DRACULA HIS BITE
role. The London production was still playing to packed houses at the time. After a long season on Broadway an 18-month national tour followed, breaking all box office records for any modern play in America. Then came the renowned 1931 film, again starring Bela Lugosi, whose performances are credited with paving the way for the incredible proliferation of vampire movies in Hollywood that followed. Deane had come out of the London production, to lead another No. 1. Company tour, playing Van Helsing. Then a No. 2 Company was formed and a No. 3, all touring Britain at the same time. After an absence from London of some years, Deane returned in 1939 to The Wintergarden Theatre, (now the site of The New London Theatre), this time playing the title role, which he had written for himself 15 years previously. It attracted a big following.
By strange coincidence and dint of availability, a transfer to the Old Lyceum was appropriated. Deane had returned to the theatre where as a young actor in Henry Irving’s London Lyceum company, he had 40 years earlier first met Stoker, who for 26 years had not only run the theatre, but had toiled and fretted behind the scenes to smooth the path, giving focus and direction to the ‘demanding, life-sucking, vampiric, super-star’ Henry Irving.
It was said that a lot of Irving’s personality was reflected in the Dracula that graced the stage at the old theatre.
Deane went on playing Dracula in the provinces until July 1941, ending a working association with the play as playwright, producer and actor for 18 years.
When he died in 1958 there remanied a single black cloak in his wardrobe which he had designed so that Dracula could disappear under it through a trap door in a cloud of smoke.
The British Dracula Society, who hold their annual dinner on Bram Stoker’s birthday, November 8, present the Hamilton Deane memorial award to the person or persons who have made the most outstanding contribution to the gothic genre in the performing arts.
Blood relative of Stoker, Ivan Stoker Dixon said he wanted the people of New Ross to know about the role Hamilton Deane had in making Dracula one of the most famous literary creations of the 20th and 21st centuries.