Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Today we are continuing this story of Todd Browning's life as part of our autumn season and lead into Halloween because his contributions to the horror film genre are significant, and the films that are most responsible for that reputation are what we are covering today, among other projects, and the latter portion of Browning's life. If you didn't listen to part one, go back and do it otherwise you're going to be a little bit lost, because we are jumping in right where we left off. So in the late nineteen twenties, Browning had proven that he could turn out films that made money, so he was something of a darling in Hollywood, but that did not last. So we are picking up at the end of the nineteen twenties. In specifically, Browning's mother, Lydia, died in a of nineteen twenty eight, and we mentioned in Part one that he did not attend his father's funeral. In nineteen twenty two, he once again opted not to participate in any of the memorials or the funeral for his mother. Although he was the wealthiest member of the family by far, he also didn't contribute to the expenses for her burial. He and Alice had visited Louisville in the wake of the success of The Unholy Three, but they really just had minimal contact with the Browning family after that point. Two more Browning and Lawn Cheney collaborations came out in ninety West of Zanzibar, which featured a paralyzed magician on a quest for vengeance, and a film called Big City, Big City. It was quite different in tone from the other projects that Browning worked on with Cheney. It did not feature anything supernatural or unusual, or grizzly or unsettling. It was a pretty basic gangster film, at least as far as we know. No copies of it have survived for modern analysis. The two also paired for a film called Where East Is East, in in which Cheney played a professional animal trapper who is suspicious of but ultimately accepts the young man who wants to marry his daughter. That's just the beginning of the film. The twist is that an older woman shows up who wants to seduce the younger man, and her ties to the animal trapper and his daughter make up this very convoluted and complex situation. There is also some fairly grisly implied violence in the movie, when a wild animal is set loose on purpose with the intent that it will harm people. Critics alternately braved about the film, some calling it Browning's best and panned the film, finding the entire thing utterly ridiculous. Unbeknownst to Browning and Cheney at the time, this was their last movie together. All of the films we've talked about up to this point were made without recorded dialogue, and they were silent films set two scores, but Browning moved into talkies in with the Moviete Chair. This film was an adaptation of a stage play and revolves around a murder that takes place at a seance that was builled in promotional material as a new adventure in the realm of mysticism. Browning and the studio wanted Lon Cheney to play the role of the detective that's called in to investigate the murder, but Cheney was not comfortable with the idea of dialogue films at this point, so the role went instead to Baila Legosi. There was actually a silent version of the film made simultaneously. This was to appease movie theaters that ran films because they were not all equipped to handle sound projection at this point in time. But the silent version of Browning's thirteen Chair has been lost. The following year, Browning made another dialogue picture, it was Outside the Law. He was once again hoping to get Cheney in the main role. Cheney had appeared in a talkie version of The Unholy Three that had filmed in nine was released in nineteen thirty and was a remake of the silent version that Cheney and Browning had made back in this time. It was directed by Jack Conway, so it seemed that the actor was now ready to move into speaking roles. But unfortunately, Lon Cheney died of throat cancer not long after the release of The Unholy Three, so Todd Browning had to find another actor for Outside the Law. That role went to Edward G. Robinson. And then we get to nineteen thirty one, which it was, of course, the year that Browning made his most famous film, Dracula. If you were a fan of the various horror films that get grouped under the umbrella of universal monsters. I feel like it's it's worthwhile to thank Todd Browning and Baila Lego. See Dracula was the first of those films that was a hit, and it was a huge hit, but critically it didn't really qualify as a success. The New York Times review of Dracula that appeared on February nineteen thirty one reads, in part quote, count Dracula, brown Stoker's human vampire who has chilled the spines of book readers and playgoers, is now to be seen at the Roxy in a talking film directed by Todd Browning, who delights in such blood curdling stories. It is a production that evidently had the desired effect upon many in the audience yesterday afternoon. For there was a general outburst of applause when Dr Van Helsing produced a little cross that caused the dreaded Dracula to fling his cloak over his head and make himself scarce. What was Mr Browning's imaginative direction and Mr Legosi's makeup and weird gestures. This picture succeeds to some extent and its grand gunule intentions. That review incidentally, was written by the New York Times first regular film critic More daunt Hall, and that was about as good as any commentary the film got by critics. That was really one of the nicest wins. But box office numbers were a very different story from those reviews. As is hinted at in that reviewer's note, audiences went absolutely wild for this movie, and they went to see it in large numbers and often went to see it multiple times. Dracula didn't only launch an entire genre success for Universal, it also gave Todd Browning even more freedom to do as he wished as a director. His next film, perhaps surprisingly, was the drama Iron Man, which came out in nineteen thirty one. That's about a failed prize fighter and his wife who leaves him, only to come back when he starts winning again. Browning ended up back at MGM in the early nineteen thirties, although the studio probably wished that had not been the case. Once he finished his first picture back with them. That movie was to use Freaks, based on the Todd Robins story Spurs. Freaks was completely unlike any film that had been made at the time that it was released. The plot is set in motion when a trapeze artist named Cleopatra joins the circus and plans to marry one of the side shows performers, that's a little person named Hans played by Harry Earles. Cleopatra plans to ultimately kill him and take his fortune. When the rest of the sideshow cast learns what Cleopatra and her accomplice who's the circus strongman, have planned, they enact this violent and gruesome revenge that leaves the two of them who started out in quotation marks normal totally mangled and uh physically altered and relegated to the side show themselves. Browning hired actual side show performers for the film, working with casting director Ben Piazza to scour all of the potential talent from side shows along the East Coast, and Among the cast were conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, Johnny Eck who was born with a truncated torso from sacred legenesis, Prince Randian who was born with tetra amelia syndrome, Peter Robinson, an extremely thin man build as the human skeleton or Skeleton Man, Bearded Lady Olga Roderick, Little People Daisy and Harry Earls, who were siblings in real life, and Schlitzy, who was born with microcephaly. Production of the film was reportedly pretty smooth, although the sideshow performers were asked to take their lunch breaks in a separate mess hall that was set up outside the regular cafeteria because regular MGM staff and performers were apparently unsettled at seeing them. There were also reportedly some tensions and professional jealousies among the sideshow performers, although this didn't really seem to impact the actual production at all. There was as some unpredictability to the entire endeavor because of using performers who were from circuses and side chosen not accustomed to filmmaking, and Browning using some very outdated language, so I'm not even going to quote it. Uh talked in interviews about his anxiety working on this picture because of it. He seems, based on most reports, to have worked very very hard to create a positive atmosphere for the side show performers, although crew members reported that he was not the least bit nurturing with them and was often quite the opposite. Some of this might be attributed to Browning still learning the ropes of sound on pictures after a full career of shooting silent scenes, but several crew members called working on Freaks the toughest film of their careers due to everything from grueling schedules to dangerously wired electrical systems. We're going to talk about how Freaks was received both internally at MGM and among the public, but before we do, let's pause for a sponsor break. If you have ever seen this film, Freaks, it is fairly apparent that it turned societal norms upside down. The villains of the piece are the people who are not freaks in the side show terminology sense, but are revealed to be absolute monsters in their intentions. Audiences, however, did not respond well to Browning's cast of actual sideshow performers and to the violent retribution that they visit on Cleopatra and Strongman Hercules in response to their treachery. Louis B. Mayor, the mayor of Metro Goldwyn. Mayor, hated the movie and he was worried about what it would do to MGM's reputation, so he did what he could to limit the anticipated damage by trying to minimize the number of people who would actually see it, so it was released to as few screens as possible. Irving Thalberg also edited it into a much shorter version, cutting almost a third of the film for the early screenings, although the full length film did appear for some showings and critics did not know quite what to make of it. The New York Times review said this quote, Metro Goldwyn Mayer definitely has on its hands a picture that is out of the ordinary. The difficulty isn't telling whether it should be shown at the rialto where it opened yesterday or in say, the medical Center. Freaks is no normal program film, but whether it deserves the title of abnormal is a matter of personal opinion. Its first audience apparently could not decide, although there was a good bit of applause based on the life of quote these strange people of the circus side show. The picture is excellent at times and horrible in the strict meaning of the word at others. There are a few moments of comedy, but these are more than balanced by tragedy. Through long periods, the story drags itself along, and there is one of the most profound anticlimaxes of them all to form the ending. Yet despite this Freaks is not a picture to be easily forgotten. The only thing that can be said definitely for Freaks is that it is not for children. Bad dreams lie that way. But although some reviewers grappled with how to define or even perceive the movie, others dismissed it entirely as garbage. The head of the Motion Picture Committee for the National Association of Women, Mrs Ambrose Nevin Deal, wrote to William Harris and Hayes Sr. So that's the same Haze for whom the Haze Code of Moral Guidelines and Cinema was named, share her disdain of Browning's offensive film. She and a lot of other people thought it was exploitive of the sideshow performers who had appeared in it. Must debate whether Browning was heartless or a champion for inclusion started really as soon as the screening started to happen. Yeah. I want to point out too that while we talk about Mrs Deal kind of framing this in a way of like, you shouldn't exploit these people, she definitely does have like the white savior those poor things approach to it. It's not like she even considers them at a level of equality. She's really framing this in a very problematic way as well. But that discussion around the film and Browning as a champion or as heartless continues, of course. A review of a DVD release of the film by Heiony Karamanos for Disability Studies Quarterly in two thousand five kind of artfully summed up part of the reason that this movie continues to be so frequently studied, both as a piece of cinema and as an instance of early disability representation in medium writing. Quote tensions between exposing the myth of normal slash abnormal dichotomies and presenting freak performers in ways that indulge the audience's appetite for gawking creates a narrative riddled with fascinating contradiction. At the time of the movie's release, MGM even took out ads trying I mean often in awkward and really cringe worthy copy to insist that the quote freaks of the film have quote the same passions, joys, sorrows, and laughter as anyone else, and that their stories should not be untouchable. This did not really help, No. Various groups of people around the United States protested the film and in some markets they were successful in blocking it from being shown entirely. In Great Britain, Freaks was banned by sensors for thirty years, and the bad reviews continued after its early New York run. Freaks was pulled completely by the studio, although the level of trust from the studio that Browning had previously enjoyed thanks to his box office success is totally vanished. His contract with MGM said that he owed them two more pictures. He was assigned an adaptation of the play Rivets, which is about two New York construction workers who were vying for the attentions of the same woman. The movie, which was titled Fast Workers, came out in nineteen thirty three, but that had its own controversy when the studio refused to edit out a line that the Hayes office objected to. The line was quote, They're making it tougher for us every day. This was noted as quote a direct inference to sex perversion because it was said in reference to two women who appeared to be romantically involved with one another. Fast Workers was the most expensive film of Browning's career, and it flopped abysmally. The studio actually lost more money on it that it had on Freaks. Browning was next slated to work on a Cajun country melodrama called Louisiana Lou, for which William Faulkner was brought on to collaborate, and according to Faulkner, he got the runaround from the projects of other writers about what the picture was even about and was soon fired. Todd Browning was furious and openly so, and soon he was fired as well. But really this was a period when Faulkner's drinking had made him unreliable as a writer, and Louisiana Lou was put on a very long hiatus while the studio just tried to figure out what to do with it and try to salvage it. Browning made Mark of the Vampire in ninety six. This is a pastiche of themes and ideas from London After Midnight and Dracula. Sometimes it's even referred to as a sound dialogue remake of London After Midnight because many aspects of the plot are so closely repeated. It was once again a murder mystery involving vampires and hypnotism. The main borrow from Dracula was the styling of the vampire characters, who were all very much in the vein of Lugosi's Dracula character, including Lugosi himself as a character called Count Mora. Some of the shots are direct recreations of the most popular moments from the ninety one film Dracula, which was done in the hopes that it would draw audiences to see their favorite vampire do the things that they loved. Again. Remember, at this point there were no home theaters. There was no HBO. They're like, you couldn't just watch a movie at home. Yeah, none of the ways that we can see movies at home today. Uh So, while kind of hokey, this was an understandable strategy to try to get people back into the theaters. Despite how all that sounds, reviews were fairly good. The film made money, and that made it a redemption project for Browning, at least to some degree. Mark of the Empire also made a contribution to real world style that persists today. The movie featured Carol Borland as Count Mora's daughter. She was very young at the time, and her styling was a departure from the way female vampires, even in Browning's own films, had been portrayed. While previously the look of such a character usually involved hair that was slicked back into a tight bun and clothes that were kind of unstructured or maybe look like a shroud, this character, who was called Luna, had a long center parted straight, dark hairstyle and a diaphanous gown with long flowing sleeves. She looks a lot like Lily Munster, who very clearly was modeled after her, and Luna could really be kind of pointed to as a prototype of goth style that you still see today, which I love. We'll talk about Todd Browning's last films after we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuffy Miss in history class going. Browning's next project was a movie called The Devil Doll, which came out in ninety six, and this feature ran into problems right out of the gate due to its content. It is an adaptation of a novel titled Burn Which Burn, which was written by Abraham Merritt in two and that was first released as a series in Argossy magazine, and the premise of that original story is that a neurologist investigating a series of unique deaths among a group of patients who seemed completely unrelated. Uh discovers that they had all visited a toy shop known for its unique and realistic dolls, and that shop was run by a woman named Madam Mandelip Browning collaborated with two other writers on this adaptation. They were Garrett Fort and Guy Indoor, and they opted to go with an African theme. They featured humans who had been shrunk down into of dolls through voodoo. It probably goes without saying they did not have any understanding at all of the various religions that are often grouped together under the term voodoo. It was entirely going for sensationalism in this choice and the original script. A man who had escaped from the penal colony on Devil's Island gets to Paris and uses voodoo to enact revenge, and at the end of the story he dies by suicide. All of this really disturbed the Production Code administration, and the British Board of Film Censors stated that it could not be shown at all in Britain if it depicted voodoo, but a representative of the British Board did say that shrinking people for quote legitimate drama was allowable the story was reworked, stripped of all the magical elements, and instead when in a sci fi direction with the shrinking of the people. So in this reworked version of the script, which is what was made as the film, a banker from Paris is framed by some very shady colleagues and ends up imprisoned on Devil's Island and escapes. But he escapes along with a mad scientist and that scientist's wife, who have figured out how to miniaturize people and destroy their free will in the process, making them obedient devil dolls subject to telepathic communication and commands the Parisian banker named lavand disguises himself as a woman and finds ways to put these dolls into the homes of the people who wronged him so that these dolls can enact his revenge. The trailer touted this film as quote born of a revenge crazed mind, the strangest story the screen has ever told. It also played up the fact that the star Lionel Barrymore dressed as a woman, advertising quote a great star in the greatest surprise role since Lon Cheney played in The Unholy Three. But the real story when it comes to The Devil Doll was actually the practical effects that were employed to create the illusion of humans shrunk down to the size of dolls. The review in The New York Times seemed to find the film both a little absurd and pretty deserving of praise, and that praise was largely due to technical achievement. That review reads, in part quote, in The Devil Doll, you will find a Saint Bernard, a Great Dane, and a circus horse reduced to mouse like dimensions by the same magic. Arthur Hole grace Ford and one or two other hapless players are shrunken to fountain pen length and have a brisk time climbing Christmas trees, staggering under the weight of a jeweled bracelet, and sticking tiny daggers into the next and ankles of Lionel Barrymore's full sized victims. Not since The Lost World, King Kong and The Invisible Man have the camera Wizards enjoyed such a field day. By use of the split screen, glass shots, oversize sets, and other trick devices cherished of their kind, they have pieced together a photoplay which is grotesque, slightly horrible, and consistently interesting. A freak film, of course, and one which may overburden Junior's imagination, but an entertaining exhibition of photographic hocus focus. For all that, The Devil Doll made a profit, but not a huge one to the studio, it was apparent that there just wouldn't be another money maker that was anywhere near the Unholy Three coming from Todd Browning. Just a couple of months later, Irving Thalberg died, and Thalberg had been one of the few executives at MGM who had continued to support Browning's work. Without him there anymore, Browning lost his last true ally after sputtering around with pitches getting shot down. Browning did eventually get the go ahead to make a picture based on a novel titled Death from a Top Half. The novel was written by Clayton Rawson. In the premise involves a retired magician, the Great MERLINI, who solves crimes that generally appear to be supernatural or occult, but then reveals them to be the work of normal humans. The Browning version was titled Miracles for Sale and it starred Robert Young. The Great MERLINI was changed to the Great Morgan. The plot was paired down from the novel to be simpler to shoot, and while it was clearly right in Todd Browning's wheelhouse, the studio paid him a fraction of what he had made just a few years before for a picture. While there was some violent imagery in the movie, it was mostly comedic and light. But then there was a whole new kind of controversy for the studio when it came out. Magicians were really angry about it because the plot involved many instances of the Great Morgan explaining that stage trickery had been used to make crimes look supernatural. It ended up giving away a number of trade secrets that magicians had kept within the profes Shan The Pacific Coast Association of Magicians wrote a complaint letter to Lowe's Cinemas about it, and their spokesperson Hubert Brill explained that airings of the picture quote would soon render many of the magicians of this country without means of making their livings, for with the disclosure of their secrets, public interest would be destroyed, and their investments in time and costly equipment rendered a total loss. Lowe's cut parts of the film out in accordance with the magician's Association's wishes. Miracles for Sale was Browning's last picture. His reputation had really suffered after the release of Freaks, and the poor reception of the picture undoubtedly impacted his relationship with his career. Additionally, Miracles for Sale had been banned in Sweden because of its violence. He was not a commodity of note in Hollywood any longer. He couldn't get a movie greenlit, and he was viewed by a lot of people as just being more trouble than he was worth. Browning retired in the early nineteen forties when he was just in his mid fifties. He had been let go by MGM, and he did not move on to another studio. He had handled his finances well enough that money was not a concern for him. He also sold his house in Hollywood and he moved completely into his home in Malibu. In May of ninety four, Browning's wife, Alice Wilson died. After that point, he became even more reclusive. He rarely left his Malibu home. In nineteen fifty three, an article about his work appeared in Films in Review, and Browning wrote a letter to thank the writer, Mrs Henry Geltzer. In this brief note, he mentions that he had quote been enjoying life on the cream saved off the milk I received for Flickers. I enjoyed making that is, until I started making Freaks, and from then on, well that's another story. Browning grew increasingly suspicious of other people after Alice died. He started to believe that most of the people who tried to befriend him were trying to find a way into the film industry, and this sometimes manifested in treating people really cruelly, even when they were just trying to help him out. Um. There's a really sad story about a woman who kept trying to bring him food and he called her terrible names. He lavished attention and love on his dogs, and when his bulldog Toby died, his veterinarian who he had become friends with, Harold Snow, was so dismayed at Browning's level of grief that he gave the aging director another puppy. Browning refused it, but Snow really felt like he was not going to be okay if he didn't have an animal in his life, so he left it with a neighbor who eventually got Browning to warm up to it. As a side note, please don't give people pets as gifts. That's a very bad idea. Yeah. I said that on social media one time, and people tried to pick a fight with me, and it's like, yeah, if you've had a thoughtful conversation with somebody about that's fine. Don't just surprise people with animals. Correct. All. Though Browning had been somewhat estranged from his family in Louisville as he had gotten older, he had reconnected with his brother, Avery, and the two men got in the habit of talking on the phone every day. But then, on December four, Avery died accidentally from asphyxiation due to an unvented gas heater, and unlike when the Browning parents had died, Todd decided to go to Louisville to attend his brother's funeral. But even this was a pretty odd scenario. Todd attended the wake, but he would only consent to sitting behind a curtain. He refused to even greet guests. Even Todd and Avery's foster sister, Jenny, was denied an audience with Todd. Even a relatives tried to reach out to him at his hotel. They were just met with all kinds of excuses as to why he could not speak with them, for reasons that were never disclosed. Browning just wanted no actual engagement with the people from his hometown at all. Yeah, we have no idea what went down that made him behave this way, or if nothing went down and he just got something. We just don't know what was going on there. But in his final years, Browning really never wanted to discuss his film career, and he would actually get kind of angry if anyone asked him about it. He wanted to live with his animals, which at that point where dogs and ducks in peace. But he did seem to grow a little less bristly in the last period of his life. He started giving people gifts, like his neighbors who had tried for years to check on him, only to be met with suspicion, for example, and over time, that veterinarian we mentioned Dr Snow and his wife, who had started driving Browning around town after he had had a series of strokes, convinced Todd to just move in with them so that they could keep an eye on him, and for a while he really kind of became part of their family, and he would cook for them and he socialized with the Snows. Browning was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, and it was really too late by the tie. It was discovered his larynx had to be removed in June of two that left him mute. He had to have a breathing tube after the surgery, and he became prone to anxiety attacks. He really became afraid that he was going to lose his ability to breathe. Another stroke that summer degraded his health further, as well as his ability to communicate. He signed a power of attorney over to the Snows in August. Browning died in the very early morning hours of October six, nine sixty two, in Malibu, at the age of eighty two. In his will, he had left the Snows half of his estate. He kind of split it up between them in an interesting way, where Mr. Snow got and Mrs Snow got thirty five. He also left them the contents of his liquor cabinet, and the rest of his estate was doled out to various neighbors, caregivers, and the Corsair Crippled Children's Hospital in Louisville. And the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. Nothing went to his family, and he noted this in his will by writing, quote, I have intentionally and with full knowledge, admitted to provide for my heirs. In a final pretty odd coda to his life, there was a strange incident with a house painter while he was laid out at the Gates, Kingsley and Gates funeral home. This house painter had become friends and drinking buddies with Browning towards the end of his life. The painter is only ever recalled by the name Lucky. That's the only name that shows up any accounts of this, and he was allowed to spend the night in the funeral home with Browning's body simply to drink a case of course beer, which was allegedly Browning's favorite. So he's doing this sort of as a send off to Browning. Todd Browning had stipulated that there would be no funeral held for him. He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, which was where Alice's ashes had been interred. Yeah, that was actually part of Alice's family plot. He wanted to be with her family and not his own. Uh. Today, many of Browning's films, including Freaks, which essentially ended his career, are much beloved as cult favorites. Then even before his death, Freaks was actually screened at the Venice Film Festival and it was very well received, although that happened just weeks before he died, and it's believed he didn't even know about it. Uh So he kind of went went to his grave thinking that everyone hated him over that movie and never never got to see people really look at it in a more thoughtful way and try to really analyze what it meant in terms of representation and uh, you know kind of morality has told through a very unique lens. M hm. Oh, Todd Browning. Yeah, of course his films now show up in you know, film school courses all the time for a variety of reasons, including they're often just beautifully staged. He did a lot of stuff that um was staged kind of you know, a play that was being filmed, which now sometimes infuriated some of the the cameraman who worked with him, who wanted to do much more involved stuff. But uh, in other times it's it's uniquely effective. Todd Browning, m hm. Talk about my feelings on his work in our behind the scenes on Friday, but in the meantime I have an email from our listener, Katie. I love this so much. It involves both animals and stethoscopes, Katie writes, High Holly and Tracy. I was driving home from work listening to the episode about the history of stethoscopes and knew today was the day I could write in I am a veterinarian. We have stethoscopes with tiny bells for little songbirds, and very long stethoscopes for we don't want to get too close to our more dangerous patients. Lanek would have appreciated them, I think, But I'm writing to tell you a story of inclusion. Pre covid. I had a mother and her two elementary age daughters bring their cat in a routine exam. The girls were helping me do my exam until we got to the part where we listened to the heart and lungs, which is usually a crowd pleaser. The older daughter shrunk away back to her mom. The mother explained that her daughter had hearing aids and that was why she couldn't use the stethoscope. I assured her that one of my previous colleagues also used hearing aids, and that she had a special stethoscope that talked to her hearing aids. The rest of the visit went along as normal, and they went their way. The following day, the mother sent me an email saying that her daughter had always wanted to be a veterinarian, but thought she could not because of her disability. Now she has nothing standing in the way of making her dreams come true. I love it. Uh. You never know what small statement will make a big difference in someone's life. Thank you for feeding my curiosity of the world. I especially love learning about how medicine is different in the human world, but people are gross. I much prefer kiddies. That makes me very, very delighted to hear. You'll find a picture of my two cats, Felix and Susan attached for your viewing pleasure. Thanks again for all that you do, Katie. I love this. What a cool idea. I didn't know there were stethoscopes that could communicate directly with hearing aids. It makes sense. We talked about how there's all kinds of astonishing stethoscope technology and radias that are very, very uh different and much evolved from that original cylinder that lay and accused. Um, but so cool and I'm so glad that you know she was able to let a future veterinarian. Now, no problem, We got you. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media as Missed in History, and you can subscribe to the show if you haven't yet. That is easy as pie to do. You can do it on the iHeart Radio app or anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio at the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Today we are continuing this story of Todd Browning's life as part of our autumn season and lead into Halloween because his contributions to the horror film genre are significant, and the films that are most responsible for that reputation are what we are covering today, among other projects, and the latter portion of Browning's life. If you didn't listen to part one, go back and do it otherwise you're going to be a little bit lost, because we are jumping in right where we left off. So in the late nineteen twenties, Browning had proven that he could turn out films that made money, so he was something of a darling in Hollywood, but that did not last. So we are picking up at the end of the nineteen twenties. In specifically, Browning's mother, Lydia, died in a of nineteen twenty eight, and we mentioned in Part one that he did not attend his father's funeral. In nineteen twenty two, he once again opted not to participate in any of the memorials or the funeral for his mother. Although he was the wealthiest member of the family by far, he also didn't contribute to the expenses for her burial. He and Alice had visited Louisville in the wake of the success of The Unholy Three, but they really just had minimal contact with the Browning family after that point. Two more Browning and Lawn Cheney collaborations came out in ninety West of Zanzibar, which featured a paralyzed magician on a quest for vengeance, and a film called Big City, Big City. It was quite different in tone from the other projects that Browning worked on with Cheney. It did not feature anything supernatural or unusual, or grizzly or unsettling. It was a pretty basic gangster film, at least as far as we know. No copies of it have survived for modern analysis. The two also paired for a film called Where East Is East, in in which Cheney played a professional animal trapper who is suspicious of but ultimately accepts the young man who wants to marry his daughter. That's just the beginning of the film. The twist is that an older woman shows up who wants to seduce the younger man, and her ties to the animal trapper and his daughter make up this very convoluted and complex situation. There is also some fairly grisly implied violence in the movie, when a wild animal is set loose on purpose with the intent that it will harm people. Critics alternately braved about the film, some calling it Browning's best and panned the film, finding the entire thing utterly ridiculous. Unbeknownst to Browning and Cheney at the time, this was their last movie together. All of the films we've talked about up to this point were made without recorded dialogue, and they were silent films set two scores, but Browning moved into talkies in with the Moviete Chair. This film was an adaptation of a stage play and revolves around a murder that takes place at a seance that was builled in promotional material as a new adventure in the realm of mysticism. Browning and the studio wanted Lon Cheney to play the role of the detective that's called in to investigate the murder, but Cheney was not comfortable with the idea of dialogue films at this point, so the role went instead to Baila Legosi. There was actually a silent version of the film made simultaneously. This was to appease movie theaters that ran films because they were not all equipped to handle sound projection at this point in time. But the silent version of Browning's thirteen Chair has been lost. The following year, Browning made another dialogue picture, it was Outside the Law. He was once again hoping to get Cheney in the main role. Cheney had appeared in a talkie version of The Unholy Three that had filmed in nine was released in nineteen thirty and was a remake of the silent version that Cheney and Browning had made back in this time. It was directed by Jack Conway, so it seemed that the actor was now ready to move into speaking roles. But unfortunately, Lon Cheney died of throat cancer not long after the release of The Unholy Three, so Todd Browning had to find another actor for Outside the Law. That role went to Edward G. Robinson. And then we get to nineteen thirty one, which it was, of course, the year that Browning made his most famous film, Dracula. If you were a fan of the various horror films that get grouped under the umbrella of universal monsters. I feel like it's it's worthwhile to thank Todd Browning and Baila Lego. See Dracula was the first of those films that was a hit, and it was a huge hit, but critically it didn't really qualify as a success. The New York Times review of Dracula that appeared on February nineteen thirty one reads, in part quote, count Dracula, brown Stoker's human vampire who has chilled the spines of book readers and playgoers, is now to be seen at the Roxy in a talking film directed by Todd Browning, who delights in such blood curdling stories. It is a production that evidently had the desired effect upon many in the audience yesterday afternoon. For there was a general outburst of applause when Dr Van Helsing produced a little cross that caused the dreaded Dracula to fling his cloak over his head and make himself scarce. What was Mr Browning's imaginative direction and Mr Legosi's makeup and weird gestures. This picture succeeds to some extent and its grand gunule intentions. That review incidentally, was written by the New York Times first regular film critic More daunt Hall, and that was about as good as any commentary the film got by critics. That was really one of the nicest wins. But box office numbers were a very different story from those reviews. As is hinted at in that reviewer's note, audiences went absolutely wild for this movie, and they went to see it in large numbers and often went to see it multiple times. Dracula didn't only launch an entire genre success for Universal, it also gave Todd Browning even more freedom to do as he wished as a director. His next film, perhaps surprisingly, was the drama Iron Man, which came out in nineteen thirty one. That's about a failed prize fighter and his wife who leaves him, only to come back when he starts winning again. Browning ended up back at MGM in the early nineteen thirties, although the studio probably wished that had not been the case. Once he finished his first picture back with them. That movie was to use Freaks, based on the Todd Robins story Spurs. Freaks was completely unlike any film that had been made at the time that it was released. The plot is set in motion when a trapeze artist named Cleopatra joins the circus and plans to marry one of the side shows performers, that's a little person named Hans played by Harry Earles. Cleopatra plans to ultimately kill him and take his fortune. When the rest of the sideshow cast learns what Cleopatra and her accomplice who's the circus strongman, have planned, they enact this violent and gruesome revenge that leaves the two of them who started out in quotation marks normal totally mangled and uh physically altered and relegated to the side show themselves. Browning hired actual side show performers for the film, working with casting director Ben Piazza to scour all of the potential talent from side shows along the East Coast, and Among the cast were conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, Johnny Eck who was born with a truncated torso from sacred legenesis, Prince Randian who was born with tetra amelia syndrome, Peter Robinson, an extremely thin man build as the human skeleton or Skeleton Man, Bearded Lady Olga Roderick, Little People Daisy and Harry Earls, who were siblings in real life, and Schlitzy, who was born with microcephaly. Production of the film was reportedly pretty smooth, although the sideshow performers were asked to take their lunch breaks in a separate mess hall that was set up outside the regular cafeteria because regular MGM staff and performers were apparently unsettled at seeing them. There were also reportedly some tensions and professional jealousies among the sideshow performers, although this didn't really seem to impact the actual production at all. There was as some unpredictability to the entire endeavor because of using performers who were from circuses and side chosen not accustomed to filmmaking, and Browning using some very outdated language, so I'm not even going to quote it. Uh talked in interviews about his anxiety working on this picture because of it. He seems, based on most reports, to have worked very very hard to create a positive atmosphere for the side show performers, although crew members reported that he was not the least bit nurturing with them and was often quite the opposite. Some of this might be attributed to Browning still learning the ropes of sound on pictures after a full career of shooting silent scenes, but several crew members called working on Freaks the toughest film of their careers due to everything from grueling schedules to dangerously wired electrical systems. We're going to talk about how Freaks was received both internally at MGM and among the public, but before we do, let's pause for a sponsor break. If you have ever seen this film, Freaks, it is fairly apparent that it turned societal norms upside down. The villains of the piece are the people who are not freaks in the side show terminology sense, but are revealed to be absolute monsters in their intentions. Audiences, however, did not respond well to Browning's cast of actual sideshow performers and to the violent retribution that they visit on Cleopatra and Strongman Hercules in response to their treachery. Louis B. Mayor, the mayor of Metro Goldwyn. Mayor, hated the movie and he was worried about what it would do to MGM's reputation, so he did what he could to limit the anticipated damage by trying to minimize the number of people who would actually see it, so it was released to as few screens as possible. Irving Thalberg also edited it into a much shorter version, cutting almost a third of the film for the early screenings, although the full length film did appear for some showings and critics did not know quite what to make of it. The New York Times review said this quote, Metro Goldwyn Mayer definitely has on its hands a picture that is out of the ordinary. The difficulty isn't telling whether it should be shown at the rialto where it opened yesterday or in say, the medical Center. Freaks is no normal program film, but whether it deserves the title of abnormal is a matter of personal opinion. Its first audience apparently could not decide, although there was a good bit of applause based on the life of quote these strange people of the circus side show. The picture is excellent at times and horrible in the strict meaning of the word at others. There are a few moments of comedy, but these are more than balanced by tragedy. Through long periods, the story drags itself along, and there is one of the most profound anticlimaxes of them all to form the ending. Yet despite this Freaks is not a picture to be easily forgotten. The only thing that can be said definitely for Freaks is that it is not for children. Bad dreams lie that way. But although some reviewers grappled with how to define or even perceive the movie, others dismissed it entirely as garbage. The head of the Motion Picture Committee for the National Association of Women, Mrs Ambrose Nevin Deal, wrote to William Harris and Hayes Sr. So that's the same Haze for whom the Haze Code of Moral Guidelines and Cinema was named, share her disdain of Browning's offensive film. She and a lot of other people thought it was exploitive of the sideshow performers who had appeared in it. Must debate whether Browning was heartless or a champion for inclusion started really as soon as the screening started to happen. Yeah. I want to point out too that while we talk about Mrs Deal kind of framing this in a way of like, you shouldn't exploit these people, she definitely does have like the white savior those poor things approach to it. It's not like she even considers them at a level of equality. She's really framing this in a very problematic way as well. But that discussion around the film and Browning as a champion or as heartless continues, of course. A review of a DVD release of the film by Heiony Karamanos for Disability Studies Quarterly in two thousand five kind of artfully summed up part of the reason that this movie continues to be so frequently studied, both as a piece of cinema and as an instance of early disability representation in medium writing. Quote tensions between exposing the myth of normal slash abnormal dichotomies and presenting freak performers in ways that indulge the audience's appetite for gawking creates a narrative riddled with fascinating contradiction. At the time of the movie's release, MGM even took out ads trying I mean often in awkward and really cringe worthy copy to insist that the quote freaks of the film have quote the same passions, joys, sorrows, and laughter as anyone else, and that their stories should not be untouchable. This did not really help, No. Various groups of people around the United States protested the film and in some markets they were successful in blocking it from being shown entirely. In Great Britain, Freaks was banned by sensors for thirty years, and the bad reviews continued after its early New York run. Freaks was pulled completely by the studio, although the level of trust from the studio that Browning had previously enjoyed thanks to his box office success is totally vanished. His contract with MGM said that he owed them two more pictures. He was assigned an adaptation of the play Rivets, which is about two New York construction workers who were vying for the attentions of the same woman. The movie, which was titled Fast Workers, came out in nineteen thirty three, but that had its own controversy when the studio refused to edit out a line that the Hayes office objected to. The line was quote, They're making it tougher for us every day. This was noted as quote a direct inference to sex perversion because it was said in reference to two women who appeared to be romantically involved with one another. Fast Workers was the most expensive film of Browning's career, and it flopped abysmally. The studio actually lost more money on it that it had on Freaks. Browning was next slated to work on a Cajun country melodrama called Louisiana Lou, for which William Faulkner was brought on to collaborate, and according to Faulkner, he got the runaround from the projects of other writers about what the picture was even about and was soon fired. Todd Browning was furious and openly so, and soon he was fired as well. But really this was a period when Faulkner's drinking had made him unreliable as a writer, and Louisiana Lou was put on a very long hiatus while the studio just tried to figure out what to do with it and try to salvage it. Browning made Mark of the Vampire in ninety six. This is a pastiche of themes and ideas from London After Midnight and Dracula. Sometimes it's even referred to as a sound dialogue remake of London After Midnight because many aspects of the plot are so closely repeated. It was once again a murder mystery involving vampires and hypnotism. The main borrow from Dracula was the styling of the vampire characters, who were all very much in the vein of Lugosi's Dracula character, including Lugosi himself as a character called Count Mora. Some of the shots are direct recreations of the most popular moments from the ninety one film Dracula, which was done in the hopes that it would draw audiences to see their favorite vampire do the things that they loved. Again. Remember, at this point there were no home theaters. There was no HBO. They're like, you couldn't just watch a movie at home. Yeah, none of the ways that we can see movies at home today. Uh So, while kind of hokey, this was an understandable strategy to try to get people back into the theaters. Despite how all that sounds, reviews were fairly good. The film made money, and that made it a redemption project for Browning, at least to some degree. Mark of the Empire also made a contribution to real world style that persists today. The movie featured Carol Borland as Count Mora's daughter. She was very young at the time, and her styling was a departure from the way female vampires, even in Browning's own films, had been portrayed. While previously the look of such a character usually involved hair that was slicked back into a tight bun and clothes that were kind of unstructured or maybe look like a shroud, this character, who was called Luna, had a long center parted straight, dark hairstyle and a diaphanous gown with long flowing sleeves. She looks a lot like Lily Munster, who very clearly was modeled after her, and Luna could really be kind of pointed to as a prototype of goth style that you still see today, which I love. We'll talk about Todd Browning's last films after we hear from the sponsors that keep Stuffy Miss in history class going. Browning's next project was a movie called The Devil Doll, which came out in ninety six, and this feature ran into problems right out of the gate due to its content. It is an adaptation of a novel titled Burn Which Burn, which was written by Abraham Merritt in two and that was first released as a series in Argossy magazine, and the premise of that original story is that a neurologist investigating a series of unique deaths among a group of patients who seemed completely unrelated. Uh discovers that they had all visited a toy shop known for its unique and realistic dolls, and that shop was run by a woman named Madam Mandelip Browning collaborated with two other writers on this adaptation. They were Garrett Fort and Guy Indoor, and they opted to go with an African theme. They featured humans who had been shrunk down into of dolls through voodoo. It probably goes without saying they did not have any understanding at all of the various religions that are often grouped together under the term voodoo. It was entirely going for sensationalism in this choice and the original script. A man who had escaped from the penal colony on Devil's Island gets to Paris and uses voodoo to enact revenge, and at the end of the story he dies by suicide. All of this really disturbed the Production Code administration, and the British Board of Film Censors stated that it could not be shown at all in Britain if it depicted voodoo, but a representative of the British Board did say that shrinking people for quote legitimate drama was allowable the story was reworked, stripped of all the magical elements, and instead when in a sci fi direction with the shrinking of the people. So in this reworked version of the script, which is what was made as the film, a banker from Paris is framed by some very shady colleagues and ends up imprisoned on Devil's Island and escapes. But he escapes along with a mad scientist and that scientist's wife, who have figured out how to miniaturize people and destroy their free will in the process, making them obedient devil dolls subject to telepathic communication and commands the Parisian banker named lavand disguises himself as a woman and finds ways to put these dolls into the homes of the people who wronged him so that these dolls can enact his revenge. The trailer touted this film as quote born of a revenge crazed mind, the strangest story the screen has ever told. It also played up the fact that the star Lionel Barrymore dressed as a woman, advertising quote a great star in the greatest surprise role since Lon Cheney played in The Unholy Three. But the real story when it comes to The Devil Doll was actually the practical effects that were employed to create the illusion of humans shrunk down to the size of dolls. The review in The New York Times seemed to find the film both a little absurd and pretty deserving of praise, and that praise was largely due to technical achievement. That review reads, in part quote, in The Devil Doll, you will find a Saint Bernard, a Great Dane, and a circus horse reduced to mouse like dimensions by the same magic. Arthur Hole grace Ford and one or two other hapless players are shrunken to fountain pen length and have a brisk time climbing Christmas trees, staggering under the weight of a jeweled bracelet, and sticking tiny daggers into the next and ankles of Lionel Barrymore's full sized victims. Not since The Lost World, King Kong and The Invisible Man have the camera Wizards enjoyed such a field day. By use of the split screen, glass shots, oversize sets, and other trick devices cherished of their kind, they have pieced together a photoplay which is grotesque, slightly horrible, and consistently interesting. A freak film, of course, and one which may overburden Junior's imagination, but an entertaining exhibition of photographic hocus focus. For all that, The Devil Doll made a profit, but not a huge one to the studio, it was apparent that there just wouldn't be another money maker that was anywhere near the Unholy Three coming from Todd Browning. Just a couple of months later, Irving Thalberg died, and Thalberg had been one of the few executives at MGM who had continued to support Browning's work. Without him there anymore, Browning lost his last true ally after sputtering around with pitches getting shot down. Browning did eventually get the go ahead to make a picture based on a novel titled Death from a Top Half. The novel was written by Clayton Rawson. In the premise involves a retired magician, the Great MERLINI, who solves crimes that generally appear to be supernatural or occult, but then reveals them to be the work of normal humans. The Browning version was titled Miracles for Sale and it starred Robert Young. The Great MERLINI was changed to the Great Morgan. The plot was paired down from the novel to be simpler to shoot, and while it was clearly right in Todd Browning's wheelhouse, the studio paid him a fraction of what he had made just a few years before for a picture. While there was some violent imagery in the movie, it was mostly comedic and light. But then there was a whole new kind of controversy for the studio when it came out. Magicians were really angry about it because the plot involved many instances of the Great Morgan explaining that stage trickery had been used to make crimes look supernatural. It ended up giving away a number of trade secrets that magicians had kept within the profes Shan The Pacific Coast Association of Magicians wrote a complaint letter to Lowe's Cinemas about it, and their spokesperson Hubert Brill explained that airings of the picture quote would soon render many of the magicians of this country without means of making their livings, for with the disclosure of their secrets, public interest would be destroyed, and their investments in time and costly equipment rendered a total loss. Lowe's cut parts of the film out in accordance with the magician's Association's wishes. Miracles for Sale was Browning's last picture. His reputation had really suffered after the release of Freaks, and the poor reception of the picture undoubtedly impacted his relationship with his career. Additionally, Miracles for Sale had been banned in Sweden because of its violence. He was not a commodity of note in Hollywood any longer. He couldn't get a movie greenlit, and he was viewed by a lot of people as just being more trouble than he was worth. Browning retired in the early nineteen forties when he was just in his mid fifties. He had been let go by MGM, and he did not move on to another studio. He had handled his finances well enough that money was not a concern for him. He also sold his house in Hollywood and he moved completely into his home in Malibu. In May of ninety four, Browning's wife, Alice Wilson died. After that point, he became even more reclusive. He rarely left his Malibu home. In nineteen fifty three, an article about his work appeared in Films in Review, and Browning wrote a letter to thank the writer, Mrs Henry Geltzer. In this brief note, he mentions that he had quote been enjoying life on the cream saved off the milk I received for Flickers. I enjoyed making that is, until I started making Freaks, and from then on, well that's another story. Browning grew increasingly suspicious of other people after Alice died. He started to believe that most of the people who tried to befriend him were trying to find a way into the film industry, and this sometimes manifested in treating people really cruelly, even when they were just trying to help him out. Um. There's a really sad story about a woman who kept trying to bring him food and he called her terrible names. He lavished attention and love on his dogs, and when his bulldog Toby died, his veterinarian who he had become friends with, Harold Snow, was so dismayed at Browning's level of grief that he gave the aging director another puppy. Browning refused it, but Snow really felt like he was not going to be okay if he didn't have an animal in his life, so he left it with a neighbor who eventually got Browning to warm up to it. As a side note, please don't give people pets as gifts. That's a very bad idea. Yeah. I said that on social media one time, and people tried to pick a fight with me, and it's like, yeah, if you've had a thoughtful conversation with somebody about that's fine. Don't just surprise people with animals. Correct. All. Though Browning had been somewhat estranged from his family in Louisville as he had gotten older, he had reconnected with his brother, Avery, and the two men got in the habit of talking on the phone every day. But then, on December four, Avery died accidentally from asphyxiation due to an unvented gas heater, and unlike when the Browning parents had died, Todd decided to go to Louisville to attend his brother's funeral. But even this was a pretty odd scenario. Todd attended the wake, but he would only consent to sitting behind a curtain. He refused to even greet guests. Even Todd and Avery's foster sister, Jenny, was denied an audience with Todd. Even a relatives tried to reach out to him at his hotel. They were just met with all kinds of excuses as to why he could not speak with them, for reasons that were never disclosed. Browning just wanted no actual engagement with the people from his hometown at all. Yeah, we have no idea what went down that made him behave this way, or if nothing went down and he just got something. We just don't know what was going on there. But in his final years, Browning really never wanted to discuss his film career, and he would actually get kind of angry if anyone asked him about it. He wanted to live with his animals, which at that point where dogs and ducks in peace. But he did seem to grow a little less bristly in the last period of his life. He started giving people gifts, like his neighbors who had tried for years to check on him, only to be met with suspicion, for example, and over time, that veterinarian we mentioned Dr Snow and his wife, who had started driving Browning around town after he had had a series of strokes, convinced Todd to just move in with them so that they could keep an eye on him, and for a while he really kind of became part of their family, and he would cook for them and he socialized with the Snows. Browning was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, and it was really too late by the tie. It was discovered his larynx had to be removed in June of two that left him mute. He had to have a breathing tube after the surgery, and he became prone to anxiety attacks. He really became afraid that he was going to lose his ability to breathe. Another stroke that summer degraded his health further, as well as his ability to communicate. He signed a power of attorney over to the Snows in August. Browning died in the very early morning hours of October six, nine sixty two, in Malibu, at the age of eighty two. In his will, he had left the Snows half of his estate. He kind of split it up between them in an interesting way, where Mr. Snow got and Mrs Snow got thirty five. He also left them the contents of his liquor cabinet, and the rest of his estate was doled out to various neighbors, caregivers, and the Corsair Crippled Children's Hospital in Louisville. And the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. Nothing went to his family, and he noted this in his will by writing, quote, I have intentionally and with full knowledge, admitted to provide for my heirs. In a final pretty odd coda to his life, there was a strange incident with a house painter while he was laid out at the Gates, Kingsley and Gates funeral home. This house painter had become friends and drinking buddies with Browning towards the end of his life. The painter is only ever recalled by the name Lucky. That's the only name that shows up any accounts of this, and he was allowed to spend the night in the funeral home with Browning's body simply to drink a case of course beer, which was allegedly Browning's favorite. So he's doing this sort of as a send off to Browning. Todd Browning had stipulated that there would be no funeral held for him. He was buried in Rosedale Cemetery, which was where Alice's ashes had been interred. Yeah, that was actually part of Alice's family plot. He wanted to be with her family and not his own. Uh. Today, many of Browning's films, including Freaks, which essentially ended his career, are much beloved as cult favorites. Then even before his death, Freaks was actually screened at the Venice Film Festival and it was very well received, although that happened just weeks before he died, and it's believed he didn't even know about it. Uh So he kind of went went to his grave thinking that everyone hated him over that movie and never never got to see people really look at it in a more thoughtful way and try to really analyze what it meant in terms of representation and uh, you know kind of morality has told through a very unique lens. M hm. Oh, Todd Browning. Yeah, of course his films now show up in you know, film school courses all the time for a variety of reasons, including they're often just beautifully staged. He did a lot of stuff that um was staged kind of you know, a play that was being filmed, which now sometimes infuriated some of the the cameraman who worked with him, who wanted to do much more involved stuff. But uh, in other times it's it's uniquely effective. Todd Browning, m hm. Talk about my feelings on his work in our behind the scenes on Friday, but in the meantime I have an email from our listener, Katie. I love this so much. It involves both animals and stethoscopes, Katie writes, High Holly and Tracy. I was driving home from work listening to the episode about the history of stethoscopes and knew today was the day I could write in I am a veterinarian. We have stethoscopes with tiny bells for little songbirds, and very long stethoscopes for we don't want to get too close to our more dangerous patients. Lanek would have appreciated them, I think, But I'm writing to tell you a story of inclusion. Pre covid. I had a mother and her two elementary age daughters bring their cat in a routine exam. The girls were helping me do my exam until we got to the part where we listened to the heart and lungs, which is usually a crowd pleaser. The older daughter shrunk away back to her mom. The mother explained that her daughter had hearing aids and that was why she couldn't use the stethoscope. I assured her that one of my previous colleagues also used hearing aids, and that she had a special stethoscope that talked to her hearing aids. The rest of the visit went along as normal, and they went their way. The following day, the mother sent me an email saying that her daughter had always wanted to be a veterinarian, but thought she could not because of her disability. Now she has nothing standing in the way of making her dreams come true. I love it. Uh. You never know what small statement will make a big difference in someone's life. Thank you for feeding my curiosity of the world. I especially love learning about how medicine is different in the human world, but people are gross. I much prefer kiddies. That makes me very, very delighted to hear. You'll find a picture of my two cats, Felix and Susan attached for your viewing pleasure. Thanks again for all that you do, Katie. I love this. What a cool idea. I didn't know there were stethoscopes that could communicate directly with hearing aids. It makes sense. We talked about how there's all kinds of astonishing stethoscope technology and radias that are very, very uh different and much evolved from that original cylinder that lay and accused. Um, but so cool and I'm so glad that you know she was able to let a future veterinarian. Now, no problem, We got you. If you would like to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us on social media as Missed in History, and you can subscribe to the show if you haven't yet. That is easy as pie to do. You can do it on the iHeart Radio app or anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio at the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H