Lew Brice

Lew Brice, born Louis Borach on October 26, 1893, in Manhattan, New York City, was an American actor, dancer, and comedian whose Broadway career spanned from 1913 to 1931. He was the youngest of four children born to Charles Borach, an Alsatian immigrant, and Rose Stern, a Hungarian Jewish woman who had emigrated to America at age ten. The couple operated saloons and raised four children: Philip, born in 1887; Carrie, born in 1889; Fania; and Louis. Brice was the brother of performer Fannie Brice.

Brice's Broadway work encompassed musicals, plays, and revues across nearly two decades. His stage career began with The Passing Show of 1913, which ran from July through September of that year, followed by The Passing Show of 1914 the following summer. He appeared in the play Maid in America from February through May 1915 and in the musical Step This Way from May through August 1916. A decade later he returned to Broadway in the revue Americana, which ran from July 1926 through February 1927. His final Broadway credit was Billy Rose's Crazy Quilt, a revue in which he performed from May through July 1931.

Alongside his stage work, Brice appeared in several films, including The Income Tax Collector in 1923, Partners Again in 1926, Lew Tyler's Wives in 1926 as the character Buzzy Mandelbush, and Happy Days in 1929 as a minstrel show performer. He also appeared in the 1930 one-reel Vitaphone comedy short The Window Cleaners, which was adapted from a vaudeville routine, and had an uncredited role as a reporter in Two Seconds in 1932.

On February 26, 1928, Brice married actress Mae Clarke. The marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Clarke subsequently appeared in the 1931 film The Public Enemy, which featured the well-known scene in which James Cagney pushes a grapefruit into her face. The film proved enormously popular, running continuously for twenty-four hours a day at a Times Square theater upon its release. Four months after the premiere, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Brice claimed to have seen the film more than twenty times, watching it at least twice per week, and quoted him as saying he attended specifically to see the grapefruit scene. Brice died on June 16, 1966, in Hollywood, California, at the age of 72.