Listen to them, the children of the night.
What music they make.
Hello. I'm Carla Laemmle.
When my uncle, Carl Laemmle...
founded Universal Pictures in 1915...
one of the first properties he considered for production...
as a silent film...
was Bram Stoker's horror classic Dracula.
Sixteen years later, when Universal finally produced the film...
I had the privilege of speaking the first lines of dialogue...
in the first talking, supernatural thriller.
"Among the rugged peaks that frown down upon the Borgo Pass...
are found crumbling castles of a bygone age."
It was a very small part...
but the fact that I still receive fan mail from all over the world...
is a wonderful testimonial...
to the film's status as an enduring classic.
Join me now as we return...
to the fog-shrouded Borgo Pass...
and take a ride together...
along the road to Dracula.
And just as I was commencing to get drowsy...
it seemed the whole room was filled with mist.
Then I saw two red eyes staring at me...
and a white, livid face came down out of the mist.
I felt his breath on my face.
And then his lips...
Why are we scared by something? Why are we aroused by something?
I'm talking about sexually aroused.
Because in the case of Dracula...
very often the two responses overlap.
Dead. I'm dead.
I don't care. They all frighten me.
- I love to be frightened. - Do you?
Laugh all you like.
I think he's fascinating.
Who wouldn't wanna be like Dracula?
You live forever and don't work, you stay up all night.
Dracula is quite simply the most media-friendly...
fictional personality of the 20th century, if not all time.
People who never read the book...
or saw the movie...
still know exactly who he is.
I am Dracula.
Count Dracula.
Dracula? What's he done to you?
Dracula is our vampire.
I never even heard the name before.
Today, thanks to Universal Studios...
everyone knows the name of Dracula.
Although at first, my uncle, Carl Laemmle...
had serious reservations about horror movies.
Universal eventually filmed Bram Stoker's classic three times.
First, in Tod Browning's famous 1931 film...
starring Bela Lugosi.
Next was the simultaneously produced Spanish-language version...
starring Lupita Tovar and Carlos Villarias.
Some people feel that this was the superior version...
from a technical standpoint.
But you'll have to be the judge.
And then came the romantic 1979 remake with Frank Langella.
I can't imagine how my uncle, a very proper man...
would've reacted to such a sexy Dracula.
But speaking for myself, I would've given anything...
for a "bit" part in that production.
The story of Dracula didn't begin at Universal City.
As a fictional character...
Dracula is more than a hundred years old.
First published in 1897...
Bram Stoker's original novel has been frightening readers ever since.
His centennial was recently celebrated in high style...
at events, exhibitions and conventions...
all over the world.
But perhaps the most revealing exhibition took place...
at the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia...
where novelist Bram Stoker's original working notes for Dracula...
were placed on public display for the first time.
What we have here are Stoker's working notes for Dracula.
His earliest notes concern certain elements of plot.
There are particular scenes in the novel...
that Stoker had imagined at its earliest stages...
that survive all the way to the end.
A scene where Jonathan Harker, trapped in Dracula's castle...
is preyed upon by three female vampires...
who are then interrupted by Count Dracula...
barging into the room saying, "This man is mine. I want him. '"
This was one of Stoker's earliest ideas for Dracula.
Bram Stoker never visited Transylvania...
but he was very well acquainted with the picturesque town of Whitby...
on the North Yorkshire coast...
where a good deal of his novel takes place.
Stoker often vacationed there...
and was most impressed with its ancient, windblown cemetery...
and crumbling gothic abbey.
Whitby is certainly a wonderful place for atmosphere.
It would lend itself to his cinematic treatment...
if we could imagine Stoker thinking of that.
Whitby as a popular port...
and as a shipping port...
had its number of shipwrecks.
Stoker must've been fascinated with the idea...
of having a shipwreck in Dracula.
So he used the shipwreck of a Russian schooner...
called Dimitri as a model for Dracula's arrival...
onto the English coast.
It was in Whitby that Stoker first came across the name of Dracula.
He discovered there was this 15th-century Transylvanian prince...
whose name was Dracula, also known as Vlad the Impaler...
due to a method of disposing of his enemies...
of which he was particularly fond.
If you can see behind me, this is from a...
a late 15th-century woodcut...
showing Vlad at lunch with some of his victims behind him.
Stoker was the first to take the legend of Vlad the Impaler...
or Vlad Dracula, and attach it to the vampire.
They haven't really come apart since.
The historical Dracula didn't inspire Stoker to write the book.
There's some confusion about this. He'd already outlined the novel...
when he came across the account of Vlad the Impaler...
and simply used it as a window dressing or atmosphere.
Stoker's novel unfolds through letters, diaries and journals.
Count Dracula, a 500-year-old vampire...
leaves his castle in Transylvania...
in search of new blood in a new country.
Carrying the boxes of native soil...
in which he must rest during the hours of daylight...
Dracula kills the entire crew of the ship...
that transports him to England.
Two young women, Lucy and Mina...
become his victims in turn.
Dracula kills Lucy, transforming her...
into a foul thing of the night...
an undead creature like himself.
Soon, Mina falls under Dracula's spell...
and is terribly endangered.
But thanks to a scientist wise enough...
to believe in the supernatural...
the vampire is finally destroyed...
and Mina is released from her thrall.
Stoker drew on an already established tradition...
of the vampire in literature and folklore...
but did it in such a way that the legend achieved a critical mass.
Unlike the earlier fictional vampires...
Stoker's Dracula was not a romantic character.
He was a decrepit old man who became younger as he drank blood...
but never really became attractive.
He was writing...
of blood and thunder.
A piece of what we would now call sort of exploitation.
It's a first-rate, 19th-century trashy novel.
Above everything, Bram Stoker...
wanted his story dramatized.
He may have been a bit of a frustrated playwright.
Stoker's real career was managing...
London's prestigious Lyceum Theatre.
And he knew exactly who he wanted to play Dracula on stage...
his employer, the great Victorian actor...
Sir Henry Irving.
Henry Irving has a lot to do with the character of Dracula.
A lot of the characters Irving was most famous for playing...
could be considered to be Dracula-like characters.
Roles like Mephistopheles in Faust...
or Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
These were Irving's greatest roles, the ones he was most popular in.
Psychologically complex villains.
Irving would've been perfect for the part.
After all, he already was a boss from hell.
Irving really was a vampire.
He really was a kind of horrible person...
who fed on the energy of others.
They did an interminably long reading of the novel...
at the Lyceum for purposes of copyright.
And Irving was reputed to have walked through the theater...
and intoned "dreadful" and walked out.
And that was stupid of him.
It would've been a very good part...
and he should've done it.
Now, Dracula's more famous than he is.
Bram Stoker died in 1912...
and never saw his story properly dramatized.
But nine years later, the character of Dracula...
made his first screen appearance in a now lost Hungarian film...
called Dracula's Death.
The plot owed almost nothing to Stoker or his book.
But I guess Dracula's movie career had to start somewhere.
In the story, Dracula plays a music teacher...
who has gone crazy and is after some of the patients in the asylum.
So the story plays more like Phantom of the Opera than Dracula.
However, there is this idea...
of a monster loose with fangs and a cape.
The following year, German filmmakers...
got on the Dracula bandwagon with Nosferatu:
A Symphony of Horror.
It remains one of the most frightening movies ever made.
A classic example of German expressionism.
It's so frightening.
For one thing, Dracula is so evil.
He's disgusting, and he's a plague spreader.
He looks like a rat.
There's nothing suave about him.
The Dracula character was called Count Orlok...
and was played by a German stage actor named Max Schreck...
whose name, by happy coincidence...
means "terror" or "fright" in German.
It was his real name, not just a publicity stunt for the film.
He remains to this day the single screen Dracula...
who really embodies the essential repulsiveness...
that Stoker intended.
In the early part of the century...
the laws of copyright were not well understood...
especially with filmmaking.
Prana Films, the very small studio that made Nosferatu...
did not bother nor know to get a copyright from Stoker's widow.
Murnau used the novel without clearing the rights...
and eventually got involved in a big lawsuit...
and the film literally had to be pulled from the market.
With two movies already to his credit...
Dracula decided to give the theater another try.
In 1924, the British actor/ manager Hamilton Deane...
added the first authorized dramatization of Dracula...
to his popular travelling repertory.
Film historian and former actor Ivan Butler...
was a member of Deane's company.
He had to cut it down...
for expense, for one thing.
And it's such a vast, rambling novel.
It's a sort of skeleton of the original.
It was Hamilton Deane who really created the modern image of Dracula.
He took his inspiration not from Irving's Shakespearean villains...
but from a much lower end of the theater.
Essentially, his Dracula is a kind of vaudeville...
or music hall magician.
The suave trickster in evening clothes...
who knows how to work a crowd.
Well, they came to London, of course...
and those dreadful notices they had, we all know.
They were very depressed. Somebody came up to him and said...
"What are you worrying about? Have you looked outside?"
They were halfway around the block, queuing for it.
Several actors performed the role of Dracula for Deane...
including Raymond Huntley...
who played the part thousands of times...
in England and America...
and still holds the all-time record...
for sheer number of performances.
Ivan Butler worked with a noted actor...
W.E. Halloway.
He was an older man.
Very, very gaunt looking.
Very deep-set eyes and everything...
and a good voice.
It seemed to work better...
more like the real Dracula, in a way.
He always seemed to me to have something...
that the young ones lacked.
There was no sort of sex attraction...
in those days.
Dracula came for one thing only... his evening drink.
You had the bat coming in through the French windows...
at the end of the second act.
The assistant stage manager was standing on a stool...
with a fishing rod...
and about two foot of bat.
He was floating it around outside like that.
It banged into the window.
Smoke came and everything.
Then Dracula appeared out of the mist.
One day, I don't know why, but the string...
attached to the fishing rod broke.
But he was concerned...
over the Britishness of the language...
and a lot of idiomatic stuff nobody in New York would understand.
So we asked my father if he would rewrite it.
In the 1920s, the only kind of vampires...
American audiences knew about...
were vamps like Theda Bara.
For the Broadway version of Dracula...
I am... Dracula.
A moment ago I stumbled upon a most amazing phenomenon.
Something so incredible I mistrust my own judgment.
Look.
Dracula. The very mention of the name
brings to mind things so evil, so fantastic, so degrading
you wonder if it isn't all a dream, a nightmare.
Rats... Rats... Rats!
Thousands, millions of them!
But no, this is no dream.
This is Dracula,
the original, terrifying story of a maniac, and a man who lived after death -
lived on human blood, took the form of a vampire bat
and lured innocent girls to a fate truly worse than death!
Dracula?
Oh, what's he done to you, dear? Tell me.
He came to me.
He opened a vein in his arm... and he made me drink.
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