Career
Van Sloan"s roles date from the 1930s, including Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932). In the first of these, he played Abraham Van Helsing, the famous vampire-hunter, a role he had first taken in the successful touring production of Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. He again played Van Helsing in the 1936 film Dracula"s Daughter.
In Frankenstein, he played the character of Doctor, but he also stepped in front of a curtain before the film"s opening credits to warn audience members that they now had a chance to escape the theatre if they were too squeamish to endure the film.