Joe E. Brown

Joe E. Brown was an American actor, comedian, and Broadway performer born on July 28, 1891, in Holgate, Ohio, near Toledo, into a large family of Welsh descent. He died on July 6, 1973. Brown spent most of his childhood in Toledo and at the age of ten, in 1902, joined a traveling troupe of circus tumblers called the Five Marvelous Ashtons, performing on both circus and vaudeville circuits. He later pursued professional baseball, declining an offer to sign with the New York Yankees in order to continue his entertainment career. After three seasons he returned to circus work, then vaudeville, gradually incorporating comedy into his performances before making his way to Broadway.

Brown's Broadway career spanned from 1920 to 1951. His stage credits included the musicals Jim Jam Jems, Captain Jinks, and Betty Lee, among other productions. He later took on the role of Elwood P. Dowd in the touring company of Mary Chase's Harvey, succeeding Frank Fay, the role's originator, and performing the part for seven months in the New York company before the production moved on the road. Brown went on to perform the role more than 2,000 times, appearing in productions in Australia, Canada, England, and Hawaii. In 1948, he received a Special Tony Award for his work in that touring company. In 1951, he returned to Broadway to star in Courtin' Time, a musical by William Roos, Jack Lawrence, and Don Walker, in which he played the widower Samuel Rilling.

In late 1928, Brown began working in film, initially making silent and early sound pictures for various studios before signing a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. His profile rose sharply after appearing in On with the Show! in 1929, the first all-color, all-talking musical comedy. He followed that with a series of Technicolor musical comedies including Sally, Hold Everything, Song of the West, and Going Wild, all released in 1929 and 1930. By 1931 his name appeared above the title in his films. Several of his Warner Bros. pictures drew on his background in baseball: in Fireman, Save My Child he played a St. Louis Cardinals player, while Elmer, the Great and Alibi Ike both cast him as a Chicago Cubs ballplayer. He also demonstrated range in the 1934 Damon Runyon adaptation A Very Honorable Guy, and earned particular praise for his portrayal of Francis Flute in the Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1935, one of the few vaudeville comedians to appear in a Shakespearean film. Brown was named one of the top ten moneymakers in American films in both 1933 and 1936, and ranked among the top fifty moneymakers in Great Britain in 1936. His final feature for Warner Bros. was Polo Joe in 1936, after which he signed with independent producer David L. Loew for a two-year, six-picture deal distributed across RKO, Columbia, and MGM. Following the expiration of that contract in 1938, he continued making films for Paramount, Columbia, and Republic before transitioning into character roles and guest appearances.

During World War II, Brown was too old to enlist at age fifty, though both of his biological sons served in the military. In 1942, his son Captain Don E. Brown was killed when his Douglas A-20 Havoc crashed near Palm Springs, California. Before the USO was formally organized, Brown traveled at his own expense to entertain troops in the South Pacific, including stops at Guadalcanal, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as the Caribbean and Alaska. He also spent considerable time at the Hollywood Canteen. He documented these experiences in his book Your Kids and Mine. For his contributions to troop morale, Brown became one of only two civilians awarded the Bronze Star during World War II. In 1939, prior to the war, he had testified before the House Immigration Committee in support of legislation to admit 20,000 German-Jewish refugee children into the United States, and he later adopted two refugee children.

Brown's postwar work included a cameo in Around the World in 80 Days in 1956, playing a Fort Kearney stationmaster, and another cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 1963 as a union official. He appeared as the mystery guest on What's My Line? on January 11, 1953, and was featured in the 1954 made-for-television industrial musical Milestones of Motoring alongside Merv Griffin and Rita Farrell. His most celebrated postwar screen performance came in Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot, in which he played aging millionaire Osgood Fielding III opposite Jack Lemmon. The film's closing line, delivered by Brown's character, became one of the most quoted in cinema history.