by Alex Severin
CARL LAEMMLE PRESENTS...
“DRACULA”
BY BRAM STOKER
FROM THE PLAY ADAPTED BY
HAMILTON DEANE & JOHN L. BALDERSTON
A TOD BROWING PRODUCTION
PRODUCED BY CARL LAEMMLE, JR.
COPYRIGHT MCMXXXI
BY UNIVERSAL PICTURES CORPORATION
She needed to know all the details whenever she watched a film – producers, director, writer.
And the cast list – she red it from the bottom up. Her heart skipped a beat merely reading his name on the screen. Count Dracula...BELA LUGOSI.
Then...
The Carpathian mountains appear. A carriage races along the precarious passes. The passengers inside are jostled to and fro by the rickety wheels on the rough, stony road.
They arrive at a small roadside tavern and are met by locals, pleased to see tourists stepping from the coach. But their enthusiasm turns to fear when one of the passengers announces that he is not staying the night – he must carry on to the Borgo Pass where he will be met by another driver at midnight. That driver will take him on to Castle Dracula.
The locals are horrified. One old woman crosses herself. The inn keeper tells Renfield that the locals believe vampires live in the castle and that the Count and his three wives drink the blood of the living by night.
Of course, the sophisticated Englishman is amused by these uneducated and superstitious foreigners. He insists he must carry on and turns to get back on the coach. The old lady stops him, puts her crucifix around his neck and asks him to wear it...for his mother's sake.
Then...
In the vaults deep beneath Castle Dracula lie dusty old coffins. A lid creaks open and is slowly lifted by the pale hand of the Count.
And his beautiful, alabaster-skinned wives rise from their rest, ready to feed.
And there he is - larger than life - on the screen, clad in black from head to toe, his dark cloak wrapped about him.
Belladonna draws in a breath, her eyes widen. A tiny squeak of excitement escapes her throat and she is in thrall to him once more.
Her heart hammered in her chest, her wide eyes consuming each flicker of light and shade, the thick gothic atmosphere made a little surreal by the placement of armadillos and giant-rat-like possums among the dirt and the cobwebs.
She was wide-eyed and breathless in the dark once more.
This was it. This was her dream. This was romance.
And then he spoke.
“I am...Dracula. I bid you welcome.”
The wolves howled on the hillside beyond the old castle walls. Dracula stops to enjoy the sound.
“Listen to them...children of the night. What music they make.”
Belladonna's eyes closed momentarily, as if she was in ecstasy, as he spoke. She sighed as she listened, his voice like a lover's caress on naked skin.
Dracula walks up the stone staircase, magically passing through a gigantic cobweb without disturbing the painstakingly-spun silks. A huge spider, maker of the web, scurries up the castle wall.
“A spider spinning his web for the unwary fly. The blood...is the life, Mr. Renfield.”
Count Dracula leads Mr. Renfield, the unsuspecting law clerk from across the water up to his chambers. Count Dracula has laid out a cold supper for the hungry traveler. He uncorks a bottle of wine.
“This is very old wine. I hope you will like it,” he tells Renfield.
He pours the dark potion into an fine goblet.
“Aren't you drinking?” Renfield enquires of his host.
“I never drink...wine,” Dracula tells his guest.
Belladonna sighed long and hard. She knew what she had to do. There was no other way. There was nothing else in the world for her, no other path she could take in life.
She had made up her mind. In an instant her heart was consumed by one desire.
Belladonna was going to Hollywood to become an actress and star in a move opposite Bela Lugosi.
~
Her mother was worried. Ever since Bell had come back from Portland for the second time she was different. Even more different than the first time. There was a glint in her eyes that shone like stars. She knew that her daughter was keeping something from her. She knew it.
She'd asked her time and time again what the matter was but Belladonna would always reply with the same answer.
“Nothing, mama. I'm fine.” And she would smile her disarming smile, a smile that rendered anyone and everyone who saw it unable to keep a furrow in their brow or a scowl on their face. And mom would walk off, smiling for a while, believing the lies her daughter told. Deep down, Morag knew that something wasn't right. She also knew by the ache in the pit of her stomach that at some point, Belladonna would tell her what was wrong. That worried her so much more than not knowing.
She didn't have long to wait for Belladonna's revelation. Just three days later she went to her mother and stood looking into her eyes. The look made her heart sink and her shoulders slump even before her daughter opened her mouth. She knew she was about to hear something she would rather not hear at all. This was it – the day she had been dreading.
“I'm leaving home, mom. I'm going to Hollywood to be an actress.”
Morag stumbled dramatically and Belladonna rolled her eyes. But it was no act – the statement made her feel weak at the knees, made her guts turn somersaults inside her, her innards gripping and spasming as if they were trying to break free of her body.
She pleaded with her not to go; Portland was one thing, Hollywood was quite another. She’d heard stories about it, how people are chewed up and spat out and used and abused by unscrupulous men who prey on young, impressionable girls like her. Hollywood was a place for women of ill repute, a place for drunkards and the drug addled. To her mother, Hollywood was the modern Babylon.
Belladonna was angry with her. She was treating her like a child again, the same way as she had always treated her. She knew now that her mother would have loved it if she had come home with a sob story from Portland and never wanted to let go of her apron strings again.
"Mama, I have to do this. I have to. I'm not doing it to hurt you. I love you, you know that. But no matter how much I love you, and papa, and Cal and Quita, I still need to do this. I'm a big girl now. I'm all grown up.”
Morag couldn't speak. Panic held her throat and it took every ounce of will she had to keep on breathing. But even if she could have spoken, she had no idea what to say to Belladonna. She was at a loss for words, her fears and her anguish robbing her of the ability to express herself.
But this was more than being afraid for her daughter as she ran off to the big city. Much more. This felt like she was losing her child. This felt like Belladonna was dying, like she was never going to see her again.
There was nothing Morag could say or do to dissuade her from heading to Hollywood. Belladonna knew her destiny lay within the spotlights and the glamor of the place they called Hollywoodland, and beneath the sign which said the same.
~
CHAPTER FOUR : BELLADONNA IN HOLLYWOODLAND
Belladonna sat on her tiny suitcase in the blistering heat. It seemed like she'd been sitting there forever with her knees almost touching her chin as her shoulders slumped and her head pitched downward.
The heat had been increasing by the minute; the temperature now at a blistering 110 degrees as she sat there, far from shade, her café latte skin exposed to the rigors of the heatwave.
Belladonna had inherited her father's coloring and skin tone. He was of mixed race – an eclectic blend of Mexican, Latgawa Indian, Scottish and Irish. He would joke with her that there really was no white blood in the family because the Celts – the Scots and the Irish – were the Indians and Mexicans of Europe. But she did not yet know how much of her father's volatile blood ran deeply in her veins. Belladonna was unaware of the spitfire she was to become.
Sweat began to pour from her and run down the cleft of her back and between her ample breasts. Behind her knees and t
he bends in her arms were hot and wet, and the soles of her feet slid and slipped inside her dainty sandals. She wiggled her dusty toes and made a face as grains of sandy dirt made their way between them. She wondered, sitting there in the dry heat and dust of the Oregon boonies if she was really doing the right thing.
The doubt set in - she’d never been away from home for more than a few nights to stay with her grandmother or her aunt or a friend in her entire life. Barely had a day passed that she did not see her mother, her father her brother or sister. Belladonna wondered just how she was going to get by without them all around her as her protectors.
But suddenly, all fatigue and weariness, all trace of reticence fled from her body as she saw the bus off in the distance. It shimmered like a jewel in the heat haze as it inched toward her.
This rickety old vehicle was going to take her far away from the one-horse town she grew up in, and deliver her to her destiny in the City of Angels.
By the time the bus creaked open its rusty doors to let her and the other frazzled passengers board, Belladonna was soaked through and covered from head to foot in dust.
The bus ride from her tiny hometown of Independence, Oregon, was long and uncomfortable, but she sat there with a smile on her face all the way. She bounced up and down with the motion of the bus as it dragged itself over rough, uneven roads, which at times were little more than well-traveled dirt tracks until it reached the highway.
She didn't care that her pretty summer dress was saturated with sweat now and clung to her curves like a second skin. She was oblivious to the fact that people were staring at her because her nipples were hard and showing through the delicate fabric of her dress now that it was wet and had become semi-transparent. It didn't matter to her that beads of sweat ran down her scalp and made the nape of her neck itch, and the scratching had knotted the underside of her hair. She didn’t even mind the foul stench emanating from the bacteria-infested fat rolls of the morbidly obese man taking up an entire seat to himself in front of her. Not even the tiny, yapping dog that pissed on her suitcase, which contained her every worldly possession, could erase the smile from her face.
Belladonna didn’t care about anything at that moment. Not a thing in the world could bring her down or wipe the smile from her lips that showed a stunning set of perfect white teeth. She was on her way to a new life - a life that would be extraordinary and was waiting there for her beneath the sign that said Hollywoodland.
Belladonna reached into her purse and fondled the edge of her well-worn paperback copy of Dracula. If it hadn’t been for that book, if she hadn’t fallen in love with the romance of the vampire, she would never have been inspired to go see the stage version in Portland and she would never have fallen in love with the star of the show - Count Dracula himself - Bela Lugosi. If none of those things had happened she would never have been sitting on the bus and on her way to Hollywood to become an actress. She had to land a part in a Bela Lugosi movie.
It would all be so perfect - she would be cast in a Bela Lugosi film and he would fall in love with her at first sight and he would sweep her off her feet and they would live happily ever after. She knew that her dreams were going to come true. She knew that an incredible life lay before her. But Belladonna's destiny was one even she could never have imagined.
~
Hollywood could smell innocence. And Belladonna gave off the scent in abundance.
Belladonna was little more than a girl in a woman’s body - a desirable woman’s body. Her inexperience of life and her naiveté made her irresistible to almost everyone. Her purity was like an aphrodisiac, her inexperience arousing to the predators all around. But it didn’t take long for her to get wise to the games in Hollywood. It didn’t take long for her girlish qualities to fade.
The spectacular innocence that made the predators salivate, that made their eyes sparkle, and their lips curl into knowing smiles would one day be no more. And when that happened, Belladonna would become just like all the other would-be starlets – worldly wise and jaded.
From child-like bumpkin who was taken advantage of, to wily and suspicious and distrusting took only a matter of weeks for some in Hollywood. Belladonna had taken a little longer; she simply refused to believe that everybody in this beautiful town was on the make and up to no good, no matter how many chewed up and spat out never-weres told her so.
But the experiences she had each and every day were rubbing off on her. She could not carry on with the denial for much longer when all she could see all around her was dirt and degradation. She wondered how anybody ever made it in Hollywood when the shyster seemed to outnumber the legitimate movie people by several-to-one.
And now she could smell innocence on other suckers who flocked toward the bright lights and the big city and the lure of fame and fortune. Now she smiled sadly at the pretty young things who came here like sacrificial lambs by the dozens every day. She now understood that look she’d seen thrown at her a hundred times since she’d been here. And all of them would soon know how that sad smile felt on their own lips.
They came in their hundreds every month. Some days, she could look down from her balcony and see hoards of them, all the same, all blonde and pale and stinking with inexperience. They would stand there on the street, their bodies vibrating with excitement to be in Hollywood, believing they were standing on the brink of their own stardom, gazing up at the huge white letters on the hillside. And someday, all of them would know what it felt like - the realization of knowing they were not going to be a star.
But what was worst about the whole thing, the whole place, all the people here, was nobody would ever leave. Nobody wanted to return to whence they came with their tails between their legs and choruses of a hundred-fold I told you sos. No matter how hard the knocks, no matter how sleazy the so-called producer, no matter how hard it got, so many stayed. Or died here.
~
It had been a particularly bad day for Belladonna; she was exhausted and her high heels made a metallic dragging sound as her fatigued muscles failed to lift her aching feet off the sidewalk.
But the show must go on - this next stop could be the one, she thought. She knew she had to carry on, carry on through the fatigue of her spasming muscles, through the blistering heat and the dirt. She had to get to the next appointment, no matter what.
She was light-headed from lack of food. She’d skipped breakfast that morning to save money, then missed lunch because she had to hang around an office reception all day waiting to see a casting director.
“Sorry, doll; but I’m in the market for a skinny little blonde thing right now, not a curvaceous raven-haired beauty. Damn shame,” the casting director told her the instant after he laid eyes on her.
After waiting for more than three hours, their conversation lasted no more than a few seconds. She thanked him, but he didn’t wait to shake her hand or throw her a smile, instead she said ‘thank you’ to the slam of his office door behind him. These days, not being at least leered at by a casting director seemed like an insult.
The plain Jane behind the desk smirked, eyes sparkling with delight behind her bottle-end spectacles at Belladonna’s dismissal by her boss.
The secretary watched her all the way out the door; Belladonna felt her eyes on her. The blood rose in her veins, throbbed in her temples and flooded her cheeks with red heat as she heard a snicker issuing from the sneer of the frump behind the desk.
Belladonna turned around, grinned one-sided and looked her up and down. She didn’t need words - one glance from her obsidian eyes and the flash of contempt across her full red lips was enough to make the secretary feel as ugly on the outside as she was on the inside. Belladonna had mastered that withering look now; she had seen it thrown in her own direction often enough when she arrived here, by those who envied her pristine beauty, by those who could no longer get away with saying that they were in their first flush of youth, even if they really had been only a short time ago. The life they had chosen – the life they c
raved, longed for – had robbed them of their looks and their youth, many of them their dreams. And some of them, their life.
Belladonna felt better for getting one over on the nasty secretary, but the humor she was in right now was foul and she was in no mood for more hours sitting around in a stifling windowless hallway in the heat. But the next appointment was one she simply could not miss. The next appointment really could be the one that would change her life. The next appointment was the one she had come here for in the first place. This casting was for a movie that might just be Bela Lugosi’s next - that was the word on the grapevine, at least. His face was plastered all over billboards everywhere and he was riding high on the current success of the film version of Dracula.
Belladonna adored him - and she was desperate for him to adore her too. She could not imagine ever being with any man but him. She had never even dreamed of being in another man’s arms or feeling the heat of another man’s lips on her own.
Well maybe Valentino...once or twice
She giggled to herself, lost in her thoughts of Bela.
It was all about him. She couldn’t even imagine going through an entire life and not knowing him. She was certain that they were meant to be and that she was put here on this earth to worship him.
He was all she wanted; her dream was that he would take her away to live in a fairytale forever - that tall, dark, mysterious, handsome, experienced man with the black velvet voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and her knees tremble violently. Listening to him made her smile, made her close her eyes and picture his distinguished features – his regal nose, his hypnotic eyes, his dimpled chin.
She wanted this part badly. She knew that she was right for it. She knew she could play the part. She simply had to get it. She thought, fleetingly, that she might even kill for it.
~
The lobby was filled with young women, some hardly shy of childhood, some barely acquainted with their teens, and chaperoned by fading beauties they called mother. Some girls ran in floods of tears from the office, with red-faced mothers pulling them by the arm, suddenly aware of how young their daughters were again. Some walked quickly with their heads down, wondering how many of the girls standing in line knew the type of movie they were waiting to be cast in.
