orig. Charles Albert Browning
born July 12, 1880, Louisville, Ky., U.S.
died Oct. 6, 1962, Malibu, Calif.
U.S. film director.
He was a circus performer and vaudeville comic before joining the Biograph film studio in 1915. He wrote several screenplays, then directed melodramas and adventure films (1917–25). He directed the macabre film The Unholy Three (1925), starring Lon Chaney , followed by Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932), which established his reputation for films of horror and the grotesque.