Hamilton Deane (1880 – 25 October 1958) was an Irish actor, playwright and director. He played a key role in popularising Bram Stoker's 1897 novel '' Dracula'' as a 1924 stage play and a 1931 film.

Biography

Deane was born in New Ross in County Wexford and grew up in Clontarf, a suburb of

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

. His family lived close to the families of both Bram Stoker and Florence Balcombe (Stoker's wife), and his mother had been acquainted with Bram Stoker in her youth.Skal (1990) p. 22 Deane entered the theater as a young man, first appearing in 1899 with the

Henry Irving Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility ( ...

Company (Stoker was stage manager for Henry Irving for many years). Even before he formed his own troupe in the early 1920s, Deane had been thinking about bringing ''Dracula'' to the stage. Stoker had attempted this in 1897 but the verdict from Irving consigned it to the waste-paper basket. Unable to find a scriptwriter to take on the project, Deane wrote the play himself in a four-week period of inactivity while he was suffering with a severe cold. He then contacted Florence Stoker, Bram's widow, and negotiated a deal for the dramatic rights.Raymond T. McNally, Radu Florescu: In Search of Dracula. Haughton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994. p. 157 Deane re-imagined Count Dracula as a more urbane and theatrically acceptable character who could plausibly enter London society. It was Deane's idea that the count should wear a tuxedo and stand-up collar, and a flowing cape which concealed Dracula while he slipped through a trap-door in the stage floor, giving the impression that he had disappeared.Skal (1990) p. 73 Deane also arranged to have a uniformed nurse available at performances, ready to administer smelling salts should anyone faint. Dracula by Hamilton Deane & John L

Deane's play premiered at the Grand Theatre,

Derby Derby ( ) is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby g ...

in June 1924.Skal (1990) p. 70 Despite critics' misgivings, the audiences loved it. With

Raymond Huntley Horace Raymond Huntley (23 April 1904 – 15 June 1990) was an English actor who appeared in dozens of British films from the 1930s to the 1970s. He also appeared in the ITV period drama '' Upstairs, Downstairs'' as the pragmatic family s ...

as the Count and Deane as

Van Helsing A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van, it can be bigger or smaller than a pickup truck and SUV, and bigger than a common car. There is some varying in the scope of the word across ...

, it was a huge success and toured for years.James Craig Holte: Dracula in the Dark. Greenwood, 1997. p. 35 Deane had initially intended to play the role of the count himself. When the play crossed the Atlantic in 1927, the role of Dracula was taken by the then-unknown Hungarian actor

Béla Lugosi Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (; October 20, 1882 – August 16, 1956), known professionally as Bela Lugosi (; ), was a Hungarian and American actor best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 horror classic ''Dracula'', Ygor in ''S ...

. For its US debut, ''Dracula'' was rewritten by the American playwright John L. Balderston. The show ran for a year on Broadway and for two more years on tour, breaking all previous records for any show put on tour in the United States. It is the Deane/Balderston interpretation upon which the classic

Tod Browning Tod Browning (born Charles Albert Browning Jr.; July 12, 1880 – October 6, 1962) was an American film director, film actor, screenwriter, vaudeville performer, and carnival sideshow and circus entertainer. He directed a number of films of vari ...

film '' Dracula'' (1931) was based.

Works

* Deane, Hamilton, and John L. Balderston. ''Dracula: The Vampire Play in Three Acts''. New York: Samuel French, 1927.

References

Cited text

* ''Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990.

Bibliography

* ''Dracula (The Original 1931 Shooting Script)''. Atlantic City, NJ: Magic Image Filmbooks, 1990. * Glut, Donald F. ''The Dracula Book''. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1975. * Skal, David J., ed. ''Dracula: The Ultimate, Illustrated Edition of the World-Famous Vampire Play''. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. *

External links