Books by Leger Grindon

Tod Browning was an American actor and director whose career spanned the silent and talkie eras. He joined a traveling circus while still a teenager, performing as a clown and contortionist. In 1915 he made his debut as an actor in DW Griffith's classic Intolerance. Browning began directing in 1917, frequently co-writing his films. His first film with actor Lon Chaney, The Unholy Three, was a hit and led to several memorable silent melodramas, including The Unknown, London After Midnight (which Browning remade in 1935 as Mark Of The Vampire), and West Of Zanzibar. By the 1930s Browning was specialising in horror, and directed two classics of the era: Dracula with Bela Lugosi, and the astounding Freaks. The latter, a shocker set among the freaks of a traveling sideshow, was far too disturbing for its time and was quickly yanked from theaters; only in the 1960s did the film come to be hailed as a masterpiece. Browning retired after directing Miracles for Sale (1939); however, as with Freaks, the ground-breaking significance of his work only started to be recognised decades later.