March 18- The Origins of “Bleh!” Via Bela

I got a nice letter from Jenny of Niles, Il. - with a very note-worthy question. She wrote that she had seen our parody of Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back” song (“Bela Lugosi’s Back”) in which we replaced all the “yeah!”s with “Bleh!”-in the Bela/Dracula vice. Jenny asked how the “bleh” got associated with vampires- primarily, the Bela Dracula? The funny thing is- that same thing came up recently in a conversation with one of my friends! We were talking about how certain phrases are often used when people do impressions of people or characters- but those phrases were never actually said by the person or character-like doing Cary Grant saying “Judy-Judy-Judy!” (Extra points if it’s Goober from “Andy Griffith” doing Cary saying that!)Other ones are Bogart saying “play it again, Sam” (he just said “Play it”) or Mae West saying “come up and see me some time” (she just said “Come up and see me.”)There are probably more, which you can feel free to send me.
Anyway, we were talking about how a line used by someone in imitating a star or celebrity can become totally associated with the real person, after being repeated by other people imitating the imitator (are you still with me?) My whole point being- that Bela, as Dracula, never said “Bleh!” It was indeed an imitator- back in the days of the old Steve Allen TV show; one of his stock players, Gabriel Dell (who had, at one time, been a “Dead End Kid” in movies- and may have even worked with Bela in a cut-rate Monogram movie) was playing Dracula- and did the “bleh!” thing (or, do you spell it “blah”?!) From there on, it was history. So many Drac and/or Bela impersonators have done that now, that most people assume that Bela actually did that-, which, if you think of the sophisticated Bela, is actually pretty funny!
The great George Carlin had an interesting way to get into his Bela impersonation- he once said that, most impressionists have a word or phrase that they use to “set’ the voice that they’re doing (this was in explaining how he did Ed Sullivan- he would use the phrase “Now you know…”- if you have no idea who Sullivan was, never mind!) For George, the way he would set his voice to imitate Lugosi was to use the name of a California town- Palo Alto! (Say that a few times quickly in the Bela voice, and you’ll understand it!)
So, Jenny, and everyone else, the “bleh” in the Bela impressions and vampire characterizations comes from- an old comedy show! Bela himself never said it…but, I wonder of he ever got lost driving out of Hollywood, and had to ask someone “Vich vay is Palo Alto?”