A runaway at the age of 16, he followed a dancer of a travelling circus for whom he had fallen in love with, and started working as a clown (which provided the background for "The Show" and "Freaks"), later as a vaudeville actor. This came to an end when he met D.W. Griffith and became an actor ("Intolerance" 1916). In 1917 he started directing his own movies, but he had about 25 unimportant productions until his first success with "The Unholy Three" (1925), where he worked together with silent star Lon Chaney Sr. Their biggest success as a team may be the lost film "London After Midnight" (1927). Browning later made a remake named "Mark Of The Vampire" with Bela Lugosi, with whom he already had worked together in his greatest film, "Dracula". Browning's first choice for the role of Dracula wasn't Bela Lugosi, he favored his old "partner" Lon Chaney instead. It was Chaney's untimely death in 1930 that brought Lugosi the role of his life. But Browning's fame was on the decline, and by 1936 he was no longer considered an "A" director, and so he retired after directing "Miracles For Sale" in 1939. In the time following it became so quiet about him that a newspaper mistakenly announced his death in 1944. In fact he died not before 1962, alcoholic and totally isolated.