text:
Talk:Bloody Sunday (1972)

missing names
. Why isn't it in the article? 2A00:1028:8390:C7F2:E0A8:443D:80B9:C02D (talk) 18:46, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

 * Read the multiple sections above. TL;dr version: there isn't consensus to include his name in the article. If Dave is convicted, it can certainly be included then, I would imagine. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 18:57, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Introduction of the term 'Soldier F'
I don't mean to start any new discussions about whether 'Soldier F' should be named; there seems to be no new consensus on that front. But the article does not actually introduce or define the term 'Soldier F' despite using it numerous times in important contexts. This is confusing. If we are going to use this term, in quotes no less, then it should be prominently explained (in whatever manner existing consensus allows).

I would add something myself, but given the previous lengthy debate I thought it best to raise the issue with editors more familiar with the issue. Rwbogl (talk) 17:06, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I clarified the "Soldier F" definition in the bulletpoints under the Report subheading. Mztourist (talk) 09:51, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * @Mztourist What was your edit? It seems to have been removed since, and "Soldier F" doesn't appear in the article body any more. Cortador (talk) 07:14, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Cortador this change:, its still there. regards Mztourist (talk) 07:18, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * My search messed up, my bad. Cheers! Cortador (talk) 08:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

"Bogside Massacre" and number of fatalities
@Ianmacm Can you assist?

@Kathleen's bike insists on reversing edits. I explained why bogside massacre is superfluous to the lede, which should be both concise and not duplicated.

Bloody Sunday (1972) is universally known and not the alternative they have submitted.

"Both bogside and massacre in bold are superfluous in the lede when two links to both words are already present. 13 died on Bloody Sunday, not 14. This ties in with the Martin McGuinness page which has been updated to reflect accurately the deaths that occurred as a result of British soldiers opening fire. A further death four months later, from injuries is also recorded". Jaymailsays (talk) 23:57, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

 * See guidance at WP:OTHERNAMES. The presence of two words, unconnected, in the sentence does not have the same effect. Kathleen's bike (talk) 00:22, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

 * My two cents is that "Bogside massacre" is nowhere near being the WP:COMMONNAME for this incident. It probably doesn't need to be in the opening sentence. As for the death toll, it is not disputed that thirteen people died on the day of the incident; this is still regarded as the official death toll and is quoted by many sources. John Johnston died four months later and is widely regarded as the fourteenth victim. The wording should make clear that thirteen people died on the day and Johnston died later.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 07:32, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

 * Concur with Ianmacm - it's universally known as "Bloody Sunday", and "Bogside Massacre" is much rarer and isn't used again in the whole article. (>330,000 hits for "Bloody Sunday" +1972, versus 22,000 hits for "Bogside Massacre). Should not be in the lede sentence, might merit mention as an alternative name in the body. "The wording should make clear that thirteen people died on the day and Johnston died later" - yes, this. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 09:53, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

 * Per MOS:BOLDALTNAMES the question is whether it's a "significant" alternative name, not per se  how it compares to "Bloody Sunday" in use. COMMONNAME is a different and inapplicable test and being "much rarer" than Bloody Sunday doesn't exclude it as an ALTNAME. I don't think there's any doubt that it's normally called Bloody Sunday. Having looked at Google Books, there were more references to "Bogside Massacre" than I was expecting. It's a marginal call, but I think it does just make it as a "significant alternative name". It's a redirect, so it's also helpful that anyone who gets to the article through that means immediately sees why. It's not as though there are a long list of alternatives cluttering the first sentence so I don't really see a pressing need to exclude it. DeCausa (talk) 10:11, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * You may not personally see a pressing need to remove "bogside massacre" in bold, from the opening description but it is, at least in this discussion a minority view. The use of massacre is immotive and a term often used to further propaganda and it is rarely seen as neutral.
 * It is not disputed that armed individuals attended the protest and the military perceived they were under threat from, weapons, car bombs and nail bombs.
 * Had the leadership of both sides, simply withdrawn and dispersed from the area, probably there would have been no loss of life that awful day. Jaymailsays (talk) 15:07, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * "Immotive"? Do you mean emotive? That's neither here nor there. (And "Bloody Sunday" isn't emotive????) The only question is whether it's significantly used or not. I didn't realise you just didn't like it. That's absolutely no reason to remove it - and you'll notice no one else has argued that. You're in a minority of one (so far) on that. DeCausa (talk) 15:50, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * And, Jailmailsays, the heading that you chose for this thread (Reporting Edit warring!) could be seen as a WP:PA so I've changed it to something that's more appropriate. I don't see any edit-warring. You WP:BOLDly edited, were reverted once and then you took it to Talk. That's exactly as it should be. No edit-warring. DeCausa (talk) 10:38, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * If there are reliable sources for the name "Bogside massacre", we should probably include it somewhere. If it's not widely recognised enough to be used in the opening sentence, maybe put it later in the lead. I'm less concerned about the nuance around the number of casualties; it needs to be conveyed somewhere but if it makes the opening sentences too wordy the important bit is that 14 people were killed and we can make it clear as the lead goes on that #14 was a few months later. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:02, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The BBC and the Guardian use shootings rather than massacre. The use of massacre is over used in the opening paragraph and throughout the Article. Where used it should be stated who used the term and in what context, in my view. Jaymailsays (talk) 15:26, 2 April 2024 (UTC)
 * There's nothing wrong with Wikipedia reporting that someone else has called something a massacre, especially if it become the common name, cf. Milltown massacre (redirect, bolded in the opening) or Hungerford massacre (article title) off the top of my head. We shouldn't call it such in Wikipedia's voice of course. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:11, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

 * Bogside Massacre is widely used in news media and books, thus per guidance at WP:OTHERNAMES ("significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph"), it very much belongs where it is. Kathleen's bike (talk) 15:18, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

About the names and victims: RTE Archives - Witness To Bogside Deaths 1972, RTE Archives - Remembering The Victims 1974. Both Irish sources. About the names: Het Parool 31-1-1972 (called "bloedbad", i.e. massacre in English) (Dutch source). I hope this helps. The Banner talk 16:56, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

 * Or the highly regarded A Treatise on Northern Ireland Volume 1 (Colonialism) by Brendan O'Leary, page 40 - Bloody Sunday is the only one of the events just described with significant numbers of civilian deaths to be commemorated as a massacre—it is sometimes called “the Bogside massacre.”. O'Leary is clearly a subject matter expert. Kathleen's bike (talk) 17:47, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 May 2024
Change interment without trial to interment 85.31.142.37 (talk) 12:17, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Primefac (talk) 12:24, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The phrase "Internment without trial" used in the lead and Background sections has an element of tautology, because internment is by definition detaining a person without a legal process. I think this what is trying to say. The wording could be changed as it is explained in more detail at Operation Demetrius.-- ♦Ian Ma c  M♦  (talk to me) 12:46, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
 * No. A reader shouldn't have to click through to another article to find that out. "Internment without trial" is absolutely a common term, especially in the context of Northern Ireland. Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 13:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bloody Sunday (1972)


text:
Bo Diddley

Ellas Otha Bates (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008), known professionally as Bo Diddley, was an American guitarist and singer who played a key role in the transition from the blues to rock and roll. He influenced many artists, including Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, George Thorogood, Syd Barrett, and the Clash.

His use of African rhythms and a signature beat, a simple five-accent hambone rhythm, is a cornerstone of hip hop, rock, and pop music. In recognition of his achievements, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2003, and the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2017. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Diddley is also recognized for his technical innovations, including his use of tremolo and reverb effects to enhance the sound of his distinctive rectangular-shaped guitars.

Early life
Bo Diddley was born in McComb, Mississippi, as Ellas Otha Bates (also stated as Otha Ellas Bates or Elias Otha Bates). He was the only child of Ethel Wilson, a sharecropper's teenaged daughter, and Eugene Bates, whom he never knew. Wilson was only sixteen, and being unable to support a family, she gave her cousin, Gussie McDaniel, permission to raise her son. McDaniel eventually adopted him, and he assumed her surname. Diddley denied ever having the name "Otha" in a 2001 interview, saying "I don't know where they got that 'Otha' from", but his website, maintained by his estate, confirms it as his middle name.

After his adoptive father Robert died in 1934, when Diddley was five years old, Gussie McDaniel moved with him and her three children to the South Side of Chicago; he later dropped Otha from his name and became Ellas McDaniel. He was an active member of Chicago's Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, where he studied the trombone and the violin, becoming so proficient on the violin that the musical director invited him to join the orchestra, in which he played until he was 18. However, he was more interested in the joyful, rhythmic music he heard at a local Pentecostal Church and took up the guitar; his first recordings were based on that frenetic church music. Diddley said he thought that the trance-like rhythm he used in his rhythm and blues music came from the Sanctified churches he had attended as a youth in his Chicago neighborhood.

Career
Inspired by a John Lee Hooker performance, Diddley supplemented his income as a carpenter and mechanic by playing on street corners with friends, including Jerome Green, in the Hipsters band, later renamed the Langley Avenue Jive Cats. Green became a near-constant member of McDaniel's backing band, the two often trading joking insults with each other during live shows. In the summers of 1943 and 1944, he played at the Maxwell Street market in a band with Earl Hooker. By 1951 he was playing on the street with backing from Roosevelt Jackson on washtub bass and Jody Williams, who had played harmonica as a boy but took up guitar in his teens after he met Diddley at a talent show, with Diddley teaching him some aspects of playing the instrument, including how to play the bass line. Williams later played lead guitar on "Who Do You Love?" (1956)

In 1951, he landed a regular spot at the 708 Club, on Chicago's South Side, with a repertoire influenced by Louis Jordan, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters. In late 1954, he teamed up with harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold, drummer Clifton James and bass player Roosevelt Jackson and recorded demos of "I'm a Man" and "Bo Diddley". They re-recorded the songs at Universal Recording Corp. for Chess Records, with a backing ensemble comprising Otis Spann (piano), Lester Davenport (harmonica), Frank Kirkland (drums), and Jerome Green (maracas). The record was released in March 1955, and the A-side, "Bo Diddley", became a number one R&B hit.

Origins of stage name
The origin of the stage name Bo Diddley is unclear. McDaniel said his peers gave him the name, which he suspected was an insult. Diddly is a truncation of diddly squat, which means "absolutely nothing". Diddley also said that the name first belonged to a singer his adoptive mother knew. Harmonicist Billy Boy Arnold said that it was a local comedian's name, which Leonard Chess adopted as McDaniel's stage name and the title of his first single. McDaniel also stated that his school classmates in Chicago gave him the nickname, which he started using when sparring and boxing in the neighborhood with The Little Neighborhood Golden Gloves Bunch.

In the 1921 story "Black Death", by Zora Neale Hurston, Beau Diddely was a womanizer who impregnates a young woman, disavows responsibility, and meets his undoing by the powers of the local hoodoo man. Hurston submitted it in a contest run by the academic journal Opportunity in 1925, where it won an honorable mention, but it was never published during her lifetime.

A diddley bow is a homemade single-string instrument that survived in the American Deep South, especially in Mississippi. Played mainly by children, the diddley bow in its simplest form was made by nailing a length of broom wire to the side of a house, using a rock placed under the string as a movable bridge, and played in the style of a bottleneck guitar, with various objects used as a slider. The apparent consensus among scholars is that the diddley bow is derived from the monochord zithers of central Africa.

Success in the 1950s and 1960s
On November 20, 1955, Diddley appeared on the popular television program The Ed Sullivan Show. According to legend, when someone on the show's staff overheard him casually singing "Sixteen Tons" in the dressing room, he was asked to perform the song on the show. One of Diddley's later versions of the story was that upon seeing "Bo Diddley" on the cue card, he thought he was to perform both his self-titled hit single and "Sixteen Tons". Sullivan was furious and banned Diddley from his show, reputedly saying that he would not last six months. Chess Records included Diddley's cover of "Sixteen Tons" on the 1963 album Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger.

Diddley's hit singles continued in the 1950s and 1960s: "Pretty Thing" (1956), "Say Man" (1959), and "You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover" (1962). He also released numerous albums, including Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger and Have Guitar, Will Travel. These bolstered his self-invented legend. Between 1958 and 1963, Checker Records released eleven full-length Bo Diddley albums. In the 1960s, he broke through as a crossover artist with white audiences (appearing at the Alan Freed concerts, for example), but he rarely aimed his compositions at teenagers. Diddley was among those musicians who capitalized on the mid-1960s surfing and beach party craze in the United States, and released the albums Surfin' with Bo Diddley and  Bo Diddley's Beach Party. These featured heavy, distorted blues, played on his Gretsch guitar with bended notes and minor key riffs, unlike the clean, undistorted sounds of the Fender guitars used by the California surf bands. The cover of Surfin' with Bo Diddley had a photograph of two surfers riding a big wave.

In 1963, Diddley starred in a UK concert tour with the Everly Brothers and Little Richard along with the Rolling Stones (a little-known band at that time).

Diddley wrote many songs for himself and also for others. In 1956, he and guitarist Jody Williams co-wrote the pop song "Love Is Strange", a hit for Mickey & Sylvia in 1957, reaching number 11 on the chart. Mickey Baker claimed that he (Baker) and Bo Diddley's wife, Ethel Smith, wrote the song. Diddley also wrote "Mama (Can I Go Out)", which was a minor hit for the pioneering rockabilly singer Jo Ann Campbell, who performed the song in the 1959 rock and roll film Go Johnny Go.

After moving from Chicago to Washington, D.C., Diddley built his first home recording studio in the basement of his home at 2614 Rhode Island Avenue NE. Frequented by several of Washington, D.C.'s musical luminaries, the studio was the site where he recorded the Checker LP (Checker LP-2977) Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger. Diddley also produced and recorded several up-and-coming groups from the Washington, D.C. area. One of the first groups he recorded was local doo-wop group the Marquees, featuring Marvin Gaye and baritone-bass Chester Simmons, who moonlighted as Diddley's chauffeur.

The Marquees appeared in talent shows at the Lincoln Theatre, and Diddley, impressed by their smooth vocal delivery, let them rehearse in his studio. Diddley got the Marquees signed to Columbia subsidiary label OKeh Records after unsuccessfully attempting to get them a contract with his own label, Chess. The OKeh label rivaled Chess in the promotion of rhythm and blues. On September 25, 1957, Diddley drove the group to New York City to record "Wyatt Earp", a novelty song written by Reese Palmer, lead singer of the Marquees. Diddley produced the session, with the group backed by his own band. They cut their first record, a single with "Wyatt Earp" on the A-side and "Hey Little School Girl" on the B-side, but it failed to become a hit. Diddley persuaded Moonglows founder and backing vocalist Harvey Fuqua to hire Gaye. Gaye joined the Moonglows as first tenor; the group then moved to Detroit with the hope of signing with Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr.

Diddley included women in his band: Norma-Jean Wofford, also known as The Duchess; Gloria Jolivet; Peggy Jones, also known as Lady Bo, a lead guitarist (rare for a woman at that time); and Cornelia Redmond, also known as Cookie V.

Later years
In early 1971, writer-musician Michael Lydon, a founding editor of Rolling Stone, conducted a lengthy, rambling interview of Diddley, at his then home in the San Fernando Valley, California. Lydon described him as a "protean genius" whose songs were "hymns to himself", and led the published piece with a Diddley quote: "Everything I know I taught myself."

Over the decades, Diddley's performing venues ranged from intimate clubs to stadiums. On March 25, 1972, he played with the Grateful Dead at the Academy of Music in New York City. The Grateful Dead released part of this concert as Volume 30 of the band's concert album series, Dick's Picks. Also in the early 1970s, the soundtrack of the ground-breaking animated film Fritz the Cat contained his song "Bo Diddley", in which a crow dances and finger-pops to the track.

Diddley spent some years in New Mexico, living in Los Lunas from 1971 to 1978, while continuing his musical career. He served for two and a half years as a deputy sheriff in the Valencia County Citizens' Patrol; during that time he purchased and donated three highway-patrol pursuit cars. In the late 1970s, he left Los Lunas and moved to Hawthorne, Florida, where he lived on a large estate in a custom-made log cabin, which he helped to build. For the remainder of his life he divided his time between Albuquerque and Florida, living the last 13 years of his life in Archer, Florida, a small farming town near Gainesville.

In 1979, he appeared as an opening act for the Clash on their US tour.

In 1983, he made a cameo appearance as a Philadelphia pawn shop owner in the comedy film Trading Places. He also appeared in George Thorogood's music video for the song "Bad to the Bone," portraying a guitar-slinging pool shark.

In 1985, he appeared on George Thorogood's set, alongside fellow blues legend Albert Collins, on the Live Aid American stage to perform Thorogood's popular cover of Diddley's song Who Do You Love?".

In 1989, Diddley and his management company, Talent Source, entered into a licensing with the sportswear brand. The Wieden & Kennedy-produced commercial in the "Bo Knows" campaign teamed Diddley with dual sportsman Bo Jackson. The agreement ended in 1991, but in 1999, a T-shirt of Diddley's image and "You don't know diddley" slogan was purchased in a Gainesville, Florida, sports apparel store. Diddley felt that Nike should not continue to use the slogan or his likeness and fought Nike over the copyright infringement. Despite the fact that lawyers for both parties could not come to a renewed legal arrangement, Nike allegedly continued marketing the apparel and ignored cease-and-desist orders, and a lawsuit was filed on Diddley's behalf, in Manhattan Federal Court.

Diddley played a blues and rock musician named Axman in the 1990 comedy film Rockula, directed by Luca Bercovici and starring Dean Cameron.

In Legends of Guitar (filmed live in Spain in 1991), Diddley performed with Steve Cropper, B.B. King, Les Paul, Albert Collins, and George Benson, among others. He joined the Rolling Stones on their 1994 concert broadcast of Voodoo Lounge, performing "Who Do You Love?" at Joe Robbie Stadium, in Miami. In 1996, he released A Man Amongst Men, his first major-label album (and his final studio album) with guest artists like Keith Richards, Ron Wood and The Shirelles. The album earned a Grammy Award nomination in 1997 for the Best Contemporary Blues Album category.

Diddley performed a number of shows around the country in 2005 and 2006, with fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Johnnie Johnson and his band, consisting of Johnson on keyboards, Richard Hunt on drums and Gus Thornton on bass. In 2006, he participated as the headliner of a grassroots-organized fundraiser concert to benefit the town of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, which had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The "Florida Keys for Katrina Relief" had originally been set for October 23, 2005, when Hurricane Wilma barreled through the Florida Keys on October 24, causing flooding and economic mayhem.

In January 2006, the Florida Keys had recovered enough to host the fundraising concert to benefit the more hard-hit community of Ocean Springs. When asked about the fundraiser, Diddley stated, "This is the United States of America. We believe in helping one another". The all-star band included members of the Soul Providers, and famed artists Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band, Joey Covington of Jefferson Airplane, Alfonso Carey of The Village People, and Carl Spagnuolo of Jay & The Techniques. In an interview with Holger Petersen, on Saturday Night Blues on CBC Radio in the fall of 2006, he commented on racism in the music industry establishment during his early career. Diddley sold the rights to his songs early on, and until 1989 he received no royalties from the most successful part of his career.

His final guitar performance on a studio album was with the New York Dolls on their 2006 album One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This. He contributed guitar work to the song "Seventeen", which was included as a bonus track on the limited-edition version of the disc.

In May 2007, Diddley suffered a stroke after a concert the previous day in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Nonetheless, he delivered an energetic performance to an enthusiastic crowd. A few months later he had a heart attack. While recovering, Diddley came back to his hometown of McComb, Mississippi, in early November 2007, for the unveiling of a plaque devoted to him on the Mississippi Blues Trail. This marked his achievements and noted that he was "acclaimed as a founder of rock-and-roll." He was not supposed to perform, but as he listened to the music of local musician Jesse Robinson, who sang a song written for this occasion, Robinson sensed that Diddley wanted to perform and handed him a microphone, the only time that he performed publicly after his stroke.

Marriages and children
Bo Diddley was married four times. His first marriage, at 18, to Louise Willingham, lasted a year. Diddley married his second wife Ethel Mae Smith in 1949; they had two children. He met his third wife, Kay Reynolds, when she was 15, while performing in Birmingham, Alabama. They soon moved in together and married, despite taboos against interracial marriage. They had two daughters. He married his fourth wife, Sylvia Paiz, in 1992; they were divorced at the time of his death.

Health problems
On May 13, 2007, Diddley was admitted to intensive care in Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, following a stroke after a concert the previous day in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Starting the show, he had complained that he did not feel well. He referred to smoke from the wildfires that were ravaging south Georgia and blowing south to the area near his home in Archer, Florida. The next day, as he was heading back home, he seemed dazed and confused at the airport, and 911 was called, and he was immediately taken by ambulance to Creighton University Medical Center where he stayed for several days. He was then flown to Shands Hospital in Gainesville, FL, where it was confirmed that he had suffered a stroke. Diddley had a history of hypertension and diabetes, and the stroke affected the left side of his brain, causing receptive and expressive aphasia (speech impairment). The stroke was followed by a heart attack, which he suffered in Gainesville, Florida, on August 28, 2007.

Death
Bo Diddley died on June 2, 2008, of heart failure at his home in Archer, Florida at the age of 79. Many family members were with him when he died at 1:45 am. EDT at his home. His death was not unexpected. "There was a Gospel song that was sung, at his bedside, and when it was done, he opened his eyes, gave a thumbs up, and said, "Wow! I'm goin' to Heaven!" The song was 'Walk Around Heaven', and those were his last words."

He was survived by his children, Evelyn Kelly, Ellas A. McDaniel, Pamela Jacobs, Steven Jones, Terri Lynn McDaniel-Hines, and Tammi D. McDaniel; a brother, the Rev. Kenneth Haynes; and eighteen grandchildren, fifteen great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

His funeral, a four-hour "homegoing" service, took place on June 7, 2008, at Showers of Blessings Church in Gainesville, Florida. Many in attendance chanted "Hey Bo Diddley" as members of Diddley's band played a subdued version of the song.

A number of notable musicians sent flowers, including Little Richard, George Thorogood, Tom Petty and Jerry Lee Lewis. Little Richard, who had been asking his audiences to pray for Bo Diddley, throughout his illness, had to fulfill concert commitments in Westbury and New York City, the weekend of the funeral. He remembered Diddley at the concerts, performing his namesake tune. Eric Burdon of the Animals flew to Gainesville to attend the service.

After the funeral service, a tribute concert was held at the Martin Luther King Center in Gainesville, Florida, featuring guest performances by his son and daughter, Ellas A. McDaniel and Evelyn "Tan" Cooper; long-time background vocalist (and original Boette), Gloria Jolivet, and long-time bassist and bandleader, Debby Hastings, Eric Burdon, and former Bo Diddley & Offspring guitarist, Scott Free. In the days following his death, tributes were paid by then-President George W. Bush, the United States House of Representatives, and musicians and performers including B. B. King, Ronnie Hawkins, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, George Thorogood, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Randolph and the Family Band and Eric Burdon. Burdon used video footage of the McDaniel family, and friends in mourning, for a video promoting his ABKCO Records release "Bo Diddley Special". Hastings is quoted as having said, "He was the rock that the roll was built on."

In November 2009, the guitar used by Bo Diddley in his final stage performance sold for $60,000 at auction.

In 2019, members of Bo Diddley's family sued to regain control of the music catalog held in trust by attorney Charles Littell. The family was successful in appointing a new trustee, music industry veteran Kendall Minter. The family was represented by Charles David of Florida Probate Law Group in the 2019 lawsuit.

Accolades
Bo Diddley was posthumously awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts degree by the University of Florida for his influence on American popular music. In its People in America radio series, about influential people in American history, the Voice of America radio service paid tribute to him, describing how "his influence was so widespread that it is hard to imagine what rock and roll would have sounded like without him." Mick Jagger stated that "he was a wonderful, original musician who was an enormous force in music and was a big influence on the Rolling Stones. He was very generous to us in our early years and we learned a lot from him". Jagger also praised the late star as a one-of-a-kind musician, adding, "We will never see his like again". The documentary film Cheat You Fair: The Story of Maxwell Street by director Phil Ranstrom features Bo Diddley's last on-camera interview.

He achieved numerous accolades in recognition of his significant role as one of the founding fathers of rock and roll.
 * 1986: Inducted into the Washington Area Music Association's Hall of Fame.
 * 1987: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
 * 1987: Inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame
 * 1990: Lifetime Achievement Award from Guitar Player magazine
 * 1996: Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation
 * 1998: Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
 * 1999: His 1955 recording of his song "Bo Diddley" inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame
 * 2000: Inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame
 * 2000: Inducted into the North Florida Music Association's Hall of Fame
 * 2002: Pioneer in Entertainment Award from the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters
 * 2002: Honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards, along with BMI affiliates Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
 * 2003: Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame
 * 2008: Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree posthumously conferred on Diddley by the University of Florida in August (the award had been confirmed before his death in June).
 * 2020: Induction into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame
 * 2010: Induction into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.
 * 2017: Inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame.
 * 2021: Inducted into the New Mexico Music Hall of Fame.

In 2003, U.S. Representative John Conyers paid tribute to Bo Diddley in the United States House of Representatives, describing him as "one of the true pioneers of rock and roll, who has influenced generations".

In 2004, Mickey and Sylvia's 1956 recording of "Love Is Strange" (a song first recorded by Bo Diddley but not released until a year before his death) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as a recording of qualitative or historical significance. Also in 2004, Bo Diddley was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame and was ranked number 20 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

In 2005, Bo Diddley celebrated his 50th anniversary in music with successful tours of Australia and Europe and with coast-to-coast shows across North America. He performed his song "Bo Diddley" with Eric Clapton and Robbie Robertson at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 20th annual induction ceremony. In the UK, Uncut magazine included his 1957 debut album, Bo Diddley, in its listing of the '100 Music, Movie & TV Moments That Have Changed the World'.

Bo Diddley was honored by the Mississippi Blues Commission with a Mississippi Blues Trail historic marker placed in McComb, his birthplace, in recognition of his enormous contribution to the development of the blues in Mississippi. On June 5, 2009, the city of Gainesville, Florida, officially renamed and dedicated its downtown plaza the Bo Diddley Community Plaza. The plaza was the site of a benefit concert at which Bo Diddley performed to raise awareness about the plight of the homeless in Alachua County and to raise money for local charities, including the Red Cross.

Beat
The "Bo Diddley beat" is essentially the clave rhythm, one of the most common bell patterns found in sub-Saharan African music traditions. One scholar found this rhythm in 13 rhythm and blues recordings made in the years 1944–55, including two by Johnny Otis from 1948.

Bo Diddley gave different accounts of how he began to use this rhythm. Ned Sublette says, "In the context of the time, and especially those maracas [heard on the record], 'Bo Diddley' has to be understood as a Latin-tinged record. A rejected cut recorded at the same session was titled only 'Rhumba' on the track sheets." The Bo Diddley beat is similar to "hambone", a style used by street performers who play out the beat by slapping and patting their arms, legs, chest, and cheeks while chanting rhymes. Somewhat resembling the "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm, Diddley came across it while trying to play Gene Autry's "(I've Got Spurs That) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle". Three years before his "Bo Diddley", a song with similar syncopation "Hambone", was cut by the Red Saunders Orchestra with the Hambone Kids. In 1944, "Rum and Coca Cola", containing the Bo Diddley beat, was recorded by the Andrews Sisters. Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" (1957) and Them's "Mystic Eyes" (1965) used the beat. In its simplest form, the Bo Diddley beat can be counted out as either a one-bar or a two-bar phrase. Here is the count as a one-bar phrase: One e and ah, two e and ah, three e and ah, four e and ah (the boldface counts are the clave rhythm).

Many songs (for example, "Hey Bo Diddley" and "Who Do You Love?") often have no chord changes; that is, the musicians play the same chord throughout the piece, so that the rhythms create the excitement, rather than having the excitement generated by harmonic tension and release. In his other recordings, Bo Diddley used various rhythms, from straight back beat to pop ballad style to doo-wop, frequently with maracas by Jerome Green. His 1955 rhythm and blues hit, "Bo Diddley", had a "driving African rhythm and ham-bone beat". Beginning that same year, Diddley collaborated with various doo-wop vocal groups, using the Moonglows as a backing group on his first album, Bo Diddley, released in 1958. In one of the most well-known of his 1958 doo-wop sessions, Diddley added harmonies by the Carnations recording as the Teardrops, who sang smooth, polished doo-wop in the backgrounds on the songs "I'm Sorry", "Crackin' Up", and "Don't Let it Go".

An influential guitar player, Bo Diddley developed many special effects and other innovations in tone and attack, particularly the "shimmering" tremolo sound, and amp reverb. His trademark instrument was his self-designed, one-of-a-kind, rectangular-bodied "Twang Machine" (referred to as "cigar-box shaped" by music promoter Dick Clark), built by Gretsch. He had other uniquely shaped guitars custom-made for him by other manufacturers throughout the years, most notably the "Cadillac" and the rectangular "Turbo 5-speed" (with built-in envelope filter, flanger and delay) designs, made by Tom Holmes (who also made guitars for ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, among others). In a 2005 interview on JJJ radio in Australia, he implied that the rectangular design sprang from an embarrassing moment. During an early gig, while jumping around on stage with a Gibson L5 guitar, he landed awkwardly, hurting his groin. He then went about designing a smaller, less-restrictive guitar that allowed him to keep jumping around on stage while still playing his guitar. He also played the violin, which is featured on his mournful instrumental "The Clock Strikes Twelve", a twelve-bar blues.

Diddley often created lyrics as witty and humorous adaptations of folk music themes. His first hit, "Bo Diddley", was based on hambone rhymes. The first line of his song "Hey Bo Diddley" is derived from the nursery rhyme "Old MacDonald". The song "Who Do You Love?" with its rap-style boasting, and his use of the African-American game known as "the dozens" on the songs "Say Man" and "Say Man, Back Again," are cited as progenitors of hip-hop music; for example, in the dialogue of the song, "Say Man", percussionist Jerome Green says the lines: "You've got the nerve to call somebody ugly. Why, you so ugly till the stork that brought you in the world oughta be arrested."

Studio albums
• Bo Diddley (Checker, 1958)

• Go Bo Diddley (Checker, 1959)

• Have Guitar Will Travel (Checker, 1960)

• Bo Diddley in the Spotlight (Checker, 1960)

• Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger (Checker, 1960)

• Bo Diddley Is a Lover (Checker, 1961)

• Bo Diddley's a Twister (Checker, 1962)

• Bo Diddley (Checker, 1962)

• Bo Diddley & Company (Checker, 1963)

• Surfin' with Bo Diddley (Checker, 1963)

• Hey! Good Lookin' (Checker, 1965)

• 500% More Man (Checker, 1965)

• The Originator (Checker, 1966)

• The Black Gladiator (Checker, 1970)

• Another Dimension (Chess, 1971)

• Where It All Began (Chess, 1972)

• The London Bo Diddley Sessions (Chess, 1973)

• Big Bad Bo (Chess, 1974)

• 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll (RCA Victor, 1976)

• Ain't It Good to Be Free (New Rose, 1983)

• Living Legend (New Rose, 1989)

• Breakin' Through the B.S. (Triple X, 1989)

• This Should Not Be (Triple X, 1992)

• A Man Amongst Men (Atlantic, 1996)

Collaborations

 * Chuck Berry Is on Top, with Chuck Berry (Chess, 1959)
 * Two Great Guitars, with Chuck Berry (Checker, 1964)
 * Super Blues, with Muddy Waters and Little Walter (Checker, 1967)
 * The Super Super Blues Band, with Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf (Checker, 1968)

Books

 * Arsicaud, Laurent (2012). Bo Diddley, Je suis un homme. Camion Blanc editions.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Bo Diddley


text:
Bela Lugosi

Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (October 20, 1882 – August 16, 1956), known professionally as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian–American actor, best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 horror film classic Dracula, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.

Lugosi began acting on the Hungarian stage in 1902. After playing in 172 productions in his native Hungary, Lugosi moved on to appear in Hungarian silent films in 1917. He had to suddenly emigrate to Germany after the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919 because of his former socialist activities (organizing a stage actors' union), leaving his first wife in the process. He acted in several films in Weimar Germany, before arriving in New Orleans as a seaman on a merchant ship, then making his way north to New York City and Ellis Island.

In 1927, he starred as Count Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, moving with the play to the West Coast in 1928 and settling down in Hollywood. He later starred in the 1931 film version of Dracula directed by Tod Browning and produced by Universal Pictures. Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in horror films, but his notoriety as Dracula and thick Hungarian accent greatly limited the roles offered to him, and he unsuccessfully tried for years to avoid typecasting.

He co-starred in a number of films with Boris Karloff, who was able to demand top billing. To his frustration, Lugosi, a charter member of the American Screen Actors Guild, was increasingly restricted to mad scientist roles because of his inability to speak English more clearly. He was kept employed by the studios principally so that they could put his name on the posters. Among his teamings with Karloff, he performed major roles only in The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939); even in The Raven, Karloff received top billing despite Lugosi performing the lead role.

By this time, Lugosi had been receiving regular medication for sciatic neuritis, and he became addicted to doctor-prescribed morphine and methadone. This drug dependence (and his gradually worsening alcoholism) was becoming apparent to producers, and after 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the offers dwindled to parts in low-budget films; some of these were directed by Ed Wood, including a brief appearance in Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (released posthumously in 1957).

Lugosi married five times and had one son, Bela G. Lugosi (with his fourth wife, Lillian).

Early life
Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in 1882 in Lugos, Kingdom of Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania) to Hungarian father István Blaskó, a baker who later became a banker, and Serbian-born mother Paula de Vojnich. He was raised in a Catholic family.

At the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school and left home to work at a succession of manual labor jobs. His father died during his absence. He began his stage acting career in 1902. His earliest known performances are from provincial theatres in the 1903–04 season, playing small roles in several plays and operettas. He took the last name "Lugosi" in 1903 to honor his birthplace, and went on to perform in Shakespeare plays. After moving to Budapest in 1911, he played dozens of roles with the National Theatre of Hungary between 1913 and 1919. Although Lugosi would later claim that he "became the leading actor of Hungary's Royal National Theatre", many of his roles there were small or supporting parts, which led him to enter the Hungarian film industry.

During World War I, he served as an infantryman in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 to 1916, rising to the rank of lieutenant. He was awarded the Wound Medal for wounds he sustained while serving on the Russian front. Returning to civilian life, Lugosi became an actor in Hungarian silent films, appearing in many of them under the stage name "Arisztid Olt".

Due to his activism in the actors' union in Hungary during the revolution of 1919 and his active participation in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was forced to flee his homeland when the government changed hands, initially accompanied by his first wife Ilona Szmik. They escaped to Vienna before settling in Berlin (in the Langestrasse), where he began acting in German silent films. During these moves, Ilona lost her unborn child, after which she left Lugosi and returned home to her parents where she filed for divorce, and soon after remarried.

Lugosi eventually travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana in December, 1920 working as a crewman aboard a merchant ship, then made his way north to New York City, where he again took up acting in (and sometimes directing) stage plays in 1921–1922, then worked in the New York silent film industry from 1923 to 1926. In 1921, he met and married his second wife, Ilona von Montagh, a young Hungarian emigree and stage actress whom he had worked with years before in Europe. They only lived together for a few weeks, but their divorce took until October 1925 to be finalized.

He later moved to California in 1928 to tour in the Dracula stage play, and his Hollywood film career took off. Lugosi claimed he performed the Dracula play around 1,000 times during his lifetime. He eventually became a U.S. citizen in 1931, soon after the release of his film version of Dracula.

Early films
Lugosi's first film appearance was in the 1917 Hungarian silent film Leoni Leo. When appearing in Hungarian silent films, he mostly used the stage name Arisztid Olt. Lugosi made at least 10 films in Hungary between 1917 and 1918 before leaving for Germany. Following the collapse of Béla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, leftists and trade unionists became vulnerable, some being imprisoned or executed in public. Lugosi was proscribed from acting due to his participation in the formation of an actors' union. Exiled in Weimar-era Germany, he co-starred in at least 14 German silent films in 1920, among them Hypnose: Sklaven fremden Willens (1920), Der Januskopf (1920) and an adaptation of the Karl May novel Caravan of Death (1920).

Lugosi left Germany in October 1920, emigrating by ship to the United States, and entered the country at New Orleans in December 1920. He made his way to New York and was inspected by immigration officers at Ellis Island in March 1921. He only declared his intention to become a US citizen in 1928; on June 26, 1931, he was naturalized.

On his arrival in America, the 6 ft, 180 lb Lugosi worked for some time as a laborer, and then entered the theater in New York City's Hungarian immigrant colony. With fellow expatriate Hungarian actors he formed a small stock company that toured Eastern cities, playing for immigrant audiences. Lugosi acted in several Hungarian language plays before starring in his first English Broadway play, The Red Poppy in 1922. Three more parts came in 1925–26, including a five-month run in the comedy-fantasy The Devil in the Cheese. In 1925, he played an Arab Sheik in Arabesque which premiered in Buffalo, New York at the Teck Theatre before moving to Broadway.

His first American film role was in the silent melodrama The Silent Command (1923) which was filmed in New York. Four other silent roles followed, villains and continental types, all in productions made in the New York area. A rumor has circulated for decades among film historians that Lugosi played an uncredited bit part as a clown in the 1924 Lon Chaney Hollywood film He Who Gets Slapped, but this has been heavily disputed. The rumor originated from the discovery of a publicity still from this film found posthumously in Lugosi's scrapbook, which showed an unidentified clown in heavy makeup standing near Lon Chaney in one scene. It was thought to be evidence that Lugosi appeared in the film, but historians all agree that is very unlikely, since Lugosi was in both Chicago (appearing in a play called The Werewolf) and New York at the time that film was being made in Hollywood.

Dracula
Lugosi was approached in the summer of 1927 to star in a Broadway theatre production of Dracula, which had been adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. The Horace Liveright production was successful, running in New York City for 261 performances before touring the United States to much fanfare and critical acclaim throughout 1928 and 1929. In 1928, Lugosi decided to stay in California when the play ended its first West Coast run. His performance had piqued the interest of Fox Film, and he was cast in the Hollywood studio's silent film The Veiled Woman (1929). He also appeared in the film Prisoners (also 1929), believed lost, which was released in both a silent and partial talkie version.

In 1929, with no other film roles in sight, he returned to the stage as Dracula for a short West Coast tour of the play. Lugosi remained in California where he resumed his film work under contract with Fox, appearing in early talkies often as a heavy or an "exotic sheik". He also continued to lobby for his prized role in the film version of Dracula.

Despite his critically acclaimed performance on stage, Lugosi was not Universal Pictures' first choice for the role of Dracula when the company optioned the rights to the Deane play and began production in 1930. Different prominent actors, such as Paul Muni, Chester Morris, Ian Keith, John Wray, Joseph Schildkraut, Arthur Edmund Carewe, William Courtenay, John Carradine, and Conrad Veidt were considered. Lew Ayres was eventually hired to play Jonathan Harker, only to be replaced by Robert Ames after being cast in a different role in a different Universal Pictures film. Ames was in turn replaced with David Manners. Lugosi had played the role on Broadway, and was considered before director Tod Browning cast him in the role. The film was a major hit, but Lugosi was paid a salary of only $3,500, since he had too eagerly accepted the role.

Typecasting
Through his association with Dracula (in which he appeared with minimal makeup, using his natural, heavily accented voice), Lugosi found himself typecast as a horror villain in films such as Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), The Black Cat (1934) and The Raven (1935) for Universal, and the independent White Zombie (1932). His accent, while a part of his image, limited the type of role he could play.

Lugosi did attempt to break type by auditioning for other roles. He lost out to Lionel Barrymore for the role of Grigori Rasputin in Rasputin and the Empress (also 1932); C. Henry Gordon for the role of Surat Khan in Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), and Basil Rathbone for the role of Commissar Dimitri Gorotchenko in Tovarich (1937), a role Lugosi had played on stage. He played the elegant, somewhat hot-tempered General Nicholas Strenovsky-Petronovich in International House (1933).

Regardless of controversy, five films at Universal – The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), The Invisible Ray (1936), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Black Friday (1940), plus minor cameo performances in Gift of Gab (1934) and two at RKO Pictures, You'll Find Out (1940) and The Body Snatcher (1945) – paired Lugosi with Boris Karloff. Despite the relative size of their roles, Lugosi inevitably received second billing, below Karloff. There are contradictory reports of Lugosi's attitude toward Karloff, some claiming that he was openly resentful of Karloff's long-term success and ability to gain good roles beyond the horror arena, while others suggested the two actors were – for a time, at least – amicable. Karloff himself in interviews suggested that Lugosi was initially mistrustful of him when they acted together, believing that the Englishman would attempt to upstage him. When this proved not to be the case, according to Karloff, Lugosi settled down and they worked together amicably (though some have further commented that the English Karloff's on-set demand to break from filming for mid-afternoon tea annoyed Lugosi). Lugosi did get a few heroic leads, as in Universal's The Black Cat after Karloff had been accorded the more colorful role of the villain, The Invisible Ray, and a romantic role in producer Sol Lesser's adventure serial The Return of Chandu (1934), but his typecasting problem appears to have been too entrenched to be alleviated by those films.

Lugosi addressed his plea to be cast in non-horror roles directly to casting directors through his listing in the 1937 Players Directory, published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in which he (or his agent) calls the idea that he is only fit for horror films "an error."

Career decline
Lugosi developed severe, chronic sciatica, ostensibly aggravated by injuries received during his military service. Though at first he was treated with benign pain remedies such as asparagus juice, doctors increased the medication to opiates. The growth of his dependence on opiates, particularly morphine and (after 1947, when it became available in America) methadone, was directly proportional to the dwindling of Lugosi's screen offers. The problem first manifested itself in 1937, when Lugosi was forced to withdraw from a leading role in a serial production, The Secret of Treasure Island, due to constant back pain.

Historian John McElwee reports, in his 2013 book Showmen, Sell It Hot!, that Bela Lugosi's popularity received a much-needed boost in August 1938, when California theater owner Emil Umann revived Dracula and Frankenstein as a special double feature. The combination was so successful that Umann scheduled extra shows to accommodate the capacity crowds, and invited Lugosi to appear in person, which thrilled new audiences that had never seen Lugosi's classic performance. "I owe it all to that little man at the Regina Theatre," said Lugosi of exhibitor Umann. "I was dead, and he brought me back to life." Universal took notice of the tremendous business and launched its own national re-release of the same two horror favorites. The studio then rehired Lugosi to star in new films, fortunately just as Lugosi's fourth wife had given birth to a son.

Universal cast Lugosi in Son of Frankenstein (1939), appearing in the character role of Ygor, a mad blacksmith with a broken neck, in heavy makeup and beard. Lugosi was third-billed with his name above the title alongside Basil Rathbone as Dr. Frankenstein's son and Boris Karloff reprising his role as Frankenstein's monster. Regarding Son of Frankenstein, the film's director Rowland V. Lee said his crew let Lugosi "work on the characterization; the interpretation he gave us was imaginative and totally unexpected ... when we finished shooting, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he stole the show. Karloff's monster was weak by comparison."

The same year saw Lugosi making a rare appearance in an A-list motion picture: he was a stern Soviet commissar in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer romantic comedy Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Lugosi was quite effective in this small but prestigious character part and even received top billing among the film's supporting cast, all of whom had significantly larger roles. It might have been a turning point for the actor, but within the year he was back on Hollywood's Poverty Row, playing leads for Sam Katzman. These horror, comedy and mystery B-films were mostly released by Monogram Pictures. At Universal, he often received star billing for what amounted to a supporting part.

Lugosi went to 20th Century-Fox for The Gorilla (1939), which had him playing straight man (a butler) to Patsy Kelly and the Ritz Brothers. When Lugosi's Black Friday premiered in 1940 on a double bill with the Vincent Price film The House of the Seven Gables, Lugosi and Price both appeared in person at the Chicago Theatre where it opened on Feb. 29, 1940 and remained for four performances. He was finally cast in the role of Frankenstein's monster for Universal's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). (At the end of the previous film in the series, The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Lugosi's voice had been dubbed over that of Lon Chaney Jr. since Ygor's brain was now in the Monster's skull. ) But at the last minute, Lugosi's heavily-accented dialogue was edited out after the film was completed, along with the idea of the Monster being blind, leaving his performance featuring groping, outstretched arms and moving lips seeming enigmatic (and funny) to audiences.

Lugosi kept busy during the 1940s as a screen menace. In addition to his nine Monogram features, he worked in three features for RKO and one for Columbia (The Return of the Vampire, 1943). He also accepted the lead in an experimental, economical feature, shot in the semi-professional 16mm film format and blown up to 35mm for theatrical release, Scared to Death (produced in 1946 but not released until 1947). The feature is noteworthy as being Bela Lugosi's only color film.

Lugosi played Dracula for a second and final time on film in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), which was his last "A" movie. For the remainder of his life, he appeared – less and less frequently – in obscure, forgettable, low-budget B features. From 1947 to 1950, he performed in summer stock, often in productions of Dracula or Arsenic and Old Lace, and during the rest of the year, made personal appearances in a touring "spook show", and on early commercial television.

In September 1949, Milton Berle invited Lugosi to appear in a sketch on Texaco Star Theatre. Lugosi memorized the script for the skit, but became confused on the air when Berle began to ad lib. He also appeared on the anthology series Suspense on October 11, 1949, in a live adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado".

In 1951, while in England to play a six-month tour of Dracula, Lugosi co-starred in a lowbrow film comedy, Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (also known as Vampire Over London and My Son, the Vampire), released the following year. Following his return to the United States, he was interviewed for television, and reflected wistfully on his typecasting in horror parts: "Now I am the boogie man". In the same interview, he expressed a desire to play more comedy, as he had in the Mother Riley farce. Independent producer Jack Broder took Lugosi at his word, casting him in a jungle-themed comedy, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), starring nightclub comedians Duke Mitchell and Jerry Lewis look-alike Sammy Petrillo, whose act closely resembled that of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (Martin and Lewis). Hal B. Wallis, Martin and Lewis's producer, unsuccessfully sued Broder.

Stage and personal appearances
Lugosi enjoyed a lively career on stage, with plenty of personal appearances. As film offers declined, he became more and more dependent on live venues to support his family. Lugosi took over the role of Jonathan Brewster from Boris Karloff for Arsenic and Old Lace. Lugosi had also expressed interest in playing Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey to help himself professionally. He also made plenty of personal live appearances to promote his horror image or an accompanying film.

The Vincent Price film, House of Wax premiered in Los Angeles at the Paramount Theatre on April 16, 1953. The film played at midnight with a number of celebrities in the audience that night (Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Rock Hudson, Broderick Crawford, Gracie Allen, Eddie Cantor, Shelley Winters and others). Producer Alex Gordon, knowing Lugosi was in dire need of cash, arranged for the actor to stand outside the theater wearing a cape and dark glasses, holding a man costumed as a gorilla on a leash. He later allowed himself to be photographed drinking a glass of milk at a Red Cross booth there. When Lugosi playfully attempted to bite the "nurse" in attendance, she overreacted and spilled a glass of milk all over his shirt and cape. Afterward, Lugosi was interviewed by a reporter who botched the interview by asking the prearranged questions out of order, thoroughly confusing the aging star. Embarrassed, Lugosi left abruptly, without attending the screening.

Ed Wood and final projects
Late in his life, Bela Lugosi again received star billing in films when the ambitious but financially limited filmmaker Ed Wood, a fan of Lugosi, found him living in obscurity and near-poverty and offered him roles in his films, such as an anonymous narrator in Glen or Glenda (1953) and a mad scientist in Bride of the Monster (1955). During post-production of the latter, Lugosi decided to seek treatment for his drug addiction, and the film's premiere was arranged to raise money for Lugosi's hospital expenses (resulting in a paltry amount of money). According to Kitty Kelley's biography of Frank Sinatra, when the entertainer heard of Lugosi's problems, he visited Lugosi at the hospital and gave him a $1,000 check. Sinatra would recall Lugosi's amazement at his visit, since the two men had never met before.

During an impromptu interview upon his release from the treatment center in 1955, Lugosi stated that he was about to begin work on a new Ed Wood film called The Ghoul Goes West. This was one of several projects proposed by Wood, including The Phantom Ghoul and Dr. Acula. With Lugosi in his Dracula cape, Wood shot impromptu test footage, with no particular storyline in mind, in front of Tor Johnson's home, at a suburban graveyard, and in front of Lugosi's apartment building on Carlton Way. This footage ended up posthumously in Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957 ), which was filmed in 1956 soon after Lugosi died. Wood hired Tom Mason, his wife's chiropractor, to double for Lugosi in additional shots. Mason was noticeably taller and thinner than Lugosi, and had the lower half of his face covered with his cape in every shot, as Lugosi sometimes did in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Following his treatment, Lugosi made one final film, in late 1955, The Black Sleep, for Bel-Air Pictures, which was released in the summer of 1956 through United Artists with a promotional campaign that included several personal appearances by Lugosi and his co-stars, as well as Maila Nurmi (TV's horror host "Vampira"). To Lugosi's disappointment, however, his role in this film was that of a mute butler with no dialogue. Lugosi was intoxicated and very ill during the film's promotional campaign and had to return to L.A. earlier than planned. He never got to see the finished film. Tor Johnson said in interviews that Lugosi kept screaming that he wanted to die the night they shared a hotel room together.

In 1959, a British film called Lock Up Your Daughters was theatrically released (in the U.K.), composed of clips from Bela Lugosi's Monogram pictures from the 1940s. The film is lost today, but a March 16, 1959, critical review in the Kinematograph Weekly mentioned that the movie contained new Lugosi footage (intriguing since Lugosi had died in 1956). Back in 1950 however, Lugosi had appeared on a one-hour TV program called Murder and Bela Lugosi (which WPIX-TV broadcast on Sept. 18, 1950) in which Lugosi was interviewed and provided commentary about a number of his old horror films while clips from the films were being shown; historian Gary Rhodes thinks some of this Lugosi TV production found its way into the 1959 British film, which would finally explain the mystery.

Personal life
Lugosi repeatedly married. In June 1917, Lugosi married 19-year-old Ilona Szmik (1898–1991) in Hungary. The couple divorced after Lugosi was forced to flee his homeland for political reasons (risking execution if he stayed) and Ilona did not wish to leave her parents. The divorce became final on July 17, 1920 and was uncontested as Lugosi could not show up for the proceedings. (Szmik then married wealthy Hungarian architect Imre Francsek in December 1920, moved with him to Iran in 1930, had two children, and died in 1991.)

After living briefly in Germany, Lugosi left Europe by ship and arrived in New Orleans on October 27, 1920, and, after making his way north, underwent his primary alien inspection at Ellis Island, N.Y. on March 23, 1921.

In September 1921, he married Hungarian actress Ilona von Montagh in New York City, and she filed for divorce on November 11, 1924, charging him with adultery and complaining that he wanted her to abandon her acting career to keep house for him. The divorce became final in October, 1925. (Lugosi learned in 1935 that von Montagh and a female friend were both arrested for shoplifting in New York City, which was the last he heard of her.).

Lugosi took his place in Hollywood society and scandal when he married wealthy San Francisco resident Beatrice Woodruff Weeks (1897–1931), widow of architect Charles Peter Weeks, on July 27, 1929. Weeks subsequently filed for divorce on November 4, 1929, accusing Lugosi of infidelity, citing actress Clara Bow as the "other woman", and claimed Lugosi tried to take her checkbook and the key to her safe deposit box away from her. She even claimed he slapped her in the face one night because she ate a pork chop he had hidden in their refrigerator. Lugosi complained of her excessive drinking and dancing with other men at social gatherings. The divorce became official on December 9, 1929. (Weeks died 17 months later (at age 34) from alcoholism in Panama, Lugosi never receiving a penny from her fortune.)

On June 26, 1931, Lugosi became a naturalized United States citizen.

In 1933, the 51-year-old Lugosi married 22-year-old Lillian Arch (1911–1981), the daughter of Hungarian immigrants living in Hollywood. Lillian's father was against her marriage to Lugosi at first as the actor was experiencing financial difficulties at the time, so Bela talked her into eloping with him to Las Vegas in January 1933. They remained married for 20 years and they had a child, Bela G. Lugosi, in 1938. (Bela eventually had four grandchildren (Greg, Jeff, Tim, and Lynne) and seven great-grandchildren, although he did not live long enough to meet any of them.)

Lillian and Bela vacationed on their lakeshore property in Lake Elsinore, California (then called Elsinore), on several lots between 1944 and 1953. Lillian's parents lived on one of their properties, and Lugosi frequented the health spa there. Bela Lugosi Jr. was boarded at the Elsinore Naval and Military School in Lake Elsinore, and also lived with Lillian's parents while she and Bela were touring.

After almost breaking up their marriage in 1944, Lillian and Bela finally divorced on July 17, 1953, at least partially because of Bela's excessive drinking and his jealousy over Lillian taking a full-time job as an assistant to actor Brian Donlevy on Donlevy's radio and television series Dangerous Assignment. Lillian obtained custody of their son Bela Jr. Lugosi called the police one night after Lillian left him and threatened to commit suicide, but when the police showed up at his apartment, he denied making the call. (Lillian eventually did marry Brian Donlevy in 1966, by which time he had also become an alcoholic, and she died in 1981.)

Lugosi married Hope Lininger, his fifth wife, in 1955; she was 37 years his junior. She had been a fan, writing letters to him when he was in the hospital recovering from his drug addiction. She would sign her letters "A dash of Hope". They remained married until his death in 1956. However Bela and Hope were actually discussing getting divorced before he died.

Death
Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956, in the bedroom of his Los Angeles apartment while taking a nap. His wife, Hope, discovered him when she came home from work that evening, his apparently having died peacefully in his sleep around 6:45 p.m. according to the medical examiner at the age of 73. The rumor that Lugosi was clutching the script for The Final Curtain, a planned Ed Wood project, at the time of his death is not true.

Lugosi was buried wearing one of the "Dracula" capes and his full costume as well as his Dracula ring in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Contrary to popular belief, Lugosi never requested to be buried in his cloak; Bela G. Lugosi confirmed on numerous occasions that he and his mother, Lillian, made the decision but believed that it is what his father would have wanted.

The funeral was held on Saturday, August 18 at the Utter-McKinley funeral home in Hollywood. Attendees in addition to immediate family included former wife of 20 years Lillian, Forrest J. Ackerman, Ed Wood (pall bearer), Tor Johnson, Conrad Brooks, Richard Sheffield, Norma McCarty, Loretta King, Paul Marco and actor George Becwar. Bela's fourth wife Lillian paid for the cemetery plot and stone (which was inscribed "Beloved Father"), while Hope Lugosi paid for the coffin and the funeral service. Lugosi's will left several inexpensive pieces of real estate in Elsinore and only $1,000 cash to his son, but since the will had been written on Jan. 12, 1954 (before Lugosi's fifth marriage), Bela Jr. had to share the thousand dollars evenly with Hope Lugosi.

Hope later gave most of Lugosi's personal belongings and memorabilia to Bela's young neighborhood friend Richard Sheffield, who gave Lugosi's duplicate Dracula cape to Bela Jr. and sold some of the other items to Forrest J. Ackerman. Hope told Sheffield she had searched the apartment for several days looking for $3,000 she suspected Lugosi had hidden there, but she never found it. Sheffield said years later "Lugosi had probably spent it all on alcohol." Hope later moved to Hawaii, where she worked for many years as a caregiver in a leper colony. Hope died in Hawaii in 1997, at age 78, having never remarried. Before her death, she gave several interviews to the fan press.

California Supreme Court decision on personality rights
In 1979, the Lugosi v. Universal Pictures decision by the California Supreme Court held that Lugosi's personality rights could not pass to his heirs, as a copyright would have. The court ruled that under California law, any rights of publicity, including the right to his image, terminated with Lugosi's death. Six years later the law was changed by the California Celebrities Rights Act.

Legacy
The cape Lugosi wore in Dracula (1931) was in the possession of his son until it was put up for auction in 2011. It was expected to sell for up to $2 million, but has since been listed again by Bonhams in 2018. In 2019, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced acquisition of the cape via partial donation from the Lugosi family. In 2019 it was announced that the cape would be on display the following year.

Andy Warhol's 1963 silkscreen The Kiss depicts Lugosi from Dracula about to bite into the neck of co-star Helen Chandler, who played Mina Harker. A copy sold for $798,000 at Christie's in May 2000.

Lugosi was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. His star is mentioned in "Celluloid Heroes", a song performed by The Kinks and written by their lead vocalist and principal songwriter, Ray Davies. It appeared on their 1972 album Everybody's in Show-Biz.

In 1979, a song called "Bela Lugosi's Dead" was released by UK post-punk band Bauhaus and is a pioneering song in the gothic rock genre. On choosing the topic of the song, the band's bassist David J remarked "There was a season of old horror films on TV and I was telling Daniel about how much I loved them. The one that had been on the night before was Dracula [1931]. I was saying how Bela Lugosi was the quintessential Dracula, the elegant depiction of the character."

An episode of Sledge Hammer! titled "Last of the Red Hot Vampires" was an homage to Bela Lugosi; at the end of the episode, it was dedicated to "Mr. Blasko".

Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff are referenced in the Curtis Stigers' song "Sleeping with the Lights On", from the 1991 album Curtis Stigers.

In Tim Burton's Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi is portrayed by Martin Landau, who received the 1994 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the performance. According to Bela G. Lugosi (his son), Forrest Ackerman, Dolores Fuller and Richard Sheffield, the film's portrayal of Lugosi is inaccurate: In real life, he never used profanity, did not hate Karloff, owned no small dogs, nor did he sleep in a coffin. Also Ed Wood did not meet Lugosi in a funeral parlor, but rather through his roommate Alex Gordon.

Péter Müller's 1998 theatrical play Lugosi – the Shadow of the Vampire (Lugosi – a vámpír árnyéka) is based on Lugosi's life, telling the story of his life as he became typecast as Dracula and as his drug addiction worsened. In the Hungarian production, directed by István Szabó, Lugosi was played by Ivan Darvas.

In 2001, BBC Radio 4 broadcast There Are Such Things by Steven McNicoll and Mark McDonnell. Focusing on Lugosi and his well-documented struggle to escape from the role that had typecast him, the play went on to receive the Hamilton Deane Award for best dramatic presentation from the Dracula Society in 2002.

On July 19, 2003, German artist Hartmut Zech erected a bust of Lugosi on one of the corners of Vajdahunyad Castle in Budapest.

The Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York City features a live 30-minute play that focuses on Lugosi's illegal entry into the country via New Orleans and his arrival at Ellis Island months later to enter the country legally.

In 2013 the Hungarian electronic music band Žagar recorded a song entitled "Mr. Lugosi", which contains a recording of the voice of Bela Lugosi. The song was a part of the Light Leaks record.

According to Paru Itagaki, the creator of the Japanese manga/anime Beastars, the main character Legoshi was inspired by Bela Lugosi (regarding the similar-sounding names).

In 2020, Legendary Comics published an adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 Dracula novel, which used the likeness of Lugosi.

A 2021 hardcover graphic novel depicting the life of Bela Lugosi was written and drawn by Koren Shadmi, entitled Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Dracula.

title: Bela Lugosi


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Bride of the Monster

Bride of the Monster is a 1955 American independent science fiction horror film, co-written, produced and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr., and starring Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson with a supporting cast featuring Tony McCoy and Loretta King.

The film is considered to have Wood's biggest budget ($70,000). Production commenced in 1954 but, due to further financial problems, was not completed until 1955. It was released in May 1955, initially on a double bill with Macumba.

Plot
In a stretch of woods, two hunters are caught in a thunderstorm. They decide to seek refuge in Willows House, supposedly abandoned and haunted. They find Willows House occupied, and the current owner repeatedly denies them hospitality. They attempt to force their entry into the house, but a giant octopus is released from its tank and sent after them. One of the fleeing hunters is killed by the octopus, while a giant captures the other. The owner is a scientist, Dr. Eric Vornoff, and the giant is his mute assistant, Lobo. Vornoff explains that he will experiment on the unwilling hunter, who dies on the operating table.

In a police station, Officer Tom Robbins sees Lieutenant Dick Craig. There are now 12 missing victims, and the police still do not know what happened to them. The reporter behind the newspaper reports is Janet Lawton, Craig's fiancée. Janet forces her way into the office and argues with Robbins, and vows to go to Lake Marsh to investigate. At the police station, Robbins and Craig have a meeting with an intellectual from Europe, Professor Vladimir Strowski, who agrees to assist the police in investigating the Marsh but not at night. As night falls and another storm begins, Janet drives alone to Lake Marsh, but visibility is poor, and she drives off the road and into a ravine. Lobo rescues her.

Janet awakens to find herself a prisoner of Vornoff, who uses hypnosis to put her back to sleep. The following day, Craig and his partner drive to the area around Lake Marsh, a swamp. The partners also discuss the strange weather and mention that the newspapers could be right about "the atom bomb explosions distorting the atmosphere". The duo eventually discovers Janet's abandoned car and realizes she is the 13th missing victim. They leave the swamp while Strowski drives a rented car to the swamp.

Janet awakens at Willows House. Vornoff assures her that Lobo is harmless, but the giant seems fascinated with the female captive and approaches her with questionable intent. Vornoff explains the giant is human and that Vornoff found him in the "wilderness of Tibet". Vornoff then hypnotically places Janet back to sleep. He orders Lobo to transport the captive to Vornoff's private quarters.

Meanwhile, Strowski silently approaches Willows House and enters through the unlocked front door. While Strowski searches the house, Vornoff arrives to greet him. Their country of origin is interested in Vornoff's groundbreaking experiments with atomic energy and wants to recruit him. Vornoff narrates that two decades prior, Vornoff had suggested using experiments with nuclear power, which could create superhumans of great strength and size. In response, he was branded a madman and exiled by his country. Strowski reveals that he dreams of conquest in their country's name, while Vornoff dreams of his creations conquering in his own name. He is then attacked and forced into the octopus cage and killed by the octopus. Meanwhile, Craig and his partner return to the swamp by late evening and discover Strowski's abandoned car. The partners split up to search the area, Craig heading towards Willows House. Back in the secret laboratory, Vornoff uses a wave of his hand to summon Janet to his current location. She arrives dressed as a bride, summoned through telepathy. He has decided to use her as the next subject of his experiments. Lobo is reluctant to participate in this experiment, and Vornoff uses a whip to re-assert his control over his slave and assistant. Meanwhile, Craig has entered the house and accidentally discovers the secret passage. He is himself captured by Vornoff and Lobo. As the experiment is about to begin, Lobo is visibly distressed. He decides to rebel and knocks Vornoff out. Lobo then releases Janet and transports the unconscious Vornoff to the operating table. The scientist becomes the subject of his own human experiment. This time the experiment works and Vornoff transforms into an atomic-powered superhuman being. He and Lobo physically struggle, and their fight destroys the laboratory and starts a fire. Vornoff grabs Janet and escapes from the flames. Robbins and other officers arrive to help Craig. The police pursue Vornoff through the woods. There is another thunderstorm, and a lightning strike further destroys Willows House. With his home and equipment destroyed, a distressed Vornoff abandons Janet and merely attempts to escape. Craig rolls a rock at him and lands him in the water with the octopus. They struggle until a nuclear explosion obliterates both combatants. Apparently, the end result of the chain reaction started at the destroyed laboratory. Robbins says of Vornoff "he tampered in God's domain".

Cast

 * Bela Lugosi as Dr. Eric Vornoff
 * Tor Johnson as Lobo
 * Tony McCoy as Lt. Dick Craig
 * Loretta King as Janet Lawton
 * Harvey B. Dunn as Captain Robbins
 * George Becwar as Professor Strowski
 * Paul Marco as Officer Kelton
 * Don Nagel as Martin
 * Bud Osborne as Mac
 * John Warren as Jake
 * Ann Wilner as Tillie
 * Dolores Fuller as Margie
 * William "Billy" Benedict as Newsboy
 * Ben Frommer as Drunk

Production and release
The first incarnation of the film was a 1953 script by Alex Gordon titled The Atomic Monster, but a lack of financing prevented any production. Later Ed Wood revived the project as The Monster of the Marshes. Actual shooting began in October 1954 at the Ted Allan Studios, but further money problems quickly halted the production. The required funds were supplied by a meat packing plant owner named Donald McCoy, who became credited as the film's producer on the condition that his son Tony was to star as the film's hero. According to screenwriter Dennis Rodriguez, casting the younger McCoy as a protagonist was one of two terms Donald imposed on Wood. The other term was to include an atomic explosion at the film's finale. Production resumed in 1955 at Centaur Studios.

Actor George Becwar, who played the bearded Russian agent Strowski, after getting paid for his one day of work on the film, complained that he had been underpaid to the Screen Actors Guild and caused the production to be temporarily shut down for an investigation. Wood as a result had to raise more money from backers and lost another piece of the ownership of the film as a result. An actor friend of Wood's, John Andrews, said in an interview: "Eddie hated, loathed, despised, wanted murdered, George Becwar ....I'm not overdoin' it man, I'm telling you straight. He hated George Becwar to the day he deceased, and I mean with a passion!"

The film premiered at Hollywood's Paramount theater on May 11, 1955, under the title Bride of the Atom. Wood related the story of how, after the film played, he asked the theater's manager what he thought of the picture, to which the manager replied "Stinks". Wood took scissors and physically cut the man out of an 8 X 10 group shot that was taken that night after the premiere as a publicity photo. When asked "Who was that you cut out?", Wood replied "Well, he's not there any more, so it doesn't matter".

The film was reportedly completed and released through a deal with attorney Samuel Z. Arkoff. Arkoff profited from the film more than Wood, and his earnings contributed to the funding of his American International Pictures. Wood had oversold shares in the picture and wound up owning none of it himself. The ending credits identify the copyright holder of the film as "Filmakers Releasing Organization". Distribution rights were held by Banner Films in the United States, and by Exclusive in the United Kingdom.

Genre and background
The film combines elements of science fiction and horror fiction, genres which were frequently combined in films of the 1950s. Like many of these contemporaries, Bride serves in part as a Cold War propaganda film. The country of origin for Vornoff and Strowski is left unnamed. The only clues is that it is European and has its own dreams of conquest. By implication, the country which exiled Vornoff in the 1930s could be Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Their role as villains for the American cinema had already been solidified by the 1950s, and Wood could be alluding to both of them. Strowski uses the term master race, which is a key concept in Nazism.

Both the working title "Bride of the Atom" and the final title Bride of the Monster allude to the film Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The film otherwise follows the template of the Poverty Row horror films of the 1940s. The Atomic Age influences the film in its ominous implications concerning nuclear weapons and the threat they posed towards human civilization.

Content
This was Bela Lugosi's last speaking role in a feature film. Lugosi subsequently played a silent part in The Black Sleep (1956). Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) uses silent archive footage of Lugosi, since he died prior to the creation of its script. Lock Up Your Daughters (1959) recycled footage from Lugosi's earlier films, possibly mixed with some new material.

According to Rob Craig, in Bride, Lugosi for the last time plays "a charismatic villain whose megalomania leads to downfall and destruction". Craig considers this to be one of Lugosi's finest roles, citing the surprisingly energetic performance of the aging actor. The scenes involving hypnosis contain close-ups of Lugosi's eyes. Wood was probably trying to recreate similar scenes from an older film of Lugosi's, White Zombie (1932). Lugosi did not actually play Vornoff in the scenes demanding physicality. The film made use of body doubles for Lugosi: Eddie Parker and Red Reagan. Parker was also the body-double of Lugosi in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). Lugosi's fee for the film is estimated to have been $1,000.00.

The story is similar to an earlier Bela Lugosi movie, The Corpse Vanishes (1942). In both movies, each bride at her wedding was given an orchid, which she sniffed before passing out. In The Corpse Vanishes, Lugosi played a doctor who captured the brides and took some kind of liquid from each bride's body and injected it into his wife to make her temporarily young again. Characters included his wife, an old woman, the old woman's grown son, and a dwarf. In Bride of the Monster, Lugosi again plays a doctor doing experiments, but his only housemate/assistant is Lobo, and when his experiment fails to turn someone into an "atomic-powered superman", he throws the dead subject to an octopus or an alligator, similar to Lugosi throwing a body into a river in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932).

The hunters of the opening scenes, Jake Long and Blake "Mac" McCreigh, were played by John Warren and Bud Osborne. The police station scenes feature cameos by a drunk and a newspaper seller. The former is played by Ben Frommer (known for playing Count Bloodcount in Transylvania 6-5000). The latter is played by William Benedict (known as one of The Bowery Boys). Janet Lawton briefly speaks with a co-worker called Margie. Margie is played by Dolores Fuller (Ed Wood's girlfriend at the time). Dick Craig's partner, Martin, is played by Don Nagel. Both Fuller and Nagel had worked with Wood in Wood's previous film Jail Bait (1954).

The film uses stock footage of a real octopus, and a fake, rubber octopus in scenes where "the monster" interacts with the actors. It is widely believed this was a prop from the John Wayne film Wake of the Red Witch (1948). Contradictory accounts claim that Wood either stole or legally rented the prop from Republic Pictures, which produced the earlier film. The struggle between Vornoff and the octopus was filmed at Griffith Park.

Craig comments that there is a stark contrast between the characters of Dick Craig and Janet Lawton. Dick speaks in a deadpan unemotional way and seems to be a rather lethargic character. Janet is a "brassy girl reporter", a dynamic character with a sense of autonomy. The role of Janet was reportedly intended for Dolores Fuller. According to Fuller's recollections, Loretta King bribed Wood into casting her as Janet, with promises of securing further funding for the film. Fuller was thus reduced to playing a cameo role, "Margie", and this led to her later breakup with Ed Wood and her moving to New York to start a songwriting career with Elvis Presley. King always vehemently denied bribing Wood in any way, saying the story was ridiculous since she never had any money to invest in films in the 1950s.

In a subplot of the film, there are storms every night for three months and strange weather patterns. The characters attribute the phenomenon to the effects the nuclear explosions have on the atmosphere. This probably reflects actual anxiety of the 1950s about potential climate change. Until the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), atmospheric nuclear weapons testing was used widely and recklessly. Rob Craig suggests that the months of constant storms could be inspired by the Genesis flood narrative. In the context of the film, the strange weather is implied to be a side-effect of the experiments of Vornoff which apparently release radioactivity into the atmosphere.

The dialogue of the film includes lines such as "Home? I have no home!", "One is always considered mad, when one discovers something which others cannot grasp", and the closing "He tampered in God's domain." The phrases could well apply to the fates of avant-garde artists and thinkers. The title "Bride of the Atom", which Vornoff uses for Janet in the bridal dress, is inexplicable unless the scientist is actually attempting to use Janet to replace his long-lost wife. One of his reassuring lines to Janet concerning the experiment, "It hurts, just for a moment, but then you will emerge a woman...", sounds as if he is preparing her for the loss of her virginity. The scene of a young woman, in a bridal gown, restrained by leather shackles seems to be sadomasochistic in nature.

Throughout the film, the mute Lobo is implied to have an unspecified intellectual disability and to be of sub-human intelligence. Yet he successfully operates complex machinery as if trained to do so. Craig views this scene as implying that supposedly "dumb" servants can have a capacity of learning the secrets of their masters.

The final scenes, with the mushroom cloud of the nuclear explosion, use stock footage from the blast of a thermonuclear weapon ("hydrogen bomb").

The apparent fetish of Lobo with angora wool is a reflection of Wood's own fetish for the material. This serves as the film's connection to Glen or Glenda (1953), where the fetish plays a more prominent role. In 1961's The Beast of Yucca Flats, Johnson strangely pets and hugs a rabbit as he dies in that film's finale.

The character of Lobo appeared again in Wood's Night of the Ghouls, horribly burned but still alive. This film serves as a sequel of sorts to Bride. Vornoff is absent from the later film, but there are references to the activities of "the mad doctor". Tor Johnson also plays a character called Lobo in The Unearthly (1957) who also serves as a henchman to the main villain.

This film is part of what Wood aficionados refer to as "The Kelton Trilogy", a trio of films featuring Paul Marco as Officer Kelton, a whining, reluctant policeman. The other two films are Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls. Kelton is the only character to appear in all three films.

Critical reception
Writing for Famous Monsters in 1962, Joe Dante, Jr. included Bride of the Monster on his list of the worst horror films of all time. Dante declared it as "definitely one of the most inexpensive thrillers ever. The sets were cardboard, and the direction card-boring." Film critic Glenn Erickson wrote in DVD Talk that "nearly every dialogue exchange is an embarrassment and every camera setup somehow wrong," but noted that Lugosi's performance "is better than okay, rising to the demands of the awful script," and that the film is "too endearing to hate." A review by Bruce Eder in AllMovie noted that the film "is ineptly made and it has seams - including mismatched interior and exterior sets and scenery that shakes during the fight scenes," that it has "some of the strangest incidental dialogue that anyone had ever heard," and that "there is a lot to laugh at in the movie, most of it unintentional." A review of the film in TV Guide described it as a "masterpiece of involuntary farce," that the "marvelously idiotic dialog keeps things moving along without stopping for breath [or] logic," and that the "final images of poor old decrepit Lugosi struggling in the arms of a motionless rubber octopus are incomparably bathetic."

Legacy
In 1986, the film was featured in the syndicated series the Canned Film Festival, and was later featured on the comedy series, Mystery Science Theater 3000. The episode also features a musical parody of the Jam Handy short film "Hired!", with Joel Robinson, Crow T. Robot, Tom Servo and Gypsy performing "Hired! The Musical".

The late 1990s dream trance track "Alright", by DJ Taucher, sampled a monologue from Bela Lugosi during the interlude of the song.

In 2005, The Devil's Rejects footage of the film was played in the movie.

In 2008, a colorized version was released by Legend Films. This version was also released on Amazon Video on Demand.

In 2010, a retrospective on the movie entitled Citizen Wood: Making 'The Bride', Unmaking the Legend was included in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Volume 19 DVD set as a bonus feature for said episode featuring the movie. Horror host Mr. Lobo is among the interviewees of the 27 minute documentary.

Controversies
In 1980, the book The Golden Turkey Awards claims that Lugosi's character declares his manservant Lobo (Tor Johnson) is "as harmless as a kitchen" [sic]. This allegedly misspoken line is cited as evidence of either Lugosi's failing health/mental faculties, or as further evidence of Wood's incompetence as a director. However, a viewing of the film itself reveals that Lugosi said this line correctly, the exact words being, "Don't be afraid of Lobo; he's as gentle as a kitten." The easier explanation would be that authors Michael Medved and Harry Medved saw the film in a theater setting with inferior sound quality, or viewed a damaged print. A single viewing in such conditions could result in mishearing some lines of dialogue. The inaccurate claim managed to achieve urban legend status, and continues circulating.

The biopic Ed Wood portrays the filmmakers stealing the mechanical octopus (previously used in the film Wake of the Red Witch) from the Republic Studios backlot, while failing to steal the motor which enabled the prop to move realistically. These events are alleged to have actually occurred in the 2004 documentary The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made. However, other stories circulated that Wood legitimately rented the octopus, along with some cars, for the picture. To remedy the lack of movement from the octopus prop, whenever someone was killed by the monster in the film, they simply flailed around in the shallow water while holding the tentacles around themselves to imitate its movements.

Rudolph Grey's book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr. contains anecdotes regarding the making of this film. Grey notes that participants in the original events sometimes contradict one another, but he relates each person's information for posterity. He also includes Ed Wood's claim that only one of his films made a profit and surmises that it was most likely Bride of the Monster, but that Wood had oversold the film and could not reimburse all of the backers afterward. Most biographies mention The Violent Years as being Wood's most profitable film.

title: Bride of the Monster