Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning

ISBN: 0385474067

Author: David J. Skal

Condition: Used

One of the most original and unsettling filmmakers of all time -- thecreator of the horror classics Dracula and Freaks, among others-- Tod Browning is also one of the most enigmatic directors who ever worked in Hollywood. A complicated, troubled, and fiercely private man, he confounded would-be biographers hoping to penetrate his secret, obsessive world -- both during his lifetime and afterward.Now, film historians David J. Skal and Elias Savada, using newly discoveredfamily documents and revealing published interviews with friends andcolleagues, join forces for the first full-length biography of the man whoearned a reputation as "the Edgar Allan Poe of the cinema." The authorschronicle Browning's turn-of-the-century flight from an eccentric Louisville family into the world of carnival sideshows (where he began his career literally buried alive) and vaudeville, his disastrous first marriage, his rapid climb to riches in the burgeoning silent film industry, and thealcoholism that would plague him throughout his life. Browning's legendarycollaborations with Lon Chaney, Sr., and Bela "Dracula" Lugosi are explored in depth, along with the studio politics that ended his career after the bizarrecircus drama Freaks -- a cult classic today -- proved to be one of thebiggest box-office disasters of the early thirties.Illustrated throughout with rare photographs, Dark Carnival is both anartful, often shocking portrait of a singular film pioneer and an illuminatingstudy of the evolution of horror, essential to an understanding of ourcontinuing fascination with the macabre.