The Unknown

Tod Browning was an American motion picture actor, director and screenwriter. Browning's career spanned the silent and talkie eras. Best known as the director of Dracula , the cult classic Freaks , and classic silent film collaborations with Lon Chaney, Browning directed many movies in a wide... range of genres. He was born Charles Albert Browning, Jr., in Louisville, Kentucky, the second son of Charles Albert and Lydia Browning, and the nephew of baseball star Pete Browning. As a young boy, he put on amateur plays in his backyard. He was fascinated by the circus and carnival life, and at the age of 16 he ran away from his well-to-do family to become a performer. Changing his name to "Tod", he traveled extensively with sideshows, carnivals, and circuses. His jobs included working as a talker for the Wild Man of Borneo, performing a live burial act in which he was billed as "The Living Corpse", and performing as a clown with the Ringling Brothers Circus. He would draw on this experience as inspiration for some of his film work.
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Kevin Brownlow is a British filmmaker, film historian, television documentary-maker, author, and Academy Award recipient. Brownlow is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era. Brownlow became interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career... spent documenting and restoring film. He has rescued many silent films and their history. His initiative in interviewing many largely forgotten, elderly film pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s preserved a legacy of cinema. Brownlow received an Academy Honorary Award at the 2nd Annual Governors Awards given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on November 13, 2010. His interest in World War II prompted the creation of an alternative-history film, It Happened Here in which the Nazis have conquered Britain. Brownlow began work on the film at the age of 18 and began to collaborate with a friend Andrew Mollo, who was 16. After 8 years of struggle, during which the film's content changed dramatically, it was completed in 1964 with the last-minute aid of Tony Richardson but not released until 1966.
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