Tod Browning

Tod Browning, born July 12, 1880 in Louisville, KY, began his love and fascination with circus life early. At the age of 16, he left school to become a circus clown. He toured around on the circus, vaudeville, and burlesque circuits until 1913 when he was signed to the Biograph Company, a major American motion-picture studio. Browning acted in a number of roles before releasing his directorial debut, the one-reel silent film, The Lucky Transfer, in 1915. Between 1915 and 1925, Browning directed over 40 films and acted in over 50. 

In 1925, Browning began creating films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the first of which was the silent film, The Unholy Three, based on the Tod Robbins book of the same name. The film is about three sideshow performers who are kicked out of the sideshow after a fight breaks out. The “Unholy Three” are Tweedledee, played by Harry Earles. Earles was one of the The Doll Family siblings, all of whom were little people. Famed silent-film horror actor, Lon Chaney, played the dual role of Prof. Echo and Mrs. O'Grady. Victor McLaglen played the role of Hercules, the strongman. Over the course of the film, they hatch a scheme to become rich, to limited success. The film was remade only five years later as a sound film, but was directed by Jack Conway because Browning had switched to Universal Studios.

Lon Chaney would work with Browning on a total of 10 films. Another one of their collaborations was the 1927 silent film, The Unknown. Chaney plays Alonzo the Armless, an armless carnival knife thrower who is trying to win over the love of his assistant, Nanon, played by Joan Crawford. 1927’s The Show and 1928’s West of Zanzibar, which also featured Lon Chaney, continued with the showman theme.

In 1931, Browning kickstarted the era of the classic Universal horror films by directing “Dracula”, starring Bela Lugosi. “Dracula” was a huge hit, as well as James Whale’s “Frankenstein”, released the same year. MGM wanted Browning back, and to release their own horror film, so they were happy to let Browning make whatever film he wanted.

The following year, Browning returned to MGM and released one of the most iconic cult classic films of all time, 1932’s Freaks. Freaks was adapted from another Tod Robbins short story, “Spur”. It was a film that came at the end of the Pre-Code Hollywood era. The Pre-Code was a time between the beginning of sound films in the late 1920s and the enforcement of film censorship with the Hays Code in the summer of 1934. The films were subversive and included sexual innuendo, unconventional sexual relationships of the time, violence, anti-heros, and morally ambiguous characters, among other scandalous characteristics. Advertisements for Freaks included tag lines such as “What about abnormal people? Are they as human as we? See the real Siamese twins and understand their love life” and “Do the Siamese twins have love lives? You’ll find out! Can a full-grown normal woman marry a dwarf?” Despite films of the time being risqué, Freaks was still shocking and controversial.

The “freak” side of the cast was was made up of Harry Earles, who was in the The Unholy Three, and his sister Daisy, was was also a little person; Angelo Rossitto, a little person; Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins; Schlitzie, Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow, "pinheads"; Josephine Joseph, an intersex person; Johnny Eck, half-man; Frances O'Connor, an armless woman; Peter Robinson, “The Living Skeleton”; Jane Barnell, a bearded lady; Koo-Koo the Bird Girl and Elizabeth Green who also performed as a “bird girl”; and Prince Randian, an armless and legless man.

The film was controversial from the beginning. Allegedly, Myrna Loy and other actresses refused to be cast in the lead role of “normal” trapeze artist, Cleopatra. MGM employees were upset about sharing a cafeteria with the “freaks” that made up the majority of the cast. F. Scott Fitzgerald was working as a screenwriter for MGM at the time, he came across the Hilton sisters ordering lunch in the cafeteria. Upon noticing they were conjoined twins, he fled the building. A separate cafeteria was set up for the cast, so MGM employees never needed to interact with them.

The film doesn’t portray the “different” looking performers as the “freaks” but rather it is the able-bodied performers who are the real villains. The beautiful, blond Cleopatra, played by Olga Baclanova, is the true outsider among this family of outcasts. The group anoints her “one of us”, but she conspires with Hercules the strongman, played by Henry Victor, to betray them. As a result, the ”freaks” turn them into people just like them, forever a “freak”. Cleopatra is mutilated and becomes an attraction. In a cut ending, Hercules is seen singing in a high-pitched tone, implying that he was castrated. 

The public was horrified upon the film's release. Legend has it that the film caused a woman to miscarry. Advertisements for the film included warnings that children would not be admitted and “adults not in normal health” should avoid watching it. The film would inevitably be censored after test screenings, with close to 30 minutes of the 90 minute film being cut out and the ending changed. The uncensored version screened at the San Francisco premiere because there wasn’t enough time to switch the print. That version received positive reviews. 

The film was recut to make the “freaks” less sympathetic and more villainous, turning it into a more conventional horror movie. The normalization of people that society deemed as “outsiders” or “different” was too much for the public. The uncensored version with the original 30 minutes has become impossible to see and is thought to be lost. The film was released but was quickly pulled from theaters. Versions of the film don’t include the MGM Lion logo because they were too horrified by it. MGM was a “respectable” film studio that had released what was essentially a big budget exploitation film. 

Freaks was banned in Great Britain. In early 1932, the British Board of Film Classification only had two ratings, “U”, meaning the film can be viewed by anyone and “A”, for adults. Later in the year, “H” was added to indicate horror movies with admittance for ages 16 and over. The film board thought that not even the “H” rating would be appropriate for the film. 

Freaks is considered one of the earliest cult films. Even its marketing in 1932 seemed to play into this “cult status” that had yet to fully form by screening it due to public demand. Theaters advertising the film included disclaimers, “Notice- It was not our desire to show this picture but the numerous amount of requests prompts us to show it”. It also utilized a shock marketing approach. As soon as warnings and disclaimers are put on posters and rumors spread about people falling ill while seeing it, the public wanted to see what all the fuss was about. This kind of marketing would gain attention decades later with The Exorcist, then with the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.

To this day, there are very few films or TV shows that have come close to amassing a cast of that many people with that many physical differences in a circus setting. A notable recent attempt was 2014’s American Horror Story: Freak Show. The cast included Mat Fraser, Rose Siggins, Jyoti Amge, and Ben Woolf, people with real physical differences, mixed with mainstream actors’ made-up to appear like they had physical differences.

Browning’s career was never the same after Freaks. He went from being one of the most in demand directors, to being a pariah. Browning only made four more films before retiring in 1942. His wife, Alice Wilson, died in 1944, at which point he withdrew from society. In 1949, Browning received the Honorary Life Member Award from the Directors Guild of America.

Freaks continued to find people to champion it. Dwain Esper was a director and producer of early exploitation films, specializing in “cautionary tales” films. He bought the rights for Freaks from MGM in 1947. In the 1940s and 1950s, he traveled the film around under its original title, as well as Forbidden Love, The Monster Show, and Nature’s Mistake. The Nature's Mistake version included a written prologue which talked about how “freaks of nature” are perceived and how, with medical advances, scientists are “rapidly eliminating such blunders of nature from the world”. This verbiage made it seem as though this would be the last opportunity to view these born different people.

Esper was part of a roadshow exploitation film group called "the Forty Thieves''. "The Forty Thieves” had a similar ethic to sideshows. They would come into small towns and set up tents, utilize drive-ins, or find an independent theater that wasn’t owned by a Hollywood studio. Then cover the theater lobbies and towns in attractive advertising. It was all about making money by drawing people with films about “adults only” subjects that Hollywood studios weren’t making. Often these films were older existing films retitled and with added salacious clips mixed in for added “adult” appeal. Occasionally, the films were originals. Esper would sometimes show Freaks with a nudist camp film directly following the screening. Screenings were occasionally accompanied by an “expert” giving a lecture on the topic and using that as an opportunity to introduce a blow-off, something extra the audience could pay for. Esper would include sideshow performers at some of the screenings. Many of these men had a carnival or showman background, so they knew how the game was played.

In 1952, the British film production company, Adelphi Films, owned a copy of the film. Their director, Arthur Dent, presented the film to the British Board of Film Classification for a reevaluation. He thought the “X” category, which was introduced in 1951 to replace “H”, would be well suited for the film, even though “X” was still ages 16 and over. The BBFC rejected the film again.

Back in the United States, Willy Werby bought the rights for Freaks off Esper in the late 1950s. Church of Satan founder, Anton Lavey, recommended it to her for a horror film program at the newly formed Camera Obscura Film Society. He was a big fan of Freaks and amassed a large collection of promotional materials for the film. Esper had let the film fall into obscurity once the film roadshow scene had dried up. When Werby finally tracked down the print and got the rights, she began lending prints of the film out, beginning to reignite interest in it. After some time, she sold the rights to Raymond Rohauer, who specialized in the distribution of early American cinema. MGM eventually reacquired the rights after the film gained a new following.

Dan Talbot, a pioneer in the distribution of arthouse cinema, was screening Freaks at his theater, the New Yorker Theater, in 1960. Photographer Diane Arbus caught a screening and it changed her life. She went back repeatedly to see these real people on the screen who looked different from anyone she had seen before.  This sent Arbus on a path that would define her as a photographer. She would become known for photographing outsiders, frequenting locations like Hubert's dime museum in Times Square. 

In 1962, Freaks was screened in the horror category at the Cannes Festival Repertory, giving it new credibility and solidifying its status as a cult classic. It also contributed to Great Britain lifting their ban on the film in 1963. The film had transferred to another distributor who decided to try their luck with the BBFC. The distributor pitched the film for distribution at art house theaters, therefore limiting it to a more mature audience who wouldn’t sensationalize it. Freaks was finally awarded the “X” rating and was cleared for release. After Cannes, Freaks was reviewed in the Spring 1962 issue of Film Quarterly. Writer John Thomas gave the film a positive review and called the film a “minor masterpiece”.

After retiring, Browning had lived out the next 20 years as a recluse in his Malibu, California home. In 1962, Browning was diagnosed with throat cancer. Later that year, on October 6, 1962, Browning died. He was 82 years old.

Freaks continued to be a staple on college campuses and the emerging midnight movie circuit of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1994, Freaks was included in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. In 2004, Freaks was released on DVD, introducing it to a new audience yet again. The DVD included three alternative endings and a documentary about the making of the film. Today, it can be found on streaming services, making it more accessible than ever before. 

We may never be able to see Freaks the way Tod Browning intended, but Browning would be proud to know his passion project has survived nearly 100 years. The film has inspired everyone from our own Coney Island Circus Sideshow as well as many other variety performers, to The Ramones’ song “Pinhead” and Bill Griffith’s Zippy the Pinhead comics, to Douglas Trumbull’s use of amputees in the 1972 sci-fi film Silent Running. Most importantly, it was solidified as a cultural landmark when it was referenced in episodes of The Simpsons and South Park. 

Let us always remember the welcoming chant, “gobble gooble, gooble gobble, we accept you, one of us!”

Written by Eliza Rinn