Friday Night Fluff: Freaks Edition

The most famous scene from my favorite movie, Freaks. Released in 1932, the movie showed real life “freak show” performers- a fact that shocked the public and pretty much ruined director Tod Browning’s career.

Harry Earles played Hans (the groom in this banquet) and was a member of the Lollipop Guild in The Wizard of Oz. His sister, Daisy Earles, played his wife in this movie.

My favorite person in the movie, who has little screen time and no lines that are coherent, is Schlitze (the excited person with the somewhat misshapen head with the shock of hair). He had a birth defect called microcephaly that effected both his physical appearance and his mental capacity. He liked to play dress up (he plays a she in the film), dance, sing and imitate the director’s voice. He could count to ten but refused to say eight. He was institutionalized after 30 years of working in sideshows but his health declined sharply and he was taken back on the road, where he died at the age of 80.

It is a rumor that F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was writing at MGM at the time Freaks was filming, felt so uncomfortable around the traditional movie stars and industry execs that he opted to lunch with the “freaks” instead.

Tags: friday night fluff, Freaks, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Schlitze, Harry Earles, Daisy Earles, Tod Browning