quote: His original intentions in writing Dracula were actually to have it performed as a play by his boss, Henry Irving (Stoker's main job was helping run a theater), whom Stoker wanted to play the part of Dracula. The role was intended as something that would combine the best of the villainous parts Irving specialized in. Irving walked in on a reading of Dracula, and declared it would never be performed in HIS theater. Poor Stoker.
Yeah, I remember reading that in the Belford book. Dracula was played in the reading by Whitworth Jones, another celebrated actor of the day. It's also worth noting that Stoker's descriptions of Dracula's face are very heavily based on Irving's looks, especially since the recent Norton Antholgy edition of Dracula edited by David Skal prominently features a malevolent-looking Irving (in a still from Faust) on the cover.
The Skal-edited version of the book has some great articles and reviews in it by film and literature historians. It's amazing how stuff like that can utterly transform a text you're familiar with into something fresh and new.
I'll have to check out Speeding Bullets and Skal's edit on Dracula, then. I loved his biography of Tod Browning.
My favorite of Skal's books thus far is Screams Of Reason, the examination of the realtionship between sci-fi/fantasy films and real-world scientific developments. Wonderful stuff, that. :)
