The vampire has always had audience appeal. What is amazing is that Hollywood shunned the King of Vampires for years fearing the story was too gruesome of any movie audience’s palette. When Universal finally decided to make a screen production of the classic novel and successful Broadway play, they were not originally going to pursue Bela Lugosi for the part even though he had stunned audiences with his performance in the Broadway role for years. This MagicImage Filmbook traces the long trail of the classic 1931 production from legend to screenplay to film. Includes treatments, preliminary scripts even, for the first time anywhere, reproductions of some of Bram Stoker’s original handwritten and typed draft manuscript for the novel. Special Introduction by Bela Lugosi and Preface by Carla Laemmle.