Bill Kaffenberger

The cobwebs of time and space are finally cleared. Drawing on years of research across four countries, excavating and analyzing thousands of yellowed documents in archives as well as every digitized source, Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger shine light from their candelabrum onto a long-forgotten past, onto the creation of a legend. Becoming Dracula is a two-volume biography covering Bela Lugosi's life from his birth to 1930, when he first played the famous vampire onscreen. "No one has chronicled the life and career of Bela Lugosi with more precision than Gary Rhodes. With Becoming Dracula: The Early Years of Bela Lugosi, Volume One, Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger detail Lugosi's heretofore obscure early life in Austria-Hungary with a level of focused research akin to literary paleontology. As fascinating as the future Count Dracula's journey through Europe to America is, Lugosi-philes everywhere will rejoice that there will be a Volume Two continuation "- Alan K. Rode, author of Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film (2017) "The path to becoming a vampire is simplicity itself: one need only fall victim to the notorious Count Dracula. The path that led to becoming Count Dracula, though, was lengthy, arduous, and fraught with disappointment, especially for the noble bloodsucker's initial cinematic portrayer, Bela Lugosi. Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger have returned to focus their impeccable research and unimpeachable historicity on that path. 'Tis a path that begs to be followed."- John Soister, author of Conrad Veidt on Screen (2009) and Many Selves: The Horror and Fantasy Films of Paul Wegener (2017)

The cobwebs of time and space are finally cleared. Drawing on years of research across four countries, excavating and analyzing thousands of yellowed documents in archives as well as every digitized source, Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger shine light from their candelabrum onto a long-forgotten past, onto the creation of a legend. Becoming Dracula is a two-volume biography covering Bela Lugosi's life from his birth to 1930, when he first played the famous vampire onscreen. "No one has chronicled the life and career of Bela Lugosi with more precision than Gary Rhodes. With Becoming Dracula: The Early Years of Bela Lugosi, Volume One, Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger detail Lugosi's heretofore obscure early life in Austria-Hungary with a level of focused research akin to literary paleontology. As fascinating as the future Count Dracula's journey through Europe to America is, Lugosi-philes everywhere will rejoice that there will be a Volume Two continuation "- Alan K. Rode, author of Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film (2017) "The path to becoming a vampire is simplicity itself: one need only fall victim to the notorious Count Dracula. The path that led to becoming Count Dracula, though, was lengthy, arduous, and fraught with disappointment, especially for the noble bloodsucker's initial cinematic portrayer, Bela Lugosi. Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger have returned to focus their impeccable research and unimpeachable historicity on that path. 'Tis a path that begs to be followed."- John Soister, author of Conrad Veidt on Screen (2009) and Many Selves: The Horror and Fantasy Films of Paul Wegener (2017)

"Gary Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger have added the final chapter to Bela Lugosi's career, combining fascinating unknown details of his film and stage activities with post-WWII film history. Superbly researched and written as an engrossing story of an actor's struggle against professional decline. A must-read " - Robert Cremer, author of Lugosi: The Man Behind the Cape (Henry Regnery, 1976). "Gary Rhodes represents that elusive Gold Standard in narrative research into the full depth and breadth of Bela Lugosi's complicated career. Rhodes' devotion to the banishment of myth, and to its replacement with frank and humanizing truth, has provided a wealth of historical storytelling that, in turn, renders the actor's known body of work all the more fascinating and comprehensible. Just when I catch myself believing I know all there is to be known about Lugosi -- along comes Gary Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger with a fresh brace of revelations. The process advances immeasurably in No Traveler Returns: The Lost Years of Bela Lugosi." - Michael H. Price, coauthor of the Forgotten Horrors series. In No Traveler Returns, Bela Lugosi scholar extraordinaire Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger provide a fascinating time travel journey back to the late 1940s/early 1950s, when Lugosi - largely out of favor in Hollywood - embarked on a Gypsy-like existence of vaudeville, summer stock, and magic shows. While many historians have considered this era a limbo in Lugosi's career, with precious few facts unearthed, Rhodes and Kaffenberger take the reader along for a wide-eyed ride as Bela performs in a nightclub so notorious that armed guards keep watch on the roof, dresses as Dracula in a magic show where he and a gorilla (a man in a suit) play football with the guillotined head of a woman (a dummy), and races from one stock engagement to another without ever missing a cue. Never in his American career was Bela so busy, and never did his light shine so brightly as he valiantly troupes to support his family, dominate age and illness, and please his audiences. It's a fastidiously researched education in the show business world of the time - and a stirring tribute to the charm, brilliance and inexhaustible professionalism of the star who was Dracula. - Gregory William Mank, author of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration (McFarland, 2009).

The latest in a series of books by researchers extraordinaire Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger, Bela Lugosi in Person brims with new facts, figures, and never-seen photos documenting the actor's scores of live public performances from 1931 to 1945, the era of his greatest fame. Three-act plays, vaudeville sketches, variety shows, and personal appearances are all chronicled at length, bringing new perspective to Lugosi's life and career. Gary Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger have once again delivered the goods with their latest work Bela Lugosi in Person. They have combined their gift for scholarly research with an entertaining style to unveil fascinating aspects of Lugosi's stage career and the personal dramas that took place behind stage. Chockfull of surprises and new revelations that will delight every reader, but particularly aficionados who know Lugosi, but not "Lugosi in Person." Simply superb. - Robert Cremer, author of Lugosi: The Man Behind the Cape I've been a fan of Bela Lugosi for some six decades. Ironically I'd never heard of the actor until the day in 1956 that he died, when my Mother informed me of his passing. Now I'm also a fan of Gary D. Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger, a team who, it seems, know - and care - more about the man best known for his role of Count Dracula, and getting the facts about that man accurately recorded, than anyone else on the planet. Rhodes' previous book, Tod Browning's Dracula, and Rhodes and Kaffenberger's No Traveler Returns, are incredibly well-researched and entertaining studies of the actor's career that I could not put down once I began reading them ... and this new tome, written with the same scholarship and style, completes a literary trilogy every Bela Lugosi enthusiast should own and read. Highly recommended - Donald F. Glut, author of The Dracula Book and The Empire Strikes Back novelization. I witnessed the intensity of my father, Bela Lugosi, firsthand. But I did not at the time realize how unique the experience was. His personal magnetism has survived in people's memories and in our culture. This is evidenced by the desire of so many people wanting to connect to Dad by connecting to me - at conventions, on the street and anywhere they hear the name "Bela Lugosi." It was Dad's elegance and captivating personality that made Count Dracula such an alluring yet horrific figure, so I can imagine the draw my father must have created when he was to appear in person - and the effect he must have had on a live audience. I am grateful that Gary Rhodes and Bill Kaffenberger's new book shines a light on Dad's personal appearances, a previously uncovered facet of his career and legacy. - Bela G. Lugosi