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Southern Beau wrote:

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atenolol wrote:

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As for being British just getting one in the door, perhaps, but were British actors successful because Hollywood was Anglophile, or because they were good.

That is the question. I always thought Lugosi's accent, which branded him, ultimately limited him. I think Lugosi was capable of many of those roles you mentioned Karloff playing to. Perhaps it was more perception on the part of producers than being British.

He might have been capable of some of the roles Karloff was playing, but realistically, which ones would he have done better? And of the ones he perhaps lost to Karloff, did "Britishness" get Karloff over the top? Take THE MUMMY. Why were the German Carl Laemmle and the Bohemian Karl Freund Anglophiles? Could it be that they chose Karloff because they felt he was superior at pantomime and would therefore do better in the extended silent flashback scene? This is just as plausible to me as the British argument. Did Michael Curtiz prefer Karloff on THE WALKING DEAD because he was British? I doubt it. As for the roles Lugosi did not get, the best of these were not lost to Karloff. Lugosi might have played Count Zaroff in THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, but Karloff didn't play that role. He lost Rasputin to Lionel Barrymore. He didn't lose the villain role in THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE to Karloff either. He lost the forties Universal Dracula roles to Chaney and Carradine.

As for Lugosi getting the better of Karloff when they had equal roles in the same movie, I don't think he ever did. Karloff more than holds his own in THE BLACK CAT. Lugosi actually has much the better roles in THE RAVEN and SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. In SOF, Karloff isn't even on screen for the first third of the movie, his character is comatose for the second third, and he has no dialogue. In contrast, Lugosi is on screen much more and has scene after scene with rich dialogue. What impression would Lugosi have made in that movie if he had played the monster? He also had much more screen time in THE RAVEN, is the focus of attention throughout, and has all the good dialogue. If Karloff was nearly the egoistic "rival" he's cracked up to be, he would never have accepted such a subsidiary role. Would Lugosi have been able to make Bateman anything more than Karloff made him? I don't see any evidence off any of his performances to suspect he would have.

Bottom line for me is that comparisions are odious. Karloff failed to carve out a career as a "British" type in A movies. Lugosi failed to carve out a career as an exotic villain in A movies. Both had the talent to do so if they had been luckier and perhaps if not typecast. The other had nothing to do with these failures, and the success each enjoyed in horror roles may in fact have aided the success of the other in such roles over the long run.