Judging by the bright leaves and the bare trees that once held them Halloween must be here.
Welcome to Marginalia. The intention behind the new blog category is to keep everyone up to date with the services we provide at the circulation desk. Along the way we’ll also introduce you to the staff members who work here and as well as sharing some stories about the library in general. Our intention is to keep it light, but relevant. With that in mind, let’s start things off with a tale about gimmick infringement called Dracula v Nosferatu.
However, before we begin our epic monster bash, here’s a timely treat for you straight from the circulation desk. Did you know that if you borrow a two-hour item from the reserve room during the last two hours before closing it’s not due back until early the following morning?
So, if you’re ready for our main event, let’s open our favorite monster magazine to page thirteen.
Sadly, Uncle Bela isn’t here to narrate it himself because he’s off having his front teeth trimmed and polished at Dr. Acula’s School of Creative Dentistry, but he did ask me to relate this rather duplicitous tale of copycat vampires in his absence.
Albin Grau was a German film producer who had the idea of doing a movie based on Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897). Max Reinhardt protégé F.W. Murnau was brought on board to direct and the film was called Nosferatu (1922). There was just one small hitch: Grau didn’t have the rights to either the story or the character.
Other attempts at deception included changing Dracula’s name to Count Orlock, moving the story line back to 1838, and altering Stoker’s ending (death by knives) by having their vampire die from direct exposure to the first light of a new day.
Florence Balcombe (Bram’s wife and literary executor of the estate) was not amused and sued over the intellectual property rights, but what she didn’t know at the time was that Prana Film (Grau’s production company) had gone bankrupt due to an overly expensive promotional campaign. Curiously, that particular strategy came back to haunt Grau a second time when some early publicity posters, which included the phrase “freely adapted from Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, were discovered. In lieu of a cash settlement the court ordered that all European copies of Nosferatu be destroyed. But as any respectable cryptozoologist will attest, vampires are notoriously resilient creatures. Some years later, Florence gave Universal Pictures her blessing and they released an authorised version in 1931. Producer Carl Laemmle Jr. recruited Tod Browning to direct the film and hired Bela Lugosi, a little known, thickly accented, stage actor from Hungary to play Dracula.
Nevertheless, a few copies of Nosferatu managed to survive the European purge. That, combined with the fact that Stoker never registered a copyright for Dracula in America, allowed the film to eventually surface in the United States where it soon became a critically acclaimed addition to the Horror genre.
As we turn the page on this cautionary tale of vampiric plagiarism, I’d like to take a moment and share a quick secret with you (but only if you promise not to tell Uncle Bela). As much as I respect his long standing association with Dracula, I still prefer Max Schreck’s portrayal of the character. Simply put, his plasma chilling performance in Nosferatu sends a sharp shiver of delight through me that runs right from the bottom of my dirt covered Transylvanian coffin all the way to the thick, shiny tips of my blood stained fangs every single time I see the film.
Just in case you’re wondering, my name is Eva Prim and I’m a vampire just like my Uncle Bela!
Happy Halloween!
Photo & Prose: david eugene everard © 2018