Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, Hollywood's Master of the Macabre

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 inHollywood. A complicated, troubled, and fiercely private man, he confoundedwould-be biographers hoping to penetrate his secret, obsessive world — bothduring 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 Louisvillefamily into the world of carnival sideshows (where he began his careerliterally buried alive) and vaudeville, his disastrous first marriage, hisrapid 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 indepth, 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.