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 on screen.

By presenting a staggering wealth of well researched details, Gary D. Rhodes and Bill

Kaffenberger create not only the context but the humanity of Lugosi becoming Dracula. Their

portrait-in-words is nuanced, revealing and sympathetic, but still preserves the mystery and

majesty of this most charismatic of actors. They introduce the reader to the Hungarian-American

subculture in which Lugosi found himself when he arrived on the shores of the United States.

Lugosi was initially the big fish in that small pond, but the authors portray his emergence into

the vast ocean of Broadway and Hollywood and the fascination Lugosi created with his unique

presence there.

• Steve Haberman, screenwriter of Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) and

author of Silent Screams: The History of the Silent Horror Film (Midnight

Marquee, 2010)