Adopting the professional name "Tod" Browning ( tod is the German word for death), Browning abandoned his wife and became a vaudevillian, touring extensively as both a magician's assistant and a blackface comedian in an act called The Lizard and the Coon with comedian Roy C.
In 1906, the 26-year-old Browning was briefly married to Amy Louis Stevens in Louisville. He would later draw on these early experiences to inform his cinematic inventions. Browning developed a live burial act in which he was billed as "The Living Hypnotic Corpse", and performed as a clown with the renowned Ringling Brothers circus. Initially hired as a roustabout, he soon began serving as a "spieler" (a barker at sideshows) and by 1901, at the age of 21, was performing song and dance routines for Ohio and Mississippi riverboat entertainment, as well as acting as a contortionist for the Manhattan Fair and Carnival Company. At the age of 16, and before finishing high school, he ran away from his well-to-do family to join a traveling circus. Circus, sideshow and vaudeville Īs a child, Browning was fascinated by circus and carnival life. Browning's uncle, the baseball star Pete "Louisville Slugger" Browning saw his sobriquet conferred on the iconic baseball bat. Charles Albert Sr., "a bricklayer, carpenter and machinist" provided his family with a middle-class and Baptist household. Tod Browning was born Charles Albert Browning, Jr., in Louisville, Kentucky, the second son of Charles Albert and Lydia Browning. circus life, for Browning, represented a flight from conventional lifestyles and responsibilities, which later manifested itself in a love of liquor, gambling and fast cars." - Film historian Jon Towlson in Diabolique Magazine, Novem "A non-conformist within his family, the alternative society of the circus shaped his disdain for normal mainstream society.
8 The Browning-Chaney collaborations at M-G-M: 1925–1929.6 Director: early silent feature films, 1917–1919.4 Early film directing and screenwriting: 1914–1916.
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