Hollywood writer/director/actor David E. Durston died of pneumonia on 6 May 2010. Born in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, on 10 September 1921, he started his career as a stage actor, but will be best remembered for writing and directing the 1970 cult horror classic I Drink Your Blood (which ran in drive-ins as a double feature with the zombie film I Eat Your Skin).
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Durston began as a stage actor, appearing in such works as Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (in which he replaced Montgomery Clift), Night Must Fall, and Young Man’s Fancy. One of his early roles as Tony Kirby in a summer stock production of You Can’t Take It With You brought him into contact with Broadway legend Moss Hart, who became an early mentor to Durston and encouraged the actor to write his own scripts. While making the jump to writing, he “also found time to star in a demented play called The Drunkard and toured with family friend Bela Lugosi in productions of Dracula and Arsenic and Old Lace.
“‘My father, who was German, knew Bela in Europe when Bela of a matinee idol in the theater,’ Durston once said. ‘When Bela came to New York for a theater engagement, Dad and Bela got together, and when Bela came to the house, we all met him. I was about 12 years old then. When I grew up, I met Bela again, and we had two opportunities to work together.'”
As a writer and/or director, Durston was responsible for I Drink Your Blood (1970) and two episodes of Tales of Tomorrow (1953). He edited the fantasy Red Roses of Passion (1966), and acted in Gang Wars (1976).
He also produced the annual broadcast of the Tournament of Roses Parade for all three major TV networks during the late 1950s.