Tod Browning

Bela Lugosi's defining role. He plays Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman who leases a ruined abbey in London and begins preying on the city's residents. The film was based on the stage play rather than Stoker's novel directly, which is why the pacing feels theatrical and the dialogue is sparse. Dwight Frye as Renfield is genuinely unhinged. The film was released during the Great Depression and was a box office hit, saving Universal from bankruptcy and launching the Universal monster franchise. Lugosi's interpretation of the Count, with his hypnotic stare and deliberate accent, set the template for every screen Dracula that followed.

Horror · Drama

A 1923 silent melodrama directed by Tod Browning and set in the opium underworld of Shanghai. Priscilla Dean plays Cassie Cook, an American woman smuggling opium who falls under the surveillance of a government agent disguised as a mining engineer. When she falls in love with him, she tries to leave the drug trade, but the head of the ring will not let her go. Wallace Beery plays her menacing confederate, and Anna May Wong appears in a supporting role. The film is based on the 1910 Broadway play by John Colton and Daisy H. Andrews and was produced by Carl Laemmle at Universal. It is a precursor to the stranger, darker films Browning would make later in the decade. The film's copyright expired at the end of its first term, and it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019.

Drama · Crime · Silent

A 1930 American pre-Code crime film directed by Tod Browning and starring Edward G. Robinson. The picture is a remake of the 1920 film of the same name starring Lon Chaney, which was also directed by Browning. Robinson plays Cobra Collins, the ruthless boss of a criminal gang who is willing to do anything to prevent a rival gangster from pulling off a bank robbery on his territory. The film was one of Robinson's early sound films, made before his breakout role in Little Caesar (1931). Produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. and distributed by Universal Studios. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

The Show is a Tod Browning film set in a Hungarian carnival, among the performers of a sideshow called the Palace of Illusions. John Gilbert plays Cock Robin, the ballyhoo man who stars in a reenactment of Salome's dance that ends with a staged beheading. Lionel Barrymore is the Greek, a jealous villain who conspires to make the beheading real. Renée Adorée plays Salome, the woman both men want. Browning, who would go on to make Freaks, was drawn to the strange world of carnival performers, and The Show is thick with that atmosphere. The film entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023.

Drama · Romance · Silent

The silent original of the story Tod Browning later remade in 1930 as Lon Chaney's only sound film. Three sideshow performers, a ventriloquist, a strongman, and a dwarf, leave the circus and set up a pet shop as a front for a burglary ring. Echo, the ventriloquist, uses his talent to throw his voice and frame an innocent man for the murder he commits. Chaney, in one of his most unsettling roles, plays a man who manipulates others through their voices, and the film is a prime example of the grotesque, circus-inflected material Browning was drawn to throughout his career. This is the silent version; the 1930 sound remake is also in the collection. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.

Crime · Drama · Silent

A circus knife thrower known as "Alonzo the Armless" performs with his feet and falls for the carnival girl Nanon, who cannot bear to be touched by a man. What no one knows is that Alonzo's arms are strapped to his body to hide a double thumb that marks him as a criminal on the run. When Nanon finally overcomes her fear and turns to another man, Alonzo takes a terrible step to become what he has pretended to be. Lon Chaney gives one of his most disturbing performances, and a young Joan Crawford is the love interest in her first major role. Tod Browning, who would go on to make Freaks and Dracula, sets the whole story in a circus of grotesques. The film was considered lost until a print turned up in 1968. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2023.

Horror · Thriller · Silent