professormortis:

Ever hear the story of the copyright battle that nearly resulted in the 1922 Nosferatu being lost forever?

greggorysshocktheater:

In 1922, Bram Stoker’s widow Florence  learned of a German film adaptation of Dracula. The filmmakers, who had not purchased the legal rights to the story, had attempted (badly) to disguise their theft, titling the film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror) and renaming the characters. Dracula, played by Max Schreck, became Count Orlock; Jonathan Harker and Mina became Thomas Hutter and his wife, Ellen; Renfield became Knock; Prof. Van Helsing became Prof. Bulwer. The story, though much is condensed, is essentially the same as that of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Stoker’s living, however meager it was, depended on the sale of various foreign rights to Dracula, her husband’s only true success. She appealed to the British Incorporated Society of Authors for help fight for the producers of Nosferatu, Prana-Film, for her rights to the Dracula story. She sued and won, but the legal fees were high and Prana-Film already bankrupt. Stoker, whose rights to Dracula were her only means of support, sought to have all copies of the film destroyed, and in July 1925 the court finally agreed to this penalty.

But Nosferatu had already been distributed around the world, and international copyright law was sometimes a tricky thing. No matter how hard Florence Stoker tried, she could not manage to destroy all copies of Nosferatu in existence. Eventually, several copies (some heavily edited) found their way to the United States for public showing, despite Stoker’s protests.

Along with the American stage version, which starred the iconic Dracula Bela Lugosi, Nosferatu provided much inspiration for the 1931 film version of Dracula. This time the studio paid Florence Stoker for film rights, despite the fact that Dracula was public domain in the United States. Bela Lugosi, before he was cast in the film’s title role, helped the studio negotiate with Stoker.