When Johnny Eck was hired for Freaks, his manager simply told him he was going to work in a circus that started its tour in California. He didn't realize he was in a movie until he reported for work at MGM.

Eck's condition was a result of Sacral Agenesis, an abnormal fetal development of the lower spine. He actually had legs, but they were small and unusable. He usually kept them disguised under his costume.

In Tod Robbins's original story, Cleopatra and Hercules were partners in a bareback riding act.

At one point, according to New York Herald-Tribune critic Richard Watts, Jr., Tod Browning was considering Robbins's story as a vehicle for Lon Chaney. In that version he would have cut the wedding and had Harry Earles, as the story's little person, avenge himself for insults from Chaney's character by forcing the full-sized human to carry him around Europe on his back.

Phroso the clown was named for Lon Chaney's magician character in West of Zanzibar (1928).

The wedding banquet scene resembles a story MGM publicity writers placed under Chaney's name in Motion Picture Classic. Titled "The Most Grotesque Moment of My Life," it described a visit from half-a-dozen deformed men and women who declared Chaney their honorary king in gratitude for his portrayal of human monsters on screen. At the time the article appeared, Willis Goldbeck, who contributed to the Freaks screenplay, was working in the MGM publicity department.

Although Schlitze, the leader of the pinheads, wears a dress and plays his role as a woman, he was, in fact, a man. His managers simply found putting him in dresses made it easier for him to go to the bathroom. He so thoroughly identified with his acquired gender that the thought of a new dress and other fineries, particularly hats, sent him into throes of ecstasy.

Made at a cost of $316,000, Freaks lost $164,000 at the box office.

In an attempt to recoup some of MGM's losses, production head Irving G. Thalberg reissued the film in 1933 with a new title, Nature's Mistakes, and an exploitative ad campaign asking such questions as "Do Siamese Twins Make Love?" and "What Sex is the Half-Man-Half-Woman?" The reissue did not include the MGM logo.

Freaks remained largely unseen in the U.S. for years, though there were occasional European revivals. The resurgence of interest in the film started in 1962, when it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. In the '70s and '80s, it was a popular film on the midnight movie circuit, eventually developing a cult following.

Memorable Quotes from FREAKS

"In ancient times, anything that deviated from the normal was considered an omen of ill luck or representative of evil." -- opening title for 1933 reissue of Freaks

"They're not children; they're monsters." -- Michael Visaroff, as Jean, reacting to the pinheads

"Why should they laugh at you?"
"Most big people do. They don't realize that I'm a man with the same feelings they have." -- Olga Baclanova, as Cleopatra, and Harry Earles, as Hans

"To me -- you're a man." -- Daisy Earles, as Frieda, to Harry Earles

"They're going to make you one of them, my peacock!" - Henry Victor, as Hercules, to Baclanova, as Cleopatra, at the wedding

"We accept you, one of us! Gobble Gobble!" -- The Freaks' chant at the wedding dinner

"Dirty -- slimy -- freaks! Make me one of you, will you?" -- Baclanova

"I'm not going to have my wife laying in bed half the day with one of your hangovers." -- Roscoe Ates, as Roscoe, to Daisy Hilton, as Siamese Twin