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Tod Browning
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Tod Browning's Outside the Law was a huge popular success that further established Lon Chaney's reputation for prodigious versatility. He plays both Ah Wing, a gentle student of Confucian philosophy and "Black" Mike Sylva, a vicious criminal. Outside ... reunited Chaney, Browning and the Universal star, Priscilla Dean from (the recently rediscovered) gangster opus, The Wicked Darling.
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Tod Browning's "Freaks" is without a doubt one of the most controversial movies ever made, and certainly one of the most interesting too. Made in the early 30s, the film became notorious not only for its subject matter (the story of a midget in love with a "normal" woman), but because it used real sideshow "freaks" to play the actors of the movie, showing their lives and stories to a wide audience. This was considered too shocking and disgusting for the audiences of its time, and the film became forbidden and censored, tragic events that cost Browning his career and attempted to send "Freaks" to oblivion. fortunately, it didn't happened that way, and "Freaks" has finally received its well-deserved praise as a classic of cinema and a movie ahead of its time. "Tod Brownint's Freaks: The Sideshow Cinema" is a documentary produced by Warner Home Video to celebrate the re-release of "Freaks" in DVD format.
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From Amazon.com ~ Tod Browning, who directed Bela Lugosi in the original Dracula, stepped into even eerier territory with this 1932 story of betrayal and retribution in the circus. Evil trapeze artist Olga Baclanova seduces and marries a midget in the circus sideshow, hoping to inherit his wealth. But in doing so, she has crossed the wrong folks: the tightly knit group of nature's aberrations, who stick together like family--and who set out to avenge their little pal. Browning brought in some of the most famous sideshow attractions of the era, include Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton and Johnny Eck the Legless Boy, as well as Zip and Pip, microcephalics whose appearance in this film inspired cartoonist Bill Griffith to create his comic strip, "Zippy the Pinhead." So disturbing that it was banned for 30 years in Great Britain. --Marshall Fine
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Known as the 'Edgar Allen Poe of cinema', Tod Browning is truly the dark master of filmmaking. However, despite the commercial success he enjoyed during his lifetime, he has never received the critical acclaim his work deserves. Studying under the great master, DW Griffiths, Browning employed a unique cinematic style, involving cross-cutting between scenes, dark noir-ish shadows, and macabre subject matter. Best known for his films "Freaks", "The Unknown", "Mark of the Vampire", "The Devil Doll and Dracula", his dark, gothic style has influenced such filmmakers as Sam Raimi, David Lynch and Tim Burton. This book at last pays tribute to Browning's cinematic legacy. The contributors include academics from the fields of film studies, gender studies and disability studies from universities the world over.
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Tod Browning was born on July 12, 1880. At the age of sixteen he ran away from home and joined a circus where he worked for several years as a clown, acrobat, contortionist and ringmaster. His experiences in the circus greatly influenced his later career in Hollywood and echoes of those years can be found in many of his films. After the circus Browning went into vaudeville as a comedian and toured the world with various companies.
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Tod Browning was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the second son of Charles Albert and Lydia Browning. As a young boy, he put on amateur plays in his backyard. He was fascinated by the circus and carnival life, and at the age of 16 he ran away from his well-to-do family to become a performer.
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Tod Browning