He's a good friend of Bella Lugosi

Actually, that's incorrect. You're thinking of Lon Chaney, Jr. Lon Chaney was a silent film actor. He filmed over 100 films, but many of them were lost because stupid studio people melted them down to recover the silver from the film. London After Midnight was one of these.
Chaney was known as "the man of a thousand faces" because of his famous ability to morph into any character only with his own box of makeup and great acting ability. His parents were deaf-mutes, so his life experiences with this probably helped him greatly in acting in silent films.
Chaney died young in 1930. He had been shooting a movie in the cold Wisconsin winter and came down with (I believe) leukemia. Chaney's career as perhaps the greatest silent screen actor was already over at this point, though, because talkies had made their way into the mainstream as quickly as they were invented. Chaney did appear in one talkie as "the man of a hundred voices," but he died soon after.
His son went on to be a famous actor in monster movies: Lon Chaney, Jr. More people remember this Chaney than his legendary father. They're missing out.