Category Archives: Dracula

Casting Shadows, as It Were

October 29, 20241940s mystery, Bela Lugosi, Dracula, Film Noir, Gail Russell, Gothic, Halloween, Horror films, Jessica Minton, Murder, mystery, New England, radio, radio drama, radio dramas, Shadows of a Dark Past, supernatiral films, supernatural, suspense, The Black Cat (1934), The Uninivted, Vitus Werdegast1940s mystery, Bela Lugosi, Dracula, Forever Knight, Gail Russell, Geraint Wyn Davies, ghost story, Halloween, Jessica Minton, mystery, New England, Return of the Vampire, Shadows of a Dark Past, Sharon Healy Yang, The Black Cat (1934), The Night Has A Thousand Eyes, The Univinted, Vitus Werdegasthealy24yang

“Casting Shadows, as It Were”

In the past, I’ve posted on how “casting” characters as if they were played by (mostly) classic era actors in my earlier Jessica Minton mysteries helped me flesh out their characters. Now that Shadows of a Dark Past is out, I thought you might enjoy reading about the inspirations for the folks Jessica, Liz, and James encounter on the mysterious Birdsong Island. So, let’s begin!

When you’re writing a ghost story à la Val Lewton/Edgar Ulmer/ Joseph Lewis, it only makes sense that some of your characters be inspired by star players from those films. So, with whom to start? Why not the inspiration for the haunted scientist/widower of Shadows, Vitus Blasko?

Who is a prime prospect to play a man whose obsession with his work cost him his wife and child many years ago? My choice was one of the premiere players of 1930s/40s horror, especially at Universal: Bela Lugosi. “What?!” you exclaim. “The guy who played those Machiavellian vampires in Dracula (1931) and Return of the Vampire (1945), as well a plethora of sinister scientists?” “You bet!” I reply. Lugosi also played the tortured and highly sympathetic Dr. Vitus Werdegast in 1934’s The Black Cat. Here, he’s a doctor who had been sent to a death camp at the end of WWI, costing him his wife and daughter, through the betrayal of Boris Karloff’s Hjalmar Poelzig. (Now those are names!) His intellectual battles with Poelzig may seem sinisterly to threaten a young married couple caught in the middle at Hjalmar’s Frank-Lloyd-Wright-on-LSD designed mansion. However, Werdegast’s grief over what he has lost and his protection of the couple reveal a sympathetic tenderness in Lugosi’s acting. In honor of the sensitivity of Lugosi’s performance, I opted to select Vitus for the first name of my haunted scientist from Lugosi’s character in The Black Cat and the last name from Lugosi’s actual family name.

Jamie Blasko: Jamie, Vitus and the ghostly Felicia’s daughter, has terribly suffered through her mother’s murder (or abandonment?), a broken engagement, and living in a shadow-shrouded manse looking after a father broken by the mistakes of his past. With a cast member of The Wellstone Mystery Hour offering her the life saver of romance, Jamie has a chance for happiness. Dare she take it? The radio program will broadcast shows focusing on that most terrible time: the mystery of her mother’s disappearance. Can Jamie bear a revival of that scandal and pain? Will the program provide the answers she needs? Will she and her father be able to bear those answers?

Soulful-eyed Gail Russell is the natural inspiration of my creation, Jamie Blasko. In such roles as the haunted daughter determined to embrace the ghostly touch of her mother in The Uninvited or the young woman struggling against the psychic prediction of her death at a fast approaching appointed hour in The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Russell’s gentle demeanor threaded with flashes of piercing anguish embodies the spirit of the Blasko girl.

Gerry Davis: A WWII vet who lost a leg at Anzio, Gerry is a true radio trouper on The Wellstone Mystery Hour, not only playing most of their romantic leads but a host of other parts as the need arises. Handsome with wavy blondish brown hair and a twinkle in his eye, Gerry’s kind heart and impish wit may be just the ticket to save Jaime Blasko from the darkness shadowing her life. However, Gerry must overcome the antipathy between Vitus Blasko and the Carlyle family sponsoring these broadcasts of a past tearing apart both families. For Gerry, I’ve turned to a more modern player for inspiration: Geraint Wyn Davies. The humor, passion, and intelligence Davies has brought to roles ranging from Shakespeare to the conscience-stricken vampire detective of Forever Knight makes him an ideal choice to inspire Gerry’s good nature and passion to protect Jamie Blasko.

If you haven’t already, check out my blogs on casting characters in the first three novels of the Jessica Minton Mysteries

Bait and Switch

Letter from a Dead Man

Always Play the Dark Horse

Image Credits
Bela Lugosi images screen shots from The Black Cat (1934), © Universal Pictures.
First Gail Russell Image: Screen Shot from The Uninvited (1944) © Paramount Pictures.
Second Gail Russell Image Public Domain from Wikkipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gail_Russell_postcard_photo_circa_1950s.jpg
Geraint Wynn Davies image a portion of Lady Vamp’s Forever Knight Site, http://www.foreverknight.org/LadyVampKnight1228/home.html

If any violation of copyright has been inadvertently committed by my posting or re-posting these images, let me know and I will remove them.

Back to Shadows of a Dark Past
Back to Home Page

On Tour for Dracula

November 29, 2015Cemeteries, Dracula, England, English Robin, George Eliot, Gothic, Gothic literature, Highgate Cemetery, medieval, monastery, Nature, Whitby AbbeyCemeteries, Dracula, George Eliot, Gothic, Highgate Cemetery, Whitby Abbeyhealy24yang

So, the last work we’re covering for my Romantic and Victorian Gothic course is Dracula, on December 2nd. For “educational” purposes, I’m going to post some pictures that Yang and I took on our visits to England in 2013 and 2015. The first trip was a kind of “English major’s dream.” We visited Tintern Abbey, the Lake Country, Haworth and Whitby in Yorkshire, and in London St. Pancras Cemetery, Samuel Johnson’s House, Highgate Cemetery, and other neat places. So, let’s start with images from Whitby that correspond to events in Dracula.

Here is a shot of the cemetery for the Church of St. Mary’s, overlooking the harbor. You can even see a few graves that might have been the very ones that Mina and Lucy sat upon – where Lucy was attacked by the evil Count and where he hid out during the day.

Here are some of the views of the harbor that the young gals would have see from their spot – or Dracula if he peeked through the cracks of his sepulcher hideyhole. Note the man-made breakwater with its lighthouse, described in the novel.

The brilliant roofs on the houses perhaps inspired Stoker’s emphasis of red predominating his descriptions of the town.

The other arm of the harbor stretches mightily outward. You can see the depth of the harbor just by noting the height of the opposite cliff.

You get the same impression looking at the abbey and St. Mary’s from the heights above the beach and the concert pavilion.

Mina must have lied. She could never have run up these stairs in her bare feet. The girl must have had her New Balance sneakers on – and collapsed when she got to the top!

Here are some shots of the magnificent ruins themselves.

Notice me in the corner for scale.

The other Dracula portion of my tour was at Highgate Cemetery. There are actually two sides to the cemetery. One is called the Old Highgate and the other the New. They’re both pretty old, but Yang and I figure that the encounters with Lucy’s Undead self probably occurred in New Highgate, since she would have been buried in 1897. We weren’t there in the middle of the night; that’s frowned on. So, our pictures are all in daylight – they wouldn’t have looked too good with only flash light, anyway. Still, these pics definitely capture the eeriness – especially if you are a Dr. Who fan. Don’t blink!

The graves are closely crowded, so you can imagine how easy Dr.Van Helsing and the boys would have had it finding a place to hide and peek at the vampires. I don’t know how overgrown the landscape would have been about 120 years ago, though.

You can’t forget to visit some of the famous folk buried here, like George Eliot.

And my husband said hello to one of the more fiery of the Marx Brothers, Karl. I guess Van Helsing and Co. were in too much of a rush to pay any literary/political social calls.

To end on an adorable note, enjoy the English Robin on the tomb stone, though you might have to click on the picture and enlarge it to see him/her.

Or this fox, who is way too adorable to fall under Dracula’s evil sway.