Tod Browning

Merlini the Magician, Clayton Rawson's crime-solving illusionist, has been singularly ill-used by Hollywood, having appeared in a mere two films, "starring" in only one. Miracles for Sale compounds the oversight by rechristening Merlini as "Michael Morgan", in the person of Robert Young. The picture starts well, with a grisly political execution revealed to be an elaborate bit of stage magic perpetrated by the personable Morgan. The story then goes into a fraud and murder scheme perpetrated by Dave Duvallo (Henry Hull), whose consummate skill with makeup and Houdinilike escape devices comes in handy for phony spiritualist Madame Rapport (Gloria Holden). The film's highlight finds Morgan exposing several tricks utilized by magicians and fortune-tellers to gull the public, a sequence which incurred the wrath of the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians, who took a dim view at having the secrets of their trade revealed for the cost of a movie ticket. Of historical interest is the fact that Miracles for Sale was the final directorial effort of Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks etc.) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Mark of the Vampire is Tod Browning's remake of his own 1927 thriller London After Midnight, which unfortunately no longer exists. The sudden appearance of ghostly vampires in a remote mittel-European community is seemingly tied in with an old, unsolved murder case. Police inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill) and occult expert Prof. Zelen (Lionel Barrymore) investigate, with the full cooperation of leading citizen Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt). For awhile, it looks as though the vampires -- Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) and his chalky-faced daughter Luna (Carroll Borland) -- will continue to hold the community in thrall, but the truth behind their mysterious activities is revealed midway through the film, whereupon the story concentrates on identifying the well-concealed murderer. In the original London After Midnight, Lon Chaney played both Count Mora and Prof. Zelen, which should provide a clue as to the film's incredible outcome. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The genesis of MGM's Freaks was a magazine piece by Ted Robbins titled Spurs. The story involved a terrible revenge enacted by a mean-spirited circus midget upon his normal-sized wife. In adapting Spurs for the screen, writers Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, Edgar Allan Wolf, and Al Boasberg retained the circus setting and the little man-big woman wedding, all the while de-vilifying the midget and transforming the woman into the true "heavy" of the piece. German "little person" Harry Earles plays Hans, who falls in love with long-legged trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). Discovering that Hans is heir to a fortune, Cleopatra inveigles him into a marriage, all the while planning to bump off her new husband and run away with brutish strongman Hercules (Henry Victor). What she doesn't reckon with is the code of honor among circus freaks: "offend one, offend them all." What set this film apart from director Tod Browning's earlier efforts was the fact that genuine circus and carnival sideshow performers were cast as the freaks: Harry Earles and his equally diminutive sister Daisy, Siamese twins Violet and Daisy Hilton, legless Johnny Eck, armless-legless Randian (who rolls cigarettes with his teeth), androgynous Josephine-Joseph, "pinheads" Schlitzie, Elvira, Jennie Lee Snow, and so on. Upon its initial release, Freaks was greeted with such revulsion from movie-house audiences that MGM spent the next 30 years distancing themselves as far from the project as possible. For many years available only in a truncated reissue version titled Nature's Mistakes, Freaks was eventually restored to its original release print. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"I am....Drac-u-la. I bid you velcome." Thus does Bela Lugosi declare his presence in the 1931 screen version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Director Tod Browning invests most of his mood and atmosphere in the first two reels, which were based on the original Stoker novel; the rest of the film is a more stagebound translation of the popular stage play by John Balderston and Hamilton Deane. Even so, the electric tension between the elegant Dracula and the vampire hunter Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) works as well on the screen as it did on the stage. And it's hard to forget such moments as the lustful gleam in the eyes of Mina Harker (Helen Chandler) as she succumbs to the will of Dracula, or the omnipresent insane giggle of the fly-eating Renfield (Dwight Frye). Despite the static nature of the final scenes, Dracula is a classic among horror films, with Bela Lugosi giving the performance of a lifetime as the erudite Count (both Lugosi and co-star Frye would forever after be typecast as a result of this film, which had unfortunate consequences for both men's careers). Compare this Dracula to the simultaneously filmed Spanish-language version, which makes up for the absence of Lugosi with a stronger sense of visual dynamics in the lengthy dialogue sequences. In 1999, a special rerelease of Dracula was prepared featuring a new musical score written by Philip Glass and performed by The Kronos Quartet. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of his 1921 film of the same name, Tod Browning's Outside the Law offers Edward G. Robinson in an incisive, pre-Little Caesar gangster portrayal. Robinson, however, is not the star of the picture: that honor goes to Owen Moore, cast as enterprising bank robber Fingers O'Dell. As part of his plan to knock over the City National Bank, Fingers poses as an advertising mannequin in the bank's window, allowing himself to case the joint while in full view of the police and public. Gangster boss Cobra Collins (Robinson) gets wind of Fingers' scheme and demands a 50-percent piece of the action. Fingers' girlfriend Connie (Mary Nolan) tries to throw Collins off the track by giving him the wrong date of the scheduled heist, but this plan falls through at the last minute. After blowing the bank's safe, Fingers hides out in an apartment which happens to be next door to a flat owned by a policeman. Thus it is that when Collins shows up, demanding his share of the dough, the cops are ready for him. Browning's directorial technique and Robinson's energetic performance help to obscure the plot idiocies in this outlandish cops-and-robbers yarn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Star Lon Chaney Sr. and director Tod Browning bade adieu to the silent-movie era with 1929's Where East is East. His face covered with hideous scars (convincingly applied with nonflexible collodion), Chaney is cast as weather-beaten animal trapper Tiger Haynes, at present living and working in Indochina. Haynes' loving relationship with his nubile half-caste daughter Toyo (Lupe Velez) is threatened by the return of Toyo's scheming mother, Madame Da Sylva (Estelle Taylor). Still harboring a grudge against Tiger, the Madame decides to get even by stealing Toyo's sweetheart Bobby (Lloyd Hughes) away from her. The villainess also intends to destroy Haynes by turning his animal "pets" against him. But the Madame is herself destroyed by Haynes' loyal gorilla, who in a gruesome (but largely unseen) finale tears the viperish woman apart. A typically morbid entry in the Chaney-Browning series, Where East is East may elicit more laughs than chills when seen today. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this lurid Tod Browning melodrama, boasting a thoroughly creepy performance by Lon Chaney, Chaney plays Phroso, a limehouse magician who is thoroughly in love with his wife Anna (Jacquelin Gadsdon). Also in love with Phroso's wife is ivory-trader Crane (Lionel Barrymore). After a performance, Anna tells Phroso that she is leaving him to go away with Crane to Africa. After Phroso confronts Crane, Crane kicks him down a second-floor landing, crippling him. Months later, Phroso, now known as "Dead Legs" Flint, is now seen to be paralyzed from the chest down, and he gets around by pulling himself forward by his hands. He enters a church where he sees Annie has returned, but she is dead at the altar, leaving her child Maizie, whom Dead Legs assumes to be Crane's child, crying next to her. Hate consumes the soul of Dead Legs, and he swears vengeance on Crane. Years pass. Dead Legs is now lording it over a group of African savages as their god. Maizie (Mary Nolan) has been installed at a brothel in Zanzibar and is now a broken-down alcoholic prostitute. Dead Legs conspires to steal some of Crane's ivory so Crane can appear before Dead Legs, and his revenge can be redeemed. He sends for Maizie and reveals her to Crane. He plans on killing Crane and, due to an African tribal custom that says a man's daughter must be burned at the stake when he dies, have the savages have their way with Maizie. But when Crane arrives and he tells Dead Legs that Maizie is not his daughter but Dead Legs' daughter, Dead Legs is stupefied. Crane leaves and is shot by the savages, his body returned to Dead Legs. Now the bloodthirsty savages want Maizie, so that she can be sacrificed at the stake. Dead Legs, as her father, must now conspire a way to save his daughter from certain death. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

As a group, the silent-movie collaborations between director Tod Browning and star Lon Chaney hardly represent the best work of either man, though each film definitely has its moments. One of the best, and weirdest, of the batch is The Unknown. Chaney plays a carnival performer known as the "Armless Wonder," who performs near-miraculous stunts with his bare feet. In fact, he is in possession of both his arms, but keeps them strapped to his side to maintain the illusion of being limbless. Chaney's beautiful assistant Joan Crawford has a pathological fear of being touched by any man. This leads Chaney to believe that he is attractive to Crawford so long as his keeps his arms hidden. Halfway through the film, Chaney murders the circus manager--a crime witnessed by Crawford, who was only able to glimpse Chaney's distinctively mutated thumb. To cover up his crime, and to make himself the perfect mate for Crawford, Chaney blackmails a doctor into amputating his arms. Upon returning to the carnival, the now-genuinely armless Chaney learns to his horror that Crawford has overcome her aberration of being touched, thanks to handsome circus strong man Norman Kerry. Enraged, Chaney plots to kill Kerry in a horrible fashion...but guess who ends up seriously dead? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This characteristically grim Lon Chaney/Tod Browning collaboration stars "The Man of a Thousand Faces" in two distinct characterizations. By day, the crippled Bishop of Limehouse (Chaney) is a kindly, beneficent figure, ministering to the needs of the poor and destitute. But by night, the Bishop sheds his clerical garb-and his physical handicap-to become the Black Bird, mastermind of a vast underworld organization. Completely undetectable and untouchable, the Black Bird can only be destroyed by himself-a fact that consumes the film's final reels. Renee Adoree and Owen Moore also star in this atmospheric melodrama, which was adapted by Waldemar Young from Tod Browning's story The Mockingbird. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Returning to one of his favorite themes, crooks bilking the gullible nouveau riche, Tod Browning both co-wrote (with Waldemar Young) and directed this evocative silent melodrama starring Conway Tearle as Michael Nash, an American criminal who imports a gang of Hungarian gypsies to gain control over a fortune. The victim, Doris Merrick (Gladys Hulette), is persuaded by fake medium Zara (Aileen Pringle) to hand over her jewels to Nash. But the seance does more than raise the fake spirit of Doris' dear departed father; it also uncovers a plot by "Uncle" James (David Torrence) to take over the girl's inheritance. Saving Doris from her unscrupulous guardian, Nash and Zara renounce crime and return to Hungary. Somewhat of a disappointment in comparison with Browning's later thriller The Unholy Three (1925), The Mystic benefited from the presence of costume designer Romain de Tirtoff (aka Erté) whose extravagant black-and-white creations were luxuriously modeled by the sophisticated Aileen Pringle. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In one of her valiant but unsuccessful attempts to escape the serial grind, action heroine Ruth Roland played Ruth Craig whose wasteful ways almost ruin her family. Although in love with aviator/inventor Grant Elliot (Earl Schenk), Ruth falls in with the wrong crowd and is soon accused of embezzlement. The first of three modest films directed by Tod Browning for lowly FBO in 1924, Dollar Down was shelved because of its poor quality. The plodding melodrama was finally dumped on an unsuspecting audience after Browning had scored with MGM's The Unholy Three (1925). Perennial chorus girl Toby Wing, later a fixture in Busby Berkeley musical extravaganzas, appeared in a bit part in Dollar Down. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In between contracts with Universal and MGM, where he would do his best work, enigmatic director Tod Browning marked time with lowly Film-Booking-Office for two melodramas starring the smoldering Evelyn Brent, The Dangerous Flirt and Silk Stocking Sal. Despite an undeserved bad reputation, Sheila Fairfax (Brent), The Dangerous Flirt of the title, manages to land mining engineer Dick Morris (Edward Earle). But on their wedding night, Dick's embraces intimidate her and, disgusted with his bride's coldness, he leaves for South America. She follows tearfully, and they are reunited at the rancho belonging to Don Alfonso (Sheldon Lewis). Don Alfonso's nephew, José (Pierre Gendron), proves to be the villain who once ravished Sheila and Dick kills him in a duel. Realizing the root to her marital problems began with José and the subsequent attitude of her prissy aunt, Prissy (Clarissa Selwynne), Sheila manages to free her jailed husband and they escape to start a new life together. The dark-haired Evelyn Brent appeared in quite a few potboilers like this before being "re-discovered" by Josef von Sternberg. But for the rest of her life, Brent always credited Browning for starting "the Queen of the Underworld thing" that ultimately led to her playing Feathers McCoy, the quintessential gangster's moll in Underworld (1927). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide