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Tod Browning Biography |
Charles Albert Browning, Jr. (July 12, 1880 - October 5, 1962), better known as Tod Browning, was an American film actor and director whose career spanned the silent and talkie eras. Best known as a horror director for Dracula (1931) with Bela Lugosi and the cult classic Freaks (1932), he directed many movies in a wide range of genres.
Early life
Tod Browning was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the second son of Charles and Lydia Browning. As a young boy, he put on amateur plays in his backyard. He was fascinated by the circus and carnival life, and at the age of 16 he ran away from his well-to-do family to become a performer.
Changing his name to "Tod", he travelled extensively with sideshows, carnivals, and circuses. His jobs included working as a barker for the Wild Man of Borneo, performing a live burial act in which he was billed as "The Living Corpse", and performing as a clown with the Ringling Brothers Circus. He would draw on this experience as inspiration for some of his film work.
He performed in vaudeville as an actor, magician, dancer, etc. He appeared in the Mutt and Jeff and The Lizard and the Coon acts, and in a blackface act titled The Wheel of Mirth alongside comedian Charles Murray.
Beginnings of a film career
Later, while Browning was working as director of a variety theater in New York, he met D. W. Griffith. He began acting along with Murray on single-reel nickelodeon comedies for Griffith and the Biograph company.
In 1913 Griffith split from Biograph and moved to California. Browning followed and continued to act in Griffith's films, now for Reliance-Majestic Studios, including a stint as an extra in the epic Intolerance. Around that time he began directing, eventually directing 11 short films for Reliance-Majestic.
In June of 1915, he crashed his car at full speed into a moving train. His passengers were actor Elmer Booth and George A. Seigmann. Booth was killed instantly, while Seigmann and Browning suffered serious injuries, including in Browning's case a shattered right leg. During his convalescence, Browning wrote scripts, and did not return to active film work until 1917.
Silent feature films
Browning's feature film debut was Jim Bludso (1917), about a riverboat captain who sacrifices himself to save his passengers from a fire. It was well-received.
Browning moved back to New York in 1917. He directed two films for Metro Studios: Peggy, the Will o' the Wisp and The Jury of Fate, both starring Mabel Taliaferro, the latter in a dual role achieved with double exposure techniques that were groundbreaking for the time. He moved back to California in 1918 and produced two more films for Metro: The Eyes of Mystery and Revenge.
In the spring of 1918 he left Metro and joined Bluebird Productions, a subsidiary of Universal Pictures, where he met Irving Thalberg. Thalberg paired Browning with Lon Chaney, Sr. for the first time for the film The Wicked Darling (1919), a melodrama in which Chaney played a thief who forces a poor girl from the slums into a life of crime.
The death of his father sent Browning into a depression that led to alcoholism. He was laid off by Universal and his wife left him. However, he recovered, reconciled with his wife, and got a one-picture contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer. The film he produced for MGM, The Day of Faith, was a moderate success, putting his career back on track.
Thalberg reunited Browning with Lon Chaney for The Unholy Three (1925), the story of three circus performers who concoct a scheme to con and steal jewels from rich people using disguises. Browning's circus experience shows in his sympathetic portrayal of the antiheroes. The film was a resounding success, so much so that it was later remade in 1930 as Lon Chaney's first (and only) talkie. Browning and Chaney embarked on a series of popular collaborations, including The Blackbird and The Road to Mandalay. The Unknown (1927), originally titled Alonzo the Armless, can be considered a precursor to Freaks in that it concerns a love triangle involving a circus freak. London After Midnight (1927), from this period, was Browning's first foray into vampire film and is a highly sought-after lost film. Their final collaboration was Where East is East (1929), of which only incomplete prints have survived. Browning's first talkie was The Thirteenth Chair (1929), which was also released as a silent and starred Bela Lugosi.
Talkies
After Chaney's death in 1930, Browning was hired by Universal Pictures to direct Dracula (1931). Although Browning wanted to hire an unknown European actor for the title role and have him be mostly offscreen as a sinister presence, budget constraints and studio interference necessitated the casting of Bela Lugosi and a more straightforward approach. Although the film is now considered a classic, at the time Universal was unhappy with it and preferred the Spanish-language version filmed on the same sets at night.
After directing the boxing melodrama The Iron Man (1931), he began work on Freaks (1932). Based on a short story by the screenwriter of The Unholy Three, it concerns a love triangle between a wealthy midget, a gold-digging aerialist, and a strongman, a murder plot, and the vengeance dealt out by the midget and his fellow circus freaks. The film was highly controversial, even after heavy editing to remove many disturbing scenes, and was a commercial failure. Browning's career was derailed.
Browning found himself unable to get his requested projects greenlighted. After directing the drama Fast Workers (1933) starring John Gilbert, who was also not in good standing with the studio, he was allowed to direct a remake of London After Midnight, originally titled Vampires of Prague but later retitled Mark of the Vampire (1935). In the remake, the roles played by Lon Chaney in the original were split between Lionel Barrymore and Bela Lugosi (spoofing his Dracula image). After that he directed The Devil Doll (1936), originally titled The Witch of Timbuctoo, from a script he wrote himself. It starred Lionel Barrymore as an escapee from an island prison who avenges himself on the people who imprisoned him using magically animated dolls. His final film was the murder mystery Miracles for Sale (1939).
Retirement
After Miracles for Sale, Browning did some scenario work for MGM. In 1942 he retired and moved to Malibu. He became such a recluse that soon after his wife died in 1944, Variety accidentally published an obituary for him. Even his neighbors rarely saw him. In the late 1950s he developed throat cancer, necessitating tongue surgery. When his brother Avery died in 1959, he attended the funeral from a private room and would not let family members see him. On October 6th, 1962, he was found dead in the bathroom of some friends. |
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