Actor Biographies
Helen Chandler (Mina Seward): Helen Chandler was born in Charleston, South Carolina on February 1, 1906. By the late 1920s she had become a hugely popular actress on the New York stage. That Hollywood should beckon was inevitable, but unfortunately whatever quality made Chandler a success on the stage did not survive the transition to film. Chandler is probably best remembered by movie fans as the fragile Mina, pursued and nearly vampirized by Bela Lugosi in the original "Dracula" (1931). In 1937 Chandler left Hollywood to return to the stage, but a dependency on alcohol and sleeping pills haunted her subsequent career, and in 1940 she was committed to a sanitarium. Ten years later she was disfigured in a fire, apparenty caused by smoking in bed. Helen Chandler died (following surgery for a bleeding ulcer) on April 30, 1965. Her body was cremated, and as no relative ever came forward to claim the remains, her ashes now repose in the vaultage section (off limits to visitors) of the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.
David Manners (John Harker): Distantly related to Princess Diana on his mother's side, Nova Scotia-born actor David Manners, ne Rauff de Ryther Daun Acklom, came from well-to-do stock. His father ran the prestigious Tower Road boys' school Harrow House and later became a literary advisor for E.P. Dutton Publishing Co. in New York. He graduated from Trinity School where he first performed on stage as Fernando in "The Tempest." Joining Eva La Gallienne's Civil Repertory Co., he forged enduring friendships with the legendary teacher and later with Helen Hayes when both appeared in front of the footlights in the play "Dancing Mothers." He was "discovered" by director James Whale for film after being cast in the highly successful movie Journey's End. From there he was cast opposite Hollywood's female elite, servicing such stars as Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck and Claudette Colbert in well-mounted soapers and tea-service comedies. But he became best known for his participation in horrors where he displayed his vital, heroic side opposite Bela Lugosi's Dracula (as Jonathan Harker), and Boris Karloff's Mummy. A lack of interest had him leaving films in 1936, returning from time to time to the theater and spending time painting and writing novels. He died in 1998.
Renfield (Dwight Frye): A versatile character actor, originator of several memorable characterizations in the horror film genre. Dwight Frye had a notable theatre career, moving from juvenile parts to leads before entering film. He originated the part of "the Young Man" in the 1922 Broadway premiere of Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author." Cast with Bela Lugosi in a 1926 production of "The Devil and the Cheese, " he ultimately appeared in at least two Lugosi films. Despite (or perhaps because of) his memorable, impassioned portrayals of real estate agent-cum-madman Renfield in Tod Browning's 1931 film "Dracula, " and Fritz the sadistic hunchbacked lab assistant in James Whale's "Frankenstein, " the Industry seemed determined to typecast him. "The Crime of Dr. Crespi" (1935) offered him billing second only to that of villain Erich von Stroheim but too soon he was consigned to playing a lucklustre array of lunatics, spies, red herrings, grasping heirs, and bit parts. He occasionally returned to the stage in comedies, musicals, and thrillers such as "Night Must Fall" and a stage version of "Dracula." In the early '40's he worked nights (between films and local theatre productions) as a tool desginer for the Lockheed Aircraft Company. An uncanny physical resemblance to then-Secretary of War Newton D.Baker led to being signed to a substantial role in a film called "Wilson", based on the life of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, but Frye succumbed to a heart attack on a bus a few days later.
Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan): Not much is known about this great American Actor, so I cannot offer much about him. US character actor; he of the close-cropped gray hair, thick spectacles and clipped, ominous tones who would serve most memorably as the nemesis of evil-doers and monsters in 30's and 40's horror movies and suspensers, antagonizing first the likes of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff and then, years later, Erich von Stroheim.
Herbert Bunston (Dr.Seward): At age 23, the year 1897, Herbert began a long experience of his career towards acting on the British Theater. During that time the theater was still owned by the eminent Thomas Alva Edison. As a classically trained British actor he began by acting in small parts on screen and off. Fans will probably remember his most as the ineffectual Dr. Seward in the classic Bela Lugosi film of Dracula (1931/I). In fact Herbert essayed the part both in the film and the stage. When the 1927 stageplay of Dracula was released he played the very same role of Dr. Seward on the play, as did another British actor, Edward Van Sloan who played Professor Van Helsing both on the play and on screen. After many years with the British stage he moved on to play parts in Broadway. A very capable actor with his versatili ty and cultured masculinity. By the late 1930s, Herbert became an older gentlemen in his late 50s and continued both on stage and screen to play authoritative s upporting roles mostly of which were film versions of classic literature novels and plays. By 1935, his career was tragically cut short of a heart attack. He died at 61.
Frances Dade (Lucy Weston): Sorry to break your hearts, but I couldn't find any info on her and I know nothing about her. Sorry. If you do know about her E-mail me at JC48tiny