ST ch 7 Dracula

Sat May 16 21:11:05 UTC 2026

I’m hopscotching around Shadow Ticket in presenting these posts, hope you don’t mind.
This is a big one, strap in.

Dracula strikes me as central to the concerns of the Shadow Ticket, a wormhole into the
dimly-lit past and an arrow to future consolidation of economic power.

Shadow Ticket’s epigram inclines us towards Bela Lugosi’s best known film portrayal
—though Plan 9 From Outer Space is a close second—Dracula, the 1931 Universal Pictures
English language version:

“ . . . a 1931 American Pre-Code vampire film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning 
 from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort and starring Bela Lugosi . . . 

. . . As a published work from 1931, the film will enter the American public domain on January 1,
2027. . .”

Dracula (1931 English-language film) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_(1931_English-language_film)

The movie was re-released in 1998 with a new musical score by Philip Glass, performed by the
Kronos Quartet:

Dracula (album) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_(album)

A scene from the movie with Glass’ PoMo score:

https://youtu.be/1YfXRqKhciM?si=aS_fGqK9tcG3vCKH

Shadow Ticket has two scenes situated inside movie theaters, both have extended riffs on
the hidden or implied aspects of the respective films. I’ll be spilling off tangents here,
tendrils if you will, as these things constitute the context from which these movies
emerged.

Dracula is Lebowski’s Rug, to coin a neologism, in this novel, the singular element that ties
everything together. This scene begins on page 46. April Randazzo is Hicks’ Dance
Partner/friend with benefits. It’s Valentine’s Day, 1932, Milwaukee. Dracula, the Bela Lugosi
movie, came out on Valentine’s Day the previous year, April wants to go to Chicago to see it,
Hicks is nervous on account of what went down on Valentine’s Day in Chicago, 1929.

Saint Valentine's Day Massacre - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine%27s_Day_Massacre

Chicago in the 1930s - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_in_the_1930s

Also knowing it’s a real scary movie, which it turns out to be:

“Hmm, well, OK, but this picture is supposed to be kind of terrifying, so promise if you get
scared you’ll come sit in my lap.”

So they rode into Chicago, and were spared any Outfit-related violence, but what there was
was Count Dracula, big as a movie screen, once or twice during who activities it was Hicks
who considered jumping into April’s lap. By the time it was over she’d eaten six cubic feet of
popcorn and was using his tie to wipe the butter off his fingers with.”

Shadow Ticket, pgs. 46/47

There’s still more massive overconsumption of popcorn when Bruno and Daphne watch a
Squeezita Thickly movie In Budapest, much later in the novel. But I digress, as per usual.

After watching Dracula, April sez she’s going to swoon over Bela, this after previous swooning
over William Powell and Jimmy Cagney.

— William Powell:

“ . . . Powell portrayed a vengeful film director in the silent movie The Last Command
(1928). His first starring role was Philo Vance in The Canary Murder Case (1929). He played
Vance at Paramount Pictures four times. His strong stage-developed voice became a
powerful asset when talking pictures were introduced. He went on to star opposite Kay
Francis in seven pre-Code films, starting with "Street of Chance" (1930) and including
"Jewel Robbery" (1932), in which he plays a thief who proffers marijuana cigarettes to his
victims.

Powell appeared as Nick Charles in six Thin Man films, beginning with The Thin Man in
1934, based upon Dashiell Hammett’s novel. This movie provided Powell with his first
Academy Award nomination, in 1935

William Powell - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Powell

His first starring role, Philo Vance in ‘The Canary Murder Case’:

The Canary Murder Case (film) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canary_Murder_Case_(film)

In the history of the talkies, this is an interesting film in numerous ways. It’s from 1929, a
very early entry in the history of talkies. The film revolves around Vance's investigation into
the murder of a conniving showgirl, the “Canary” of the title. The Canary Murder Case was
initially intended to be a silent film. As it turned out, Powell had the perfect voice for early
sound films, very clear and clearly trained for the stage. On the other hand, Louise Brooks,
famous silent film star, effectively ends her film career here with her refusal to participate
in dubbing this film. The dubbing was performed by Margaret Livingston, the Wiki post says
she is remembered today as "the Woman from the City" in F. W. Murnau’s 1927 film
Sunrise, a Song of Two Humans.

Margaret Livingston - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Livingston

A fine looking print on You Tube of the entire movie:

https://youtu.be/O4VtgBtHdhE?si=b1vuABb6X6tdJoAo

In turn, Sunrise, a Song of Two Humans, featuring Margaret Livingston, was the first movie
released using the Movietone sound on film system.  While the film has no audible dialogue, it
was released with a synchronized musical score and sound effects using the
Movietone sound-on-film process.  

“ . . . Murnau chose to use the then new Fox Movietone sound-on-film system,
making Sunrise one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound
effects soundtrack. The film incorporated Charles Gounod’s 1872 composition Funeral
March of a Marionette, which inspired its use as the theme for the television series Alfred
Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965) . . . “

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise:_A_Song_of_Two_Humans

https://youtu.be/1CVLz1_MrCk?si=6x0-QK4TCWCvW6Ud

The story behind the story is how the major Hollywood studios were battling it out for
market dominance of sound-on-film technology. As of 1927, William Fox had the upper
hand. Then the stock market went crazy the following year, and Fox had a major car
accident the year after that:

“ . . . Following the 1927 death of Marcus Loew, head of Loews Incorporated, the parent
company of rival studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, control of MGM passed to his longtime
associate, Nicholas Schenck. Fox saw an opportunity to expand his empire, and in 1929,
with Schenck's assent, bought the Loew family's MGM holdings, unbeknownst to MGM
studio bosses Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg. Mayer and Thalberg were outraged;
despite their high posts at MGM, they were not shareholders. Mayer used his strong
political connections to persuade the Justice Department to sue Fox for violating federal
antitrust laws. In July 1929, Fox was severely injured in an automobile accident. By the time
he recovered, the stock market crash in October 1929 had wiped out virtually his entire
fortune, ending any chance of the Loews-Fox merger going through even if the Justice
Department had approved it.
William Fox (producer) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Fox_(producer)

Allow me to underscore this:

. . . Mayer used his strong political connections to persuade the Justice Department to sue
Fox for violating federal antitrust laws . . .

Setting in motion the series of unfortunate events that led to the fall of Pynchon and
Company. Enemy action, in this case, coming from the Federal government.

Ah, but I digress.

F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu is probably that director’s most famous film today, an unlicensed
‘adaptation’ of Bram Stoker’s Dracula:

“ . . . Even with several details altered, Stoker's widow, Florence, sued over the
adaptation's copyright violation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be
destroyed. However, several prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded
as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre. Critic and historian Kime
Newman declared it as a film that set the template for the genre of horror film. The film
entered the public domain worldwide in 2019. . . “

Nosferatu - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu

https://youtu.be/Ydxl9Gi2jIM?si=5bxgTyvQTsaw9hgwJames “Jimmy” Cagney:

“ . . . Cagney is remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in films such as The Public
Enemy (1931), Taxi! (1932), Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties
(1939), City for Conquest (1940) and White Heat (1949), finding himself typecast in the
early years of his career. He was able to negotiate dancing opportunities in his films and
ended up winning the Academy Award for his role of George M. Cohan in the musical
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). In 1999, the  American Film Institute ranked him eighth on its
list of greatest male stars of the Golden Ahe of Hollywood. Orson Welles described him as
maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera".

James Cagney - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cagney

A few pages before going to Chicago to see Dracula, on page 24:

. . . By the time Hicks understands he should’ve been paying closer attention to what’s
going on, the moment has arrived when April is using the movies as an alibi for her
whereabouts, a regression to high school Hicks would never have expected.

“The Public Enemy again? It’s three in the morning.”

“They’ve started running it all night, round the clock, young American womanhood, you
know, we can’t get enough of that Jimmy, knocked all gaga in fact, plenty there to swoon
over, case I haven’t drooled enough about him to you already.”

“Only part I remember’s that grapefruit really . . . don’t spoze you’d happen to have one
around . . .

https://youtu.be/k4R5wZs8cxI?si=VC-imJ1i_jUhTE2g

Two tough guys of the screen, circa 1932, but Bela’s got that “X” factor:

. . . “Hicks, you need more culture, a more Continental approach to life and love. At least
find out what Bela’s putting on his hair” and so forth.

William Powell, James Cagney, now this. Hicks figures he’s in for weeks of sighing, movie
magazines in uneasy stacks, and whispers of “Oh Bela!” in her sleep . . .

My guess is that Hicks finds out what Bela’s putting on his hair about a year too late to
impress April.

Hicks still wanted to go to the Villa Venice, his hoped for Valentine’s Day evening
destination. But before that can happen, Hicks is informed that April Randazzo is about
to marry Don Peppino Infernacci, a person of some respect in Chicago’s “Outfit” and
a someone of considerable influence in such social circles.

It is at this juncture of the novel that one sincerely wonders if Hicks can see what is clearly
in front of him. This is not the first premonition of what is about to come—that’s on the first
page, with the first explosion. But there’s Thessalie informing Hicks about apports and asports
on pg. 40, setting us up for weird things in the general region of Transylvania some
number of pages later. I guess that Thessalie’s useful information comes in handy further
into the future than whatever future Angie “Vumvum” Voltaggio”s can offer, though it seems
Hicks still hasn’t got the message by Xmas time.

Back to Dracula. It’s the movie that made Bela Lugosi a star, also the role that typecast him
for life. The man first appears in Against the Day on page 913 as Béla Blaskó:

. . . “For young English újházaspár,” loudly announced Miklós the desk clerk, ignoring all the
agricultural smudges and handing over a pair of tickets, “compliments of this Hotel!
Wonderful show tonight at the Varosi Színház! The incomparable Béla Blaskó, our famous
actor from Lugos, singing and dancing in a new operetta straight from Vienna! If only you
had been here last week to see Béla as Romeo”—producing a local newspaper and
opening it to the theater review—“look, they said ‘fiery… passionately loving …’ but—no
need to tell you two, eh?” “Well,” Kit demurred. “Oh, c’mon,” Dally said mischievously, “it’ll
be fun.” As it turned out, it was a pretty good show, though they didn’t quite catch the whole
thing . . .

The show is “The Burgher King.”

“. . . The Operetta, all the rage in Vienna at the moment, was called The Burgher King, in
which the ruler of a fictional country in Central Europe, feeling disconnected from his
people, decides to go out among them disguised as a member of the urban middle class.

The first act closed with young Béla Blaskó, playing the Burgher King, wearing a silk hat at a
rakish angle and twirling a cane, in front of a corps of dancers and  . . .

(Singing  a stupid song. Maybe’s there’s some kabbablaistic code in there somewhere, but
let’s move on while the groat-cakes are still hot.)

. . . Which by the first-act curtain had Dally mesmerized into some peculiar wide-eyed
 state.

“Ain’t like I never saw a charming leading man before, seen ’em come and go, but this lad is
the goods, I tell you—and Hungarian, too!”

Kit guessed so. “But what’s with that piece of business where he bites old Heidi’s neck,
what was that all about?”

 “Something they do in these parts? You’re the one with the college education.” Her look
just short of what you’d call innocent.

Kit peered back, trying to resist the nitwit smile that was about to take over his face. “Well,
hard to say, you know, my Hungarian being a little rusty and all, but… didn’t it look to you
like that she was, sort of … going for it?”

“What. Having her neck bitten.” Slipping she was sure she didn’t know why into her
country-weekend mode of English accent.

 “Well here, let’s just—

916

Whatever’s going on here, it’s making Kit and Dally very hot, getting back to
their room, getting busy with Dally experiencing a Paprika flashback afterwards.

But now that you mention it, Kit:

“But what’s with that piece of business where he bites old Heidi’s neck, what was that al
l about?”

We’ll have to come back to that later, first note Pierce Inverarity's phone call to Oedipa from
Pierce Inverarity very early on in The Crying of Lot 49:

. . . It took her till the middle of Huntley and Brinkley to remember that last year at three or so
one morning there had come this long-distance call, from where she would never know (unless
now he'd left a diary) by a voice beginning in heavy Slavic tones as second secretary at the
Transylvanian Consulate, looking for an escaped bat . . .

2/3

Hmmm . . . wonder who this is supposed to be. . . Oh, that's right, he's that "Anarchist Miracle":

"You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world's intrusion into this one.
Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there's cataclysm. Like the church
we hate, anarchists also believe in another world. Where revolutions break out spontaneous
and leaderless, and the soul's talent for consensus allows the masses to work together without
effort, automatic as the body itself. And yet, sena, if any of it should ever really happen that
perfectly, I would also have to cry miracle. An anarchist miracle. Like your friend. He is too
exactly and without flaw the thing we fight. In Mexico the privilegiado is always, to a finite
percentage, redeemed one of the people. Unmiraculous. But your friend, unless he's joking, is
as terrifying to me as a Virgin appearing to an Indian." . . . 

105/106

In Vineland we witness Mucho Maas’ transformation into Count Drugula:

. . . Mucho Maas, originally a disk jockey, had decided around 1967, after a divorce
remarkable even in that more innocent time for its geniality, to go into record producing.
The business was growing unpredictable, and his takeoff was abrupt — soon, styling
himself Count Drugula, Mucho was showing up at Indolent, down in the back-street
Hollywood flats south of Sunset and east of Vine, in a chauffeured Bentley, wearing joke-
store fangs and a black velvet cape from Z & Z, scattering hits of high-quality acid among
the fans young and old who gathered daily for his arrival. "Count, Count! Lay some dope on
us!" they'd cry. Indolent Records had rapidly become known for its unusual choices of
artists and repertoires. Mucho was one of the very first to audition, but not, he was later to
add hastily, to call back, fledgling musician Charles Manson. He almost signed Wild Man
Fischer, and Tiny Tim too, but others got to them first . . .

309

Warner Brothers—the folks what cooked up the Vitaphone system for sound on
film?—if I recall correctly—via subsidiaries Reprise and Bizarre Records. Of
course, this was the golden age of drugola/payola. Check out “Hit Men” by Frederick
Dannen for more:

Hit Men | Penguin Random House Higher Education https://penguinrandomhousehighereducation.com/book/?isbn=9780679730613

Inherent Vice has a very interesting placement of Van Helsing’s name:

“Handsome stone,” Doc said.

Like an actress hitting her mark, she had come to a pause beneath a looming portrait of
Mickey Wolfmann, shown with a distant stare, as if scanning the L.A. Basin to its farthest
horizons for buildable lots. She whirled to face Doc and smiled sociably. “Here we are, then.”

Doc noticed a sort of fake chiseled stone frieze above the portrait, which read, ONCE YOU
GET THAT FIRST STAKE DRIVEN, NOBODY CAN STOP YOU.— ROBERT MOSES.

 “A great American, and Michael’s inspiration,” said Sloane. “That’s always been his motto.”

“I thought Dr. Van Helsing said that.”

She’d found and stopped exactly inside a flattering convergence of lights that made her
look like some contract star of the grand studio era, about to let loose with an emotional
speech at some less expensive actor. Doc tried not to glance around too obviously to see
where the light was coming from, but she noticed the flicker off his eyeballs.

“Do you like the lighting? Jimmy Wong Howe did it for us years ago.”

“The D.P. on Body and Soul wasn’t he? Not to mention They Made Me a Criminal, Dust Be
My Destiny, Saturday’s Children—”

“Those,” quizzically, “are all . . . John Garfield movies. . .”

58

John Garfield takes up a lot of space in Inherent Vice. HUAC and all that.

There is a completely obscure reference in Bleeding Edge, demonstrating once again how
Dracula is the rug that ties the whole room together. Really early on, page 12, we have
Maxine’s “Cruise Ship”, the Hungarian tramp container vessel M/V Aristide Olt, which just
happens to be a name the future Bela Lugosi used as a younger actor, and it also points to
the time Hungary still had a port in Fiume:

 . . . Returning to Arsztid Olt's film career, eleven Hungarian feature films followed 1917's,
"Leoni Leo". Two stand-out to English film goers. The actor portrayed "Lord Henry
Wotton", in director Alfred Deesy's, "Az elet kiralya (The Royal Life)", a Hungarian
adaption of playwright Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", released
in Budapest, on January 21, 1918. . .

THE HOUSE OF FRADKIN-STEIN: Béla Lugosi: Arisztid Olt and Other Children of the Night https://www.bewaretheblog.com/2025/11/bela-lugosi-arisztid-olt-and-other.html

So, again we ask: “But what’s with that piece of business where he bites old Heidi’s neck,
what was that all about?”

Perhaps the metaphor of Dracula as Old Money/Capital?

Gravity’s Rainbow is full of references to Dracula, Bela Lugosi, and the concept of Vampires
in the leftist economic sense, explicitly in this passage:

“ . . . It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep
the people distracted…secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of
technology…by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that
needed the energy-burst of war, crying, “Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of
Nation] is at stake,” but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night’s blood,
my funding, funding, ahh more, more…The real crises were crises of allocation and priority,
not among firms—it was only staged to look that way—but among the different
Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by
the ruling elite…

Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been iterated, dogged,
humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger Schwarzkommando especially),
“All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we’d’ve had the
Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn’t wanted to
chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize
the T on technology, deify it if it’ll make you feel less responsible—but it puts you in with the
neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb
and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
are—”

529/530

There are right-wing discussions about Dracula and Capitalism, pointing out that Bram
Stoker was of the social/Financial elite of England and portrayed the character Dracula
more as a xenophobic threat, typical right-wing fears of "the other", but it’s the left-wing
discussions that hold more social currency.

Dracula: A Symbol of Capitalist Fear

. . . Count Dracula is presented in Dracula as a foreboding, aristocratic character whose
main goal is to feed off of the human characters, such as Lucy and Mina, and gain an
unquenchable desire for strength – both over the characters as they become dependent on
him, and strength from the blood he takes from them. Franco Moretti discusses this point,
describing Dracula as “a metaphor for capital” (433) who “sets out on the irreversible road
of concentration and monopoly” (433). Dracula’s character represents a motif for
capitalism, and the struggle to maintain authority over other capitalist societies . . .

Dracula: A Symbol of Capitalist Fear – Late 19th Century British Literature & Culture https://blogs.dickinson.edu/britishlit/2016/03/10/dracula-a-symbol-of-capitalist-fear/

Franco Moretti’s “The Dialectic of Fear” represents Left-wing consensus on the subject:

'Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the
more, the more labour it sucks.' Marx's analogy unravels the vampire metaphor. As
everyone knows, the vampire is dead and yet not dead: he is an Un-Dead, a 'dead' person
who yet manages to live thanks to the blood he sucks from the living. Their strength
becomes his strength. The stronger the vampire becomes, the weaker the living become:
'the capitalist gets rich, not, like the miser, in proportion to his personal labour and
restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes out labour-power from others,
and compels the worker to renounce all the enjoyments of life.' Like capital, Dracula is
impelled towards a continuous growth, an unlimited expansion of his domain:
accumulation is inherent in his nature. 'This', Harker exclaims, 'was the being I was helping
to transfer to London, where, perhaps for centuries to come, he might, amongst its teeming
millions, satiate his lust for circle of semi-demons to batten on blood, and create a new
and ever widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless.' 'And so the circle goes
on ever widening', Van Helsing says later on; and Seward describes Dracula as 'the father or
furtherer of a new order of beings'.

Moretti, "The Dialectic of Fear" https://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/moretti.html

In essence, them that’s got shall have, them that’s not shall lose.

https://youtu.be/mp349H8G0XQ?si=zMotozstbPO8u4Eq

What’s that sucking sound?

Capital in the Twenty-First Century https://dowbor.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/14Thomas-Piketty.pdf

I will get back to these themes later on in the novel, as Hicks heads east into the center of the
fascist storm engulfing Europe. But we will rest here and catch our breath.

“There must be a Pony in here somewhere!”