September 29, 2021 • 36 mins
Tod Browning’s contributions to the horror film genre are massive. And the films that are most responsible for that reputation are covered in this episode, among other projects and the latter portion of Browning’s life.
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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 B. Wilson. Today we
are continuing this story of Todd Browning's life as part
of our autumn season and lead into Halloween because his
(00:23):
contributions to the horror film genre are significant, and the
films that are most responsible for that reputation are what
we are covering today, among other projects, and the latter
portion of Browning's life. If you didn't listen to part one,
go back and do it otherwise you're going to be
a little bit lost, because we are jumping in right
where we left off. So in the late nineteen twenties,
(00:44):
Browning had proven that he could turn out films that
made money, so he was something of a darling in Hollywood,
but that did not last. So we are picking up
at the end of the nineteen twenties. In specifically, Browning's mother, Lydia,
died in a of nineteen twenty eight, and we mentioned
in Part one that he did not attend his father's funeral.
(01:05):
In nineteen twenty two, he once again opted not to
participate in any of the memorials or the funeral for
his mother. Although he was the wealthiest member of the
family by far, he also didn't contribute to the expenses
for her burial. He and Alice had visited Louisville in
the wake of the success of The Unholy Three, but
(01:27):
they really just had minimal contact with the Browning family
after that point. Two more Browning and Lawn Cheney collaborations
came out in ninety West of Zanzibar, which featured a
paralyzed magician on a quest for vengeance, and a film
called Big City, Big City. It was quite different in
tone from the other projects that Browning worked on with Cheney.
(01:49):
It did not feature anything supernatural or unusual, or grizzly
or unsettling. It was a pretty basic gangster film, at
least as far as we know. No copies of it
have survived for modern analysis. The two also paired for
a film called Where East Is East, in in which
Cheney played a professional animal trapper who is suspicious of
(02:12):
but ultimately accepts the young man who wants to marry
his daughter. That's just the beginning of the film. The
twist is that an older woman shows up who wants
to seduce the younger man, and her ties to the
animal trapper and his daughter make up this very convoluted
and complex situation. There is also some fairly grisly implied
(02:32):
violence in the movie, when a wild animal is set
loose on purpose with the intent that it will harm people.
Critics alternately braved about the film, some calling it Browning's
best and panned the film, finding the entire thing utterly ridiculous.
Unbeknownst to Browning and Cheney at the time, this was
their last movie together. All of the films we've talked
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about up to this point were made without recorded dialogue,
and they were silent films set two scores, but Browning
moved into talkies in with the Moviete Chair. This film
was an adaptation of a stage play and revolves around
a murder that takes place at a seance that was
(03:15):
builled in promotional material as a new adventure in the
realm of mysticism. Browning and the studio wanted Lon Cheney
to play the role of the detective that's called in
to investigate the murder, but Cheney was not comfortable with
the idea of dialogue films at this point, so the
role went instead to Baila Legosi. There was actually a
(03:38):
silent version of the film made simultaneously. This was to
appease movie theaters that ran films because they were not
all equipped to handle sound projection at this point in time.
But the silent version of Browning's thirteen Chair has been lost.
The following year, Browning made another dialogue picture, it was
Outside the Law. He was once again hoping to get
(04:01):
Cheney in the main role. Cheney had appeared in a
talkie version of The Unholy Three that had filmed in
nine was released in nineteen thirty and was a remake
of the silent version that Cheney and Browning had made
back in this time. It was directed by Jack Conway,
so it seemed that the actor was now ready to
(04:21):
move into speaking roles. But unfortunately, Lon Cheney died of
throat cancer not long after the release of The Unholy Three,
so Todd Browning had to find another actor for Outside
the Law. That role went to Edward G. Robinson. And
then we get to nineteen thirty one, which it was,
of course, the year that Browning made his most famous film, Dracula.
(04:44):
If you were a fan of the various horror films
that get grouped under the umbrella of universal monsters. I
feel like it's it's worthwhile to thank Todd Browning and
Baila Lego. See Dracula was the first of those films
that was a hit, and it was a huge hit,
but critically it didn't really qualify as a success. The
New York Times review of Dracula that appeared on February
(05:07):
nineteen thirty one reads, in part quote, count Dracula, brown
Stoker's human vampire who has chilled the spines of book
readers and playgoers, is now to be seen at the
Roxy in a talking film directed by Todd Browning, who
delights in such blood curdling stories. It is a production
that evidently had the desired effect upon many in the
(05:30):
audience yesterday afternoon. For there was a general outburst of
applause when Dr Van Helsing produced a little cross that
caused the dreaded Dracula to fling his cloak over his
head and make himself scarce. What was Mr Browning's imaginative
direction and Mr Legosi's makeup and weird gestures. This picture
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succeeds to some extent and its grand gunule intentions. That
review incidentally, was written by the New York Times first
regular film critic More daunt Hall, and that was about
as good as any commentary the film got by critics.
That was really one of the nicest wins. But box
office numbers were a very different story from those reviews.
(06:12):
As is hinted at in that reviewer's note, audiences went
absolutely wild for this movie, and they went to see
it in large numbers and often went to see it
multiple times. Dracula didn't only launch an entire genre success
for Universal, it also gave Todd Browning even more freedom
to do as he wished as a director. His next film,
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perhaps surprisingly, was the drama Iron Man, which came out
in nineteen thirty one. That's about a failed prize fighter
and his wife who leaves him, only to come back
when he starts winning again. Browning ended up back at
MGM in the early nineteen thirties, although the studio probably
wished that had not been the case. Once he finished
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his first picture back with them. That movie was to
use Freaks, based on the Todd Robins story Spurs. Freaks
was completely unlike any film that had been made at
the time that it was released. The plot is set
in motion when a trapeze artist named Cleopatra joins the
circus and plans to marry one of the side shows performers,
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that's a little person named Hans played by Harry Earles.
Cleopatra plans to ultimately kill him and take his fortune.
When the rest of the sideshow cast learns what Cleopatra
and her accomplice who's the circus strongman, have planned, they
enact this violent and gruesome revenge that leaves the two
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of them who started out in quotation marks normal totally
mangled and uh physically altered and relegated to the side
show themselves. Browning hired actual side show performers for the film,
working with casting director Ben Piazza to scour all of
the potential talent from side shows along the East Coast,
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and Among the cast were conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton,
Johnny Eck who was born with a truncated torso from
sacred legenesis, Prince Randian who was born with tetra amelia syndrome,
Peter Robinson, an extremely thin man build as the human
skeleton or Skeleton Man, Bearded Lady Olga Roderick, Little People
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Daisy and Harry Earls, who were siblings in real life,
and Schlitzy, who was born with microcephaly. Production of the
film was reportedly pretty smooth, although the sideshow performers were
asked to take their lunch breaks in a separate mess
hall that was set up outside the regular cafeteria because
regular MGM staff and performers were apparently unsettled at seeing them.
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There were also reportedly some tensions and professional jealousies among
the sideshow performers, although this didn't really seem to impact
the actual production at all. There was as some unpredictability
to the entire endeavor because of using performers who were
from circuses and side chosen not accustomed to filmmaking, and
(09:09):
Browning using some very outdated language, so I'm not even
going to quote it. Uh talked in interviews about his
anxiety working on this picture because of it. He seems,
based on most reports, to have worked very very hard
to create a positive atmosphere for the side show performers,
although crew members reported that he was not the least
bit nurturing with them and was often quite the opposite.
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Some of this might be attributed to Browning still learning
the ropes of sound on pictures after a full career
of shooting silent scenes, but several crew members called working
on Freaks the toughest film of their careers due to
everything from grueling schedules to dangerously wired electrical systems. We're
(09:53):
going to talk about how Freaks was received both internally
at MGM and among the public, but before we do,
let's pause for a sponsor break. If you have ever
seen this film, Freaks, it is fairly apparent that it
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turned societal norms upside down. The villains of the piece
are the people who are not freaks in the side
show terminology sense, but are revealed to be absolute monsters
in their intentions. Audiences, however, did not respond well to
Browning's cast of actual sideshow performers and to the violent
retribution that they visit on Cleopatra and Strongman Hercules in
(10:40):
response to their treachery. Louis B. Mayor, the mayor of
Metro Goldwyn. Mayor, hated the movie and he was worried
about what it would do to MGM's reputation, so he
did what he could to limit the anticipated damage by
trying to minimize the number of people who would actually
see it, so it was released to as few screens
(11:01):
as possible. Irving Thalberg also edited it into a much
shorter version, cutting almost a third of the film for
the early screenings, although the full length film did appear
for some showings and critics did not know quite what
to make of it. The New York Times review said
this quote, Metro Goldwyn Mayer definitely has on its hands
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a picture that is out of the ordinary. The difficulty
isn't telling whether it should be shown at the rialto
where it opened yesterday or in say, the medical Center.
Freaks is no normal program film, but whether it deserves
the title of abnormal is a matter of personal opinion.
Its first audience apparently could not decide, although there was
(11:45):
a good bit of applause based on the life of
quote these strange people of the circus side show. The
picture is excellent at times and horrible in the strict
meaning of the word at others. There are a few
moments of comedy, but these are more than balanced by tragedy.
Through long periods, the story drags itself along, and there
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is one of the most profound anticlimaxes of them all
to form the ending. Yet despite this Freaks is not
a picture to be easily forgotten. The only thing that
can be said definitely for Freaks is that it is
not for children. Bad dreams lie that way. But although
some reviewers grappled with how to define or even perceive
(12:28):
the movie, others dismissed it entirely as garbage. The head
of the Motion Picture Committee for the National Association of Women,
Mrs Ambrose Nevin Deal, wrote to William Harris and Hayes Sr.
So that's the same Haze for whom the Haze Code
of Moral Guidelines and Cinema was named, share her disdain
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of Browning's offensive film. She and a lot of other
people thought it was exploitive of the sideshow performers who
had appeared in it. Must debate whether Browning was heartless
or a champion for inclusion started really as soon as
the screening started to happen. Yeah. I want to point
out too that while we talk about Mrs Deal kind
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of framing this in a way of like, you shouldn't
exploit these people, she definitely does have like the white
savior those poor things approach to it. It's not like
she even considers them at a level of equality. She's
really framing this in a very problematic way as well.
But that discussion around the film and Browning as a
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champion or as heartless continues, of course. A review of
a DVD release of the film by Heiony Karamanos for
Disability Studies Quarterly in two thousand five kind of artfully
summed up part of the reason that this movie continues
to be so frequently studied, both as a piece of
cinema and as an instance of early disability representation in
(14:00):
medium writing. Quote tensions between exposing the myth of normal
slash abnormal dichotomies and presenting freak performers in ways that
indulge the audience's appetite for gawking creates a narrative riddled
with fascinating contradiction. At the time of the movie's release,
MGM even took out ads trying I mean often in
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awkward and really cringe worthy copy to insist that the
quote freaks of the film have quote the same passions, joys, sorrows,
and laughter as anyone else, and that their stories should
not be untouchable. This did not really help, No. Various
groups of people around the United States protested the film
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and in some markets they were successful in blocking it
from being shown entirely. In Great Britain, Freaks was banned
by sensors for thirty years, and the bad reviews continued
after its early New York run. Freaks was pulled completely
by the studio, although the level of trust from the
studio that Browning had previously enjoyed thanks to his box
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office success is totally vanished. His contract with MGM said
that he owed them two more pictures. He was assigned
an adaptation of the play Rivets, which is about two
New York construction workers who were vying for the attentions
of the same woman. The movie, which was titled Fast Workers,
came out in nineteen thirty three, but that had its
(15:29):
own controversy when the studio refused to edit out a
line that the Hayes office objected to. The line was quote,
They're making it tougher for us every day. This was
noted as quote a direct inference to sex perversion because
it was said in reference to two women who appeared
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to be romantically involved with one another. Fast Workers was
the most expensive film of Browning's career, and it flopped abysmally.
The studio actually lost more money on it that it
had on Freaks. Browning was next slated to work on
a Cajun country melodrama called Louisiana Lou, for which William
Faulkner was brought on to collaborate, and according to Faulkner,
(16:12):
he got the runaround from the projects of other writers
about what the picture was even about and was soon fired.
Todd Browning was furious and openly so, and soon he
was fired as well. But really this was a period
when Faulkner's drinking had made him unreliable as a writer,
and Louisiana Lou was put on a very long hiatus
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while the studio just tried to figure out what to
do with it and try to salvage it. Browning made
Mark of the Vampire in ninety six. This is a
pastiche of themes and ideas from London After Midnight and Dracula.
Sometimes it's even referred to as a sound dialogue remake
of London After Midnight because many aspects of the plot
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are so closely repeated. It was once again a murder
mystery involving vampires and hypnotism. The main borrow from Dracula
was the styling of the vampire characters, who were all
very much in the vein of Lugosi's Dracula character, including
Lugosi himself as a character called Count Mora. Some of
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the shots are direct recreations of the most popular moments
from the ninety one film Dracula, which was done in
the hopes that it would draw audiences to see their
favorite vampire do the things that they loved. Again. Remember,
at this point there were no home theaters. There was
no HBO. They're like, you couldn't just watch a movie
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at home. Yeah, none of the ways that we can
see movies at home today. Uh So, while kind of hokey,
this was an understandable strategy to try to get people
back into the theaters. Despite how all that sounds, reviews
were fairly good. The film made money, and that made
it a redemption project for Browning, at least to some degree.
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Mark of the Empire also made a contribution to real
world style that persists today. The movie featured Carol Borland
as Count Mora's daughter. She was very young at the time,
and her styling was a departure from the way female vampires,
even in Browning's own films, had been portrayed. While previously
the look of such a character usually involved hair that
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was slicked back into a tight bun and clothes that
were kind of unstructured or maybe look like a shroud,
this character, who was called Luna, had a long center
parted straight, dark hairstyle and a diaphanous gown with long
flowing sleeves. She looks a lot like Lily Munster, who
very clearly was modeled after her, and Luna could really
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be kind of pointed to as a prototype of goth
style that you still see today, which I love. We'll
talk about Todd Browning's last films after we hear from
the sponsors that keep Stuffy Miss in history class going.
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Browning's next project was a movie called The Devil Doll,
which came out in ninety six, and this feature ran
into problems right out of the gate due to its content.
It is an adaptation of a novel titled Burn Which Burn,
which was written by Abraham Merritt in two and that
was first released as a series in Argossy magazine, and
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the premise of that original story is that a neurologist
investigating a series of unique deaths among a group of
patients who seemed completely unrelated. Uh discovers that they had
all visited a toy shop known for its unique and
realistic dolls, and that shop was run by a woman
named Madam Mandelip Browning collaborated with two other writers on
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this adaptation. They were Garrett Fort and Guy Indoor, and
they opted to go with an African theme. They featured
humans who had been shrunk down into of dolls through voodoo.
It probably goes without saying they did not have any
understanding at all of the various religions that are often
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grouped together under the term voodoo. It was entirely going
for sensationalism in this choice and the original script. A
man who had escaped from the penal colony on Devil's
Island gets to Paris and uses voodoo to enact revenge,
and at the end of the story he dies by suicide.
All of this really disturbed the Production Code administration, and
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the British Board of Film Censors stated that it could
not be shown at all in Britain if it depicted voodoo,
but a representative of the British Board did say that
shrinking people for quote legitimate drama was allowable the story
was reworked, stripped of all the magical elements, and instead
when in a sci fi direction with the shrinking of
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the people. So in this reworked version of the script,
which is what was made as the film, a banker
from Paris is framed by some very shady colleagues and
ends up imprisoned on Devil's Island and escapes. But he
escapes along with a mad scientist and that scientist's wife,
who have figured out how to miniaturize people and destroy
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their free will in the process, making them obedient devil
dolls subject to telepathic communication and commands the Parisian banker
named lavand disguises himself as a woman and finds ways
to put these dolls into the homes of the people
who wronged him so that these dolls can enact his revenge.
The trailer touted this film as quote born of a
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revenge crazed mind, the strangest story the screen has ever told.
It also played up the fact that the star Lionel
Barrymore dressed as a woman, advertising quote a great star
in the greatest surprise role since Lon Cheney played in
The Unholy Three. But the real story when it comes
to The Devil Doll was actually the practical effects that
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were employed to create the illusion of humans shrunk down
to the size of dolls. The review in The New
York Times seemed to find the film both a little
absurd and pretty deserving of praise, and that praise was
largely due to technical achievement. That review reads, in part quote,
in The Devil Doll, you will find a Saint Bernard,
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a Great Dane, and a circus horse reduced to mouse
like dimensions by the same magic. Arthur Hole grace Ford
and one or two other hapless players are shrunken to
fountain pen length and have a brisk time climbing Christmas trees,
staggering under the weight of a jeweled bracelet, and sticking
tiny daggers into the next and ankles of Lionel Barrymore's
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full sized victims. Not since The Lost World, King Kong
and The Invisible Man have the camera Wizards enjoyed such
a field day. By use of the split screen, glass shots,
oversize sets, and other trick devices cherished of their kind,
they have pieced together a photoplay which is grotesque, slightly horrible,
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and consistently interesting. A freak film, of course, and one
which may overburden Junior's imagination, but an entertaining exhibition of
photographic hocus focus. For all that, The Devil Doll made
a profit, but not a huge one to the studio,
it was apparent that there just wouldn't be another money
maker that was anywhere near the Unholy Three coming from
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Todd Browning. Just a couple of months later, Irving Thalberg died,
and Thalberg had been one of the few executives at
MGM who had continued to support Browning's work. Without him
there anymore, Browning lost his last true ally after sputtering
around with pitches getting shot down. Browning did eventually get
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the go ahead to make a picture based on a
novel titled Death from a Top Half. The novel was
written by Clayton Rawson. In the premise involves a retired magician,
the Great MERLINI, who solves crimes that generally appear to
be supernatural or occult, but then reveals them to be
the work of normal humans. The Browning version was titled
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Miracles for Sale and it starred Robert Young. The Great
MERLINI was changed to the Great Morgan. The plot was
paired down from the novel to be simpler to shoot,
and while it was clearly right in Todd Browning's wheelhouse,
the studio paid him a fraction of what he had
made just a few years before for a picture. While
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there was some violent imagery in the movie, it was
mostly comedic and light. But then there was a whole
new kind of controversy for the studio when it came out.
Magicians were really angry about it because the plot involved
many instances of the Great Morgan explaining that stage trickery
had been used to make crimes look supernatural. It ended
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up giving away a number of trade secrets that magicians
had kept within the profes Shan The Pacific Coast Association
of Magicians wrote a complaint letter to Lowe's Cinemas about it,
and their spokesperson Hubert Brill explained that airings of the
picture quote would soon render many of the magicians of
this country without means of making their livings, for with
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the disclosure of their secrets, public interest would be destroyed,
and their investments in time and costly equipment rendered a
total loss. Lowe's cut parts of the film out in
accordance with the magician's Association's wishes. Miracles for Sale was
Browning's last picture. His reputation had really suffered after the
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release of Freaks, and the poor reception of the picture
undoubtedly impacted his relationship with his career. Additionally, Miracles for
Sale had been banned in Sweden because of its violence.
He was not a commodity of note in Hollywood any longer.
He couldn't get a movie greenlit, and he was viewed
by a lot of people as just being more trouble
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than he was worth. Browning retired in the early nineteen
forties when he was just in his mid fifties. He
had been let go by MGM, and he did not
move on to another studio. He had handled his finances
well enough that money was not a concern for him.
He also sold his house in Hollywood and he moved
completely into his home in Malibu. In May of ninety four,
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Browning's wife, Alice Wilson died. After that point, he became
even more reclusive. He rarely left his Malibu home. In
nineteen fifty three, an article about his work appeared in
Films in Review, and Browning wrote a letter to thank
the writer, Mrs Henry Geltzer. In this brief note, he
mentions that he had quote been enjoying life on the
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cream saved off the milk I received for Flickers. I
enjoyed making that is, until I started making Freaks, and
from then on, well that's another story. Browning grew increasingly
suspicious of other people after Alice died. He started to
believe that most of the people who tried to befriend
him were trying to find a way into the film industry,
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and this sometimes manifested in treating people really cruelly, even
when they were just trying to help him out. Um.
There's a really sad story about a woman who kept
trying to bring him food and he called her terrible names.
He lavished attention and love on his dogs, and when
his bulldog Toby died, his veterinarian who he had become
friends with, Harold Snow, was so dismayed at Browning's level
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of grief that he gave the aging director another puppy.
Browning refused it, but Snow really felt like he was
not going to be okay if he didn't have an
animal in his life, so he left it with a
neighbor who eventually got Browning to warm up to it.
As a side note, please don't give people pets as gifts.
That's a very bad idea. Yeah. I said that on
social media one time, and people tried to pick a
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fight with me, and it's like, yeah, if you've had
a thoughtful conversation with somebody about that's fine. Don't just
surprise people with animals. Correct. All. Though Browning had been
somewhat estranged from his family in Louisville as he had
gotten older, he had reconnected with his brother, Avery, and
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the two men got in the habit of talking on
the phone every day. But then, on December four, Avery
died accidentally from asphyxiation due to an unvented gas heater,
and unlike when the Browning parents had died, Todd decided
to go to Louisville to attend his brother's funeral. But
even this was a pretty odd scenario. Todd attended the wake,
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but he would only consent to sitting behind a curtain.
He refused to even greet guests. Even Todd and Avery's
foster sister, Jenny, was denied an audience with Todd. Even
a relatives tried to reach out to him at his hotel.
They were just met with all kinds of excuses as
to why he could not speak with them, for reasons
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that were never disclosed. Browning just wanted no actual engagement
with the people from his hometown at all. Yeah, we
have no idea what went down that made him behave
this way, or if nothing went down and he just
got something. We just don't know what was going on there.
But in his final years, Browning really never wanted to
discuss his film career, and he would actually get kind
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of angry if anyone asked him about it. He wanted
to live with his animals, which at that point where
dogs and ducks in peace. But he did seem to
grow a little less bristly in the last period of
his life. He started giving people gifts, like his neighbors
who had tried for years to check on him, only
to be met with suspicion, for example, and over time,
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that veterinarian we mentioned Dr Snow and his wife, who
had started driving Browning around town after he had had
a series of strokes, convinced Todd to just move in
with them so that they could keep an eye on him,
and for a while he really kind of became part
of their family, and he would cook for them and
he socialized with the Snows. Browning was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer,
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and it was really too late by the tie. It
was discovered his larynx had to be removed in June
of two that left him mute. He had to have
a breathing tube after the surgery, and he became prone
to anxiety attacks. He really became afraid that he was
going to lose his ability to breathe. Another stroke that
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summer degraded his health further, as well as his ability
to communicate. He signed a power of attorney over to
the Snows in August. Browning died in the very early
morning hours of October six, nine sixty two, in Malibu,
at the age of eighty two. In his will, he
had left the Snows half of his estate. He kind
of split it up between them in an interesting way,
(30:40):
where Mr. Snow got and Mrs Snow got thirty five.
He also left them the contents of his liquor cabinet,
and the rest of his estate was doled out to
various neighbors, caregivers, and the Corsair Crippled Children's Hospital in Louisville.
And the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. Nothing went to
his family, and he noted this in his will by writing, quote,
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I have intentionally and with full knowledge, admitted to provide
for my heirs. In a final pretty odd coda to
his life, there was a strange incident with a house
painter while he was laid out at the Gates, Kingsley
and Gates funeral home. This house painter had become friends
and drinking buddies with Browning towards the end of his life.
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The painter is only ever recalled by the name Lucky.
That's the only name that shows up any accounts of this,
and he was allowed to spend the night in the
funeral home with Browning's body simply to drink a case
of course beer, which was allegedly Browning's favorite. So he's
doing this sort of as a send off to Browning.
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Todd Browning had stipulated that there would be no funeral
held for him. He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, which
was where Alice's ashes had been interred. Yeah, that was
actually part of Alice's family plot. He wanted to be
with her family and not his own. Uh. Today, many
of Browning's films, including Freaks, which essentially ended his career,
(32:11):
are much beloved as cult favorites. Then even before his death,
Freaks was actually screened at the Venice Film Festival and
it was very well received, although that happened just weeks
before he died, and it's believed he didn't even know
about it. Uh So he kind of went went to
his grave thinking that everyone hated him over that movie
and never never got to see people really look at
(32:32):
it in a more thoughtful way and try to really
analyze what it meant in terms of representation and uh,
you know kind of morality has told through a very
unique lens. M hm. Oh, Todd Browning. Yeah, of course
his films now show up in you know, film school
courses all the time for a variety of reasons, including
(32:54):
they're often just beautifully staged. He did a lot of
stuff that um was staged kind of you know, a
play that was being filmed, which now sometimes infuriated some
of the the cameraman who worked with him, who wanted
to do much more involved stuff. But uh, in other
times it's it's uniquely effective. Todd Browning, m hm. Talk
(33:17):
about my feelings on his work in our behind the
scenes on Friday, but in the meantime I have an
email from our listener, Katie. I love this so much.
It involves both animals and stethoscopes, Katie writes, High Holly
and Tracy. I was driving home from work listening to
the episode about the history of stethoscopes and knew today
(33:39):
was the day I could write in I am a veterinarian.
We have stethoscopes with tiny bells for little songbirds, and
very long stethoscopes for we don't want to get too
close to our more dangerous patients. Lanek would have appreciated them,
I think, But I'm writing to tell you a story
of inclusion. Pre covid. I had a mother and her
two elementary age daughters bring their cat in a routine exam.
(34:01):
The girls were helping me do my exam until we
got to the part where we listened to the heart
and lungs, which is usually a crowd pleaser. The older
daughter shrunk away back to her mom. The mother explained
that her daughter had hearing aids and that was why
she couldn't use the stethoscope. I assured her that one
of my previous colleagues also used hearing aids, and that
she had a special stethoscope that talked to her hearing aids.
(34:23):
The rest of the visit went along as normal, and
they went their way. The following day, the mother sent
me an email saying that her daughter had always wanted
to be a veterinarian, but thought she could not because
of her disability. Now she has nothing standing in the
way of making her dreams come true. I love it. Uh.
You never know what small statement will make a big
difference in someone's life. Thank you for feeding my curiosity
(34:45):
of the world. I especially love learning about how medicine
is different in the human world, but people are gross.
I much prefer kiddies. That makes me very, very delighted
to hear. You'll find a picture of my two cats,
Felix and Susan attached for your viewing pleasure. Thanks again
for all that you do, Katie. I love this. What
a cool idea. I didn't know there were stethoscopes that
(35:05):
could communicate directly with hearing aids. It makes sense. We
talked about how there's all kinds of astonishing stethoscope technology
and radias that are very, very uh different and much
evolved from that original cylinder that lay and accused. Um,
but so cool and I'm so glad that you know
(35:26):
she was able to let a future veterinarian. Now, no problem,
We got you. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. You can also find us on social media
as Missed in History, and you can subscribe to the
show if you haven't yet. That is easy as pie
to do. You can do it on the iHeart Radio
app or anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows.
(35:54):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio
at the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. H
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 B. Wilson. Today we
are continuing this story of Todd Browning's life as part
of our autumn season and lead into Halloween because his
(00:23):
contributions to the horror film genre are significant, and the
films that are most responsible for that reputation are what
we are covering today, among other projects, and the latter
portion of Browning's life. If you didn't listen to part one,
go back and do it otherwise you're going to be
a little bit lost, because we are jumping in right
where we left off. So in the late nineteen twenties,
(00:44):
Browning had proven that he could turn out films that
made money, so he was something of a darling in Hollywood,
but that did not last. So we are picking up
at the end of the nineteen twenties. In specifically, Browning's mother, Lydia,
died in a of nineteen twenty eight, and we mentioned
in Part one that he did not attend his father's funeral.
(01:05):
In nineteen twenty two, he once again opted not to
participate in any of the memorials or the funeral for
his mother. Although he was the wealthiest member of the
family by far, he also didn't contribute to the expenses
for her burial. He and Alice had visited Louisville in
the wake of the success of The Unholy Three, but
(01:27):
they really just had minimal contact with the Browning family
after that point. Two more Browning and Lawn Cheney collaborations
came out in ninety West of Zanzibar, which featured a
paralyzed magician on a quest for vengeance, and a film
called Big City, Big City. It was quite different in
tone from the other projects that Browning worked on with Cheney.
(01:49):
It did not feature anything supernatural or unusual, or grizzly
or unsettling. It was a pretty basic gangster film, at
least as far as we know. No copies of it
have survived for modern analysis. The two also paired for
a film called Where East Is East, in in which
Cheney played a professional animal trapper who is suspicious of
(02:12):
but ultimately accepts the young man who wants to marry
his daughter. That's just the beginning of the film. The
twist is that an older woman shows up who wants
to seduce the younger man, and her ties to the
animal trapper and his daughter make up this very convoluted
and complex situation. There is also some fairly grisly implied
(02:32):
violence in the movie, when a wild animal is set
loose on purpose with the intent that it will harm people.
Critics alternately braved about the film, some calling it Browning's
best and panned the film, finding the entire thing utterly ridiculous.
Unbeknownst to Browning and Cheney at the time, this was
their last movie together. All of the films we've talked
(02:55):
about up to this point were made without recorded dialogue,
and they were silent films set two scores, but Browning
moved into talkies in with the Moviete Chair. This film
was an adaptation of a stage play and revolves around
a murder that takes place at a seance that was
(03:15):
builled in promotional material as a new adventure in the
realm of mysticism. Browning and the studio wanted Lon Cheney
to play the role of the detective that's called in
to investigate the murder, but Cheney was not comfortable with
the idea of dialogue films at this point, so the
role went instead to Baila Legosi. There was actually a
(03:38):
silent version of the film made simultaneously. This was to
appease movie theaters that ran films because they were not
all equipped to handle sound projection at this point in time.
But the silent version of Browning's thirteen Chair has been lost.
The following year, Browning made another dialogue picture, it was
Outside the Law. He was once again hoping to get
(04:01):
Cheney in the main role. Cheney had appeared in a
talkie version of The Unholy Three that had filmed in
nine was released in nineteen thirty and was a remake
of the silent version that Cheney and Browning had made
back in this time. It was directed by Jack Conway,
so it seemed that the actor was now ready to
(04:21):
move into speaking roles. But unfortunately, Lon Cheney died of
throat cancer not long after the release of The Unholy Three,
so Todd Browning had to find another actor for Outside
the Law. That role went to Edward G. Robinson. And
then we get to nineteen thirty one, which it was,
of course, the year that Browning made his most famous film, Dracula.
(04:44):
If you were a fan of the various horror films
that get grouped under the umbrella of universal monsters. I
feel like it's it's worthwhile to thank Todd Browning and
Baila Lego. See Dracula was the first of those films
that was a hit, and it was a huge hit,
but critically it didn't really qualify as a success. The
New York Times review of Dracula that appeared on February
(05:07):
nineteen thirty one reads, in part quote, count Dracula, brown
Stoker's human vampire who has chilled the spines of book
readers and playgoers, is now to be seen at the
Roxy in a talking film directed by Todd Browning, who
delights in such blood curdling stories. It is a production
that evidently had the desired effect upon many in the
(05:30):
audience yesterday afternoon. For there was a general outburst of
applause when Dr Van Helsing produced a little cross that
caused the dreaded Dracula to fling his cloak over his
head and make himself scarce. What was Mr Browning's imaginative
direction and Mr Legosi's makeup and weird gestures. This picture
(05:51):
succeeds to some extent and its grand gunule intentions. That
review incidentally, was written by the New York Times first
regular film critic More daunt Hall, and that was about
as good as any commentary the film got by critics.
That was really one of the nicest wins. But box
office numbers were a very different story from those reviews.
(06:12):
As is hinted at in that reviewer's note, audiences went
absolutely wild for this movie, and they went to see
it in large numbers and often went to see it
multiple times. Dracula didn't only launch an entire genre success
for Universal, it also gave Todd Browning even more freedom
to do as he wished as a director. His next film,
(06:35):
perhaps surprisingly, was the drama Iron Man, which came out
in nineteen thirty one. That's about a failed prize fighter
and his wife who leaves him, only to come back
when he starts winning again. Browning ended up back at
MGM in the early nineteen thirties, although the studio probably
wished that had not been the case. Once he finished
(06:56):
his first picture back with them. That movie was to
use Freaks, based on the Todd Robins story Spurs. Freaks
was completely unlike any film that had been made at
the time that it was released. The plot is set
in motion when a trapeze artist named Cleopatra joins the
circus and plans to marry one of the side shows performers,
(07:19):
that's a little person named Hans played by Harry Earles.
Cleopatra plans to ultimately kill him and take his fortune.
When the rest of the sideshow cast learns what Cleopatra
and her accomplice who's the circus strongman, have planned, they
enact this violent and gruesome revenge that leaves the two
(07:40):
of them who started out in quotation marks normal totally
mangled and uh physically altered and relegated to the side
show themselves. Browning hired actual side show performers for the film,
working with casting director Ben Piazza to scour all of
the potential talent from side shows along the East Coast,
(08:03):
and Among the cast were conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton,
Johnny Eck who was born with a truncated torso from
sacred legenesis, Prince Randian who was born with tetra amelia syndrome,
Peter Robinson, an extremely thin man build as the human
skeleton or Skeleton Man, Bearded Lady Olga Roderick, Little People
(08:24):
Daisy and Harry Earls, who were siblings in real life,
and Schlitzy, who was born with microcephaly. Production of the
film was reportedly pretty smooth, although the sideshow performers were
asked to take their lunch breaks in a separate mess
hall that was set up outside the regular cafeteria because
regular MGM staff and performers were apparently unsettled at seeing them.
(08:49):
There were also reportedly some tensions and professional jealousies among
the sideshow performers, although this didn't really seem to impact
the actual production at all. There was as some unpredictability
to the entire endeavor because of using performers who were
from circuses and side chosen not accustomed to filmmaking, and
(09:09):
Browning using some very outdated language, so I'm not even
going to quote it. Uh talked in interviews about his
anxiety working on this picture because of it. He seems,
based on most reports, to have worked very very hard
to create a positive atmosphere for the side show performers,
although crew members reported that he was not the least
bit nurturing with them and was often quite the opposite.
(09:33):
Some of this might be attributed to Browning still learning
the ropes of sound on pictures after a full career
of shooting silent scenes, but several crew members called working
on Freaks the toughest film of their careers due to
everything from grueling schedules to dangerously wired electrical systems. We're
(09:53):
going to talk about how Freaks was received both internally
at MGM and among the public, but before we do,
let's pause for a sponsor break. If you have ever
seen this film, Freaks, it is fairly apparent that it
(10:15):
turned societal norms upside down. The villains of the piece
are the people who are not freaks in the side
show terminology sense, but are revealed to be absolute monsters
in their intentions. Audiences, however, did not respond well to
Browning's cast of actual sideshow performers and to the violent
retribution that they visit on Cleopatra and Strongman Hercules in
(10:40):
response to their treachery. Louis B. Mayor, the mayor of
Metro Goldwyn. Mayor, hated the movie and he was worried
about what it would do to MGM's reputation, so he
did what he could to limit the anticipated damage by
trying to minimize the number of people who would actually
see it, so it was released to as few screens
(11:01):
as possible. Irving Thalberg also edited it into a much
shorter version, cutting almost a third of the film for
the early screenings, although the full length film did appear
for some showings and critics did not know quite what
to make of it. The New York Times review said
this quote, Metro Goldwyn Mayer definitely has on its hands
(11:24):
a picture that is out of the ordinary. The difficulty
isn't telling whether it should be shown at the rialto
where it opened yesterday or in say, the medical Center.
Freaks is no normal program film, but whether it deserves
the title of abnormal is a matter of personal opinion.
Its first audience apparently could not decide, although there was
(11:45):
a good bit of applause based on the life of
quote these strange people of the circus side show. The
picture is excellent at times and horrible in the strict
meaning of the word at others. There are a few
moments of comedy, but these are more than balanced by tragedy.
Through long periods, the story drags itself along, and there
(12:06):
is one of the most profound anticlimaxes of them all
to form the ending. Yet despite this Freaks is not
a picture to be easily forgotten. The only thing that
can be said definitely for Freaks is that it is
not for children. Bad dreams lie that way. But although
some reviewers grappled with how to define or even perceive
(12:28):
the movie, others dismissed it entirely as garbage. The head
of the Motion Picture Committee for the National Association of Women,
Mrs Ambrose Nevin Deal, wrote to William Harris and Hayes Sr.
So that's the same Haze for whom the Haze Code
of Moral Guidelines and Cinema was named, share her disdain
(12:50):
of Browning's offensive film. She and a lot of other
people thought it was exploitive of the sideshow performers who
had appeared in it. Must debate whether Browning was heartless
or a champion for inclusion started really as soon as
the screening started to happen. Yeah. I want to point
out too that while we talk about Mrs Deal kind
(13:14):
of framing this in a way of like, you shouldn't
exploit these people, she definitely does have like the white
savior those poor things approach to it. It's not like
she even considers them at a level of equality. She's
really framing this in a very problematic way as well.
But that discussion around the film and Browning as a
(13:38):
champion or as heartless continues, of course. A review of
a DVD release of the film by Heiony Karamanos for
Disability Studies Quarterly in two thousand five kind of artfully
summed up part of the reason that this movie continues
to be so frequently studied, both as a piece of
cinema and as an instance of early disability representation in
(14:00):
medium writing. Quote tensions between exposing the myth of normal
slash abnormal dichotomies and presenting freak performers in ways that
indulge the audience's appetite for gawking creates a narrative riddled
with fascinating contradiction. At the time of the movie's release,
MGM even took out ads trying I mean often in
(14:23):
awkward and really cringe worthy copy to insist that the
quote freaks of the film have quote the same passions, joys, sorrows,
and laughter as anyone else, and that their stories should
not be untouchable. This did not really help, No. Various
groups of people around the United States protested the film
(14:43):
and in some markets they were successful in blocking it
from being shown entirely. In Great Britain, Freaks was banned
by sensors for thirty years, and the bad reviews continued
after its early New York run. Freaks was pulled completely
by the studio, although the level of trust from the
studio that Browning had previously enjoyed thanks to his box
(15:07):
office success is totally vanished. His contract with MGM said
that he owed them two more pictures. He was assigned
an adaptation of the play Rivets, which is about two
New York construction workers who were vying for the attentions
of the same woman. The movie, which was titled Fast Workers,
came out in nineteen thirty three, but that had its
(15:29):
own controversy when the studio refused to edit out a
line that the Hayes office objected to. The line was quote,
They're making it tougher for us every day. This was
noted as quote a direct inference to sex perversion because
it was said in reference to two women who appeared
(15:49):
to be romantically involved with one another. Fast Workers was
the most expensive film of Browning's career, and it flopped abysmally.
The studio actually lost more money on it that it
had on Freaks. Browning was next slated to work on
a Cajun country melodrama called Louisiana Lou, for which William
Faulkner was brought on to collaborate, and according to Faulkner,
(16:12):
he got the runaround from the projects of other writers
about what the picture was even about and was soon fired.
Todd Browning was furious and openly so, and soon he
was fired as well. But really this was a period
when Faulkner's drinking had made him unreliable as a writer,
and Louisiana Lou was put on a very long hiatus
(16:32):
while the studio just tried to figure out what to
do with it and try to salvage it. Browning made
Mark of the Vampire in ninety six. This is a
pastiche of themes and ideas from London After Midnight and Dracula.
Sometimes it's even referred to as a sound dialogue remake
of London After Midnight because many aspects of the plot
(16:54):
are so closely repeated. It was once again a murder
mystery involving vampires and hypnotism. The main borrow from Dracula
was the styling of the vampire characters, who were all
very much in the vein of Lugosi's Dracula character, including
Lugosi himself as a character called Count Mora. Some of
(17:15):
the shots are direct recreations of the most popular moments
from the ninety one film Dracula, which was done in
the hopes that it would draw audiences to see their
favorite vampire do the things that they loved. Again. Remember,
at this point there were no home theaters. There was
no HBO. They're like, you couldn't just watch a movie
(17:38):
at home. Yeah, none of the ways that we can
see movies at home today. Uh So, while kind of hokey,
this was an understandable strategy to try to get people
back into the theaters. Despite how all that sounds, reviews
were fairly good. The film made money, and that made
it a redemption project for Browning, at least to some degree.
(17:59):
Mark of the Empire also made a contribution to real
world style that persists today. The movie featured Carol Borland
as Count Mora's daughter. She was very young at the time,
and her styling was a departure from the way female vampires,
even in Browning's own films, had been portrayed. While previously
the look of such a character usually involved hair that
(18:20):
was slicked back into a tight bun and clothes that
were kind of unstructured or maybe look like a shroud,
this character, who was called Luna, had a long center
parted straight, dark hairstyle and a diaphanous gown with long
flowing sleeves. She looks a lot like Lily Munster, who
very clearly was modeled after her, and Luna could really
(18:43):
be kind of pointed to as a prototype of goth
style that you still see today, which I love. We'll
talk about Todd Browning's last films after we hear from
the sponsors that keep Stuffy Miss in history class going.
(19:05):
Browning's next project was a movie called The Devil Doll,
which came out in ninety six, and this feature ran
into problems right out of the gate due to its content.
It is an adaptation of a novel titled Burn Which Burn,
which was written by Abraham Merritt in two and that
was first released as a series in Argossy magazine, and
(19:27):
the premise of that original story is that a neurologist
investigating a series of unique deaths among a group of
patients who seemed completely unrelated. Uh discovers that they had
all visited a toy shop known for its unique and
realistic dolls, and that shop was run by a woman
named Madam Mandelip Browning collaborated with two other writers on
(19:49):
this adaptation. They were Garrett Fort and Guy Indoor, and
they opted to go with an African theme. They featured
humans who had been shrunk down into of dolls through voodoo.
It probably goes without saying they did not have any
understanding at all of the various religions that are often
(20:10):
grouped together under the term voodoo. It was entirely going
for sensationalism in this choice and the original script. A
man who had escaped from the penal colony on Devil's
Island gets to Paris and uses voodoo to enact revenge,
and at the end of the story he dies by suicide.
All of this really disturbed the Production Code administration, and
(20:35):
the British Board of Film Censors stated that it could
not be shown at all in Britain if it depicted voodoo,
but a representative of the British Board did say that
shrinking people for quote legitimate drama was allowable the story
was reworked, stripped of all the magical elements, and instead
when in a sci fi direction with the shrinking of
(20:56):
the people. So in this reworked version of the script,
which is what was made as the film, a banker
from Paris is framed by some very shady colleagues and
ends up imprisoned on Devil's Island and escapes. But he
escapes along with a mad scientist and that scientist's wife,
who have figured out how to miniaturize people and destroy
(21:17):
their free will in the process, making them obedient devil
dolls subject to telepathic communication and commands the Parisian banker
named lavand disguises himself as a woman and finds ways
to put these dolls into the homes of the people
who wronged him so that these dolls can enact his revenge.
The trailer touted this film as quote born of a
(21:40):
revenge crazed mind, the strangest story the screen has ever told.
It also played up the fact that the star Lionel
Barrymore dressed as a woman, advertising quote a great star
in the greatest surprise role since Lon Cheney played in
The Unholy Three. But the real story when it comes
to The Devil Doll was actually the practical effects that
(22:01):
were employed to create the illusion of humans shrunk down
to the size of dolls. The review in The New
York Times seemed to find the film both a little
absurd and pretty deserving of praise, and that praise was
largely due to technical achievement. That review reads, in part quote,
in The Devil Doll, you will find a Saint Bernard,
(22:21):
a Great Dane, and a circus horse reduced to mouse
like dimensions by the same magic. Arthur Hole grace Ford
and one or two other hapless players are shrunken to
fountain pen length and have a brisk time climbing Christmas trees,
staggering under the weight of a jeweled bracelet, and sticking
tiny daggers into the next and ankles of Lionel Barrymore's
(22:43):
full sized victims. Not since The Lost World, King Kong
and The Invisible Man have the camera Wizards enjoyed such
a field day. By use of the split screen, glass shots,
oversize sets, and other trick devices cherished of their kind,
they have pieced together a photoplay which is grotesque, slightly horrible,
(23:05):
and consistently interesting. A freak film, of course, and one
which may overburden Junior's imagination, but an entertaining exhibition of
photographic hocus focus. For all that, The Devil Doll made
a profit, but not a huge one to the studio,
it was apparent that there just wouldn't be another money
maker that was anywhere near the Unholy Three coming from
(23:29):
Todd Browning. Just a couple of months later, Irving Thalberg died,
and Thalberg had been one of the few executives at
MGM who had continued to support Browning's work. Without him
there anymore, Browning lost his last true ally after sputtering
around with pitches getting shot down. Browning did eventually get
(23:50):
the go ahead to make a picture based on a
novel titled Death from a Top Half. The novel was
written by Clayton Rawson. In the premise involves a retired magician,
the Great MERLINI, who solves crimes that generally appear to
be supernatural or occult, but then reveals them to be
the work of normal humans. The Browning version was titled
(24:12):
Miracles for Sale and it starred Robert Young. The Great
MERLINI was changed to the Great Morgan. The plot was
paired down from the novel to be simpler to shoot,
and while it was clearly right in Todd Browning's wheelhouse,
the studio paid him a fraction of what he had
made just a few years before for a picture. While
(24:33):
there was some violent imagery in the movie, it was
mostly comedic and light. But then there was a whole
new kind of controversy for the studio when it came out.
Magicians were really angry about it because the plot involved
many instances of the Great Morgan explaining that stage trickery
had been used to make crimes look supernatural. It ended
(24:55):
up giving away a number of trade secrets that magicians
had kept within the profes Shan The Pacific Coast Association
of Magicians wrote a complaint letter to Lowe's Cinemas about it,
and their spokesperson Hubert Brill explained that airings of the
picture quote would soon render many of the magicians of
this country without means of making their livings, for with
(25:16):
the disclosure of their secrets, public interest would be destroyed,
and their investments in time and costly equipment rendered a
total loss. Lowe's cut parts of the film out in
accordance with the magician's Association's wishes. Miracles for Sale was
Browning's last picture. His reputation had really suffered after the
(25:37):
release of Freaks, and the poor reception of the picture
undoubtedly impacted his relationship with his career. Additionally, Miracles for
Sale had been banned in Sweden because of its violence.
He was not a commodity of note in Hollywood any longer.
He couldn't get a movie greenlit, and he was viewed
by a lot of people as just being more trouble
(25:58):
than he was worth. Browning retired in the early nineteen
forties when he was just in his mid fifties. He
had been let go by MGM, and he did not
move on to another studio. He had handled his finances
well enough that money was not a concern for him.
He also sold his house in Hollywood and he moved
completely into his home in Malibu. In May of ninety four,
(26:21):
Browning's wife, Alice Wilson died. After that point, he became
even more reclusive. He rarely left his Malibu home. In
nineteen fifty three, an article about his work appeared in
Films in Review, and Browning wrote a letter to thank
the writer, Mrs Henry Geltzer. In this brief note, he
mentions that he had quote been enjoying life on the
(26:43):
cream saved off the milk I received for Flickers. I
enjoyed making that is, until I started making Freaks, and
from then on, well that's another story. Browning grew increasingly
suspicious of other people after Alice died. He started to
believe that most of the people who tried to befriend
him were trying to find a way into the film industry,
(27:05):
and this sometimes manifested in treating people really cruelly, even
when they were just trying to help him out. Um.
There's a really sad story about a woman who kept
trying to bring him food and he called her terrible names.
He lavished attention and love on his dogs, and when
his bulldog Toby died, his veterinarian who he had become
friends with, Harold Snow, was so dismayed at Browning's level
(27:26):
of grief that he gave the aging director another puppy.
Browning refused it, but Snow really felt like he was
not going to be okay if he didn't have an
animal in his life, so he left it with a
neighbor who eventually got Browning to warm up to it.
As a side note, please don't give people pets as gifts.
That's a very bad idea. Yeah. I said that on
social media one time, and people tried to pick a
(27:47):
fight with me, and it's like, yeah, if you've had
a thoughtful conversation with somebody about that's fine. Don't just
surprise people with animals. Correct. All. Though Browning had been
somewhat estranged from his family in Louisville as he had
gotten older, he had reconnected with his brother, Avery, and
(28:07):
the two men got in the habit of talking on
the phone every day. But then, on December four, Avery
died accidentally from asphyxiation due to an unvented gas heater,
and unlike when the Browning parents had died, Todd decided
to go to Louisville to attend his brother's funeral. But
even this was a pretty odd scenario. Todd attended the wake,
(28:32):
but he would only consent to sitting behind a curtain.
He refused to even greet guests. Even Todd and Avery's
foster sister, Jenny, was denied an audience with Todd. Even
a relatives tried to reach out to him at his hotel.
They were just met with all kinds of excuses as
to why he could not speak with them, for reasons
(28:53):
that were never disclosed. Browning just wanted no actual engagement
with the people from his hometown at all. Yeah, we
have no idea what went down that made him behave
this way, or if nothing went down and he just
got something. We just don't know what was going on there.
But in his final years, Browning really never wanted to
discuss his film career, and he would actually get kind
(29:14):
of angry if anyone asked him about it. He wanted
to live with his animals, which at that point where
dogs and ducks in peace. But he did seem to
grow a little less bristly in the last period of
his life. He started giving people gifts, like his neighbors
who had tried for years to check on him, only
to be met with suspicion, for example, and over time,
(29:36):
that veterinarian we mentioned Dr Snow and his wife, who
had started driving Browning around town after he had had
a series of strokes, convinced Todd to just move in
with them so that they could keep an eye on him,
and for a while he really kind of became part
of their family, and he would cook for them and
he socialized with the Snows. Browning was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer,
(29:57):
and it was really too late by the tie. It
was discovered his larynx had to be removed in June
of two that left him mute. He had to have
a breathing tube after the surgery, and he became prone
to anxiety attacks. He really became afraid that he was
going to lose his ability to breathe. Another stroke that
(30:18):
summer degraded his health further, as well as his ability
to communicate. He signed a power of attorney over to
the Snows in August. Browning died in the very early
morning hours of October six, nine sixty two, in Malibu,
at the age of eighty two. In his will, he
had left the Snows half of his estate. He kind
of split it up between them in an interesting way,
(30:40):
where Mr. Snow got and Mrs Snow got thirty five.
He also left them the contents of his liquor cabinet,
and the rest of his estate was doled out to
various neighbors, caregivers, and the Corsair Crippled Children's Hospital in Louisville.
And the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. Nothing went to
his family, and he noted this in his will by writing, quote,
(31:03):
I have intentionally and with full knowledge, admitted to provide
for my heirs. In a final pretty odd coda to
his life, there was a strange incident with a house
painter while he was laid out at the Gates, Kingsley
and Gates funeral home. This house painter had become friends
and drinking buddies with Browning towards the end of his life.
(31:26):
The painter is only ever recalled by the name Lucky.
That's the only name that shows up any accounts of this,
and he was allowed to spend the night in the
funeral home with Browning's body simply to drink a case
of course beer, which was allegedly Browning's favorite. So he's
doing this sort of as a send off to Browning.
(31:48):
Todd Browning had stipulated that there would be no funeral
held for him. He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, which
was where Alice's ashes had been interred. Yeah, that was
actually part of Alice's family plot. He wanted to be
with her family and not his own. Uh. Today, many
of Browning's films, including Freaks, which essentially ended his career,
(32:11):
are much beloved as cult favorites. Then even before his death,
Freaks was actually screened at the Venice Film Festival and
it was very well received, although that happened just weeks
before he died, and it's believed he didn't even know
about it. Uh So he kind of went went to
his grave thinking that everyone hated him over that movie
and never never got to see people really look at
(32:32):
it in a more thoughtful way and try to really
analyze what it meant in terms of representation and uh,
you know kind of morality has told through a very
unique lens. M hm. Oh, Todd Browning. Yeah, of course
his films now show up in you know, film school
courses all the time for a variety of reasons, including
(32:54):
they're often just beautifully staged. He did a lot of
stuff that um was staged kind of you know, a
play that was being filmed, which now sometimes infuriated some
of the the cameraman who worked with him, who wanted
to do much more involved stuff. But uh, in other
times it's it's uniquely effective. Todd Browning, m hm. Talk
(33:17):
about my feelings on his work in our behind the
scenes on Friday, but in the meantime I have an
email from our listener, Katie. I love this so much.
It involves both animals and stethoscopes, Katie writes, High Holly
and Tracy. I was driving home from work listening to
the episode about the history of stethoscopes and knew today
(33:39):
was the day I could write in I am a veterinarian.
We have stethoscopes with tiny bells for little songbirds, and
very long stethoscopes for we don't want to get too
close to our more dangerous patients. Lanek would have appreciated them,
I think, But I'm writing to tell you a story
of inclusion. Pre covid. I had a mother and her
two elementary age daughters bring their cat in a routine exam.
(34:01):
The girls were helping me do my exam until we
got to the part where we listened to the heart
and lungs, which is usually a crowd pleaser. The older
daughter shrunk away back to her mom. The mother explained
that her daughter had hearing aids and that was why
she couldn't use the stethoscope. I assured her that one
of my previous colleagues also used hearing aids, and that
she had a special stethoscope that talked to her hearing aids.
(34:23):
The rest of the visit went along as normal, and
they went their way. The following day, the mother sent
me an email saying that her daughter had always wanted
to be a veterinarian, but thought she could not because
of her disability. Now she has nothing standing in the
way of making her dreams come true. I love it. Uh.
You never know what small statement will make a big
difference in someone's life. Thank you for feeding my curiosity
(34:45):
of the world. I especially love learning about how medicine
is different in the human world, but people are gross.
I much prefer kiddies. That makes me very, very delighted
to hear. You'll find a picture of my two cats,
Felix and Susan attached for your viewing pleasure. Thanks again
for all that you do, Katie. I love this. What
a cool idea. I didn't know there were stethoscopes that
(35:05):
could communicate directly with hearing aids. It makes sense. We
talked about how there's all kinds of astonishing stethoscope technology
and radias that are very, very uh different and much
evolved from that original cylinder that lay and accused. Um,
but so cool and I'm so glad that you know
(35:26):
she was able to let a future veterinarian. Now, no problem,
We got you. If you would like to write to us,
you can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. You can also find us on social media
as Missed in History, and you can subscribe to the
show if you haven't yet. That is easy as pie
to do. You can do it on the iHeart Radio
app or anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows.
(35:54):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio
at the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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