Tod Browning facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Tod Browning
Born	Charles Albert Browning Jr. (1880-07-12)July 12, 1880 Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
Died	October 6, 1962(1962-10-06) (aged 82) Malibu, California, U.S.
Occupation	Film actor film director screenwriter vaudevillian comedian carnival/sideshow worker
Years active	1900–1962

Tod Browning (born Charles Albert Browning Jr.; July 12, 1880 – October 6, 1962) was an American film director, film actor, screenwriter, vaudeville performer, and carnival sideshow and circus entertainer. He directed a number of films of various genres between 1915 and 1939, but was primarily known for horror films, and was often cited in the trade press as the Edgar Allan Poe of cinema.

Browning's career spanned the silent film and sound film eras. He is known as the director of Dracula (1931), Freaks (1932), and his silent film collaborations with Lon Chaney and Priscilla Dean.

Early life

Charles Albert Browning, Jr., was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the second son of Charles Albert and Lydia Browning. Charles Albert Sr., "a bricklayer, carpenter and machinist," provided his family with a middle-class and Baptist household. Browning's uncle, the baseball star Pete "Louisville Slugger" Browning saw his sobriquet conferred on the iconic baseball bat.

Circus, sideshow and vaudeville

As a child, Browning was fascinated by circus and carnival life. At the age of 16, and before finishing high school, he ran away from his well-to-do family to join a traveling circus.

Initially hired as a roustabout, he soon began serving as a "spieler" (a barker at sideshows) and by 1901, at the age of 21, was performing song and dance routines for Ohio and Mississippi riverboat entertainment, as well as acting as a contortionist for the Manhattan Fair and Carnival Company. He would later draw on these early experiences to inform his cinematic inventions.

In 1906, the 26-year-old Browning was briefly married to Amy Louis Stevens in Louisville. Adopting the professional name "Tod" Browning (tod is the German word for death), Browning abandoned his wife and became a vaudevillian, touring extensively as both a magician's assistant and a blackface comedian in an act called The Lizard and the Coon with comedian Roy C. Jones. He appeared in a Mutt and Jeff sketch in the 1912 burlesque revue The World of Mirth with comedian Charles Murray.

Film actor: 1909-1913

In 1909, after 13 years performing in carnivals and vaudeville circuits, Browning, age 29, transitioned to film acting.

Browning's work as a comedic film actor began in 1909 when he performed with director and screenwriter Edward Dillon in film shorts. In all, Browning was cast in over 50 of these one- or two-reeler slapstick productions. Film historian Boris Henry observes that "Browning's experience as a slapstick actor [became] incorporated into his career as a filmmaker." Dillon later provided many of the screenplays for the early films that Browning would direct. A number of actors that Browning performed with in his early acting career would later appear in his own pictures, many of whom served their apprenticeships with Keystone Cops director Max Sennett, among them Wallace Beery, Ford Sterling, Polly Moran, Wheeler Oakman, Raymond Griffith, Kalla Pasha, Mae Busch, Wallace MacDonald and Laura La Varnie.

In 1913, the 33-year-old Browning was hired by film director D. W. Griffith at Biograph Studios in New York City, first appearing as an undertaker in Scenting a Terrible Crime (1913). Both Griffith and Browning departed Biograph and New York that same year and together joined Reliance-Majestic Studios in Hollywood, California. Browning was featured in several Reliance-Majestic films, including The Wild Girl (1917).

Early film directing and screenwriting: 1914–1916

Film historian Vivian Sobchack reports that "a number of one- or two-reelers are attributed to Browning from 1914 to 1916" and biographer Michael Barson credits Browning's directorial debut to the one-reeler drama The Lucky Transfer, released in March 1915.

Browning's career almost ended when he drove his vehicle into a railroad crossing and collided with a locomotive. Browning suffered grievous injuries, as did passenger George Siegmann. A second passenger, actor Elmer Booth was killed instantly. Film historian Jon Towlson notes that "After 1915, Browning began to direct his traumatic experience into his work – radically reshaping it in the process."

Indeed, the thirty-one films that Browning wrote and directed between 1920 to 1939 were, with few exceptions, melodramas.

Browning's injuries likely precluded a further career as an actor. During his protracted convalescence, Browning turned to writing screenplays for Reliance-Majestic. Upon his recovery, Browning joined Griffith's film crew on the set of Intolerance (1916) as an assistant director and appeared in a bit part for the production's "modern story" sequence.

Director: early silent feature films, 1917–1919

In 1917, Browning wrote and directed his first full-length feature film, Jim Bludso, for Fine Arts/ Triangle film companies, starring Wilfred Lucas in the title role. The story is based on a poem by John Hay, a former personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War.

Browning married his second wife Alice Watson in 1917; they would remain together until her death in 1944.

Returning to New York in 1917, Browning directed pictures for Metro Pictures. There he made Peggy, the Will O' the Wisp and The Jury of Fate. Both starred Mabel Taliaferro, the latter in a dual role achieved with double exposure techniques that were groundbreaking for the time. Film historian Vivian Sobchack notes that many of these films "involved the disguise and impersonations found in later Browning films." (See Filmography below.) Browning returned to Hollywood in 1918 and produced three more films for Metro, each of which starred Edith Storey: The Eyes of Mystery, The Legion of Death and Revenge, all filmed and released in 1918. These early and profitable five-, six- and seven-reel features Browning made between 1917-1919 established him as "a successful director and script writer."

In the spring of 1918 Browning departed Metro and signed with Bluebird Photoplays studios (a subsidiary of Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures), then in 1919 with Universal where he would direct a series of "extremely successful" films starring Priscilla Dean.

Universal Studios: 1919–1923

Priscilla Dean, publicity still, Outside the Law (1920)

Outside the Law, lobby poster

During his tenure at Universal, Browning directed a number of the studio's top female actors, among them Edith Roberts in The Deciding Kiss and Set Free (both 1918) and Mary MacLaren in The Unpainted Woman, A Petal on the Current and Bonnie, Bonnie Lassie, all 1919 productions. Browning's most notable films for Universal, however, starred Priscilla Dean, "Universal's leading lady known for playing 'tough girls'" and with whom he would direct nine features.

The Browning-Chaney collaborations at M-G-M: 1925–1929

After moving to M-G-M in 1925 under the auspices of production manager Irving Thalberg, Browning and Chaney made eight critically and commercially successful feature films, representing the zenith of both their silent film careers. Browning wrote or co-wrote the stories for six of the eight productions. Screenwriter Waldemar Young, credited on nine of the M-G-M pictures, worked effectively with Browning. At M-G-M, Browning would reach his artistic maturity as a filmmaker.

The first of these M-G-M productions, The Unholy Three, established Browning as a talented filmmaker in Hollywood, and deepened Chaney's professional and personal influence on the director.

The Unholy Three, publicity still. L to R: Ventriloquist dummy, Lon Chaney, Tod Browning.

While Lon Chaney was making The Tower of Lies (1925) with director Victor Sjöström Browning wrote and directed The Mystic, which was followed byDollar Down, starring Ruth Roland and Henry B. Walthall.

Following these "more conventional" crime films, Browning and Chaney embarked on their final films of the late silent period.

The Blackbird (1928) publicity still. L to R, Lon Chaney as Dan Tate, Doris Lloyd as his wife Limehouse Polly.

Their next feature film, The Blackbird (1926), was one of the most "visually arresting" of their collaborations. Though admired by critics for Chaney's performance, the film was only modestly successful at the box office.

The Road to Mandalay (1926), publicity still. L to R, director Tod Browning, actor Lon Chaney.

Director Tod Browning and actors Polly Moran and Lon Chaney (dressed as Inspector Burke), on the set of London After Midnight (1927)

Whereas Browning's The Road to Mandalay (1926) exists in a much deteriorated 16mm abridged version, London After Midnight is no longer believed to exist, the last print destroyed in an M-G-M vault fire in 1965.

London After Midnight is widely considered by archivists the Holy Grail and "the most sought after and discussed lost film of the silent era." The film is a "drawing room murder mystery'—its macabre and Gothic atmosphere resembling director Robert Wiene's 1920 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The film received a mixed critical response, but delivered handsomely at the box office "grossing over $1,000,000 in 1927 dollars against a budget of $151,666.14."

The Show (1927) publicity stills. Left: Browning, Gertrude Short, John Gilbert. Right: Gilbert, Adorée and Browning, Salome playlet

In 1926, while Lon Chaney was busy making Tell It to the Marines with filmmaker George W. Hill, Browning directed The Show, "one of the most bizarre productions to emerge from silent cinema." The film received generally good reviews, but approval was muted due to Gilbert's unsavory character, Cock Robin. Browning was now poised to make his masterwork of the silent era, The Unknown (1927), which marks the creative apogee of the Tod Browning and Lon Chaney collaborations. The film is widely considered their most outstanding work of the silent era.

The Unknown (1927) Lon Chaney as Alonzo the Armless, John George as Cojo

In 1928, Browning and Lon Chaney embarked upon their penultimate collaboration, West of Zanzibar, based on Chester M. De Vonde's play Kongo (1926). The film enjoyed popular success at the box office.

The last of Browning-Chaney collaborations with an "outrageous premise" and their final silent era film, Where East Is East was marketed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer "as a colonial drama in the mold of British imperialist fiction."

The film is set in the "picturesque French Indo-China of the 1920s" and tells a story of Haynes (Chaney), a big game hunting trapper, who tries to stop his beloved half-Chinese daughter Toyo (Lupe Velez) from marrying Bobby "white boy" Bailey, a Western suitor and son of a circus owner.

Sound films: 1929–1939

Upon completing Where East Is East, M-G-M prepared to make his first sound production, The Thirteenth Chair (1929). The question as to Browning's adaptability to the film industry's ineluctable transition to sound technology is disputed among film historians.

Biographers David Skal and Elias Savada report that Browning "had made his fortune as a silent film director but had considerable difficulties in adapting his talents to talking pictures." Film critic Vivian Sobchack notes that Browning, in both his silent and sound creations, "starts with the visual rather than the narrative" and cites director Edgar G. Ulmer: "until the end of his career, Browning tried to avoid using dialogue; he wanted to obtain visual effects." Biographer Jon Towlson argues that Browning's 1932 Freaks reveals "a director in full control of the [sound] medium, able to use the camera to reveal a rich subtext beneath the dialogue" and at odds with the general assessment of the filmmakers post-silent era pictures.

Browning's sound oeuvre consists of nine features before his retirement from filmmaking in 1939.

Browning's first sound film, The Thirteenth Chair is based on a 1916 "drawing room murder mystery" stage play by Bayard Veiller first adapted to film in a 1919 silent version and later a sound remake in 1937.

Set in Calcutta, the story concerns two homicides committed at séances. Illusion and deception are employed to expose the murderer.

In a cast featuring some of M-G-M's top contract players including Conrad Nagel, Leila Hyams and Margaret Wycherly Hungarian-American Bela Lugosi, a veteran of silent films and the star of Broadway's Dracula (1924) was enlisted by Browning to play Inspector Delzante, when Lon Chaney declined to yet embark on a talking picture.

The first of his three collaborations with Lugosi, Browning's handling of the actor's role as Delzante anticipated the part of Count Dracula in his Dracula (1931). Browning endows Lugosi's Delzante with bizarre eccentricities, including a guttural, broken English and heavily accented eyebrows, characteristics that Lugosi made famous in his film roles as vampires. Film historian Alfred Eaker remarks: "Serious awkwardness mars this film, a product from that transitional period from silent to the new, imposing medium of sound. Because of that awkwardness The Thirteenth Chair is not Browning in best form."

Outside the Law (1930), a remake of Browning's 1921 silent version, tells a story of a criminal rivalry among gangsters. It stars Edward G. Robinson as Cobra Collins and Mary Nolan as his moll Connie Madden. Film critic Alfred Eaker commented that Browning's remake "received comparatively poor reviews."

Dracula (1931): The first talkie horror picture

Browning's Dracula initiated the modern horror genre, and it remains his only "one true horror film." Today the picture stands as the first of Browning's two sound era masterpieces, rivaled only by his Freaks (1932). The picture set in motion Universal Studios' highly lucrative production of vampire and monster movies during the 1930s. Browning approached Universal's Carl Laemmle Jr. in 1930 to organize a film version of Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula, previously adapted to film by director F. W. Murnau in 1922.

In an effort to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits, Universal opted to base the film on Hamilton Deane's and Louis Bromfield's melodramatic stage version Dracula (1924), rather than Stoker's novel.

Actor Lon Chaney, then completing his first sound film with director Jack Conway in a remake of Browning's silent The Unholy Three (1925), was tapped for the role of Count Dracula. Terminally ill from lung cancer, Chaney withdrew early from the project, a significant personal and professional loss to long-time collaborator Browning. The actor died during the filming of Dracula. Hungarian expatriate and actor Bela Ferenc Deszo Blasco, appearing under the stage name Bela Lugosi, had successfully performed the role of Count Dracula in the American productions of the play for three years. According to film historian David Thomson, "when Chaney died it was taken for granted that Lugosi would have the role in the film."

Lugosi's portrayal of Count Dracula is inextricably linked to the vampire genre established by Browning. As film critic Elizabeth Bronfen observes, "the notoriety of Browning's Dracula within film history resides above all else in the uncanny identification between Bela Lugosi and his role." Browning quickly establishes what would become Dracula's— and Bela Lugosi's—sine qua non: "The camera repeatedly focuses on Dracula's hypnotic gaze, which, along with his idiosyncratic articulation, was to become his cinematic trademark." Film historian Alec Charles observes that "The first time we see Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning's Dracula...he looks almost directly into the camera...Browning affords the audience the first of those famously intense and direct into-the-camera Lugosi looks, a style of gaze that would be duplicated time and again by the likes of Christopher Lee and Lugosi's lesser imitators..." Lugosi embraced his screen persona as the preeminent "aristocratic Eastern European vampire" and welcomed his typecasting, assuring his "artistic legacy".

Film critic Elizabeth Bronfen reports that Browning's cinematic interpretation of the script has been widely criticized by film scholars. Browning is cited for failing to provide adequate "montage or shot/reverse shots", the "incoherence of the narrative" and his putative poor handling of the "implausible dialogue" reminiscent of "filmed theatre."

Bronfen emphasizes the "financial constraints" imposed by Universal executives, strictly limiting authorization for special effects or complex technical shots, and favoring a static camera requiring Browning to "shoot in sequence" in order to improve efficiency. Bronfen suggests that Browning's own thematic concerns may have prompted him—in this, 'the first talkie horror picture'—to privilege the spoken word over visual tricks.":

The scenario follows the vampire Count Dracula to England where he preys upon members of the British upper-middle class, but is confronted by nemesis Professor Van Helsing, (Edward Van Sloan) who possesses sufficient will power and knowledge of vampirism to defeat Count Dracula. Film historian Stuart Rosenthal remarks that "the Browning version of Dracula retains the Victorian formality of the original source in the relationships among the normal characters. In this atmosphere the seething, unstoppable evil personified by the Count is a materialization of Victorian morality's greatest dread."

A number of sequences in Dracula have earned special mention, despite criticism concerning the "static and stagy quality of the film." The dramatic and sinister opening sequence in which the young solicitor Renfield (Dwight Frye) is conveyed in a coach to Count Dracula's Transylvanian castle is one of the most discussed and praised of the picture. Karl Freund's Expressionistic technique is largely credited with its success.

Browning employs "a favorite device" with an animal montage early in the film to establish a metaphoric equivalence between the emergence of the vampires from their crypts and the small parasitic vermin that infest the castle: spiders, wasps and rats. Unlike Browning's previous films, Dracula is not a "long series of [illusionist] tricks, performed and explained" but rather an application of cinematic effects "presenting vampirism as scientifically verified 'reality'."

Despite Universal executives editing out portions of Browning's film, Dracula was enormously successful. Opening at New York City's Roxy Theatre, Dracula earned $50,000 in 48 hours, and was Universal's most lucrative film of the Depression Era. Five years after its release, it had grossed over one million dollars worldwide. Film critic Dennis Harvey writes: "Dracula's enormous popularity fast-tracked Browning's return to MGM, under highly favorable financial terms and the protection of longtime ally, production chief Irving Thalberg."

Iron Man (1931)

The last of Browning's three sound films he directed for Universal Studios, Iron Man (1931) is largely ignored in critical literature. Though box office earning for Iron Man are unavailable, a measure of its success is indicated in the two remakes the film inspired: Some Blondes Are Dangerous (1937) and Iron Man (1950).

Browning returned to M-G-M studios after completing Iron Man to embark upon the most controversial film of his career: Freaks (1932).

Magnum opus: Freaks (1932)

After the spectacular success of Dracula (1931) at Universal, Browning returned to M-G-M studios, lured by a generous contract and enjoying the auspices of production manager Irving Thalberg. Anticipating a repeat of his recent success at Universal, Thalberg accepted Browning's story proposal based on Tod Robbins' circus-themed tale "Spurs" (1926).

The studio purchased the rights and enlisted screenwriter Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon to develop the script with Browning. Thalberg collaborated closely with the director on pre-production, but Browning completed all the actual shooting on the film without interference from studio executives. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's president, Louis B. Mayer, registered his disgust with the project from its inception and during the filming, but Thalberg successfully intervened on Browning's behalf to proceed with the film. The picture that emerged was Browning's "most notorious and bizarre melodrama." Though Browning had a long history of making profitable pictures at M-G-M, Freaks was a "disaster" at the box office, though earning mixed reviews among critics.

Browning's reputation as a reliable filmmaker among the Hollywood establishment was tarnished, and he completed only four more pictures before retiring from the industry after 1939. According to biographer Alfred Eaker "Freaks, in effect, ended Browning's career."

Final years and death

Browning's wife Alice died in 1944 from complications from pneumonia, leaving him a recluse at his Malibu Beach retreat. By that time Browning had become so isolated from the Hollywood establishment that Variety mistakenly published an obituary that year for Browning, confusing his spouse's death for that of the former director.

In 1949, the Directors Guild of America bestowed a life membership on Browning; at the time of his death, the honor had been enjoyed by only four of Browning's colleagues.

Browning, now a widower, lived in isolation for almost 20 years. In 1962 he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. The surgical procedure performed to correct the condition rendered him mute.

Tod Browning died alone at his Malibu home on October 6, 1962.

Filmography

Director

Actor

• Intolerance (1916) - Crook (uncredited)
• Dracula (1931) - Harbormaster (voice, uncredited, final film role)

See also

In Spanish: Tod Browning para niños

• List of people from the Louisville metropolitan area