John C. Brownell

John C. Brownell was an American actor and writer born on February 5, 1877, in Burlington, Vermont. His career spanned theater and film, and he remained active across both industries for several decades. He died on August 27, 1961, in Starksboro, Vermont. Yale University holds a collection of his papers.

Brownell's Broadway career extended from 1909 to 1934 and included appearances in The Fortune Hunter, The Cyclone Lover, and Dream Child. Beyond performing, he wrote several plays, among them Her Majesty the Widow, The Nut Farm, A Woman of the Soil, and Mississippi Rainbow: A Modern Comedy of Negro Life, the last of which dates to 1938.

His work in film encompassed both writing and production. As a screenwriter, Brownell contributed to a number of pictures in 1917, including Susan's Gentleman, The Boy Girl, The Girl by the Roadside, The Raggedy Queen, and Little Miss Nobody. He worked with Universal Films and Film Booking Offices of America, and his screen credits continued into the late 1920s with titles such as Bad Company and Three of a Kind in 1925, The King of the Turf in 1926, and Bitter Sweets and Out with the Tide in 1928. His play The Nut Farm was adapted into a film of the same name in 1935.