The elephant man

Nothing unusual was recorded about the birth of Joseph Carey Merrick on August 5, 1862 -- to the world better known as the Elephant Man. Only a few months

The Elephant Man | John Hurt

Elephant Man

John Hurt as Joseph Merrick in "The Elephant Man"

Far from being the drunken, exploitative brute portrayed on stage, Valerie Hawkins insists ancestor Tom Norman, who exhibited Joseph Merrick in Whitechapel, was in fact kind and considerate.

Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man," was the most shockingly disfigured person in history. Parts of his body were grossly enlarged. Check out these images of the Elephant man.

Friends of Sir John Hurt say he was not always so decipherable as he was haunted by the death of one of his life's great loves, Vogue model Marie-Lise Volpeliere Pierrot, who died in 1983 in Oxford.