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No Traveler Returns: The Lost Years of Bela Lugosi
© 2016 Gary D. Rhodes and William M. Kaffenberger, Jr.. All
Rights Reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Section 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs come from the collections
of Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger.
Authors’ Notes: Some images chosen for this book are of an
imperfect quality, but they are reproduced herein due to their rarity
and their importance to the narrative.
This version of the book may be slightly abridged from the print
version.
Published in the USA by:
BearManor Media
PO Box 71426
Albany, Georgia 31708
www.bearmanormedia.com
ISBN 978-1-59393-285-5
Cover Design by Michael Kronenberg.
eBook construction by Brian Pearce | Red Jacket Press.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Gerald Schnitzer
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1: Exiled
Chapter 2: Accent on Horror
Chapter 3: For Pete's Sake
Chapter 4: Two Straw Hats
Chapter 5: A Midnight Dreary
Chapter 6: Abbott And Costello Meet Dracula
Chapter 7: The Barn Emporiums
Chapter 8: Phantoms
Chapter 9: Easterly
Chapter 10: Return Engagement
Chapter 11: The Bela Lugosi Company
Chapter 12: Almost Musical
Chapter 13: The Great Unknown
Chapter 14: Spider Web Machines
Chapter 15: Fellow Travelers
Chapter 16: Dracula's End
Chapter 17: The Devil Also Dreams
Chapter 18: Lugosi and The Bloody Guillotine
Chapter 19: Farewell
Afterword By Bela G. Lugosi
Appendix: A Bela Lugosi Timeline — 1945 to 1951
Acknowledgments
Author Biographies
Lugosi stars as Dracula in a 1947 summer stock production.
PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY SAMUEL KRAVITT; COURTESY OF MRS. SAMUEL
KRAVITT
For my Mom, Dad, and brother Dave, all gone now, who with
kindness and encouragement always supported my interest in all
things Lugosi during my growing-up years.
Bill Kaffenberger
For my close friends Kristin Dewey and Jack Dowler, two of all the
all-time great Lugosi fans.
Gary D. Rhodes
Foreword
by Gerald Schnitzer
Jeerriee,” Mr. Lugosi monotoned, in his profound baritone voice,
“don’t look at me when I am reading my lines. It makes me
nearvoos!” I might have just as well been seated in the front seat of a
movie house in 1931 and quaked as he expanded his cape, hovered
over me, and intoned his classic entrance: “I am Dracula!” So why
was a fresh kid like me, in 1942, from Brooklyn, having a tête-à-tête
with film icon Bela Lugosi? Believe it or not, old buddies, Bela and I
were going over his dialogue from my screenplay, Bowery at
Midnight, which at that moment was in production at Monogram
Pictures in Hollywood, a life raft for independent producers with
meager budgets.
I had met Mr. Lugosi earlier during the production of Spooks Run
Wild (1941), written by Carl Foreman and Charles Marion. In those
beginning years, I was a 1st assistant director, chauffeur, dialogue
clerk, “gofer” and mimeographer. I was also responsible for getting
Mr. Lugosi camera ready. The most nerve-wracking part of the job
was pulling myself together and control my teeth from chattering
before knocking on his dressing room, and announcing, “We’re ready
for you, Mr. Lugosi, sir — ‘Camera ready’,” I added without
stuttering. But then, once he appeared, he put me at ease and said,
“Thanks, Jerry. How are you doing?” That was not the pulse beating
Dracula. That was a gentleman who took time to connect, to be
concerned, to be a mensch. And when I delivered shooting scripts to
his home in the San Fernando Valley, he and his wife were most
gracious, anxious to learn more about my plans for the future.
Dr. Gary D. Rhodes and I were drawn together by chance when he
came across a copy of my recently published novelized memoir, My
Floating Grandmother. Until then he had been trying to locate me, a
writer with screen credits for the Bowery Boys and Bela Lugosi films.
A dedicated film historian, Gary sensed that I could add fresh
insights into the planetary story of the movie business and fill in “the
gaps.” When he invited me to write a foreword to this biography, I
hesitated, feeling I hadn’t spent enough time with this huge
personality. Could I possibly send an accurate message to the reader
that we’re dealing here with a highly sensitive artist and human
being, something that might have gotten lost under his own cape?
Unquestionably, Gary Rhodes has opened and widened that cape
beautifully. He has peered into Bela Lugosi’s complex and fascinating
world of time and space with the clarity of today’s powerful
diagnostic tool, the MRI.
Rich in detail, Rhodes and his co-author Bill Kaffenberger reveal
Mr. Lugosi’s fascinating plunge into the world of post-war America.
And it meant lots of traveling, sleep deprivation, at times receiving
untidy small compensations.
And then it came, the tsunami of TV, and an array of stars who,
when finding their shows wanting, added comedy horror sketches.
And who could create them better than Dracula, who found himself
competing with the likes of Milton Berle? And Lugosi’s greatest
competitor was his growing reliance on drugs. But despite their
insidious pull, Lugosi lost none of his skills at performing until the
curtain fell and was too heavy to lift.
Gary Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger’s book is bigger than the
revelation of Bela Lugosi and his role in our show business
phenomenon. It is a mirror reflecting man’s desire to leave his
footprints and also, as Bobby Burns wrote, “O would some power the
gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us!”
Born in Brooklyn in 1917, Gerald “Jerry” Schnitzer became
entranced by the cinema at an early age. He gained his initial
grounding in the movie business from his father and, later, from the
famed non-fiction filmmaker John Grierson, the man credited for
coining the term “documentary film.”
By 1941, Schnitzer moved to Los Angeles and forged a career at
Monogram, the greatest of all the poverty-row studios. Schnitzer’s
tenure at Monogram found him working on four of Bela Lugosi’s
most memorable B-movies: Spooks Run Wild (1941), Black Dragons
(1942), The Corpse Vanishes (1942), and Bowery at Midnight (1942).
But in 1941, he embarked on what would become an even longer
professional relationship with Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey, working
on two East Side Kids films before signing up to fight in World War
II, and then — after returning to civilian life — six Bowery Boys
movies in 1948 and 1949.
After parting ways with Monogram, Schnitzer wrote and
directed various documentary films and television programs,
including episodes of Lassie and National Velvet. But his greatest
fame probably came as a result of his entry into the world of TV
advertising.
Of all the “Mad Men” of the fifties and sixties, Schnitzer was
perhaps the most influential. In 1958, working with Kensinger
Jones, Creative Director for the ad agency Campbell Ewald, he
invented the modern TV commercial by humanizing the ads with
real narratives as opposed to actors simply holding up and touting
products.
Far more than words or dialogue, images drove Schnitzer’s
landmark TV commercials, which were essentially short,
beautifully crafted human interest films that sold dreams to the
masses in the space of thirty seconds or less. As a result, historians
credit him with creating the “Kodak Moment.”
