Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen

by David J. Skal

Book Overview

A fully updated edition of David J. Skal's Hollywood Gothic, "The ultimate book on Dracula" (Newsweek). The primal image of the black-caped vampire Dracula has become an indelible fixture of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393308057
• ISBN13: 9780393308051
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 8.3" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

"I want no souls. Life is all I want."

Down deep, we all agree with the fly-eating Renfield. That's why we can't get his Master out of our system. David J. Skal's book Hollywood Gothic explains a lot of the reasons why. Hollywood Gothic is like David Skal's Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture. Hollywood Gothic and Screams of Reason both take horror motifs we know mostly from movies and trace them back to literature, where they originated. Screams of Reason looks at the mad scientist figure in fiction, from central European vivisectionists like Dr. Frankenstein to postwar American A-bomb scientists. Hollywood Gothic is more narrow - - it covers Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, the plays adapted from it, and then the movies inspired by it - - F.W. Murnau's silent film Nosferatu, then the Universal and Hammer horror films. Skal goes into detail about Bela Lugosi's career as Dracula on stage and film. He also digs up a lot of interesting information about the Spanish-language Dracula made simultaneously with the Bela Lugosi movie by producer Paul Kohner and cinematographer George Robinson - - who was responsible for the look of later Universal horror films like Dracula's Daughter and House of Dracula. Kohner fell in love with and married the real star of the Spanish-language Dracula, Lupita Tovar as Eva - - the Mina Harker character - - and who could blame him. Skal calls her a "truly ingenuous ingenue." In Mexico she could barely go out in public without being mobbed. Except for Bela Lugosi himself, almost everything about Kohner's Spanish version is better than Browning's. (That's my opinion from watching the movies, not just reading Hollywood Gothic.) Skal quotes people who worked on Tod Browning's Dracula that Browning was barely paying attention to the movie he was making. For instance, when Dracula welcomes Jonathan Harker to his castle from the top of the staircase, in the English version a huge spider web is off to the side behind Dracula, but in the Spanish version Dracula is framed in the center of the web. We see Dracula rise from his coffin in the Spanish version where Browning just shows him suddenly standing there. (Seeing Christopher Lee rise from his coffin, or be destroyed in it, was always a high point of the Hammer movies for me.) Every night Kohner's director George Melford looked at the film Browning's crew shot during the day and improved on it for their version. But there was (and is) something in the idea of the vampire that makes readers and audiences forgive hack storytelling. If you haven't seen them already, you should watch the films before reading Hollywood Gothic. The Universal Legacy Collection of Dracula contains the Lugosi film, the Spanish-language version, Dracula's Daughter, and Son of Dracula. (There's more, but those are the best. Universal's release of the Legacy Collections of Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man are the only good thing to come from the marketing of the movie Van Helsing.) Holl

Fascinating History of Dracula's Path to the Silver Screen.

In "Hollywood Gothic" David Skal tells the story of "Dracula" that came after the classic of gothic horror was published in 1897. It's a fascinating, fact-filled tale of colorful personalities, legal battles, Hollywood politics, and a culture still captivated by the King of Literary Vampires. The book's seven chapters begin with author Bram Stoker, end with the Count's recent incarnations on stage and screen, and include the most insightful analysis of "Dracula"'s origins that I have read in the course of my minor obsession with the novel. Chapter 1 explores "Dracula"'s literary and theatrical predecessors before moving on to discussion of the intellectual and sexual climate into which the book was published in 1897, the life and elusive character of its author Bram Stoker, and how the novel was received in its own day. David Skal does an impressive job of pulling together the relevant details, from diverse perspectives, of the novel's birth. Chapter 2 details the legal battle waged by the Bram Stoker's widow, Mrs. Florence Stoker, to suppress the first cinematic adaptation of her husband's novel, 1922's "Nosferatu", the unauthorized German production directed by F.W. Murnau, now recognized as a masterpiece of silent cinema. Chapter 3 sees Mrs, Stoker finally authorize an adaptation to British dramatist Hamilton Deane, whose wordy, plodding "Dracula" play nevertheless achieved great financial success, attracting the attention of American theatrical producer Horace Liveright. Liveright enlisted journalist John Balderston to rewrite the play for Broadway and make it a smash hit on this side of the Atlantic. Chapter 4 moves to Hollywood for the protracted negotiations over "Dracula"'s film rights. "Dracula"'s path through the early 20th century was mined with legal battles, and it is a credit to author David Skal that he is able to make interminable and constantly mutating negotiations into absorbing drama. Chapter 5 follows the winding road to the production of the first Hollywood "Dracula", the 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi, which, although made cheaply and lazily, was the first horror talkie and a financial life preserver for Universal Studios. Happily, Skal has dedicated Chapter 6 to the superior Spanish language version of "Dracula" that was filmed simultaneously, on the same sets, as the English version of the 1931 film, but with a different producer, director, cinematographer, and cast. Chapter 7 tells us what became of the principle person's associated with the two 1931 films. Then it follows the legacy of "Dracula" from the 1930s forward, through its incarnations in film, plays, musicals, ballets, and other performances. Appendix A is a list of notable stage performances of "Dracula", 1897-2003. Appendix B is a list of about 200 films, 1921-2004, which feature the "Dracula" character or name. Thankfully, there is an index. In outlining the contents of "Hollywood Gothic", I may have made the book seem dry. But the story of "Dracula"

Nice Revision to an Already Great Book

David J. Skal is as readable as ever is this newly revised edition of the definitive Hollywood Gothic as he covers the history of Dracula from his creation by Bram Stoker to the various and multiple version on screen and stage. The thrust of the story is, of course, on the novel and the iconic Bela Lugosi movie, with an additional nice, but smaller, chunk on Nosferatu. The author is particularly effective in combining, in an interesting fashion, the creative, financial, and legal elements. His analysis is always clear and interesting and will definitely send the reader on a viewing frenzy. Vampire movies seem always to be streaming forth from Hollywood and Dracula is and always will be the most tempting of the bunch. This book brings this fascination to life, as it were. A very good job.

Nosferatu gets his due!

This is a good look at the early stage and film versions of Dracula; more impressive is that it's one of the very best works to look at the 1922" Nosferatu". The author details the occult beliefs of the producer of Nosferatu, and how it was really he (Albin Grau,) and not Director Murnau who was responsible for the verminous look of Count Orlok. Fans of the recent film "Shadow of the Vampire" will really enjoy the Nosferatu production details. Some of the Freudian psychosexual analysis is way over the top and should be taken with a grain of salt (or a clove of garlic?). However, the author is on to something when he points out the paralells between the economic paralysis and blood draining of the Great Depression with the similar symptoms of victims in the 1931 Lugosi film. Was the popularity of the film a mass catharsis? You can decide after reading this book. Skal does a great job of drawing eerie analogies between the plight of the real life players behind Dracula and characters in the novel and films.You'll find yourself consulting and pondering over this book when watching the old films or reading the original Stoker novel. The social context in which Skal places the classical Dracula films will resonate for modern readers.

Absorbing and interesting!

David J. Skal's Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Draculafrom Novel to Stage to Screen details not only every Dracula moviemade to date (Frances Ford Copola's film came out after it's publication) but the historical and psychological roots of the legend as well. Skal takes us behind the scenes, where Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde are in competition intellectually as well as romantically, and where Victorian values are pushing sexuality into the realm of the dark and the deadly (a familiar mentality in the era of AIDS). A facinating book, with excellent research and insight by the author!