Bela Lugosi was buried in his full Dracula cape, but it was never his dying wish; his family simply assumed it was what he would have wanted. This episode uses that blurred line between man and monster to explore the life of a classically trained Hungarian actor who dropped out of school at 12, performed Shakespeare at the National Theatre of Hungary, served as an infantry lieutenant on the Russian front in World War One, and was driven into exile after organizing an actors' union during the Hungarian Soviet Republic.

The conversation follows his arrival at Ellis Island in 1921 speaking almost no English, the Hungarian stock company that kept him working, the 1927 Broadway hit Dracula, and Universal's reluctance to cast him in the 1931 film until he accepted just 3,500 dollars for seven weeks of work. It then traces the typecasting that fol ...