September 27, 2021 • 36 mins
Browning’s story is both fascinating and difficult; he was a golden boy of Hollywood for a time, but also plagued with personal problems. He has a cult following today, and was legitimately groundbreaking, but he was also problematic.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Tracy, we've
talked a little bit about Todd Browning on the show before. Yeah,
he's come up in various episodes. Yeah. Yeah, he came
(00:25):
up in our two parter on Baila Lagosi because he
directed Lugosi in the hit Dracula, as well as other projects.
And browning story is really interesting to me, but also
very difficult. He definitely played into some very poor practices
that were standard for the day, and he has this
cult following and was legitimately groundbreaking, but he's also pretty
(00:49):
problematic in a lot of ways that don't come up
very often. There aren't a tone of Todd Browning biographies.
There's kind of one definitive one that's really well research,
but he was kind of private, so it's not like
he was out giving interviews left and right. We mentioned Dracula.
He really directed two of the most famous films of
all time, both of which happened to fall in the
(01:11):
horror category. So he's been on my list for kind
of a Halloween on Ramp episode For a while. He
also directed a lot of other films, but a lot
of them do fall in that kind of mystical mystery
paranormal potentially maccab or Grizzly Space. But his life story
has almost as many twists and turns as any of
(01:33):
his films plots. So this turned out to be a
two parter, and today we are going to jump right
in and talk about where it all started, at least
what we know of it. Yeah. So, Charles Albert Browning
was born on July twelfth, eighty in Louisville, Kentucky. His parents,
Charles Leslie Browning and Lydia Jane Fitzgerald Browning, already had
(01:56):
two children before Todd was born. They had a son
and a daughter, although their daughter, Octavia, died in infancy.
His brother, George Avery, was four years old when Todd arrived.
Lydia and Charles also took in Lydia's niece Jenny a
few years after Todd was born, and they raised her
as a sister to Todd and Avery. Yeah, George Avery
(02:17):
went by Avery and Charles Albert went by Todd. We
don't really know how that landed, but that's how he
has always mentioned, and as early as aged seven, Todd
was actually putting on his own theatrical productions in a
shed behind the house, and these ranged from little singing
numbers to underwater puppet shows, which sounds sort of amazing.
(02:39):
Those are all according to family accounts, and he charged
initially five pins for admission. He eventually did start asking
for actual pennies, but his little enterprise became well known
enough that it actually got a right up in the
Louisville Herald Post, and that right up compared the young
Todd Browning to P. T. Barnum and declared him, quote
a go getter. It's not clear what Browning's early education
(03:06):
was like. He was enrolled in public school, but it
seems like he might not have attended all that much
or didn't really pay attention when he was there. There
aren't any records at all of him attending high school,
and as a teenager, Browning lived out of scenario that
now is something of a cliche or a punchline. He
actually did run away from home to join the circus.
(03:29):
We don't know what motivated this, if he felt unhappy
with his family, or if he just longed for something different.
We will talk additionally about his relationship with his family
as we go. But he later told a friend that
he did not make a spontaneous decision in doing this.
He had planned for a long time to leave home.
He had actually started making money without his parents knowledge
(03:51):
by tending horses, and he would stash that money away
with the intent that when he had enough to leave,
he would take off. But according to his story, he
accident only dropped the box containing his small fortune down
the outhouse hole before he was able to leave, because
he had been hiding that box in the ceiling of
the outhouse. Not the smartest place to put money, no,
(04:13):
but it's so much worse than dropping your phone in
the toilet. Right. You're never getting that money back. That's
all there was to it. Uh. That story sounds a
little fantastic and it maybe. Browning himself gave varying accounts
of how he left Louisville throughout his life. Sometimes he
said he left there when he was twelve or maybe sixteen.
(04:36):
Other times he claims he was older than he actually
was and that he had been born in eighteen seventy four. Yeah,
those questions about his exact age like persisted throughout his
life where reporters would report him as winning age and
he'd go, know that that wasn't actually my age then,
but like never really explain what this agent. But regardless
(04:59):
of what age he was is when he did it,
he did indeed leave home, and his parents eventually heard
from him once he was working with the Manhattan Fair
and Carnival Company, and this started him in a career
that initially certainly seemed destined to be in front of
an audience rather than behind a camera. He worked in
a variety of jobs with the circus, including being a
(05:19):
magician's assistant, a clown, a contortionist, and even a barker.
He claimed that he even worked for a bit as
a geek, meeting a person who performs bizarre acts or
grotesquery under the name Bosco the Snake Eater. His most
impressive turn in his circus years may have been his
stint traveling through the southern United States as the hypnotic
(05:43):
Living Corpse. And this act, Browning would be hypnotized kind
of in air quotes and then buried alive in a
shallow grave and a coffin that had slits that were
left uncovered so spectators could see him in this faux
dead state. He allegedly stayed buried, sometimes for two days
(06:05):
at a time. This obviously would have been rough, but
he did not go totally without sustenance. During this act.
He would be buried with malted milk pellets in his pockets.
I don't know why that particular choice of sustenance delights me. Um.
His fellow performers would also lower drinks down to him
(06:26):
when there wasn't a crowd of spectators around. Browning told
a reporter years later, quote, when I heard the dirt
come crashing down on that coffin, I actually shivered. This
show was shut down and find though, because it violated
the sabbath while they were in Indiana, and that just
put a total end to Brownie circus career. Yeah, to
(06:49):
be clear, those slits that let the audience see also
made it fine for him to breathe getting air the
whole time. I too, found the malted milk pellets detail
extraordinarily charming. Um. Yeah, he would just put him in
his jacket pocket. There they'd be. I suppose they keep
(07:10):
relatively well. But after the circus, Browning ended up working
on the vaudeville circuit Unfortunately, in that phase of his
entertainment career, he often appeared in black face, which was,
as we've discussed on the show before, customary at the time,
and of course now we recognize it as pretty horrifyingly racist. Yeah,
I would say there were definitely people who realized that
(07:32):
then too, but it was such a widespread thing, Yeah,
it was. It had a wide range of acceptance, even
though there were people from the get go with it,
We're like, this is not cool. Um. He bounced around
from partnership to partnership with various other performers or troops,
and later in life he actually claimed that he worked
(07:52):
for the zig Field Follies at one point, although that
has never been corroborated by any of the surviving documentation
of that true. He also claimed that he worked with
a famed magician named Herman the Great. That was Leon Herman,
who was from a family of magicians, and this is
also not corroborated, although it's pretty hard not to recognize
(08:13):
the similarities between Herman's performance garb, which was a tuxedo,
a cape and a crisp white shirt, and the main
character in Browning's famous ninety one film Dracula Browning's personal
accounts of his life indicate that he was traveling all
over the United States and the early nineteen hundreds. But
while most of his details in that regard just can't
(08:35):
be substantiated, what can be substantiated is that he was
involved with a young woman back in Louisville, Kentucky, starting
in nineteen oh five. That woman, Amy Louise Stevens, was
twenty three at the time. The two of them got
married in late March nineteen o six, and papers reported
in social columns at the time that Todd Browning was employed,
(08:57):
not in show business but by the Ellen Railroad. Yeah,
none of this part of his story really lines up
with the way he told the tale of his life
in later years, and part of that maybe because this
marriage did not go well at all. Todd and Amy
lived with Amy's parents, and the Stevenson's claimed that Browning
(09:17):
was not employed during this period, was not supporting his
wife is expected, and was a financial drain on the family.
He may have worked on and off during this time
at the Fountain Ferry amusement Park. That again is unclear,
but seems like it makes logical sense, and there is
some sort of hazy corroboration there. Browning left Louisville and
(09:40):
Amy behind in the summer of nineteen o nine, and
their divorce was completed in nineteen ten. She filed for
divorce and pretty much handled that whole thing. Browning was
not even present for the proceedings, and he had actually
been out of contact with the Stevens family for some time.
When the divorce was completed. It seems like that Browning
once again went back to a life on the road
(10:02):
at this point, performing in burlesque shows as a comedy
act and in vaudevilt theaters. His performance and a variety
show called The Whirl of Mirth was reviewed in the
Louisville Courier Journal as being quite amusing. The show was
primarily comedy sketches that took popular newspaper comics of the
day and then acted them out on stage. While Browning
(10:24):
was performing in Louisville, his former mother in law tried
to take him to court over the money that he
still owed her, but he skipped down before that. Hearing
Yeah once again often claimed he was never in Louisville
during any of this. There is a little bit of
a side story about the people that ran the world
of mirth and how some comics artists were trying to
(10:48):
soothe them because they're like, we're basically writing your show
for you. Um, I mean that seems valid, completely valid
of a whole other tale outside the scope of this one.
Uh So, the Biograph Company finally hired him as an
actor in and Browning appeared in several comedy pictures that
were directed by D. W. Griffith, who pioneered a whole
(11:11):
lot of techniques that became standard in filmmaking. If that
name rings a bell, it's because he also directed the
horrifyingly racist film The Birth of a Nation in nineteen fifteen,
but this was a couple of years earlier, and at
this time Griffith was just happy to have a reliable
performer in Todd Browning, and Browning followed him to California
to make films under the banner of Comic Company That's
(11:33):
Comic with a K. As an actor for Comic Browning
appeared in comedy shorts, including one that was titled Nell's
Eugenic Wedding. And this was an early gross out film
in which a man eats a bar of soap and
then spends the rest of the short movie throwing up
a lot. A review for the film in the Moving
picture world was pretty blunt about it. Quote, there's nothing
(11:56):
funny or elevating and having a man eat soap and
vomit all over creation as the result of his diet.
Because most people will take this view, it may be
said that Nell's eugenic wedding does not belong. Incidentally, the
writer of this gross out film was a woman named
Anita Loose, who later became famous for writing the book
A Gentleman Prefer Blonds, which of course became a very
(12:19):
famous film, which involves no soap eating or vomiting. Uh.
The soap eating film is actually lost, So we don't
know a whole lot more about it. But I'm not
sure that we really want to. I don't know. I was.
I was as we were putting this together and I
was writing a pissico. Tracy doesn't want to know about this.
(12:40):
But following that strange film, Mutual Film Corporation also started
producing a comedy series in nineteen fourteen called Bill the
Office Boy, and Browning actually appeared in seventeen episodes of
it as Bill's Boss. Coming up, We're going to talk
about a pretty horrible incident in Browning's life and how
that to him writing screenplays. But before we do that,
(13:02):
we will take a quick sponsor break. Those years that
Browning was working with Comic Company also encapsulated the period
of his life where he met Alice Wilson. Alice, who
had been born Alice Lilyan Houghton, was divorced by her husband,
(13:25):
Douglas Wilson in nineteen fifteen, and she and Browning were
both living at a Hollywood apartment house called the Writer Arms.
It is unclear whether they were living together or in
separate units, because accounts from people who knew them differ
on this point, and while Alice still used Wilson as
her acting name, some people actually knew her socially as
(13:48):
Alice Browning, although they were definitely not married at this time.
Browning's first directing work came in nineteen fifteen. That year,
he directed a film called The Lucky Transfer. Soon he
was direct sing short films regularly, But as his star
began to rise, so too did a problem with alcohol,
and that led to a tragic event. On June sixt
(14:12):
Browning and a number of his colleagues went out for
drinks after they finished filming for the day. That was
something they did pretty regularly. Late into the night, Browning
got behind the wheel with actor Elmer Booth in the
passenger seat. The night was foggy, Browning was intoxicated. When
they approached a railway intersection at top speed, Browning did
(14:34):
not see that there was a train on the tracks,
and he slammed into a flatbed car that was carrying
iron beams. Elmer was killed instantly. There were two other
people involved in this accident, Edward Booth, who was a
relative of Elmer's, and actor George A. Siegman. They were
described as being behind Browning and Elmer Booth, but it's
(14:56):
not totally clear if that meant they were in the
backseat of the car or if they were in another
car that was following closely behind. Siegmund wrote four of
his ribs. Browning broke his right leg in three places
and also had internal injuries. Papers speculated about whether Browning
would recover and whether there were any women in the car.
(15:17):
Other speculations besides that friends who left the gathering shortly
after Browning did happened upon this crash, and their descriptions
of it were gruesome. In the papers, particularly outside of Hollywood.
The crash was reported in pretty broad strokes, and it
was never ever suggested in print that Browning was responsible.
(15:38):
For example, the Morning Union of Grass Valley, California covered
the incident and they're right up. Is pretty similar to
most that you would find that ran across the country.
It merely said this quote. Elmer Booth, a motion picture actor,
was killed and to motion picture directors seriously injured today
when their automobile returning from Vernon crashed at high speed
(16:00):
into the rear of a freight car. A fog was
to blame Todd Browning and George Seligman. They spelled his
name wrong. The men with Booth sustained serious injuries. There
are other versions of the story that are similarly brief
that call Browning and Sigma actors or at director Slash actors,
and some of them left out the details of the
(16:20):
collision entirely and just said there had been an automobile accident.
Browning really never shared his thoughts or feelings with anybody
on the record about what happened that night or about
Booth's death. The death was ruled accidental due to quote
lack of precaution, and that was attributed to both Browning
and the railroad engineer involved, although the engineer remained adamant
(16:44):
that he had been waving a signal light. Browning started
screenwriting in nineteen fifteen, and it was because of that
tragic event, for the simple reason that writing was really
the only thing he could do while he was sitting
in the hospital recovering. He also spent some of his
every time back in Louisville, although it is unclear how
long he was there, and it wasn't until nineteen sixteen.
(17:06):
The following year that Browning returned to more active jobs,
back on movie sets, and that year he was the
assistant director and actor in a film called Intolerance. Browning's
first feature film as a director was Jim Bloodsoe. That
was in nineteen seventeen. He shared directing credit with Wilfred Lucas,
who also started the picture. The exact nature of that
(17:29):
shared credit isn't really known, although one of the other
actors in the picture, Winifred Hart, later said that it
was nothing more than the star insisting on getting that credit.
Later in nineteen seventeen, Browning signed a five picture contract
with Metro Pictures. He moved temporarily to New York to
make those pictures. He and Alice Wilson were married in
(17:53):
New Rochelle in June of that year. In nineteen eighteen,
Browning entered into a contract which us it in a
very productive time and really cemented his career as a
feature film director. He signed with Universal Film Manufacturing Company,
which eventually, of course, became Universal Studios. Over the next
several years, he made nine films for Universal. For The
(18:16):
Wicked Darling, which was made in nineteen Browning worked for
the first time with Lawn Cheney, and that was the
start of a long term and very fruitful collaborative relationship.
Browning film The Virgin of Stambul was a box office
hit by modern standards. It is loaded with so many problems.
(18:37):
It's filled with white actors who were playing Turkish people.
There's a completely stereotyped characterizations of the non white characters.
The premise is that a Turkish princess who's played by
very American Priscilladine falls in love with the mercenary from
the US. The plot involves the murder and kidnapping and
(18:59):
disguise yeses and the anticipation of the film was stoked
by the studio. In weeks leading up to it, they
had an actor pose as a shake to stay at
the Hotel Majestic in New York. I claimed that he
was looking for a woman who had eloped with an
American and would give a reward to the person who
returned hers. There's just a lot, a lot to unpack
(19:21):
with all this. The story continued with daily feeds to
the papers of information, so people realized this whole thing
was a hoax. The film mostly got good reviews, though
some noted that it was entertaining but should not be
taken as a real representation of Middle Eastern culture. This
publicity stunt seems to have worked. The film made a
(19:43):
pretty nice profit. Yeah. It's funny to me that even
even then the papers were like, oh you guys, nope, nope. Um.
Soon though, because it was profitable, Browning had a six
room suite at Universal to work and edit in, and
he started working the hours that he felt most productive
when he was writing, those hours being six pm to
(20:06):
six am. Kind of identify with this. Another nineteen twenty film,
Outside the Law, which was a gangster picture that he made,
also made money for the studio, and that further built
up Browning's reputation as a reliable and profitable director. Browning's father, Charles,
was ill around this time. He had a stroke, He
(20:27):
never really recovered from it, and he died on March
thirty one of ninety two. Todd did not return home
to Louisville for these services, uh, something that was really
a source of dismay for some of his family after
his father's death, Browning, who had seemed to reduce his
drinking somewhat after that nineteen fifteen crash that killed Elmore Booth,
(20:50):
once again started drinking excessively. He directed the movie Under
Two Flags, adapted from the novel by Weeta about the
occupation of Algeria, later that same year, and that production
was kind of plagued with strange problems. There was a
sandstorm that buried equipment on location, but the worst problem
came when a fire on the Universal lot threatened the
(21:12):
entire picture. According to the news periodical that Universal put
out weekly to tout and share updates on their various
project that fire played out as follows quote fire last
week destroyed film valued at thousands of dollars and threatened
to wipe out Universal City faster than a telephone call
could reach outside fire departments. Crackling sparks, A short circuited
(21:36):
electric wire whipped through an open doorway of a film
cutting room with an explosion that rocked the film city.
Almost two hundred thousand feet of film was ignited. It
burned furiously for five minutes, endangering nearby buildings with blowing
sheets of flame and intense heat. The fire, by prompt
(21:56):
action of the Universal City Fire Department and through the
fire airproof construction of all buildings of permanency, did no
other damage. There was actually more damaged though. Under two
Flags had just finished filming that day, and Priscilla Deane,
who was still in costume, ran up a flight of
stairs to the burning room to try to save the film.
(22:20):
She tripped on the hem of her costume and twisted
her ankle. Her hair was scorched, and she was very
badly burned. The fire was reported as having quickly burned
itself out, and while there was a delay while the
negative was inspected, this whole ordeal really only delayed the
films released by a couple of weeks, and at this point,
(22:41):
despite that kind of craziness, uh Browning was considered something
of a Golden Boy for Hollywood, but things quickly started
to turn sour, and we're going to explain how after
we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed
in history class. Going under two Flags was another financial
(23:06):
success for the studio, and because Browning had at that
point really established himself as their can't missdirector, they then
announced that he would be directing Lawn Cheney in a
huge and expensive adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
If you are a fan of old film, you know
that that picture did get made and that Lawn Cheney
did star in it, but Browning did not direct it.
(23:30):
While he had three huge successes, his alcoholism had made
him erratic. He had turned in another film titled White Tiger,
as plans were being laid for the Hunchback adaptation, and
it was apparently such a mess that the studio didn't
release it for a year so it could be reworked
by other people. That was a delay that was kind
of unheard of at the time. Now we're used to
(23:52):
like films coming out years from now when they get announced,
but at that point it was like much faster turnaround.
As a concert quints of the problems with White Tiger Todd.
Browning was pulled from the Hunchback project. While he did
keep working for Universal on smaller projects, his drinking was
leading into very bad decisions in his personal life. He
(24:14):
had an affair with Anime Wong, who is famous for
being the first Chinese American movie star in Hollywood. This
was an issue for reasons aside from the fact that
he was married, Wong was under age at the time.
The interracial relationship was troubling to a lot of people
in the nineteen twenties. He also got into a lot
(24:36):
of situations when he was drinking that we're really embarrassing
to the people who were associated with him. Because of
all this, Universal laid him off. Alice left him, but
Browning moved to a new contract with Metro goldwyn Mayer
in Nive, and his creative relationship with Lawn Cheney moved
right along with him. The films that Browning and Cheney
(24:59):
made together during this time we're strange and often a
little bit shocking for audiences of the day. And here
is really the point in his career where Browning started
to draw pretty deeply from his experiences as a teenager
working in circuses. This is also about when one of
only a very few interviews with Browning was published in
(25:21):
the feature in Picture Play magazine. He acknowledges that his
behavior had led to various fallings out, saying, quote, two
years ago, I went smash, temperament, impulse, wanting my own way, stubbornness.
There were a number of contributing factors. He sort of
recognized that he was at a very low point, but
(25:41):
he could not quite see or admit that his alcohol
use was the problem initially. Even after he did, he
kind of chalked it up to the fault of various
difficult things and experiences that he had in his life.
Just keep in mind with all this, the formation of
Alcoholics Anonymous was a decade away at this point. The
(26:04):
idea that alcohol abuse was something treatable wasn't quite the same, right.
There were also no UM programs that really focused on
people taking responsibility for, you know, their problems that they created.
So he was very much like, oh, but it's because
of this, Like he never once was like, wow, I
(26:25):
just really screwed up UM. Still, he said that he
did have a revelation while he was drinking whiskey one
night that he kind of suddenly understood through his stupor
why Alice had left, and he credited that moment with
what he called his regeneration, where he decided he would
reject his whiskey drinking, although he did continue to drink
(26:48):
things like beer or wine on occasion after this, particularly beer.
He spoke to Alice the next day after this revelation
and he told her about his epiphany, and she basically
told him, if you want me back, you have to
win me back, and she was not interested in going
down with what she called a quote sinking ship. So
even though they had been married for more than seven
(27:09):
years at that point, they basically started dating again and
this went well. They rekindled their relationship and he would
later credit her with getting his career back on track.
This was a valid credit. Alice really supported him emotionally,
but also was not afraid to flex her own connections
in the film industry to try to move him into
(27:30):
a better position. Not long after executive Irving Thalberg left
Universal and went to MGM, which is that's its own
wild story, Alice approached him to try to help Todd
regain his footing in Hollywood. Thalberg was a fan of Browning,
and knew what he could do when he was healthy.
So when Browning pitched a film called The Unholy Three,
(27:53):
he went for it, and that was how Browning wound
up at MGM. The Unholy Three is a story about
three sides o performers, a strong man, a little person,
and a ventriloquist, and they leave their sideshow lives and
start a life of crime together. It was based on
a book by Todd Robbins and it had been a
best seller, but Hollywood had been reluctant to adapt it
(28:15):
despite multiple attempts. But Solberg let Browning do it, although
he paid him a far lower rate than Browning had
been commanding before that totally six hundred dollars paid out
in weekly installments during this shooting, Browning was also offered
a bonus of thirty five hundred dollars if he came
in on time and under budget. This movie was a
(28:36):
spectacular return to success for Browning. The movie made a
lot of money, he got his bonus, and mg N
optioned him for several more pictures. As for the reviews,
they were also glowing almost across the board, and it's
review The New Yorker said, quote to Mr Todd Browning
all honor. His next two pictures, The Mystic and The
(28:58):
Black Bird, did well, but nothing near the level of
The Unholy Three. Still, MGM was overall pleased and increase
his rate. The Unknown, which lawn Cheney and Browning worked
on together in nine seven, really started to evidence the
early seeds that would eventually manifest into the movie Freaks.
(29:20):
The film, which starred lawn Cheney in eighteen year old
Joan Crawford, is about a circus performer who has no
arms whose act involves throwing knives and shooting a gun
at his fellow performer. That's a beautiful young woman named Nannon,
who is played by Crawford. The film's initials set up
unravels as it's revealed that Cheney's character, Alonso the Armless,
(29:43):
is a faker. He has all of his limbs. From there,
things get darker and darker as the film explores identity, deception, obsession,
and self mutilation. While modern critics have lauded it as
a groundbreaking piece of cinema, critics at the time were
far less kind. Browning was described as pathological for having
(30:07):
made the film. The New York Daily Mirror suggested that
you might like it quote if you like to tear
butterflies apart and see sausage made. In contrast his characterization
as warped and possibly some sort of monster for having
made the film, Joan Crawford later spoke of Browning on
set as being incredibly soft spoken and sensitive. Yeah. Reading
(30:30):
um actor and crew accounts of what Todd Browning is
like is the most head spinning because half of them
are like, he was the kindest, gentlest person. He knew
exactly how to work with people, and other people were
like he was abusive and horrible, and there's no middle ground.
It's always one of the other. Um. So it's a
(30:51):
little bit interesting in that regard uh Lawn, Cheney and
Browning collaborated on London After Midnight, and this is one
of those movies that film buffs wish they could see.
The last print of it was lost in a fire
in the nineteen sixties. You will occasionally see a thing
pop up. It's almost like the anti kithera mechanism of
(31:12):
we have found London after Midnight and then it turns out, no, no,
we didn't. We found a couple of skills that were together. Um.
This film is a murder mystery with possible vampires and
a little hypnosis in the mix. There are a lot
of really moody stills that survive, and in two thousand
two those still images plus a shooting script were used
(31:32):
to make a reconstruction of the film. If you have
ever heard the stories of Lawn Cheney, who was very
famous for his makeup work, using fishing wire to create
a unique and disturbing popped open look to his eyes,
that was for this movie. Chenese makeup work was such
a quote horrifying and terrible spectacle that a man named
(31:54):
Robert Williams claimed that he was haunted by visions of
Chinese character when he murdered his girl end Uh. That
defense in that murder trial did not hold. Williams, who
had also tried to take his own life during that episode,
was found guilty. He was first sentenced to death, then
received a medical reprieve. But despite all of that, in
any controversy, London After Midnight was another huge money maker,
(32:18):
and it enabled Browning to continue to make pictures that
he wanted to make with an ever increasing salary. So
we're at a pretty good place right now for Browning's
life and career. But it's not going to stay that way.
So this is where we are going to pause. In
part two, we will talk about Browning's most famous films
and the latter part of his life. One day we'll
(32:40):
see London after midnight. I hope um. I have listener mail,
which is uh from our listener Amelia, who writes tear
Holly and Tracy. I can't believe it took this long
to write the show, but of course it would be
kidties that prompted it. I couldn't help but chuckle listening
to the stories about Mike the cat. Since I have
(33:01):
worked in the museum field for the last decade and
have a weak spot for grumpy cats. I have a
very handsome cat named Dadalus who was eight years old,
and while he loves to be around people, he's not
a fan of being pet or snuggled unless it's by me.
Two years ago, he ended up at the vent and
had to have emergency surgery to remove six feet of
quilting thread he had swallowed. I was an emotional wreck,
(33:24):
and Dadalus was so angry he sent to Vet text
to the hospital for stitches. I had a cat send
people to the hospital for stitches, so I understand the
embarrassment and shame and fear that happens in your heart
when that takes place, she continues. While I was waiting
for him to go into surgery, I took my phone
out and did the only thing I could think of
(33:44):
to distract myself. I turned on stuff you missed in
history class. Datalus immediately settled right down, though he did
growl if anyone came too close. It seemed that listening
to the podcast brought him the same calm and comfort
as it has brought me over the years. I meant
to write the show back then, but after the surgery
and cat proofing, all of my sewing supplies had slipped
my mind. I am happy to report that Dadalus has
(34:07):
since made a full recovery and is back to terrorizing
anyone who tries to love on him. I'm sorry it
took so long, but I wanted to send my belated
thank you for getting Dadalus and I through one of
our toughest times. I've attached pictures of your biggest fuzzy friend.
Thank you for everything you do, Amelia and Dadalus. Um,
I'm so glad he's okay. Anyone who sows knows that
(34:27):
fear um that like of thread in the house. And
I love this story and it ended happily. We've had
so many people write us about their cats, many of
whom have talked about how they have lost beloved cats,
and I want to read all of those, but I
will cry every time. So if I'm not reading it,
please don't think it's because I don't love your story
and your devotion to your baby's. I can't get through this.
(34:50):
I can't even read them on my screen without kind
of becoming a mess. But keep sending them because I
love them. Uh. And it is my greatest honor to
have comforted a cat when he wasn't feeling well. I
am so glad he is okay. We have If anybody
has been through that emergency VET terror, it is one
of the least fun things I can imagine. Yeah, for real,
But again, so glad he is okay. So thank you
(35:13):
for sharing that story. Um, also precious. I would give
that cat the keys to my car while he shredded
my face. It would be fine. You would like to
write to us, you can do that at History Podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us
on social media as Missed in History, and you can
(35:33):
subscribe to the show. If you haven't done so already,
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(35:54):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Tracy, we've
talked a little bit about Todd Browning on the show before. Yeah,
he's come up in various episodes. Yeah. Yeah, he came
(00:25):
up in our two parter on Baila Lagosi because he
directed Lugosi in the hit Dracula, as well as other projects.
And browning story is really interesting to me, but also
very difficult. He definitely played into some very poor practices
that were standard for the day, and he has this
cult following and was legitimately groundbreaking, but he's also pretty
(00:49):
problematic in a lot of ways that don't come up
very often. There aren't a tone of Todd Browning biographies.
There's kind of one definitive one that's really well research,
but he was kind of private, so it's not like
he was out giving interviews left and right. We mentioned Dracula.
He really directed two of the most famous films of
all time, both of which happened to fall in the
(01:11):
horror category. So he's been on my list for kind
of a Halloween on Ramp episode For a while. He
also directed a lot of other films, but a lot
of them do fall in that kind of mystical mystery
paranormal potentially maccab or Grizzly Space. But his life story
has almost as many twists and turns as any of
(01:33):
his films plots. So this turned out to be a
two parter, and today we are going to jump right
in and talk about where it all started, at least
what we know of it. Yeah. So, Charles Albert Browning
was born on July twelfth, eighty in Louisville, Kentucky. His parents,
Charles Leslie Browning and Lydia Jane Fitzgerald Browning, already had
(01:56):
two children before Todd was born. They had a son
and a daughter, although their daughter, Octavia, died in infancy.
His brother, George Avery, was four years old when Todd arrived.
Lydia and Charles also took in Lydia's niece Jenny a
few years after Todd was born, and they raised her
as a sister to Todd and Avery. Yeah, George Avery
(02:17):
went by Avery and Charles Albert went by Todd. We
don't really know how that landed, but that's how he
has always mentioned, and as early as aged seven, Todd
was actually putting on his own theatrical productions in a
shed behind the house, and these ranged from little singing
numbers to underwater puppet shows, which sounds sort of amazing.
(02:39):
Those are all according to family accounts, and he charged
initially five pins for admission. He eventually did start asking
for actual pennies, but his little enterprise became well known
enough that it actually got a right up in the
Louisville Herald Post, and that right up compared the young
Todd Browning to P. T. Barnum and declared him, quote
a go getter. It's not clear what Browning's early education
(03:06):
was like. He was enrolled in public school, but it
seems like he might not have attended all that much
or didn't really pay attention when he was there. There
aren't any records at all of him attending high school,
and as a teenager, Browning lived out of scenario that
now is something of a cliche or a punchline. He
actually did run away from home to join the circus.
(03:29):
We don't know what motivated this, if he felt unhappy
with his family, or if he just longed for something different.
We will talk additionally about his relationship with his family
as we go. But he later told a friend that
he did not make a spontaneous decision in doing this.
He had planned for a long time to leave home.
He had actually started making money without his parents knowledge
(03:51):
by tending horses, and he would stash that money away
with the intent that when he had enough to leave,
he would take off. But according to his story, he
accident only dropped the box containing his small fortune down
the outhouse hole before he was able to leave, because
he had been hiding that box in the ceiling of
the outhouse. Not the smartest place to put money, no,
(04:13):
but it's so much worse than dropping your phone in
the toilet. Right. You're never getting that money back. That's
all there was to it. Uh. That story sounds a
little fantastic and it maybe. Browning himself gave varying accounts
of how he left Louisville throughout his life. Sometimes he
said he left there when he was twelve or maybe sixteen.
(04:36):
Other times he claims he was older than he actually
was and that he had been born in eighteen seventy four. Yeah,
those questions about his exact age like persisted throughout his
life where reporters would report him as winning age and
he'd go, know that that wasn't actually my age then,
but like never really explain what this agent. But regardless
(04:59):
of what age he was is when he did it,
he did indeed leave home, and his parents eventually heard
from him once he was working with the Manhattan Fair
and Carnival Company, and this started him in a career
that initially certainly seemed destined to be in front of
an audience rather than behind a camera. He worked in
a variety of jobs with the circus, including being a
(05:19):
magician's assistant, a clown, a contortionist, and even a barker.
He claimed that he even worked for a bit as
a geek, meeting a person who performs bizarre acts or
grotesquery under the name Bosco the Snake Eater. His most
impressive turn in his circus years may have been his
stint traveling through the southern United States as the hypnotic
(05:43):
Living Corpse. And this act, Browning would be hypnotized kind
of in air quotes and then buried alive in a
shallow grave and a coffin that had slits that were
left uncovered so spectators could see him in this faux
dead state. He allegedly stayed buried, sometimes for two days
(06:05):
at a time. This obviously would have been rough, but
he did not go totally without sustenance. During this act.
He would be buried with malted milk pellets in his pockets.
I don't know why that particular choice of sustenance delights me. Um.
His fellow performers would also lower drinks down to him
(06:26):
when there wasn't a crowd of spectators around. Browning told
a reporter years later, quote, when I heard the dirt
come crashing down on that coffin, I actually shivered. This
show was shut down and find though, because it violated
the sabbath while they were in Indiana, and that just
put a total end to Brownie circus career. Yeah, to
(06:49):
be clear, those slits that let the audience see also
made it fine for him to breathe getting air the
whole time. I too, found the malted milk pellets detail
extraordinarily charming. Um. Yeah, he would just put him in
his jacket pocket. There they'd be. I suppose they keep
(07:10):
relatively well. But after the circus, Browning ended up working
on the vaudeville circuit Unfortunately, in that phase of his
entertainment career, he often appeared in black face, which was,
as we've discussed on the show before, customary at the time,
and of course now we recognize it as pretty horrifyingly racist. Yeah,
I would say there were definitely people who realized that
(07:32):
then too, but it was such a widespread thing, Yeah,
it was. It had a wide range of acceptance, even
though there were people from the get go with it,
We're like, this is not cool. Um. He bounced around
from partnership to partnership with various other performers or troops,
and later in life he actually claimed that he worked
(07:52):
for the zig Field Follies at one point, although that
has never been corroborated by any of the surviving documentation
of that true. He also claimed that he worked with
a famed magician named Herman the Great. That was Leon Herman,
who was from a family of magicians, and this is
also not corroborated, although it's pretty hard not to recognize
(08:13):
the similarities between Herman's performance garb, which was a tuxedo,
a cape and a crisp white shirt, and the main
character in Browning's famous ninety one film Dracula Browning's personal
accounts of his life indicate that he was traveling all
over the United States and the early nineteen hundreds. But
while most of his details in that regard just can't
(08:35):
be substantiated, what can be substantiated is that he was
involved with a young woman back in Louisville, Kentucky, starting
in nineteen oh five. That woman, Amy Louise Stevens, was
twenty three at the time. The two of them got
married in late March nineteen o six, and papers reported
in social columns at the time that Todd Browning was employed,
(08:57):
not in show business but by the Ellen Railroad. Yeah,
none of this part of his story really lines up
with the way he told the tale of his life
in later years, and part of that maybe because this
marriage did not go well at all. Todd and Amy
lived with Amy's parents, and the Stevenson's claimed that Browning
(09:17):
was not employed during this period, was not supporting his
wife is expected, and was a financial drain on the family.
He may have worked on and off during this time
at the Fountain Ferry amusement Park. That again is unclear,
but seems like it makes logical sense, and there is
some sort of hazy corroboration there. Browning left Louisville and
(09:40):
Amy behind in the summer of nineteen o nine, and
their divorce was completed in nineteen ten. She filed for
divorce and pretty much handled that whole thing. Browning was
not even present for the proceedings, and he had actually
been out of contact with the Stevens family for some time.
When the divorce was completed. It seems like that Browning
once again went back to a life on the road
(10:02):
at this point, performing in burlesque shows as a comedy
act and in vaudevilt theaters. His performance and a variety
show called The Whirl of Mirth was reviewed in the
Louisville Courier Journal as being quite amusing. The show was
primarily comedy sketches that took popular newspaper comics of the
day and then acted them out on stage. While Browning
(10:24):
was performing in Louisville, his former mother in law tried
to take him to court over the money that he
still owed her, but he skipped down before that. Hearing
Yeah once again often claimed he was never in Louisville
during any of this. There is a little bit of
a side story about the people that ran the world
of mirth and how some comics artists were trying to
(10:48):
soothe them because they're like, we're basically writing your show
for you. Um, I mean that seems valid, completely valid
of a whole other tale outside the scope of this one.
Uh So, the Biograph Company finally hired him as an
actor in and Browning appeared in several comedy pictures that
were directed by D. W. Griffith, who pioneered a whole
(11:11):
lot of techniques that became standard in filmmaking. If that
name rings a bell, it's because he also directed the
horrifyingly racist film The Birth of a Nation in nineteen fifteen,
but this was a couple of years earlier, and at
this time Griffith was just happy to have a reliable
performer in Todd Browning, and Browning followed him to California
to make films under the banner of Comic Company That's
(11:33):
Comic with a K. As an actor for Comic Browning
appeared in comedy shorts, including one that was titled Nell's
Eugenic Wedding. And this was an early gross out film
in which a man eats a bar of soap and
then spends the rest of the short movie throwing up
a lot. A review for the film in the Moving
picture world was pretty blunt about it. Quote, there's nothing
(11:56):
funny or elevating and having a man eat soap and
vomit all over creation as the result of his diet.
Because most people will take this view, it may be
said that Nell's eugenic wedding does not belong. Incidentally, the
writer of this gross out film was a woman named
Anita Loose, who later became famous for writing the book
A Gentleman Prefer Blonds, which of course became a very
(12:19):
famous film, which involves no soap eating or vomiting. Uh.
The soap eating film is actually lost, So we don't
know a whole lot more about it. But I'm not
sure that we really want to. I don't know. I was.
I was as we were putting this together and I
was writing a pissico. Tracy doesn't want to know about this.
(12:40):
But following that strange film, Mutual Film Corporation also started
producing a comedy series in nineteen fourteen called Bill the
Office Boy, and Browning actually appeared in seventeen episodes of
it as Bill's Boss. Coming up, We're going to talk
about a pretty horrible incident in Browning's life and how
that to him writing screenplays. But before we do that,
(13:02):
we will take a quick sponsor break. Those years that
Browning was working with Comic Company also encapsulated the period
of his life where he met Alice Wilson. Alice, who
had been born Alice Lilyan Houghton, was divorced by her husband,
(13:25):
Douglas Wilson in nineteen fifteen, and she and Browning were
both living at a Hollywood apartment house called the Writer Arms.
It is unclear whether they were living together or in
separate units, because accounts from people who knew them differ
on this point, and while Alice still used Wilson as
her acting name, some people actually knew her socially as
(13:48):
Alice Browning, although they were definitely not married at this time.
Browning's first directing work came in nineteen fifteen. That year,
he directed a film called The Lucky Transfer. Soon he
was direct sing short films regularly, But as his star
began to rise, so too did a problem with alcohol,
and that led to a tragic event. On June sixt
(14:12):
Browning and a number of his colleagues went out for
drinks after they finished filming for the day. That was
something they did pretty regularly. Late into the night, Browning
got behind the wheel with actor Elmer Booth in the
passenger seat. The night was foggy, Browning was intoxicated. When
they approached a railway intersection at top speed, Browning did
(14:34):
not see that there was a train on the tracks,
and he slammed into a flatbed car that was carrying
iron beams. Elmer was killed instantly. There were two other
people involved in this accident, Edward Booth, who was a
relative of Elmer's, and actor George A. Siegman. They were
described as being behind Browning and Elmer Booth, but it's
(14:56):
not totally clear if that meant they were in the
backseat of the car or if they were in another
car that was following closely behind. Siegmund wrote four of
his ribs. Browning broke his right leg in three places
and also had internal injuries. Papers speculated about whether Browning
would recover and whether there were any women in the car.
(15:17):
Other speculations besides that friends who left the gathering shortly
after Browning did happened upon this crash, and their descriptions
of it were gruesome. In the papers, particularly outside of Hollywood.
The crash was reported in pretty broad strokes, and it
was never ever suggested in print that Browning was responsible.
(15:38):
For example, the Morning Union of Grass Valley, California covered
the incident and they're right up. Is pretty similar to
most that you would find that ran across the country.
It merely said this quote. Elmer Booth, a motion picture actor,
was killed and to motion picture directors seriously injured today
when their automobile returning from Vernon crashed at high speed
(16:00):
into the rear of a freight car. A fog was
to blame Todd Browning and George Seligman. They spelled his
name wrong. The men with Booth sustained serious injuries. There
are other versions of the story that are similarly brief
that call Browning and Sigma actors or at director Slash actors,
and some of them left out the details of the
(16:20):
collision entirely and just said there had been an automobile accident.
Browning really never shared his thoughts or feelings with anybody
on the record about what happened that night or about
Booth's death. The death was ruled accidental due to quote
lack of precaution, and that was attributed to both Browning
and the railroad engineer involved, although the engineer remained adamant
(16:44):
that he had been waving a signal light. Browning started
screenwriting in nineteen fifteen, and it was because of that
tragic event, for the simple reason that writing was really
the only thing he could do while he was sitting
in the hospital recovering. He also spent some of his
every time back in Louisville, although it is unclear how
long he was there, and it wasn't until nineteen sixteen.
(17:06):
The following year that Browning returned to more active jobs,
back on movie sets, and that year he was the
assistant director and actor in a film called Intolerance. Browning's
first feature film as a director was Jim Bloodsoe. That
was in nineteen seventeen. He shared directing credit with Wilfred Lucas,
who also started the picture. The exact nature of that
(17:29):
shared credit isn't really known, although one of the other
actors in the picture, Winifred Hart, later said that it
was nothing more than the star insisting on getting that credit.
Later in nineteen seventeen, Browning signed a five picture contract
with Metro Pictures. He moved temporarily to New York to
make those pictures. He and Alice Wilson were married in
(17:53):
New Rochelle in June of that year. In nineteen eighteen,
Browning entered into a contract which us it in a
very productive time and really cemented his career as a
feature film director. He signed with Universal Film Manufacturing Company,
which eventually, of course, became Universal Studios. Over the next
several years, he made nine films for Universal. For The
(18:16):
Wicked Darling, which was made in nineteen Browning worked for
the first time with Lawn Cheney, and that was the
start of a long term and very fruitful collaborative relationship.
Browning film The Virgin of Stambul was a box office
hit by modern standards. It is loaded with so many problems.
(18:37):
It's filled with white actors who were playing Turkish people.
There's a completely stereotyped characterizations of the non white characters.
The premise is that a Turkish princess who's played by
very American Priscilladine falls in love with the mercenary from
the US. The plot involves the murder and kidnapping and
(18:59):
disguise yeses and the anticipation of the film was stoked
by the studio. In weeks leading up to it, they
had an actor pose as a shake to stay at
the Hotel Majestic in New York. I claimed that he
was looking for a woman who had eloped with an
American and would give a reward to the person who
returned hers. There's just a lot, a lot to unpack
(19:21):
with all this. The story continued with daily feeds to
the papers of information, so people realized this whole thing
was a hoax. The film mostly got good reviews, though
some noted that it was entertaining but should not be
taken as a real representation of Middle Eastern culture. This
publicity stunt seems to have worked. The film made a
(19:43):
pretty nice profit. Yeah. It's funny to me that even
even then the papers were like, oh you guys, nope, nope. Um.
Soon though, because it was profitable, Browning had a six
room suite at Universal to work and edit in, and
he started working the hours that he felt most productive
when he was writing, those hours being six pm to
(20:06):
six am. Kind of identify with this. Another nineteen twenty film,
Outside the Law, which was a gangster picture that he made,
also made money for the studio, and that further built
up Browning's reputation as a reliable and profitable director. Browning's father, Charles,
was ill around this time. He had a stroke, He
(20:27):
never really recovered from it, and he died on March
thirty one of ninety two. Todd did not return home
to Louisville for these services, uh, something that was really
a source of dismay for some of his family after
his father's death, Browning, who had seemed to reduce his
drinking somewhat after that nineteen fifteen crash that killed Elmore Booth,
(20:50):
once again started drinking excessively. He directed the movie Under
Two Flags, adapted from the novel by Weeta about the
occupation of Algeria, later that same year, and that production
was kind of plagued with strange problems. There was a
sandstorm that buried equipment on location, but the worst problem
came when a fire on the Universal lot threatened the
(21:12):
entire picture. According to the news periodical that Universal put
out weekly to tout and share updates on their various
project that fire played out as follows quote fire last
week destroyed film valued at thousands of dollars and threatened
to wipe out Universal City faster than a telephone call
could reach outside fire departments. Crackling sparks, A short circuited
(21:36):
electric wire whipped through an open doorway of a film
cutting room with an explosion that rocked the film city.
Almost two hundred thousand feet of film was ignited. It
burned furiously for five minutes, endangering nearby buildings with blowing
sheets of flame and intense heat. The fire, by prompt
(21:56):
action of the Universal City Fire Department and through the
fire airproof construction of all buildings of permanency, did no
other damage. There was actually more damaged though. Under two
Flags had just finished filming that day, and Priscilla Deane,
who was still in costume, ran up a flight of
stairs to the burning room to try to save the film.
(22:20):
She tripped on the hem of her costume and twisted
her ankle. Her hair was scorched, and she was very
badly burned. The fire was reported as having quickly burned
itself out, and while there was a delay while the
negative was inspected, this whole ordeal really only delayed the
films released by a couple of weeks, and at this point,
(22:41):
despite that kind of craziness, uh Browning was considered something
of a Golden Boy for Hollywood, but things quickly started
to turn sour, and we're going to explain how after
we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed
in history class. Going under two Flags was another financial
(23:06):
success for the studio, and because Browning had at that
point really established himself as their can't missdirector, they then
announced that he would be directing Lawn Cheney in a
huge and expensive adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
If you are a fan of old film, you know
that that picture did get made and that Lawn Cheney
did star in it, but Browning did not direct it.
(23:30):
While he had three huge successes, his alcoholism had made
him erratic. He had turned in another film titled White Tiger,
as plans were being laid for the Hunchback adaptation, and
it was apparently such a mess that the studio didn't
release it for a year so it could be reworked
by other people. That was a delay that was kind
of unheard of at the time. Now we're used to
(23:52):
like films coming out years from now when they get announced,
but at that point it was like much faster turnaround.
As a concert quints of the problems with White Tiger Todd.
Browning was pulled from the Hunchback project. While he did
keep working for Universal on smaller projects, his drinking was
leading into very bad decisions in his personal life. He
(24:14):
had an affair with Anime Wong, who is famous for
being the first Chinese American movie star in Hollywood. This
was an issue for reasons aside from the fact that
he was married, Wong was under age at the time.
The interracial relationship was troubling to a lot of people
in the nineteen twenties. He also got into a lot
(24:36):
of situations when he was drinking that we're really embarrassing
to the people who were associated with him. Because of
all this, Universal laid him off. Alice left him, but
Browning moved to a new contract with Metro goldwyn Mayer
in Nive, and his creative relationship with Lawn Cheney moved
right along with him. The films that Browning and Cheney
(24:59):
made together during this time we're strange and often a
little bit shocking for audiences of the day. And here
is really the point in his career where Browning started
to draw pretty deeply from his experiences as a teenager
working in circuses. This is also about when one of
only a very few interviews with Browning was published in
(25:21):
the feature in Picture Play magazine. He acknowledges that his
behavior had led to various fallings out, saying, quote, two
years ago, I went smash, temperament, impulse, wanting my own way, stubbornness.
There were a number of contributing factors. He sort of
recognized that he was at a very low point, but
(25:41):
he could not quite see or admit that his alcohol
use was the problem initially. Even after he did, he
kind of chalked it up to the fault of various
difficult things and experiences that he had in his life.
Just keep in mind with all this, the formation of
Alcoholics Anonymous was a decade away at this point. The
(26:04):
idea that alcohol abuse was something treatable wasn't quite the same, right.
There were also no UM programs that really focused on
people taking responsibility for, you know, their problems that they created.
So he was very much like, oh, but it's because
of this, Like he never once was like, wow, I
(26:25):
just really screwed up UM. Still, he said that he
did have a revelation while he was drinking whiskey one
night that he kind of suddenly understood through his stupor
why Alice had left, and he credited that moment with
what he called his regeneration, where he decided he would
reject his whiskey drinking, although he did continue to drink
(26:48):
things like beer or wine on occasion after this, particularly beer.
He spoke to Alice the next day after this revelation
and he told her about his epiphany, and she basically
told him, if you want me back, you have to
win me back, and she was not interested in going
down with what she called a quote sinking ship. So
even though they had been married for more than seven
(27:09):
years at that point, they basically started dating again and
this went well. They rekindled their relationship and he would
later credit her with getting his career back on track.
This was a valid credit. Alice really supported him emotionally,
but also was not afraid to flex her own connections
in the film industry to try to move him into
(27:30):
a better position. Not long after executive Irving Thalberg left
Universal and went to MGM, which is that's its own
wild story, Alice approached him to try to help Todd
regain his footing in Hollywood. Thalberg was a fan of Browning,
and knew what he could do when he was healthy.
So when Browning pitched a film called The Unholy Three,
(27:53):
he went for it, and that was how Browning wound
up at MGM. The Unholy Three is a story about
three sides o performers, a strong man, a little person,
and a ventriloquist, and they leave their sideshow lives and
start a life of crime together. It was based on
a book by Todd Robbins and it had been a
best seller, but Hollywood had been reluctant to adapt it
(28:15):
despite multiple attempts. But Solberg let Browning do it, although
he paid him a far lower rate than Browning had
been commanding before that totally six hundred dollars paid out
in weekly installments during this shooting, Browning was also offered
a bonus of thirty five hundred dollars if he came
in on time and under budget. This movie was a
(28:36):
spectacular return to success for Browning. The movie made a
lot of money, he got his bonus, and mg N
optioned him for several more pictures. As for the reviews,
they were also glowing almost across the board, and it's
review The New Yorker said, quote to Mr Todd Browning
all honor. His next two pictures, The Mystic and The
(28:58):
Black Bird, did well, but nothing near the level of
The Unholy Three. Still, MGM was overall pleased and increase
his rate. The Unknown, which lawn Cheney and Browning worked
on together in nine seven, really started to evidence the
early seeds that would eventually manifest into the movie Freaks.
(29:20):
The film, which starred lawn Cheney in eighteen year old
Joan Crawford, is about a circus performer who has no
arms whose act involves throwing knives and shooting a gun
at his fellow performer. That's a beautiful young woman named Nannon,
who is played by Crawford. The film's initials set up
unravels as it's revealed that Cheney's character, Alonso the Armless,
(29:43):
is a faker. He has all of his limbs. From there,
things get darker and darker as the film explores identity, deception, obsession,
and self mutilation. While modern critics have lauded it as
a groundbreaking piece of cinema, critics at the time were
far less kind. Browning was described as pathological for having
(30:07):
made the film. The New York Daily Mirror suggested that
you might like it quote if you like to tear
butterflies apart and see sausage made. In contrast his characterization
as warped and possibly some sort of monster for having
made the film, Joan Crawford later spoke of Browning on
set as being incredibly soft spoken and sensitive. Yeah. Reading
(30:30):
um actor and crew accounts of what Todd Browning is
like is the most head spinning because half of them
are like, he was the kindest, gentlest person. He knew
exactly how to work with people, and other people were
like he was abusive and horrible, and there's no middle ground.
It's always one of the other. Um. So it's a
(30:51):
little bit interesting in that regard uh Lawn, Cheney and
Browning collaborated on London After Midnight, and this is one
of those movies that film buffs wish they could see.
The last print of it was lost in a fire
in the nineteen sixties. You will occasionally see a thing
pop up. It's almost like the anti kithera mechanism of
(31:12):
we have found London after Midnight and then it turns out, no, no,
we didn't. We found a couple of skills that were together. Um.
This film is a murder mystery with possible vampires and
a little hypnosis in the mix. There are a lot
of really moody stills that survive, and in two thousand
two those still images plus a shooting script were used
(31:32):
to make a reconstruction of the film. If you have
ever heard the stories of Lawn Cheney, who was very
famous for his makeup work, using fishing wire to create
a unique and disturbing popped open look to his eyes,
that was for this movie. Chenese makeup work was such
a quote horrifying and terrible spectacle that a man named
(31:54):
Robert Williams claimed that he was haunted by visions of
Chinese character when he murdered his girl end Uh. That
defense in that murder trial did not hold. Williams, who
had also tried to take his own life during that episode,
was found guilty. He was first sentenced to death, then
received a medical reprieve. But despite all of that, in
any controversy, London After Midnight was another huge money maker,
(32:18):
and it enabled Browning to continue to make pictures that
he wanted to make with an ever increasing salary. So
we're at a pretty good place right now for Browning's
life and career. But it's not going to stay that way.
So this is where we are going to pause. In
part two, we will talk about Browning's most famous films
and the latter part of his life. One day we'll
(32:40):
see London after midnight. I hope um. I have listener mail,
which is uh from our listener Amelia, who writes tear
Holly and Tracy. I can't believe it took this long
to write the show, but of course it would be
kidties that prompted it. I couldn't help but chuckle listening
to the stories about Mike the cat. Since I have
(33:01):
worked in the museum field for the last decade and
have a weak spot for grumpy cats. I have a
very handsome cat named Dadalus who was eight years old,
and while he loves to be around people, he's not
a fan of being pet or snuggled unless it's by me.
Two years ago, he ended up at the vent and
had to have emergency surgery to remove six feet of
quilting thread he had swallowed. I was an emotional wreck,
(33:24):
and Dadalus was so angry he sent to Vet text
to the hospital for stitches. I had a cat send
people to the hospital for stitches, so I understand the
embarrassment and shame and fear that happens in your heart
when that takes place, she continues. While I was waiting
for him to go into surgery, I took my phone
out and did the only thing I could think of
(33:44):
to distract myself. I turned on stuff you missed in
history class. Datalus immediately settled right down, though he did
growl if anyone came too close. It seemed that listening
to the podcast brought him the same calm and comfort
as it has brought me over the years. I meant
to write the show back then, but after the surgery
and cat proofing, all of my sewing supplies had slipped
my mind. I am happy to report that Dadalus has
(34:07):
since made a full recovery and is back to terrorizing
anyone who tries to love on him. I'm sorry it
took so long, but I wanted to send my belated
thank you for getting Dadalus and I through one of
our toughest times. I've attached pictures of your biggest fuzzy friend.
Thank you for everything you do, Amelia and Dadalus. Um,
I'm so glad he's okay. Anyone who sows knows that
(34:27):
fear um that like of thread in the house. And
I love this story and it ended happily. We've had
so many people write us about their cats, many of
whom have talked about how they have lost beloved cats,
and I want to read all of those, but I
will cry every time. So if I'm not reading it,
please don't think it's because I don't love your story
and your devotion to your baby's. I can't get through this.
(34:50):
I can't even read them on my screen without kind
of becoming a mess. But keep sending them because I
love them. Uh. And it is my greatest honor to
have comforted a cat when he wasn't feeling well. I
am so glad he is okay. We have If anybody
has been through that emergency VET terror, it is one
of the least fun things I can imagine. Yeah, for real,
But again, so glad he is okay. So thank you
(35:13):
for sharing that story. Um, also precious. I would give
that cat the keys to my car while he shredded
my face. It would be fine. You would like to
write to us, you can do that at History Podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us
on social media as Missed in History, and you can
(35:33):
subscribe to the show. If you haven't done so already,
you can do that on the I heart Radio app,
or wherever it is you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(35:54):
listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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