Fatty and Bela Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Two Legends of Hollywood's Effervescent Beginnings

When the cinema began to commercialize and expand the making of films for the general public, there was a relocation of equipment and producers from the East Coast of the United States to warmer lands where shooting could be done throughout the year.

That exodus found an ideal place in Hollywood, near a big city like Los Angeles, with cheap land and excellent weather.

From 1910 to 1920, the mecca of cinema was fertile territory for a time of creativity free from impositions.

And, also, for the birth of the first great stars of the seventh art.

Until now two graphic novels travel, which recover two legends of the beginnings of Hollywood: the myth of silent cinema Roscoe

Arbuckle and Bela Lugosi, the most famous Count Dracula on the big screen.

Two stars who knew fame and success.

But also, excesses and falls from grace.

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fatty's tragedy

In those years, in that first cycle of films that wanted to entertain the general public, a genre emerged within silent cinema that tried to make the viewer laugh with stories of slipping on banana peels, cakes on the face, happy girls, everyday situations cumbersome and silly policemen that the protagonist dodged.

And in that atmosphere a name emerged, one of the first big stars who aroused great devotion among the public: Roscoe

Arbuckle.

Born in Kansas, in addition to being one of the first Hollywood stars with a stratospheric salary, Fatty stood out for his collaborations with a first-time Charles Chaplin or for being the discoverer for the big screen of the theatrical humorist Buster Keaton.

His fame was also spread by his eccentric life and the opulence of his parties.

comic .

(Astiberri), with a script by the Frenchman Julien Frey and illustrations by the Spanish Pep Domingo

tells the story of his glory and decline.

A page from the comic about the life of Fatty Arbuckle.

Fatty Arbuckle's success took a turn when the air of freedom of that first decade was changing.

From 1920 the industry had drifted towards a new business model run by powerful businessmen where politics, the press and religion increasingly influenced filming.

In that atmosphere, Fatty was accused of a crime he had not committed, the rape and murder of a female guest at one of his parties.

Brilliant in dialogue and spectacular in character and tones, the book recounts Buster Keaton's unwavering friendship with his mentor.

“Julien especially wanted to portray a story of friendship.

He found a picture of Keaton as an adult with a portrait of Fatty on the wall.

The comic focuses on that relationship, on that human part that gives the story a layer of intimacy,” says the illustrator Nadar by phone.

A book that breathes through the color and landscapes of an effervescent cultural and media environment.

For Nadar, looking for the texture of the book is a fundamental part of the process when illustrating the script: “There is a lot of visual documentation of that time in black and white.

More than focusing on details, I was interested in reflecting the atmosphere of that time, taking out the color that was not in the black and white images in a coherent way, reflecting the luminosity, and that the reader through the book could travel and get into that epoch".

Similar to

graphic novel .

by Koren Shadmi (Desfiladero Ediciones), a Hollywood of sequins but also of decadence and abandonment is the protagonist of the book.

Bela Lugosi was born in 1893 in Hungary, near the border with Transylvania.

A successful actor in his country, he had to go into exile after the fall of Bela Kun's brief Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. In 1931 he starred in Tod Browning's

, the success was immediate and the public forever associated Lugosi's face with that of the count that he needed the blood of his victims to survive.

The film was also a hit for the horror film genre.

Lugosi shared successes and rivalry with Boris Karloff, who also played

in 1931, and their rivalry is also part of the plot of the comic.

Drawn in two inks, in black and white to convey the look of old Universal horror films and in black and red for

, the comic narrates the biography of a Hollywood emigrant full of excesses and passions, in which the drug, as it happens in

, also has an important weight in the story.

skillfully reflects the drift toward the precipice of an actor trapped in his own character.

Panels from Koren Shadmi's comic about Lugosi.

Koren Shadmi develops by email what for him was the curse of Bela Lugosi: “He was always recognized for the role of Dracula, and he was often typecast as a villain.

His first major film role was also the high point of his career, and from then on he would never reach that peak.

But I have a feeling that, despite all the tragedy, Lugosi had a huge, dark sense of humor."

The comic by the Israeli-American author skilfully reflects that personality between tragedy and self-irony that Lugosi had since he was a child.

Aware that he would not be able to shake Dracula's shadow, in recent years he has participated in several B movies, elevated to a cult actor for a minority audience.

As happened with Fatty Arbuckle, he had to recycle himself in order to survive: “Lugosi had a complex relationship with Hollywood.

He was always the outcast, other actors mentioned that he was reserved on set, and he even called himself a 'lone wolf

in various interviews.

That stance helped him excel in villainous roles.

It's a common story in the movie business, to see a creative person made king and discarded a few years later,” says Shadmi.

In both comics there is that common thread of strong personalities that end up starry, but also of how Hollywood built its glamor and greatness.

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