revealed before.  Frank interviewed John Mather’s sister about the day she spent with Bela at a theatre garden party, and met with Hamilton Deane’s niece and nephew about their memories of the man who wrote the first dramatization of Bram Stoker’s novel.   Andi found and interviewed the cinematographers from Bela’s first two British films, 1935’s Mystery Of The Mary Celeste and 1939’s Dark Eyes Of London, and Tilly Day, “script girl” on the 1935 movie.  A traveling production of The Importance of Being Earnest brought Dora Bryan, Bela’s co-star in 1951’s Mother Riley Meets The Vampire, near Frank’s flat in Aberdeen.  Andi tracked down Harry Ludlam, whose reminiscence of meeting Bela in 1951 was for many years the only available first person account of him during the Dracula tour.  Frank had brief correspondence with George Routledge in Denmark.  Routledge, now in his 80s, professed no memory at all of Lugosi, but always answered specific questions.

The writing was declared finished on July 1, 2000.  As we prepared to go to press, we learned that a member of the backstage crew of the Dracula company was living in Toronto.  During the Toronto premiere of the Dracula ballet in 1999, she had briefly talked with Elizabeth Miller of the Dracula Society.   Elizabeth did not have her address, and was not even sure of the name, but we knew this woman must be the tour’s original assistant stage manager (ie, ASM), Janet Reid, the only Canadian on the tour.  Andi quickly located her through newspaper inquiries, and Frank, who by then was living in Houston, contacted her.

Janet hails from Winnipeg, and after World War II came to London with her English mother to audition for the Royal Academy in London.  She was looking for a career in acting, but also wanted to escape Canada’s harsh winters, which wrecked havoc on her health.  She was admitted to the Academy in 1947, and studied there for 2 years.  Janet stood about 4’11”, was blonde and very jolly, but a weak voice undermined her hopes to play in musical theatre.  Work was scarce when she graduated, but she eventually found a job in weekly repertory in Horsham.

Frank interviewed Janet by telephone in July 2000:

Frank Dello Stritto: What were you doing just before joining the Dracula company?

Janet Reid: In early 1951 I was 21, and applied for a stage management job at a small club theatre in central London, the New Boltons.  I met the Director, Peter Cotes, and was hired as a salary of about £6 a week, which was pretty hard to live on in London.  I  worked as ASM.

FDS: Club theatre?

JR:    Yes, like a nightclub, but with a play for entertainment.  What Americans call “dinner theatre.”  It was in Chelsea where my mother lived.  About 2 months later a friend heard of the Bela Lugosi show—and that they were paying £10 a week, for an ASM—an enormous amount!  I would be understudying the part of the maid.  I gave in my notice, and joined the Dracula company; and that’s how I met Bela.

FDS: Well, what was Bela like?

JR:    He was a lot of fun, a sweetheart, a gentleman and a gentle man.  He was the star, but a really sweet guy, a pleasure to be with, friendly to the cast and crew—no “big star” airs. Lillian told me, “Don’t be afraid of Bela, he’s just a big pussy cat,” and I agree.

FDS: What did you think of Lillian?

JR:    Lillian was obviously devoted to him.  During the performances, she sat in a dim corner backstage, where she could see him.  On his exit, she would hand him the lit cigar she had keep going for him—I think she puffed on it from time to time to keep it going!  I often wondered if she liked the cigar, but I never had the nerve to ask her.  We had a hard time with Bela and his cigars—smoking backstage was strictly forbidden but he still ignored the “No Smoking” signs.  In desperation we printed some in Hungarian.

FDS: Did that work?

JR:    No, he pretended he couldn’t understand the language.   “I can’t read them,” he said.

FDS: Did you talk much to Bela backstage?

JR:    Sometimes.  Bela told me that he wanted one final tour as Dracula.  He said he was glad to have the chance to do it once more.  Bela really believed in his character.  It seemed to give him much pleasure.  He believed in it so strongly, and took pains to see that everything went the way it should.  Bela was very concerned with his trunk and cape.  The cape was satin lined, but of a heavy material.  He looked after it very carefully.  He might have been concerned that it would go astray.  Every night he would lock it in his trunk.  One night he left the key to his trunk in his hotel.  We called the hotel clerk.  He got it, and sent it by taxi to the theatre.  We got Bela’s cape on him just in time for the curtain.

FDS: Any stories or anecdotes of Bela?

JR:    Well, he pinched my bottom once?

FDS: Did he? 

JR:    Once he was onstage alone between performances, in full costume.  He just stood there, lost in thought.  Finally, he saw me looking at him.  He opened his cape, and said “come here, under my cloak.”  I did.  He wrapped it around me and then pinched my bottom.

FDS: What did you do?

JR:    Oh, I let out a mock scream, laughed and ran away.

FDS: Did you see any evidence that Bela was having back and leg pains.

JR:    Not really, but backstage, Bela didn’t walk much, didn’t move much.  When he was in the wings, he just stood there.

FDS: As ASM, did you work with the bat?

JR:    Oh yes, it had to be rigged up with wires to fly back and forth across the stage.  We rehearsed them endlessly as it was very temperamental and from time to time crash- landed unexpectedly, but all in all it was very effective.

FDS: I sent you a list of the company members.  Do you recall anything about them?  Did you make friends with any of them? 

JR: Yes, I know I was friendly with them, but I really don’t remember the names.  The company did not pal around a lot.  I do remember Joan Winmill.  I remember when she passed out in Middlesbrough. <

FDS: Really, she told me that story, but I had my doubts about it.

JR:     Oh, no—it’s true.  I literally stripped off her costume backstage.  There was no privacy.  And I finished the performance for her.  In my career I was an understudy four times, and each time I got to go on when the actress could not perform.  That one performance was my swan song with Dracula.  I dropped out right after that. The company went on to Belfast, and I went back to London.

FDS: Why did you leave?

JR:     I was subject to throat infections—strep throat and things like that—and had to have my tonsils out.  I had booked ahead for the operation, and had to return to London.  When I left, Bela arranged a modest party.  He had some food and drinks brought in.

After Dracula and her tonsilectomy, Janet worked in London stage productions, while doing some television.  She had a recurring role in an early television version of Anne of Green Gables.  In 1957, she acted in both the West End and television productions of The Glass Cage.  A few years later she returned to her native Canada, coincidentally just as the Canadian Broadcast Corporation was undergoing an expansion.  She enjoyed a fine career on the CBC, and was married for some years to the famous author Timothy Findley.

*          *          *

Our book, with Janet’s reminiscences included in the text, went to press in August 2000, but the search for eyewitness accounts of the 1951 tour continues.