The real names of Bela Lugosi & Boris Karloff! Dick Clark's suprising role as a murderer! Director Andre de Toth's inability to apprciate the #-D effects of The House of Wax. Actor William Hudson's encounters with gargantuan creatures!
These intriguing factoids from the sci-fi/horror/mystery genre are herewith revealed:
-- Stars' real names: Bela Lugosi was born Bela Blasko in 1882, but changed his name in 1903 in honor of his hometown of Lugos, Hungary! Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt in 1887, but assumed his new spinetingling moniker in 1909 while riding through Canada on a train!
-- Popular entertainment host Dick Clark, known for American Bandstand and the annual New Year's countdown at New York City's Times Square, was the final murderer unmasked on the initial run of the Perry Mason TV series in the aptly titled last episode, "The Case of the Final Fadeout." Moreover, the fictional attorney's creator, Erle Stanley Gardner, served as the final judge on that episode.
-- Flamboyant director Andre de Toth, who was once wed to blonde bombshell Veronica Lake, could not appreciate the dimensional effects of his 3-D masterpiece, The House of Wax (1953), because he wore a black patch over his left eye, lost in a childhood accident! This Vincent Price vehicle was preceded by a 1932 version, The Mystery of the House of Wax, which starred the redoubtable Lionel Atwill in the role of the disfigured museum curator. It was the first horror film to be set in a modern, urban backdrop (as opposed to "1931's Dracula, which was basically played out in a suburban countryside).
-- Actor William Hudson distinguished himself with co-starring roles in 2 cult classics about gargantuan humans: in 1957's The Amazing Colossal Man, he portrayed Dr. Paul Linstrom, who was endeavoring to cure the titan, while in 1958's The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, he played the philandering hubby of the giantess.