Tod BrowningFilmography

Miracles for Sale

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Young, Florence Rice, Frank Craven, Henry Hull, Lee Bowman

Synopsis: Merlini the Magician, Clayton Rawson's crime-solving illusionist, has been singularly ill-used by Hollywood, having appeared in a mere two films, "starring" in only one. Miracles for Sale compounds the oversight by rechristening Merlini as "Michael Morgan", in the person of Robert Young. The Read More

The Devil Doll

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan, Frank Lawton, Robert Greig, Lucy Beaumont

Synopsis: Falsely convicted Lionel Barrymore escapes from Devil's Island with fellow prisoner H.B. Walthall. A brilliant scientist, Walthall reveals to Barrymore that he has developed a process to shrink human beings. Upon Walthall's death, Barrymore makes his way back to the old scientist's lab, intending Read More

Mark of the Vampire

Crew: Director

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi, Elizabeth Allan, Lionel Atwill, Carroll Borland, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: Mark of the Vampire is Tod Browning's remake of his own 1927 thriller London After Midnight, which unfortunately no longer exists. The sudden appearance of ghostly vampires in a remote mittel-European community is seemingly tied in with an old, unsolved murder case. Police inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill Read More

Fast Workers

Crew: Director

Actors: John Gilbert, Robert Armstrong, Mae Clarke, Muriel Kirkland, Vince Barnett

Synopsis: This story centers around a love triangle between two construction workers and a girl. The film climaxes with a fight on top of a skyscraper. The story is based on a play called Rivets. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Freaks

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates, Harry Earles, Henry Victor

Synopsis: The genesis of MGM's Freaks was a magazine piece by Ted Robbins titled Spurs. The story involved a terrible revenge enacted by a mean-spirited circus midget upon his normal-sized wife. In adapting Spurs for the screen, writers Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, Edgar Allan Wolf, and Al Boasberg Read More

The Iron Man

Crew: Director

Actors: Lew Ayres, Robert Armstrong, Jean Harlow, John Miljan

Synopsis: In this boxing drama, a prizefighter is left by his money-grubbing showgirl wife who aspires to be a movie star. The fighter's manager is tickled by the turn of events and immediately snaps the boxer out of his love-struck funk and sets him a challenging training program. Sure enough the fighter Read More

Dracula

Crew: Director

Actors: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan

Synopsis: "I am....Drac-u-la. I bid you velcome." Thus does Bela Lugosi declare his presence in the 1931 screen version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Director Tod Browning invests most of his mood and atmosphere in the first two reels, which were based on the original Stoker novel; the rest of the film is a Read More

Paid

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Armstrong, Marie Prevost, Kent Douglass, John Miljan

Synopsis: Paid was the third film version of the Bayard Veiller stage play Within the Law. Joan Crawford is cast as a shopgirl falsely arrested for stealing and sent to jail for three years. She swears vengeance on the store owner (Purnell Pratt), and to that end sets up a shady but legal racket wherein she Read More

Outside the Law

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Mary Nolan, Edward G. Robinson, Owen Moore, Edwin Sturgis, John George

Synopsis: A remake of his 1921 film of the same name, Tod Browning's Outside the Law offers Edward G. Robinson in an incisive, pre-Little Caesar gangster portrayal. Robinson, however, is not the star of the picture: that honor goes to Owen Moore, cast as enterprising bank robber Fingers O'Dell. As part of Read More

The Thirteenth Chair

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Leila Hyams, Margaret Wycherly, Helene Millard, Holmes Herbert

Synopsis: Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks) directed this second film version of the Bayard Veiller play, which was his first collaboration with Bela Lugosi, whom he would launch to stardom two years later. Lugosi plays Inspector Delzante, who investigates a series of murders near a British mansion in Read More

Where East Is East

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Lon Chaney, Lupe Velez, Lloyd Hughes, Louis Stern

Synopsis: Star Lon Chaney Sr. and director Tod Browning bade adieu to the silent-movie era with 1929's Where East is East. His face covered with hideous scars (convincingly applied with nonflexible collodion), Chaney is cast as weather-beaten animal trapper Tiger Haynes, at present living and working in Read More

The Big City

Crew: Director

Actors: James Murray, Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Betty Compson, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: The Big City was perhaps the most "normal" of the Lon Chaney-Tod Browning collaborations. Minus makeup, Chaney plays gangster boss Chuck Collins, who despite his ruthlessness is a basically decent fellow. Collins is plagued by a rival gang, led by deceptively boyish Curly (James Murray), who has Read More

West of Zanzibar

Crew: Director

Actors: Lon Chaney, Lionel Barrymore, Warner Baxter, Mary Nolan, Jacqueline Gadsdon

Synopsis: In this lurid Tod Browning melodrama, boasting a thoroughly creepy performance by Lon Chaney, Chaney plays Phroso, a limehouse magician who is thoroughly in love with his wife Anna (Jacquelin Gadsdon). Also in love with Phroso's wife is ivory-trader Crane (Lionel Barrymore). After a performance Read More

London After Midnight

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall, Percy Williams, Conrad Nagel

Synopsis: The most tantalizing of the "lost" Tod Browning films, London After Midnight has gained a near-legendary status in recent years, especially since so many critics of the 1930s considered the film as vastly superior to its 1935 remake, Mark of the Vampire. Clearly inspired by the stage version of Read More

Show

Crew: Director

Actors: John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Connelly, Gertrude Short

Synopsis: Long believed to be a "lost" film, The Show resurfaced in the mid-1970s, proving to be a real treasure trove for aficionados of director Tod Browning. Ostensibly based on Tenney Jackson's novel The Day of Souls, the film also owes a great deal to Ferenc Molnar's Liliom. John Gilbert stars as Cock Read More

The Unknown

Crew: Director

Actors: Lon Chaney, Norman Kerry, Joan Crawford, Nick De Ruiz, John George

Synopsis: As a group, the silent-movie collaborations between director Tod Browning and star Lon Chaney hardly represent the best work of either man, though each film definitely has its moments. One of the best, and weirdest, of the batch is The Unknown. Chaney plays a carnival performer known as the Read More

The Road to Mandalay

Crew: Director

Actors: Lon Chaney, Lois Moran, Owen Moore, Henry B. Walthall

Synopsis: Having nothing whatever to do with the Rudyard Kipling poem, The Road to Mandalay is a typically bizarre collaboration between star Lon Chaney Sr. and director Tod Browning. Chaney plays Singapore Joe, the one-eyed proprietor of a Mandalay bordello. Joe's convent-bred daughter Rosemary (Lois Read More

The Black Bird

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Lon Chaney, Renée Adorée, Owen Moore, Doris Lloyd, Andy McLennan

Synopsis: This characteristically grim Lon Chaney/Tod Browning collaboration stars "The Man of a Thousand Faces" in two distinct characterizations. By day, the crippled Bishop of Limehouse (Chaney) is a kindly, beneficent figure, ministering to the needs of the poor and destitute. But by night, the Bishop Read More

The Unholy Three

Crew: Director

Actors: Lon Chaney, Mae Busch, Matt Moore, Victor McLaglen, Harry Earles

Synopsis: Although Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning had made a couple of films together earlier in their careers, this unique melodrama marked the beginning of a string of chilling, macabre silent films, which included West of Zanzibar, The Unknown, and The Black Bird. Chaney is Echo, a sideshow Read More

Mystic

Crew: Director

Actors: Aileen Pringle, Conway Tearle, Mitchell Lewis, Robert Ober, Stanton Heck

Synopsis: Returning to one of his favorite themes, crooks bilking the gullible nouveau riche, Tod Browning both co-wrote (with Waldemar Young) and directed this evocative silent melodrama starring Conway Tearle as Michael Nash, an American criminal who imports a gang of Hungarian gypsies to gain control Read More

Dollar Down

Crew: Director

Actors: Ruth Roland

Synopsis: In one of her valiant but unsuccessful attempts to escape the serial grind, action heroine Ruth Roland played Ruth Craig whose wasteful ways almost ruin her family. Although in love with aviator/inventor Grant Elliot (Earl Schenk), Ruth falls in with the wrong crowd and is soon accused of Read More

Dangerous Flirt

Crew: Director

Actors: Clarissa Selwynne, Evelyn Brent, Edward Earle, Paul Gordon

Synopsis: In between contracts with Universal and MGM, where he would do his best work, enigmatic director Tod Browning marked time with lowly Film-Booking-Office for two melodramas starring the smoldering Evelyn Brent, The Dangerous Flirt and Silk Stocking Sal. Despite an undeserved bad reputation, Sheila Read More

Silk Stocking Sal

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Silk Stocking Sal (Evelyn Brent) is caught robbing a home by its owner, Bob Cooper (Robert Ellis). Instead of turning her in to the police, he offers her money to go straight. His offer falls on deaf ears until Sal is touched by Cooper's sympathetic mother (Virginia Madison). She quits the gang Read More

Day of Faith

Crew: Director

Actors: Eleanor Boardman, Tyrone Power, Raymond Griffith, Wallace MacDonald, Ford Sterling

Synopsis: This drama was an early starring vehicle for fledgling star (Eleanor Boardman), and it was given a haunting directoral approach by Tod Browning, who hadn't yet devoted himself completely to horror films. After the death of philanthropist Blank Hendricks (Winter Hall), Jane Maynard (Boardman) Read More

White Tiger

Crew: Director, Screen Story

Actors: Priscilla Dean

Synopsis: A crook melodrama whose working title "Lady Raffles" basically told the story, White Tiger was director Tod Browning's last film under his contract with Universal and his final collaboration with the studio's leading lady, Priscilla Dean. Dean played Sylvia, a lady crook, and her two accomplices Read More

Drifting

Crew: Director

Actors: Priscilla Dean, Matt Moore, Wallace Beery, J. Farrell McDonald, Rose Dione

Synopsis: Priscilla Dean made a name for herself at Universal by playing charming female crooks in a number of films. The character of Cassie Cook is not so charming, however, and this unsympathetic role lost her a few points. Cassie is a mercenary opium smuggler, plain and simple. She is in China with Read More

Man under Cover

Crew: Director

Actors: Herbert Rawlinson, George Hernandez, William Courtwright, George Webb

Synopsis: Universal bragged that this standard crime melodrama was written by Louis Victor Eytinge, a "lifer" at the Arizona state prison. Herbert Rawlinson plays Paul Porter, who has just gotten out of the joint and, along with his pal Daddy Moffat (George Hernandez), goes back to his home town in a search Read More

Wise Kid

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The titular wise kid of this five-reel comedy/drama is Rosie Cooper (Gladys Walton), the cashier in a modest restaurant, whose suitors include the good-hearted bakery boy Freddie Smith (David Butler). Rosie at first finds herself drawn to a more sophisticated beau but eventually comes to recognize Read More

Under Two Flags

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Priscilla Dean, John Davidson, Stuart Holmes

Synopsis: Because of Rudolph Valentino's success in The Sheik, Universal deemed it a good time to bring out a desert story of their own. Ouida's novel had been filmed before with Theda Bara in the lead role of Cigarette; here, the not-as-exotic Priscilla Dean plays the half-French, half-Arab "daughter of Read More

No Woman Knows

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: After a string of successes including Outside the Law and The Virgin of Stamboul, Universal gave director Tod Browning's next film "special" status. But Browning, perhaps, tried a little too hard to live up to that in his attempt to make Edna Ferber's story Fanny Herself seem larger than life. In Read More

Outside the Law

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Synopsis: One of the earliest of the "psychological" crime yarns, Outside the Law stars Priscilla Dean as "Silk Moll" Madden, daughter of ex-crook "Silent" Madden (Ralph Lewis). Moll has tried to remain honest, like her reformed father. But when Silent Madden is framed for a shooting and sent to jail, Moll Read More

Virgin of Stamboul

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In the '20s, the Turkish empire was considered a lawless and barbaric place by Westerners who didn't understand the people's religion or their ways. Such civilized ignorance gave this part of the world an aura of mystery and decadence, which director Tod Browning captured in this tale of romance Read More

Set Free

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Roma (Edith Roberts) is a girl with too much energy and time on her hands. She becomes bored living with her staid aunt Henrietta (Blanche Gray) and decides to dress up as a Gypsy and head for the open road. Somehow, this open road lands her in New York, where she is promptly arrested because she Read More

Wicked Darling

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Priscilla Dean has impressive support from Lon Chaney in this crime drama. Mary Stevens (Dean) is a thief of the slums. She is loved by Stoop (Chaney), a hoodlum. Mary happens on a society reception and makes off with a pearl necklace which has been dropped by Adele Hoyt (Gertrude Astor). She Read More

The Exquisite Thief

Crew: Director

Synopsis: During her years at Universal, Priscilla Dean became known for her lady crook roles. Here she is Blue-Jean Billie, who is very well off as a result of the heists she has performed with her associate, Shaver Michael (Sam DeGrasse). When the Vanderhoofs throw a dinner to announce their daughter's Read More

Unpainted Woman

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This simple picture, adapted from a Sinclair Lewis story, concerns Gudrun Trygavson (Mary MacLaren), a Swede living in the Midwest and working as a hired girl for Mrs. Hawes (Lydia Yeamans). Although Gudrun is a gawky girl, Charley Holt (David Butler) falls in love with her. They are married, in Read More

The Petal on the Current

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this adaptation of a Fannie Hurst story, Stella (Mary McLaren), an innocent shopgirl, is invited to a party by some fast friends. At the party, she has one beer -- her first -- and stumbles out into the street. She runs afoul of a detective who arrests her for being drunk and soliciting, and Read More

Bonnie, Bonnie Lassie

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Alisa Graeme (Mary MacLaren) is sent from Scotland to America by her grandfather. She visits with old Jeremiah Wishart (Spottiswood Aitken), a wealthy friend of grandpa's who wants to marry her off to his nephew David (David Butler). But he runs away before meeting the girl, and Jeremiah figures Read More

Eyes of Mystery

Crew: Director

Actors: Edith Storey, Bradley Barker, Harry S. Northrup, Frank B. Andrews, Kempton Greene

Synopsis: The Eyes of Mystery was one of the first full-blooded melodramas directed by Tod Browning, who soon became an acknowledged master of the genre. Based on a short story by Roy Octavus Cohen and John U. Geisy, the film was a classic "old dark house" affair, replete with hidden stairways, sliding Read More

Which Woman?

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This Priscilla Dean vehicle began filming under the direction of Harry A. Pollard, but halfway through the shooting schedule Pollard fell ill and was replaced by Tod Browning, who received sole directorial credit. Having lost his fortune, Jimmy Nevins (Eddie Sutherland) is forced to join a gang of Read More

Brazen Beauty

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Popular Universal star Priscilla Dean teamed for the second time with director Tod Browning in 1918's Brazen Beauty (the first of their many collaborations was the profitable The Deciding Kiss) Dean plays a Montana rancher who heads to New York when she inherits her late father's millions. The Read More

The Deciding Kiss

Crew: Director

Actors: Winifred Greenwood, Hallam Cooley, Thornton Church

Synopsis: In a odd bit of casting, the strong-willed, 20-year-old Edith Roberts starts out as a meek, 12-year-old ragamuffin in this drama. Orphan Eleanor Hamlin (Roberts) is living with her grandparents in a Cape Cod village, but they hand her over to wealthy Beulah Page (Winifred Greenwood), who offers to Read More

Legion of Death

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The first film to be produced at Metro's California studios, Tod Browning's The Legion of Death was a rather muddled fictional account of a genuine "women's battalion" fighting the Hun on behalf of Kerensky and his Allied Commission. Edith Storey starred as Princess Marya, an American-educated Read More

Revenge

Crew: Director

Actors: Edith Storey, Wheeler Oakman, Ralph Lewis, Alberta Ballard, Charles H. West

Synopsis: The seeker of the eponymous revenge in this five-reel western is Alva Leigh (Edith Storey), whose fiancé was killed under mysterious circumstances in a small town located in the deserts of Arizona. She leaves the East and confronts the Arizona locals in her search for the truth -- and for Read More

Love Sublime

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Wilfred Lucas, Mildred Harris, Carmel Myers, Fred Turner, Alice Rae

Synopsis: This love story is based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, the singer who regained his wife Eurydice from the land of the dead but lost her for good when he gazed back at her before she'd left the underworld. In this version, Orpheus is still a musician and a Greek: a flute-player (and Read More

Peggy, the Will O' the Wisp

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Although Tod Browning had only recently been promoted to directing his own features, he was able to make the most of the thin script that formed the basis for this adventure. It was based on a bit of Irish folklore about a Robin Hood-like character who stole from the rich and gave to the poor Read More

Jim Bludso

Crew: Director

Actors: Wilfred Lucas, Olga Grey

Synopsis: Though he was obliged to share directorial credit with Wilfred Lucas, Tod Browning graduated to "prestige" pictures with his 1917 release Jim Bludso. The film was based on a popular ballad, written by former U.S. Secretary of State John Hay. The original ballad ended tragically, as steamboat Read More

Jury of Fate

Crew: Director

Actors: Mabel Taliaferro, William Sherwood, Frank Bennett, Charles A. Fang, Albert Tavernier

Synopsis: Filmed on location at Saranac Lake and the St. Lawrence River in New York State, The Jury of Fate starred Mabel Taliaferro in the dual role of the Labordie twins, Jeanne (a girl) and Jacques (a boy). Jeanne grows up resigned to the fact that Jacques is her father's favorite child. Thus, when Read More

Hands Up!

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Former train robber Al Jennings wrote the story to this western adventure which, not surprisingly, opens with a train robbery. The railroad's president, John Houston (Wilfred Lucas), is on board with his daughter Marjorie (Colleen Moore) and his fiance Elinor (Beatrice Van). Marjorie is oblivious Read More

The Deadly Glass of Beer

Crew: Director

Actors: Teddy Sampson, Tully Marshall, Jack Brammall, Elmo Lincoln

Synopsis: This spoof of temperance melodrama is the last two-reeler directed by Tod Browning. The virtuous John (Jack Brammall) learns that he will inherit one million dollars providing that he refrains from drinking beer before he reaches the age of 21. His dastardly cousin Henry (Tully Marshall), knowing Read More

Everybody's Doing It

Crew: Director

Actors: Tully Marshall, Howard Gaye, Lillian Webster, George E. Stone, Violet Radcliffe

Synopsis: What everybody's doing would appear to be writing film scenarios: This satiric two-reel crime story is also a send up of the motion-picture industry, which it spoofs by means of a framing story about a pair of youngsters who concoct movie stories. The kids devise a tale about a vicious crook Read More

Puppets

Crew: Director

Synopsis: A lot of potent talent was invested in this humble two-reel fantasy drama. The star was Broadway legend DeWolfe Hopper and the director was the ever-fascinating Tod Browning. Filmed on-location in Venice, CA, Puppets was based on the ages-old pantomime Pierrot et Colombine. In a bold move, the Read More

The Mystery of the Leaping Fish

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks

Synopsis: Silent superstar Douglas Fairbanks lampoons both his dashing onscreen persona and the detective mystery genre in this curious little two-reeler. Detective Coke Ennyday (Fairbanks) wears a drooping mustache, odd clothes, and starts his day with some hootch and a few hypodermics. The police call and Read More

Sunshine Dad

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: The late film historian William K. Everson has cited the 1916 De Wolf Hopper vehicle Sunshine Dad as one of the earliest examples of "screwball comedy." Despite a recent serious illness, Hopper was quite virile and athletic in the role of fiftyish man-about-town Alonzo Evergreen. Forced by the Read More

Atta Boy's Last Race

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: With this lineup -- the star was Dorothy Gish, the director was George Siegmann, who got his training under D.W. Griffith, and the screenwriter was another Griffith protégé, Tod Browning -- one would assume this picture might have something special to offer. But, in spite of Gish's lighthearted Read More

Intolerance

Crew: First Assistant Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Miriam Cooper, Walter Long, Tully Marshall, Alfred Paget

Synopsis: Sometime during the shooting of the landmark The Birth of a Nation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith probably wondered how he could top himself. In 1916, he showed how, with the awesome Intolerance. The film began humbly enough as a medium-budget feature entitled The Mother and the Law, wherein the lives Read More

The Living Death

Crew: Director

Actors: Fred Turner, Billy West, Edward Peil Sr.

Synopsis: Having lost his wife and son, Dr. Farrell (Fred A. Turner) focuses all his devotion on his surviving daughter Naida (Billie West). He takes her away with him to an isolated home on the California coast, where she meets their neighbor Tom O'Day (Edward J. Peil). He falls in love with Naida and Read More

The Electric Alarm

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Gorman, Lillian Webster, Lucy Payton, A.E. Freeman

Synopsis: This last-minute-rescue melodrama is the final one-reeler directed by Tod Browning. The fire-alarm system for a Pennsylvania town is being hooked up by the young electrical engineer Dick Ray (Charles Gorman), who completes the job except for the final connection of the alarm-box wires to the Town Read More

The Woman From Warrens

Crew: Director

Actors: Lucille Younge, Fred Turner, Billie Hutton, Charles H. West

Synopsis: The dissolute Hanson Landing (Charles West) has seduced and exploited Wynona Ware (Lucille Younge), the trusting woman who loved him. Years after her disgrace, he sets his lusty sights on the innocent young Alice Thompson ("Billy" Hutton), daughter of hotelkeeper Fred Thompson (Fred A. Turner). Read More

The Burned Hand

Crew: Director

Little Marie

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles H. West, Signe Auen, Tom Wilson, Walter Long

Synopsis: Railroad worker Beppo Puccini (Charles West) seeks to please his young daughter Marie by proposing to Bianca Pastorell (Signe Auen), whom the child adores. Bianca however misunderstands and assumes Puccini is joking with her. The crushed Puccini observes his foreman, Sam Coggini (Tom Wilson), in a Read More

An Image of the Past

Crew: Director

Actors: Signe Auen, J.H. Allen, Charles Cosgrave

Synopsis: Young heiress Jessie Curtis (Signe Auen) is disowned by her wealthy father (Charles Cosgrave) after she elopes with artist Jack Dexter (J.H. Allen). A decade later, Dexter is ailing and his wife and three children are destitute. The youngsters dress up in masks and costumes and sing in the streets Read More

The Slave Girl

Crew: Director

Actors: Otto Lincoln, Teddy Sampson, Mary Alden, W.E. Lawrence, Miriam Cooper

Synopsis: This race-themed melodrama is the first two-reeler directed by Tod Browning. Indians kill homesteader Bob West (Otto Lincoln) and capture his little daughter Ida. They sell her to a slave trader named Morgan, who uses her in place of a dead mulatto slave child and sells her to a kindly couple. Read More

The Lucky Transfer

Crew: Director

Actors: Mary Alden, Tom Wilson, Thomas Hull, Vester Pegg, Margery Wilson

Synopsis: This one-reel detective thriller is the first directorial effort of Tod Browning, who had previously only acted in short comedies. Reporter Helen Holland (Mary Alden), investigating the burglary of a jewelry store, follows the robbers to their lair and is captured by Ford (Tom Wilson). He writes Read More

The Spell of the Poppy

Crew: Director

Actors: Eugene Pallette, Lucile Young, Joseph Henaberry

Synopsis: This cautionary tale of drug addiction from director Tod Browning depicts the pianist Manfredi (Eugene Pallette), who performs in a Chinese café and has become addicted to opium. Manfredi swears to marry his common-law wife Zuletta (Lucille Young) after he returns from five years of study abroad. Read More

The Story of a Story

Crew: Director

Actors: Eugene Pallette, Miriam Cooper

Synopsis: Symbolic special effects highlight this early one-reel morality tale directed by Tod Browning. Writer John Penhallow (Eugene Pallette) abandons his idealism and pens a lurid and exploitative gangster story. When he sleeps, he dreams of the nasty people in his fiction materializing out of the book Read More

The Highbinders

Crew: Director

Actors: Signe Auen, Eugene Pallette, Walter Long, Tom Wilson, Billy West

Synopsis: San Francisco's Chinatown is the scene for this two-reel melodrama of crime and miscegenation. The cruel saloonkeeper Pat Gallagher (Walter Long) wants to marry off his daughter Maggie (Billie West) to a gangster, but she runs away and hides in a neighborhood shop. There she is persuaded to marry Read More