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The Bela Lugosi Funeral Book and Pallbearers Car The Bela Lugosi Funeral Book and Pallbearers Card w

Currency:USD Category:Memorabilia / Autographs - Original Start Price:1.00 USD Estimated At:8,000.00 - 12,000.00 USD
The Bela Lugosi Funeral Book and Pallbearers Car The Bela Lugosi Funeral Book and Pallbearers Card w
<B>The Bela Lugosi Funeral Book and Pallbearers Card with a Custom Leather Case.</B></I> On August 18, 1956, Utter McKinley's Strother Hollywood Mortuary hosted the funeral of Bela Lugosi, the cinema's legendary Count Dracula. Lugosi had fallen-in-flames as few stars have before or since, cursed by alcoholism, drug addiction, marital miseries, near-poverty and a haunting fear of death itself. Yet, in his typical and touching passion, Lugosi went to his grave as a star - laid out, as he had wished, in his Dracula cape, tuxedo and medallion. It was a morbidly poetic flourish that blended legend, fantasy and reality - a touching finale to Lugosi's life and a powerful part of his mythos. Now, on the 50th anniversary of Bela Lugosi's demise, Heritage proudly offers Lugosi's funeral book, signed by the mourners who attended his wake - a number of them colorful key players in Lugosi legend and lore. There's Edward D. Wood, Jr., director of Lugosi's <I>Glen or Glenda</B></I> (1953), <I>Bride of the Monster</B></I> (1955) and the infamous "Worst Film of All Time" <I>Plan 9 from Outer Space</B></I> , released after Lugosi's death in 1959. (Wood, of course, was the subject of the 1994 film <I>Ed Wood,</B></I> starring Johnny Depp in the title role and Martin Landau in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Lugosi, and the film dramatized Lugosi's funeral and burial in his cape.) There's Tor Johnson, the bald, behemothic horror cult figure of such Wood films as <I>Bride of the Monster</B></I> and <I>Plan 9 from Outer Space,</B></I> who signed both his wife's name and his own - adding after his signature "Lobo," his role in <I>Bride of the Monster.</B></I> (Johnson, as Lugosi's widow remembered, "blubbered like a baby" at the funeral.) Others of the Ed Wood colony include Paul Marco ("Kelton the Cop"), George Weiss (producer of <I>Glen or Glenda</B></I>), Conrad Brooks ( policeman Jamie in <I>Plan 9...</B></I> ), Dudley Manlove ("Eros" of <I>Plan 9...</B></I>), "L. King" (presumably Loretta King, leading lady of <I>Bride of the Monster</B></I>), Kathleen Wood (Ed's wife), and Norma E. McCarty (Ed's ex-wife, who had annulled the marriage after learning he was a transvestite, and who acted for him in <I>Plan 9...</B></I>). Additional signers include Duci di Kerekjarto (longtime Lugosi friend, who who played violin tribute at the funeral), directors Steve Sekely and Zoltan Korda, Manly P. Hall (who supposedly hypnotized Lugosi for a scene in 1940s <I>Black Friday</B></I>,) Mr. and Mrs. Robert Boyle (he was associate art decorator on Lugosi's <I>The Wolf Man</B></I>), Scotty Beal (assistant director on the Lugosi films <I>Dracula,</B></I> <I>Murders in the Rue Morgue,</B></I> and <I>The Raven</B></I>), Don Marlowe (Lugosi agent and hanger-on) and Forrest J Ackerman (longtime editor of <I>Famous Monsters of Filmland</B></I>). No, there's no signature from Boris Karloff - the tales of his attending the funeral and making jokes to the corpse are just legend. We also include a pallbearer's card from Richard Sheffield, Jr. ( teenager friend and fan of Lugosi). The original paperbound funeral book, with the Utter-McKinley trademark of a clock with the words "Perpetual Service" on its cover, comes in a beautiful custom black leather case with gold lettering, which the consignor had especially created for the book after receiving it from Lugosi's widow (who died in 1997). Over the past half-century, the Strother Mortuary has fallen to the wrecking ball, and Lugosi's caped corpse has long rested (presumably!) at Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles. The funeral book survives. This is a remarkable curio, intimately linked to the "undead" Lugosi and a strikingly dramatic relic of true Hollywood Gothic.