"Tomorrow's Children" (1934) on Youtube

 "The doc here just wants to cut a little of the badness out of me."

     Eugenics and America have a weird, extensive history together, one that has been cast into the shadow's of history. Before the whole Hitler thing put the kibosh on selective breeding, sterilization for select individuals was supported and encouraged by both science and the American government. In researching legendary circus attraction Schlitzie the pinhead for my review of "Freaks", I discovered the 1934 picture "Tomorrow's Children" which deals with the then contemporary social issue head on. Directed by future "House of Wax", "He Walked By Night" and "Mysterious Island" screenwriter Crane Wilbur, it's a somewhat confused take on what is still an uncomfortable chapter in the American story.

     Fresh faced couple Jim (Carlyle Moore Jr.) and Alice (Diane Sinclair) are young and in love. Jim has a bright future in the laundry business and is eager to get hitched. Nancy, though, is saddled with a terrible home life taking care of her irresponsible, alcoholic parent's and disabled brother's. The film gets off to a bleak start, with her drunken louse of a father (Arthur Wanzer) getting the news that his baby has been still born. "One less mouth to feed.", he replies.

     The pathetic sadness continues when Nancy goes to see her mother (Sarah Padden). "Poor lucky little devil", her mother says, referring to the dead baby. Later as the doctor's discuss the incident, one of them expresses relief, saying, "Good thing, too. She already had a house full of idiot's and cripple's." This film is an incredible repository of callous, insensitive dialogue, especially when viewed through the cultural prism of the 21st Century. "...see, have I gotta sock ya to say yes?", is Jim's romantic marriage proposal to Alice, and unable to resist the charm of threatened physical abuse, the lucky little lady agrees.

     Right on the heel's of this happy occasion, Nancy is hit by some really bad news, courtesy of a social worker waiting at her house. She's poor, and her family won't stop having kid's, so what does the government want to do? Why sterilize the whole clan, of course. Their reasoning is, "Most of the past three generation's have been feeble minded...each generation more of a problem..". Alice escapes from the house and hops a train where she is almost sexually assaulted by a hobo. She jumps off and gets a ride from a kindly man who turns out to be a sheriff (Dick Rush...great name). He delivers her to the very court she was trying to avoid in the first place. In one day Nancy's life has turned into a misogynistic Kafkaesque nightmare.

     Inside the courtroom, Schlitzie stands before the judge (Frank LaRue), who sentences him to sterilization. Dressed in men's clothing and sporting a beard, it's incredible how normal the microcephalic freak show performer appears. The judge seems to pass the same sentence on every defendant who is brought before him: forced sterilization. Every defendant, that is, except the pervy creepo who moment's earlier, in a moment of pre-code titillation, ripped off a nurses clothing. He has a Senator representing him thanks to his daddy's political connection's, so the judge reverses his order.

     Jim convinces Dr. Brooks (Donald Douglas) to argue Alice's case, but the judge will hear none of it. Nancy is condemned to sterilization. Brooks feels responsible for Nancy's situation and vows to help her. Throughout the picture, I kept viewing it as a dystopian, fascist alternate version of America and had to keep reminding myself that what's portrayed in the film isn't so far from the actuality of what was happening in the country at the time.

          At the hospital Schlitzie is prepared for his procedure. Spike (Hyram A. Hoover), the other poor mope sentenced to the same fate, is scared they are going to chop off his manhood, but Dr. Brooks gives him an enthusiastic and detailed description of the operation that plays like an educational film put out by the vasectomy society. Here it becomes unclear what the film's stance is on the issue. Dr. Brooks, crusader of low income people's right to procreate, sure is gung ho about the idea when it comes to delinquent's like Spike and Schlitzie. So is this not so much an anti-eugenics picture as a eugenics reform picture? Is it an argument for the fair and just use of forced sterilization? I'm not sure.

     Dr. Brooks tries unsuccessfully tries to convince his boss, Dr. McIntyre (W. Messenger Bellis...another great name) to spare Nancy, arguing that the poor are unfairly targeted and that eugenics would have robbed history of some it's greatest mind's. As the clock ticks closer to Nancy's surgery, Brooks rushes to her house in a last ditch effort to try and convince her mother to sign a form exonerating her.

     "Tomorrow's Children" is a strange low budget relic of both Hollywood and America'a past. A sterilization thriller about the right's of the individual versus the cold logic of the system; Frank Capra by way of David Cronenberg. It's a message picture, but one so muddled it's unclear what exactly the message is.

   

     

   

"Freaks" (1932) on Warner Archive Instant

"You laugh at them, shudder at them, and yet, but for the accident of birth, you might be even as they are."

     Tod Browning never left the carnival behind. He spent the early part of his life travelling with different shows, doing various jobs, including a "Living Corpse" routine, where he would be buried in a coffin (fitted with an air tube) for day's with only pocketful's of malted milk ball's for sustenance. That kind of experience, gained from having led a life outside cinema before stepping behind the camera, is something that has been increasingly rare in the post film brat generations. Tod Browning the carny informed Tod Browning the director; the live's of those who work the midway is an element in many of his work's including "The Unknown", "The Unholy Three" and, most famously,"Freaks", a morality tale set in the world of sideshow performers.

     Browning's interest in the physically malformed had been apparent in many of his works with Lon Chaney such as the aforementioned "The Unknown", as well as "Where East Is East" and "The Blackbird". He wastes no time in "Freaks" portraying the ugly scorn with which the world treats the performer's that populate the picture. In a series of short scene's he shows the "freaks" to be happy, caring people who are patronized, mocked and treated cruelly by the "normal" world. Few films take aim at hypocrisy so effectively in such a short time.

     We are thrown into into a fully realized, living, breathing world with an ensemble of characters. The viewer is immersed in the everyday backstage life of the carnival performer. Hans (Harry Earles), a dwarf, is smitten with beautiful trapeze girl Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). She exploits his feelings for money and gift's, while making a fool of him behind his back with her domestic abuse loving boyfriend Hercules (Henry Victor), the Strong Man.

     The movie has a rapid fire pace, and Browning never stops bombarding the viewer with unique and unsettling situations and image's still unparalleled eighty year's later. Whether it be the charming chronicle of the relationship issues of Siamese twins (Daisy and Violet Hilton) or the upsetting moment when Hercules punches the Half Woman-Half Man (Josephine Joseph) square in the face, we are constantly forced to react to things we have never seen before. In a poignant scene of profound kindness, the freaks gather around the bed of the Bearded Lady (Olga Roderick) and her newborn child. The Pinheads (Schlitzie, Elvira Snow, Jenny Lee Snow), Koo-koo the Bird Girl, Johnny the Half Boy (Johnny Eck), Angeleno the dwarf (Angelo Rossitto), the Bird Girl (Elizabeth Green) and the Half Woman-Half Man are framed by Browning's camera as if they were in a classic painting, not displayed as grotesque's, but as loving friend's. Director's such as John Waters and Werner Herzog, who force their audience to acknowledge the existence of society's outliers, are very much the children of Browning.

     At the center of this environment, a romance blossoms between Phroso the clown (Wallace Ford) and Venus (Leila Hyams), who walked out on Hercules due to his abuse of her. Theirs is an innocent, enthusiastic love, especially when juxtaposed with the cynical manipulations of Cleopatra. Frieda the dwarf, who was once the object of Hans' affection, goes to Cleopatra, and in a scene of brave humility, begs her to leave Hans alone. During the course of this, she lets slip that Hans possesses a fortune and with this his fate is sealed. Daisy Earles, the actress who plays Frieda gives an incredible, heartbreaking performance embodying pure selfless love.

     We cut forward to the wedding feast, a sideshow bacchanalia. Cleopatra openly cavorts with Hercules, too dumb and drunk to hide the transparency of her motives. There at the wedding table a chant breaks out, "We accept her, one of us...gooble gobble...". The freaks pass a goblet, each drinking from it. When it comes time for Cleopatra to drink, she tosses it at them, vanity making her unable to even pretend to be "one of them". Afterwards she mockingly gives Hans a piggyback ride, while Hercules accompanies on trumpet. It's an operatic moment of cruelty.

     As the day's pass, the freak's watch as Cleopatra pretends to nurse Hans back from a poisoning for which she is responsible. In these scene's Browning conveys the message that in this world it is Cleopatra who doesn't belong. She has made the fatal mistake of confusing being different with being stupid. The final sequence on the caravan during a thunderstorm where the undercaste assert themselves against those who would hurt them is a vicious, primal tour de force. It's the thematic inversion of torch wielding villagers chasing the monster; a society of the unusual seeking to purge the corrupting influence of the normal world from it's midst. At it's core this is a story of community.

          One senses Browning's own sweat and passion in every frame, and it's what sets him apart from many of his contemporaries. James Whale, for instance, directed his films with the remove and humor of a technically gifted intellectual, but Browning inhabited his pictures, dwelling within their dark world's. With "Freaks", his role as sympathetic chronicler of the marginalized reached it's apex. He created a vehicle for these people to be viewed as humans, and it remains a shockingly unique and compassionate achievement.