Tod Browning was born as Charles Albert Browning, Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A on July 12, 1880 to parents Charles Albert, Sr. and Lydia Browning. He attended Louiseville High School, later renamed as Male High School. Browning ran away from home at age 16 to join a travelling steet carnival as he was pursuing a girl who performed there. He started as a ballyhoo artist, one who hypes the crowd and attracts it to the circus. He was also a talented singer who was part of the Christ Church Cathedral choir. His biographer, Herzogenrath, writes about it, "Browning finally did escape Louisville, though the break may not have been as decisive or dramatic as he later described. Since almost all accounts of Browning's entry into show business originated with Browning himself, or with studio publicists in the ballyhoo-heavy 1920s, they need to be evaluated with a certain skepticism. For instance, he told his longtime friend William S. Hart, Jr., son of the famed western-film actor (another friend), that he first ran away from home with a carnival at the age of twelve, which would make him almost a literal Toby Tyler. He also told Hart that his real birth date was 1874, not 1880, and that he claimed the later date for professional reasons, in order to appear younger in Hollywood. But that assertion is contradicted by the aforementioned 1947 birth certificate and its supporting documentation. Browning's self-proclaimed story of his early professional experience is indeed colorful, but largely unverifiable by independent means and often contradicted by surviving archival data. According to the legend, as first put forth in friendly newspaper interviews in the Louisville Herald-Post and in studio handouts, a street fair came to Louisville in 1898 and Browning fell under the spell of one of the dancers. The show left town, and so, supposedly, did Tod."

Tod Browning continued working as an entertainer, singer, dancer and contortionist in circus. According to Louiseville city directory, in 1901, he briefly worked as a clerk for Harbison & Gathright in his hometown, where he frequently returned at times when he was not away on carnival tours. Early on in his career, he performed as the Living Hypnotic Corpse, being buried alive in a ventilated coffin and making a challenging escape. He also spieled for a carnival attraction known as the Deep Sea Divers, possibly with Manhattan Fair and Carnival Company. A 1914 review featured in Reel Life magazine discusses Browning's role as a corpse in a carnival: "When the celebrated hypnotist, with whom he had formed a partnership, fixed upon him his mesmeric gaze, he would fall into a trance. Then he would be lowered several feet under the ground and the earth thrown over him. A wooden shaft permitted the wonder-struck crowd, one by one, to gaze down upon his inert form in the bottom of the pit—and incidentally supplied him with air. Sometimes, during an exhibition, he would have to stay buried forty-eight hours at a time. He also appeared in Florenz Ziegfeld's costume drama called Mam'selle Napoleon (1903) along with Anna Held, who later went on to become a Broadway star.

He joined hands with the vaudevillian Roy C. Jones for circus tours after they met in the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. With Roy, he performed as a blackface comedian in a vaudeville act called Lizards and Coon. He went on to work closely with the famed magician Leon Herrmann and Mongolian conjurer Ching Ling Foo. Two years later, on 24 March, 1906, he got marriet to Amy Louise Stevens.

Browning made the transition from carnival to Hollywood. He started his film career as an uncredited actor in Edward Dillon's slapstick short Ethel's Luncheon. As an actor, Browning acted in at least 45 out of the 52 films directed by Edward Dillon. Before his foray into direction, Browning acted in two Biograph one-reelers and around 50 one-reelers with Komic Company. Browning and Amy Louise Stevens got divorced on December 25, 1910. "According to a statement given by Emma Stevens during Amy's 1910 divorce proceeding, the breakup of the marriage was 'all [Browning's] fault. . . . He can blame no one but himself, as she made him a kind, dutiful and affectionate wife.'' According to Mrs. Stevens, Browning abandoned his wife and left Louisville in June or July of 1909. “Because he refused to provide and support his wife I had to do that . . . he has not contributed anything towards her support and maintenance since he abandoned her.”' Asked about Browning's whereabouts, Mrs. Stevens replied, “'I don't know where [the] defendant is now. It has been over a year since we heard from him.” (...) the marriage was indeed finished, and Amy Stevens was granted a divorce decree on Christmas Eve 1910. She never remarried, using the name Mrs. Amy Louise Stevens until her death in 1956 in Louisville at the age of seventy-three. Her death certificate noted her marital status as “'single,'' instead of the more truthful “'divorced.''"

His next recorded job was a season-long engagement with a burlesque show titled The Whirl of Mirth, which premiered at Casino Theater, Brooklyn in August 1912. "The most successful strip of the day was Bud Fischer's Mutt and Jeff—the characters were cultural superstars, having even been enshrined as waxworks at the Eden Musée. It fell to Browning to play the part of the racetrack habitué A. Mutt, his nose elongated with outlandish makeup. Variety praised his performance: ''Browning is the best subject,” The trade paper opined on August 23, 1912. “'His gaunt appearance in the burlesque was good for a laugh all the time.'' The New York Clipper called Browning's performance “extremely funny,” generating “'an abundance of laughs.' Elsewhere in the show, Browning took on the roles of “Silk Hat Harry” and ''Sherlocko.”'" The success of the play The Whirl of Mirth garnered him attention of the comedian and former circus performer Charlie Murray, who was then working for D.W. Griffith under the banner of Biograph Studios in New York. Murray introduced Browning to Griffith and he was hired to act in Scenting a Terrible Crime, his first credited acting role. When Griffith left New York and moved to California to join Reliance-Majestic Studio, Browning followed him. He later assisted Griffith in making Intolerance (1916), alongside Erich von Stronheim and Woody Van Dyke. The film is hailed as one of the monumental acheivements of silent cinema due to its ambitious narrative and groundbreaking cinematic techniques that have stood the test of time. Browning acted in many slapstick one or two-reelers in the year 1914. His first West Coast film was An Interrupted Séance, which tackled themes his films would later revisit- fake spirituality and psychic mediums. At least 42 films belonging to this period have been documented, most of them directed by Edward Dillon. After working in short films for Biograph and Komic Company, Browning debuted as a director with a one-reeler drama titled The Lucky Transfer in March, 1915, under the banner of Reliance-Majestic Studio. Browning had a prolific run during this time and went on to make 10 more one or two-reelers in the next three months, including The Living Death and The Burned Hand. Both the aforementioned films deal with the concepts that later became Browning's staple- bodily disfiguration and mutilation.

In June of 1915, while Browning was driving under the influence of alchohol, his car collided at high speed with a moving train. Browning and actor George A. Siegmann were seriously injured. The actor Elmer Booth died. After the accident, Browning spent the rest of the year recuperating in a hospital. Later he shifted to his family's home in Kentucky till his health further improved. "[Elmer] Booth sat next to Browning on the foggy drive home from Vernon, and no one bothered to walk ahead of the car. Also in the vehicle, or the one following, was a Booth relative named Edward Joseph Booth, as well as George Siegmann. Browning, apparently, drove as fast as he could manage under the circumstances, and when the car reached the blocked railway intersection at Santa Fe Avenue and the Salt Lake tracks, he collided at full speed with a flatbed car loaded with iron rails. They connected with Elmer Booth's face with the force of a stamping press, killing him instantly. '"The impresses in his skull," the Los Angeles Times reported, “'were as even and regular as the design of a waffle off the grill.”' George Siegmann suffered four broken ribs, a deep laceration on the thigh, and internal injuries. Of the survivors, Browning was hurt the worst, his right leg fractured in three places below the knee, his upper body pinned and crushed, with unspecified internal injuries that, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, made his recovery "doubtful."" A noticeable shift took place in the films he made after the accident, differentiating it from the comedy films of his career before 1915. His focus shifted to moralistic melodrama, consistently exploring themes of crime, guilt, and retribution. However, he continued to stay faithful to his roots- the carnivalesque. Browning directed around 15 short films during this period.

Browning directed his first feature film, Jim Bludso, as a co-director with Wilfred Lucas during a brief stint with Fine Arts Film Company and Triangle Film Corporation. The film, now considered lost, received critical acclaim and Browning was lauded for his ambitious on-location shooting of sequences of flood onset and burning steamboat without the use of any effects or miniatures. He directed 16 more feature films between 1917-1920 (according to American Film Institute Catalogue). Soon after D.W. Griffith departed from the studio. Browning left it as well and entered into a contract to direct 5 films for Metro Studio- the first three of them were Peggy, the Will o' the Wist, The Jury of Fate and The Eyes of Mystery. Later in the same year, Metro Studio decided to shift its base from New York to Los Angeles, California, the home of Hollywood. Browning directed two more films for Metro in California- The Legion of Death and Revenge. Browning's departure from out-and-out comedy in his post-accident career is noteworthy as he delved into melodrama laden with moralism, although humour continued to play an important role in his later films. Trick photography, revenge, criminal intentions and retribution of characters became staple elements in his films. On June 11, 1917, he married his second wife, Alice Wilson.

Browning departed from Metro Studio to join Bluebird Photoplays, a subsidiary of Universal Pictures. It was there he met the Universal stalwart Irving Thalberg, who recognised Browning's potential and introduced him to Priscilla Dean. Thalberg is also credited with introducing Browning to Lon Chaney in the fall of 1918, leading to the formation of this legendary actor-director duo which resulted in a prolific body of work.

The Brazen Beauty is released in 1918. It was the first collaboration between Browning and Priscilla Dean. They made 9 films together during his tenure at Universal Pictures until 1923.

Tod Browning joined Universal Pictures in 1919. Browning's first film with Lon Chaney, The Wicked Darling, is released this year. Chaney is also known as "The Man With a Thousand Faces" due to his versatility and ability to transform himself into various roles through acting and makeup techniques done on himself. He went on to become a frequent collaborator of Browning until the actor's death on 26 August, 1930. Skal and Savada, Browning's biographers, write the about the collaboration: "Tod Browning's first encounter with Lon Chaney no doubt took place in the fall of 1918, shortly after Browning began directing for Universal's Bluebird brand. Their first picture together was The Wicked Darling (1919), a pickpocket melodrama that established Priscilla Dean firmly as a new kind of film heroine, one who managed to live on both sides of the law, titillating audiences with a kind of vicarious criminality for several reels before making a virtuous turnabout in the last. Chaney played Dean's pickpocket cohort, "Stoop" Connors. The Wicked Darling was also significant in teaming Browning for the first time with scenarist Waldemar Young, with whom he would later create some of his most successful films for M-G-M."

A Petal on the Current is released later in the year. The film marked Browning's first collaboration with Waldemar Young, who is one of the few screenwriting collaborator of Browning. It was a fruitful collaboration and they wrote 3 films in the year 1919, and 9 films between 1925-1929, during their MGM days. Young started his film career by writing comedy routines for Franklyn Farnum and Brownie Vernon. Throughout the 1920s, he often worked alongside Lon Chaney and Tod Browning. In the 1930s, he wrote multiple screenplays for Cecil B. De Mille. Between 1917 and 1938, Young was involved in over eighty films. He notably earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay in 1935 for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.

Browning's first major hit, The Virgin of Stamboul, starring the real-life couple Priscilla Dean and Wheeler Oakman, is released. Tod Browning was allowed ample creative and financial independence by Universal Studio's Carl Laemmle for this ambitious project in order to create epic-scale sets depicting Istanbul.

Outside The Law is released. Second collaboration between Browning and Chaney. Film director Leo McCarey started his career assisting Browning in this film and the previous one, The Virgin of Stamboul. He proceeded to make a name for himself in Hollywood and directed classics such as Duck Soup (1933) and Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) A minor but early acting role of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American star of Hollywood. She left Hollywood for Europe in 1928 due to disappointment from American films typecasting her in stereotypical roles and their preference for yellowface instead of using East Asian actors for playing the roles. She found recognition among the German and English audiences and was acknowledged as a sensational actor. She later returned to Hollywood and actively began participating in making political statements and fighting for social justice . Browning directed and penned the scenario of No Woman Knows. A complete print of the film survives and the Filmoteca Española in Madrid, Spain.

Part of the American public's fascination with criminality as evidenced by the popularity of Outside the Law may have had something to do with enduring the first year under Prohibition, which overnight turned millions of previously law-abiding citizens into instant transgressors, and set in motion the biggest wave of organized crime the country had ever seen as bootleggers and mobsters began staking out their territories. The advertising campaign for Outside the Law didn't address Prohibition directly, but it came close: the drive for Sunday blue laws, fueled by the same forces that had closed the saloons, was exploited by four different billboard messages that sprang up around New York shortly in advance of the film's opening. “'Do You Motor on Sunday? You are OUTSIDE THE LAW.”' “Do You Work on Sunday? You are OUTSIDE THE LAW.”' And so on. The New York blue law partisans, feeling that their position was being distorted, countered with a billboard campaign of their own, and the war of signs received saturation coverage in the press.

Browning wrote and directed White Tiger. The film starred Lon Chaney and it was Browning's last collaboration with Priscilla Dean and Universal Picutres. "White Tiger once again paired Priscilla Dean with Wallace Beery in what Thalberg, evidently, felt was a safe project for his once trustworthy, now dissipated and erratic director. Oddly worded trade paper items reported that Thalberg and Browning required a "heart-to-heart" talk about the assignment, and, with “Thalberg at the urging point,” Browning agreed to make a formula crook story "for old-times sake." White Tiger doggedly repeated familiar Browning themes: a pair of crooks running a scheme to bilk society types of their jewels. Browning concocted the story himself, and the means by which the swindle is facilitated is a clever update on the magic cabinet tricks of his stage days."

After a very productive stint with the studio, Irving Thalberg quit Universal Pictures and decided to move to California to join MGM. He worked there for 12 years. Browning and Chaney, following the footsteps of their long-term collaborator, also quit. Browning directed two Gothic Pictures specials under Film Booking Offices of America (FBO)— which later became the famous RKO Radio Pictures— in 1924 starring Evelyn Brent: The Dangerous Flirt and Silk Stocking Sal.

Both Browning and Chaney move to MGM Studio. Browning is offered a one-film contract to direct Lon Chaney in The Unholy Three for a fees of $6,500. The film was an iconic acheivement in the director's filmography as he would revisit its themes later on in his career, most remarkably in Freaks— a story set against the backdrop of circus show adapted from a work by the same author and featured Harry Earles, who played the role of circus performer in both films. A condition was set up on the basis that if Browning successfully completed the contract, the studio would have the option to hire him for three additional films under the same terms. Another option was for the studio to contract him for four more films at a higher salary. The Unholy Three became a massive hit, earning more than five times of the film's budget and the trio would go on to make 7 more films together for MGM. On March 2, 1925, MGM executed the first, three picture deal on Browning's directorial services, also raising his salary to $10,000 per film. Thereafter, Tod and Alice Browning visited his hometown Louiseville. It was the last documented visit of Browning to his family home after he became a successful Hollywood filmmaker. Dollar Down, a partially lost morality drama produced and distributed by Truart Film Corporation was released in the same year.

The Blackbird was released on January 11, 1926. The film earned a miniscule profit of $263,000, the lowest for any film Lon Chaney ever did for MGM. However, his dual role and brilliant make-up garnered him with unanimous praise from audiences and critics alike. The premise of the film harks back to Browning's earlier explorations— the idea of fake deformity turning into a real one. In this film, a fake cripple is ultimately left truly paralyzed by the end. In The Unknown, the fake armless man ends up losing his arms for real, and in Freaks, Cleopatra, who is made an honorary freak, truly becomes a 'freak' by the conclusion.

The Road to Mandalay featuring Lon Chaney is released. Roughly two-thirds of the film survives now. Browning was assisted by Herman J. Mankiewicz (of Citizen Kane fame) in the inception of the story. The film is equipped with the themes that encompass most of Browning's filmography- forged identities, a love triangle and exotic spaces, to name a few. Skal and Savada give insight into the film: "The Road to Mandalay was [Herman] Mankiewicz's last association with Browning, although a Broadway play he coauthored with Marc Connelly the following season—The Wild Man from Borneo (1927)—paid a perhaps intentional homage to the turn-of-the-century world of carnival scams and traveling charlatans that had shaped Browning's career. Though based on a skit Connelly had originally written for W. C. Fields and Beatrice Lillie, the story contained so many Browning-like elements, including a dime-museum setting, a freak-show father who hides his identity from his daughter, and a theatrical landlady who once toured as “Lady Dracula'' (Bram Stoker's novel had been recently adapted for the stage in England and attracted both Chaney and Browning at this time), that Mankiewicz's interest in such a story so shortly after working with Browning seems more than an accident."

he Unknown, starring Lon Chaney, is released on June 4, 1927. It also features an early, pre-fame Joan Crawford. The film was considered "lost" for years due to the fact that it was labeled as "unknown" in a French film archive. Chaney had already played a disabled criminal in The Penalty, so losing his arms in this film might not have been a huge leap. In The Blackbird, a character pretending to be a cripple becomes genuinely disabled as a result of an accident. Browning reworked this idea, but with a darker twist, incorporating the element of intentional self-mutilation. The film is seen as the pinnacle of the films to have came out of the sadomasochistic collaborations between Browning and Chaney, with the latter going to the extent of not untying his hands even after the shooting is over. Chaney did this in order to agonize himself for the sake of a powerful acting performance. His torturous preparations for some of his roles make him one of the initial method actors of Hollywood cinema.

London After Midnight was released on December 3, 1927. A popular Browning-Chaney collaboration that is considered lost in the MGM vault fire of 1965, it film was released two months after the immense success of Dracula on Broadway, becoming the first vampire film of Hollywood. Only the photographic stills of the film survive, and have been edited into a cohesive narrative form with intertitles and orchestral score. It also stands as the most profitable film that the Chaney-Browning duo made for MGM, accumulating more than half a million dollars in profit.

The Big City was released on March 24, 1928. It is the second Browning-Chaney collaboration which was lost in the MGM vault fire of 1965. It revisits the theme of conniving in the criminal undrbelly echoed in his earlier films such as Outside the Law and The Unholy Three, and features Chaney without any special make-up for a change.

West of Zanzibar, based on the eerie play titled Kongo by Charles de Vonde and Kilbourn Gordon, was the penultimate Browning-Chaney collaboration. The film featured Chaney in a dual role and Lionel Barrymore as his nemesis. Released in the wake of the advent of talkies, the film employed synchronised orchestral score and sound effects.

Where East is East, the last picture of Browning-Chaney duo and Chaney's last performance in a silent film, is released. Although not a horror film, this film set in Asia features Browning's affinity for the uncanny otherness in an equally strange and exoticised world. The duo was also sceptical about foraying into the world of talkie films. The film shows how Browning tackles the contemporaneous reluctance surrounding sound by synchronizing certain sounds such as background noises and animal chatter. Browning biographers Skal and Savada note the divergent reception of the film: "[...] the reviewer protested Browning's "giving us many close-ups of kisses, a beastly exhibition of poor taste entirely out of keeping with the artistic standard of the production as a whole." A few weeks later, the publication saw fit to run a second, thoroughly stinging review, noting that “'Lupe Velez plays one of those bounding halfcaste girls whose very appearance on the screen makes the hand itch for a fly swatter... Screen writers, for some reason, have the idea if the girl has the blood of two races in her veins, she must go nutty and leap around as if she were weaned on a pogo stick.'' The New York Times praised “'several shrewdly photographed and exciting episodes”' but found the story “more than slightly incredible.”"

Carl Laemmle Jr. of Universal Pictures signs Tod Browning to a "five-year contract". The plan, according to press reports, was to adapt Dracula and remake Browning's earlier hit film The Virgin of Istamboul. On the other hand, Lon Chaney, battling with cancer, renewed his contract with MGM for a remake of The Unholy Three, without Browning as the director. The plan for the adaptation of Dracula was forestalled and so was the remake of The Virgin of Istamboul. Instead, Browning directed Outside The Law, a remake of Browning's own 1920 silent film of the same name, with Edward G. Robinson reprising the role played by Lon Chaney in the earlier version. It was the first sound film made by Browning under the banner of Universal Pictures.

On this day, Lon Chaney died of a throat hemorrhage after his bronchial lung cancer worsened. Tod Browning served as an honorary pallbearer along with several influential personalities such as Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Mayer, Fred Niblo, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, to name a few. Later in the same year, Tod Browning returned to Universal City to begin casting for Dracula.

The Mystic, starring Aileen Pringle and Conway Tearle, backed by MGM was released on September 27, 1925. The film featured Browning's usual affinity for carnivals, conniving criminals and eerie seance sequences with morally ambigious antiheroes who evoke the strange sympathy of the viewers. Both The Mystic and his next film, The Blackbird, which featured Lon Chaney drew heavy influence from Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari(1920), a quintessential German Expressionist film renowned for its macabre sets and lighting techniques.

The Show, starring John Gilbert is released. Browning further delves into the world of vaudeville and explores the human condition through a lens of spectacle and introspection. The glamorous world of the circus stage is juxtaposed against the grave realities of the performers' live, laying bare the emotional toll that artists undergo.

During the summer of 1929, Lon Chaney developed pneumonia during the shooting of William Nigh's Thunder in Wisconsin. His condition continued to deteriorate and his contract with MGM was suspended due to his inability to work. His sickness developed into lung cancer; Chaney had been a heavy smoker. The seriousness of Chaney's condition was kept a secret and he lived as a recluse in the summer and fall of 1929.

Bela Lugosi took a halt from his performance as the titular character in the play Dracula from June 23 to July 21 to star in Tod Browning's first sound film, The Thirteenth Chair. This mystery-thriller premiered on Friday the 13th of December, 1929, with Lugosi playing the role of the inspector. A silent version of the film was also released some time later. It was the norm at that time, as several theatres were not equipped with the technologies required for the transition from silent to talkie films. The film made almost half the amount in profits as compared to the iconic Browning- Chaney collaborations. It was also Browning's last film backed by MGM in the silent era.

Dracula premiered at Roxy Theater in New York on February 2, 1931. The film made around $50,000 in the first 48 hours since its release in Manhattan. The date was shifted to 12th in order to avoid the inauspicious Friday the 13th. After Dracula, Tod Browning's boxing drama Iron Man, was released on April 30, 1931, marking an end to the three-film contract with Universal Pictures. He then signed a new contract with MGM.

Browning declined MGM's demand of having him direct Arsene Lupin, a film which would have had John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore as potential top-billed actors. Instead, he proposed filming an adaptation of Tod Robbins' short story Spurs which was recommended to him by actor Harry Earles, who went on to play the lead role in the adaptation titled Freaks. The shooting for Freaks began during mid-October. Production period lasted till December 1931.

Test screenings of Freaks were held at San Diego and Huntington Beach in California. The film received extremely unfavourable reviews including walkouts and legal threats. Studio then had to cut down various sequences, reducing the runtime from over an hour and a half to just 64 minutes. On 10 February, 1932, a heavily-trimmed version of Freaks was premiered at Fox Criterion in Los Angeles. The film received polarising reviews from critics and audiences alike, breaking footfall records in some places and not even being screened in cities such as San Fransisco.

This year, Browning directed Fast Workers. He was allowed a budget of $525,000 by MGM, despite the commercial failure of his previous film, Freaks, and a relatively short runtime of this film. The film panned even worse commercially, earning only a meagre one-third amount of the budget. The film received censor board's reprimand due to its violation of Hays' Code despite warning.

William Faulkner entered into a contract with MGM, and was to work with Browning for a film titled Louisiana Lu. However, Faulker was made to leave the project midway and eventually the film went to George B. Seitz, who made it under the title Lazy River in early 1934. Faulker's written material had no contribution in this version of the film.

After two major commercial flops, Tod Browning and his wife began spending more time in Malibu. They lived in the same neighbourhood as Allan Dwan, Robert Zigler Leonard, George Marshall, etc. It was a dry spell for Browning, who was unable to get work despite requesting studios. His close aide and an MGM stalwart, Irving Thalberg, had suffered a heart attack that year. Eventually, he managed to convince MGM producer Eddie Mannix to finance his next film, Mark of the Vampire. The film built up on elements borrowed from his earlier films, Dracula and London After Midnight- two of his most succesful films. Although this time, MGM did not wish to pay him more than half the amount he received for his previous film with them. Mark of the Vampire was released with moderate commercial success and generally positive critical reviews.

Immediately after the success of Mark of the Vampire, he began to work on another script, based on the novel Burn, Witch, Burn! by Abraham Merritt. The working title at that time was The Witch of Timbuctoo. It was a story about voodoo rites and witchraft and advertised by MGM trade magazine as "one of the most important mystery-horror thrillers of the year." Browning, along with Garrett Fort and Guy Endore, completed a script during the summer. This script formed the basis for his next film, The Devil-Doll.

After several alterations in the script were incorporated owing to the demands of Production Code due to the film's themes of occultism and black magic, The Devil-Doll was rewritten with inclusion of science-fiction elements and released in July. The film garnered a moderate profit of $68,000 above the budget. However, it was clear to the studios that Browning had lost his old flair to bring large profits. In order to give the illusion of miniature animals and humans, "the studio employed double-exposure optical printing techniques, but achieved far greater success by simply building gigantically oversize sets on the biggest M-G-M facility, sound stage no. 12."

September 14, 1936: Irving Thalberg died due to health complications that had aggravated since he caught pneumonia during the shooting of Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races (1937). Although by this time the relationship between Browning and Thalberg had become strained, it was an end of an era of a long-standing and successful collaboration. In the following year, Browning developed interest in adapting Horace McCoy's novel They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. Browning and McCoy both had already met at the dance marathon club where the latter worked as a bouncer. For two years, Browning tried to convince MGM to buy rights to the film adaptation for him to no success.

Browning managed to convince MGM's production manager J.J. Cohn to finance a film adaptation of Clayton Rawson's mystery novel Death from a Top Hat. The film was not billed as "A Tod Browning Production", an unprecedented act for Browning since the early 1920s. The film was released as Miracles for Sale. In this film, Browning revisited his earlier themes of magic, disguised identities and false spiritualism.

After the paltry earnings of Miracles for Sale, Browning was fired from MGM by producer Carey Wilson. Browning himself claimed that he was blackballed from Hollywood thereon, which brought an early end to a prolific cinematic career. He occasionally did some scenario writing for MGM.

"By the time Browning directed what would prove to be his last film, he had sold the Beverly Hills house and moved with Alice permanently to Malibu. In December 1940 E. J. Mannix approved Hunt Stromberg's employment of Browning as his direct employee, an arrangement that would allow him to work, while shielding him from the pressure of other demands and assignments. The arrangement obviously smacked of charity and raised eyebrows among the new administrative regime." "Studio executives began making pointed inquiries about Browning's activities since he became attached to the Stromberg unit. He had done a fifty-two-page rough treatment as well as a thirty-two page continuity for a film called Ghost of the Thin Man (released as Shadow of the Thin Man in 1941), and had begun a treatment adaptation of the Hungarian novel Hotel Majestic, by Eugen Heltai, previously filmed in 1937 in Hungary under the title Room 111. Fueled by skepticism that Browning was doing "any writing at all," internal scrutiny increased. At the end of October 1941 he was transferred from the Stromberg unit to the M-G-M writer pool, his salary reduced to $200 a week. A few weeks later he filed his last story treatment, Equilibrium, and went off the M-G-M payroll for good on January 3, 1942." He eventually retired from the film industry completely and moved to Malibu, California. "Browning retired to Malibu with Alice within weeks of the United States' entry into World War II, which made their longstanding fondness for European travel an impossibility. Their residence at 31 Malibu Colony, as well as its garage, was filled with souvenirs and curios gleaned from two previous decades of globetrotting. Because the Brownings still had money, investments, and real estate, Tod's dismissal by M-G-M was more an emotional than financial trauma. According to Browning's longtime carpenter and handyman, Herve Babineau, he felt he had been "blackballed" and, whatever the role of Carey Wilson, ultimately blamed Louis B. Mayer personally for the collapse of his career. Now he focused his life on Alice and the house. Instead of the tennis courts that were a fixture of most of the neighboring homes, Browning installed a duck pond and victory garden. He called the plot of land "Tod's Little Acre”"

He died in his home in Malibu, alone. In accordance with his demands, there was no memorial service held to honour his death. His remains are kept at Angekus-Rosedale Cemetery, Los Angeles.

In 1949, Tod Browning was given Honorary Life Member award by the Directors Guild of America. The first recipient of this award was D.W. Griffith, and at the time of Browning's death, only four other film personalities had received this prestigious award. He lived in obscurity as an alcoholic recluse. He developed throat cancer and the surgical treatment rendered him mute. "Though he feigned indifference to the modern world of show business, Browning still read the trades regularly, and grew addicted to old movies on late-night television, a pastime that dovetailed perfectly with his lifelong penchant for “burning moonlight." And despite his purported statement "I wouldn't walk across the street to see a movie," he did permit the Snows to take him to Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries in 1959. According to Dr. Snow, he responded quite favorably to the film, a study in old age and alienation that coincidentally starred one of Browning's directorial colleagues at M-G-M in the twenties, Victor Sjostrom."