The ladies’ man Hercules is played by Henry Victor, who was in the 1916 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray and would go on to play Captain Schultz in the 1942 comedy To Be Or Not To Be. Former concert violinist Roscoe Ates stuttered jealously as Roscoe. The Armless Girl, who eats, drinks and smokes with her feet, was played by Frances O’Connor, who performed as a living Venus de Milo.Ĭowboy actor Wallace Ford, who appeared in more than 200 movies, plays the sensitive clown Phroso. Leonardo DiCaprio has been trying to make a movie out of the story of his life since the 1990s. Eck was a sideshow performer, actor, artist, photographer, illusionist and ran a penny arcade. Half Boy was played by Johnny Eck, the Gooney Bird from Tarzan pictures. The forensics report said Daisy died first and Violet died two to four days later. The sisters were discovered dead in 1969 of Hong Kong flu. They tap-danced with Bob Hope as the Dancemedians in 1926. The Hilton sisters had been performing in Europe since they were three, but their management kept their money. The Siamese Twins were played by Daisy and Violet Hilton. The multilingual performer would ultimately have four daughters and a son with Princess Sarah. Barnum sideshow performer who had tetra-amelia syndrome. She is as much hurt for Han as she is for herself when she sees him degraded.Īs the Human Torso who lights a cigarette using only his mouth (I’d love to see the footage of him rolling it), Browning cast The Human Caterpillar, Prince Randian, a limbless P.T. His sister, Daisy Earles, is heartbreaking as Frieda. He would go on to be one of the Lollipop Guild in The Wizard of Oz, which featured the whole family. Earles was the one who suggested using the magazine story to Browning. Harry Earles played Tweedledee in Browning’s The Unholy Three in 1925 and he reprised his role along with Lon Chaney in the 1930 Jack Conway-directed sound remake. As Han and Frieda, the young lovers at the heart of the film, he used members of the Earles family troupe “The Moving Picture Midgets,” best known for their work with Laurel and Hardy. They went with Leila Hyams, who had been in MGM’s first talkie, Alias Jimmy Valentine, as Venus and the Russian Tigress, Olga Baclanova, as the gold-digging chicken lady-to-be.īrowning cast carnival performers and real people with deformities instead of using makeup. Myrna Loy was originally set to star as Cleopatra and Jean Harlow as Venus until Thalberg opted against using major stars. Browning suggested they get the rights to Tod Robbins’ 1923 magazine short story “Spurs.” He had worked at a traveling circus on his way to filmmaking and got Willis Goldbeck and Elliott Clawson to write a script, along with collaborators Leon Gordon, Edgar Allan Woolf, Al Boasberg, and Charles MacArthur. Irving Thalberg, the studio’s production head, wanted him to make Arsène Lupin with John Barrymore. The 1931 vampire classic made so much money that MGM snatched Browning to make a horror film at the studio best known for glitz and glamor. People forget today that Bela Lugosi made women swoon in Browning’s Dracula. Sometimes his monsters weren’t as monstrous as the people around them. He brought nuance and empathy to his monsters. In the early days of film, Tod Browning explored the tortured psyche of the outcast in his cinematic collaborations with Lon Chaney.
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