'Sammy meets Dracula !'
" At first I was merely full of curiosity and I clutched the curtain because I feared discovery. I'd already worked out an escape route back again, just in case, but I snuggled into the folds of the curtain fairly sure I could remain unseen. Because of what Dad had said, and because I knew it would have to be something special and new, I thought I was ready for anything. But I was not prepared for what did unfold.
There on the screen was a nightmare which kept me rivited to the spot for the next eighty-five minutes. I had chanced upon the original Bela Lugosi Dracula for my initiation into movie land, and it held me immediately with so much fear that I literally could not move. My spine tingled and the muscles in the back of my neck started making my head shake. My mouth opened even wider than my eyes and my body shook uncontrollably.
Every shadow and cobweb in that dusty, cold theatre seemed to become part of the unfolding drama. Years before Cinemascope came along I knew what it was like to be surrounded, literally, by the screen. As doors creaked on celluloid, so wind whistled through the backstage props. The fiendish fangs of the dreadful count were only a centre-play to the hanging ropes and dark lights of my hitherto innocent vaudville life. I stayed to the end of the film only because I would have fainted if I had moved.
As the lights went up I quickly scampered upstairs. Dad had not yet got back but when he did a few minutes later he knew immediately I had disobeyed him. He took one look at his tiny son, cowed, trembling, eyes nearly popping out of his head, and immediately guessed where I had been. I was in such a state of shock that he thought I had been punished enough. He roared with laughter and gave me a little hug. 'That'll teach you', he said, and, still snickering, began to change for the next act. Soon after, Uncle Wil came in and joined the frivolity. Dad told me he had forbidden me because when he saw the film he'd been scared to death himself.
I had been on the road with the trio for two years already. That was half a century ago. Since then I've probably spent a third of my waking life watching movies. My father had been completely wrong about one thing. Dracula was no punishment. I revelled in the utter fascination of it all. The film had been the greatest single discovery of my youth; a youth filled with a thousand exciting memories.
Dracula played two or three times every day and I watched all the performances until the end of our run. I soon knew every last action of that immortal spine-chiller and it hasn't stopped fascinating, terrifying me to this day. Now that I have built my own cinema it was among the first of the films with which I started my collection, every now and then I pull it out and run it again. The experience is an exercise in nostalgia, but it still gets the old spine tingling away.
My informal education on the road with Dad and Wil was split almost evenly between what I could learn from fellow vaudville performers and the gems I could pick up on the screen. Because from the moment Dracula scared the pants off me, no express train could haul me away from the movies. I lived all their dreams and dramas both asleep and awake. No one can change the history I learned from them, even though it might not be according to facts. To me Robin Hood and Abe Lincoln were equally important to the development of mankind, for I believed everything I saw on film. I learnt all my vocabulary from Clark Gable and Errol Flynn. In all my waking hours, when I was not on stage or eating, I was hunting down another film to see.
They once asked John Huston how much truth there was in Westerns. He thought about it for a moment and said that whenever he was given a choice between fact and legend, he always went for legend. That is what movies are all about for me, and I would take the legend every time. I can see 'real' life all around me, often from points of view not available to the average member of the public. But when that projector starts whirring, I want to leave real life behind. I want to sink into the adventurous oblivion only movies can bring. It's the ultimate luxury.
Because of that first experience I have always remained faithful to Bela Lugosi's famous and definitive interpretation of the Dracula role. The film industry has done a lot since with Bram Stoker's Gothic tale of the Transylvanian vampire, some of it excellent and some of it embarrassingly dreadful. But every minute detail of the original is implanted firmly in my head.
When the time came for me to set out and make it in Europe I knew I would have to add several dimensions to both my act and my lifestyle. Europe beckoned like the sirens of Ulysses. But, unknown to my advisors, who saw only an expansion of my personal audience and financial market as an entertainer, I had many other motives for crossing the Atlantic. The prime one had been an obsession with me for several years. Hammer Horror productions which, for a decade, had become the natural successors to the Lugosi legend.
I was the ultimate sucker for Hammer Films. They were tailor-made for me and I had seen every one many times before hitting the tarmac at London airport. Just about the first thing I did was fix up a visit to the studios. I had been around such places as the MGM lot a few times and I was expecting something similar. When the car stopped outside the Hammer building I just didn't believe it. I thought it was the reception area. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing ushered me in and I suddenly realised this actually was it. I found Hammer had done all those films on one and a half stages and had to get out at midnight so that someone else could start shooting at dawn. They could have fitted the entire operation into the parking lot of the commisary at MGM.
I was enthralled as I saw one of their low-budget blockbusters being made. The whole thing was quite incredible. Hammer was making millions but at the studio you would have thought they were producing a low-budget educational film for the youth clubs. They would churn out a whole film in days, not only one version for the British market but two other versions for the rest of the world.
I watched as they shot a fairly sedate scene for Britain and the make-up man came along with a little brush and splashed red paint onto Christopher Lee's lapels. Then they got one together for America. The same guy came along and threw paint all over him.
They stopped for a minute, changed clothes, and got ready for the Far East version. This time whole tribes of special effects guys came on with buckets of red paint and sloshed it everywhere. You'd have thought they had shares in the tomato industry the way they used that ketchup.
Later I had lunch with Chris and Peter and they found my incredulity quite amusing. I couldn't get over it, and finally said, 'Well, no wonder you make so many millions. You just don't spend a penny.' Both of them looked at each other and then back at me. 'What do you mean, millions ?' Chris asked. 'Your last movie made ten million dollars in America alone,' I said. 'You must be very rich young men.' They looked at each other again and I could see Chris' upper lip quivering as it does when he smells blood. 'Ten million ?', he said, and it was his turn to be dumfounded.
'Sure, what's your cut ?'
Both of them started fidgeting and Peter Cushing said, 'I was paid £50 a week and I'm the established star. What about you, Chris ?.
Chris said,'£45, and I thought it was marvellous to be able to pay the rent again'.
Their entire vision had been confined to that little tiny island known as England. They had shot three versions, all in the same working day, but once they had gone home they had forgotten about the rest of the world. I was glad to put them right on the facts, although I realised I was upsetting them quite considerably.
I don't begrudge Hammer their cheap film reputation at all. They worked under such idiotic conditions and produced such marvellous films they deserved all they got. Even today, the first thing I do when I get to London is call up and get them to send over the latest films, and a few of my old favourites as well. They know I am their number one fan and have always been happy to do this. After awhile I got to know pretty well everyone at Hammer and started collecting bits of scenery, props, costumes and even masks and fangs............."