Both Lon Chaney and Tod Browning have remained enigmas. […] It is, to some degree, fatal that these two men of such morbid nature, both of whom were led by their respective inner demons to project indelible images of self-fragmentation, in some way competed one another. And, like some circus freak that can be broken down, it was something the audience wanted to see, or identify with. Just like burlesque that was becoming more and more risqué, Tod Browning and Lon Chaney seemed intent upon uncovering and recovering themselves together in a new type of striptease that didn’t stop at the skin, or the bone, or even the brain. Or, as Diane Arbus explained, the identity of a class of students thirty years later, is what remains once you’ve eliminated the rest.

David J. Skal, The Monster Show, , New York, Norton & C., 1988