Eaker, 2016: "After the 1931 box office success of Browning's Dracula and Whale's Frankenstein, MGM second- in-command Irving Thalberg approached Browning and asked him to come up with something to outdo both of those films. Browning responded with his manifesto, Freaks." Baxter, 1970 p. 101: "Browning had been hired by Metro to make a more ambitious version of the many circus films then being produced. Characteristically, he took as his subject not a conventional drama of life under the but a cynical story called "Spurs" by fantasy writer Tod Robbins." Towlson, 2012: "In the case of Freaks it seems that Thalberg hired Browning to direct, but Browning had known of the short story, "Spurs," on which Freaks is based for years..." Rosenthal, 1975 p. 14: "The dwarf in "Spurs" is a hideously arbitrary and vicious individual compared to the victimized Hans in Freaks."
