The genesis of MGM's was a magazine piece by Ted Robbins titled . The story involved a terrible revenge enacted by a mean-spirited circus midget upon his normal-sized wife. In adapting for the screen, writers , , and retained the circus setting and the little man-big woman wedding, all the while de-vilifying the midget and transforming the woman into the true "heavy" of the piece. German "little person" plays Hans, who falls in love with long-legged trapeze artist Cleopatra ( ). Discovering that Hans is heir to a fortune, Cleopatra inveigles him into a marriage, all the while planning to bump off her new husband and run away with brutish strongman Hercules ( ). What she doesn't reckon with is the code of honor among circus freaks: "offend one, offend them all." What set this film apart from director 's earlier efforts was the fact that genuine circus and carnival sideshow performers were cast as the freaks: Harry Earles and his equally diminutive sister , Siamese twins and , legless , armless-legless (who rolls cigarettes with his teeth), androgynous , "pinheads" , and so on. Upon its initial release, was greeted with such revulsion from movie-house audiences that MGM spent the next 30 years distancing themselves as far from the project as possible. For many years available only in a truncated reissue version titled was eventually restored to its original release print.