Secret Dracula Star
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[h/t Karl Narveson]
As far as I can tell, the "secret" is the fact that Mr. Lee wrote and recorded heavy metal music towards the end of his life — which was not at all secret:
In 2010 Lee won a Metal Hammer Golden Gods award for his work on ‘Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross’ and the Spirit Of Metal award for his overall involvement in the metal community, describing the event as “the most amazing occasion.”
David Donnell said,
June 20, 2015 @ 2:14 am
DEAR LLOG: This-here old guy doesn't keep up with all the vampires you young people SO adore these days, but I'm pretty sure there was nothing secret about Christopher Lee's Dracularity.
Gregory Kusnick said,
June 20, 2015 @ 2:35 am
Like a duck takes to water? You'd sort of expect that from a guy who sleeps in a coffin.
maidhc said,
June 20, 2015 @ 4:27 am
Any possible story they could cobble together to go under this headline is bound to be an anticlimax.
With so many stories about forgotten film stars dying in obscurity, it's good to see that Christopher Lee went out with plenty of well-deserved recognition at a pretty good age, even down to receiving the tabloid treatment. Interesting to see that his Dracula has been judged to be more iconic than his Saruman by the popular press. Wicker Man is still tops on my list though.
He's probably the biggest celebrity I've met in real life (very briefly!), but I've been a fan since I saw all those Hammer films as a teenager. His Fu Manchu was pretty good too ("Have you ever had your bones scraped, Mr. Smith?"). If only the Shaw Brothers had been involved …
Ralph Hickok said,
June 20, 2015 @ 7:44 am
I loved his appearance as SNL host back in the 1970s, when they did spoofs such as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Rogers" with Dan Ackroyd and "The Creature from the Black Studies Program" with Garrett Morse.
Mark S said,
June 20, 2015 @ 4:24 pm
This would more appropriately be called the secret he took to his grave:
"I was attached to the SAS from time to time but we are forbidden – former, present, or future – to discuss any specific operations. Let's just say I was in Special Forces and leave it at that. People can read in to that what they like."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lee#Military_service_in_World_War_II
Yet Another John said,
June 20, 2015 @ 6:03 pm
That headline is semantically self-defeating, no? If it's splashed across the cover of a tabloid, he didn't do a very good job of taking it to the grave…
AntC said,
June 21, 2015 @ 3:16 am
@Yet Another John: but's that what a tabloid "secret" is: something you've hidden from your close ones for 50 years, but are quite happy to announce to a world-wide audience on Oprah.
DWalker said,
June 22, 2015 @ 1:46 pm
As Yet Another John said, no Web site (or newspaper) could (by definition) reveal a secret that someone took to their grave.
The headline IS clearly self-contradictory.
DWalker said,
June 22, 2015 @ 1:47 pm
On the other hand, maybe he's a "Secret Dracula Star" and he was "took" to a grave… I wanted to parse this as "Secret Dracula Star" somehow.
Andrew Bay said,
June 22, 2015 @ 2:59 pm
For those who want a Secret "Dracula Star", perhaps Dracula had some ninja throwing stars (Shuriken) and had them buried with him.
GH said,
June 23, 2015 @ 4:54 am
Or it could be about Christopher Lee being a star who took a "secret Dracula" to his grave…
Jim said,
June 23, 2015 @ 9:49 am
@Mark S, there are two stories about his wartime exploits that I love, though both are likely apocryphal – one is that when asked by a BBC reporter to tell him a story, just one story, off the record, he asked if the reporter could keep a secret. The reporter allowed that he could. Mr. Lee then responded, "So can I."
The second is the rumour that on the set of LOTR, in one scene the director was explaining to him that an orc was getting stabbed in the back, up through the lungs, and telling him about the sound effects they'd be adding in post-production. He told the director he didn't really need the description because he knew what that sounded like already.
Matt McIrvin said,
June 23, 2015 @ 3:03 pm
As a Dracula star, he certainly took to a grave, but there was nothing particularly secret about that either.
jan said,
June 24, 2015 @ 10:38 am
"Secret Dracula Star" could be the title of the next Star Trek movie.
Or somebody else was secretly starring in Dracula movies…