Joe E. Brown

Only thing I ever could do was make people laugh ... And I can take only second billing for that talent. Nature met me more than halfway when it threw a handful of features together and called it a face.
- Joe E. Brown

There are some people who are just made for caricature. And of all the celebrities in history, the #1 candidate for that honor must be Joe E. Brown.

But first of all, we ask the obvious question. When you have stars who were born Archibald Leach, Krishna Bhanji, Joaquin Bottom, Edwin Cooksey, and Reginald Kenneth Dwight, we wonder just what was Joe E. Brown's real name. Surely it must have been something other than that perfectly common everyday all-American monicker.

Well, believe it or not, Joe E. Brown's real name was ... Joe E. Brown¹.

Up to the 1950's Joe was one of the most recognized faces in the United States and one of the most popular comedians. With a mobile stretchable face that seemed to defy natural law, he was also famous for the complementary long drawn out yell whenever his character found himself in a tight situation. But Joe didn't start out as a comedian. At age 10 he became an acrobat in a tumbling act in a circus.

Joe's career path wasn't that unusual for a successful actor of the era. From the circus his act moved to vaudeville and there he began branching out into comedy. Then he found parts in early films and in a few years had achieved top billing.

Joe's most famous film is without doubt Alibi Ike which is loosely based on the short story of the same name by Ring Lardner. Joe played a star baseball pitcher named Francis X. Farrell². ("Ike's" name in the story). But because Ike can never give a straight answer to any question, his teammates dubbed him "Alibi Ike". Of course, we hear Joe's trademark call of distress when he drives onto the ball field in a car he can't quite control.

The movie was released in 1935 which hardly need be said was when special effects were limited. When Ike throws his super fastball (after a unique wind-up) it's clearly Joe throwing a pretty ordinary pitch. The only way the audience knows the ball was a mitt-burner is that the team's manager, Cap (played by William Frawley - "Bub" on My Three Sons), voices his amazement. Today CGI would take care of everything.

You'll read that Joe really was a great baseball fan, and that's certainly true. But then when he was a kid everybody was a baseball fan. Every town no matter how small had its league and local businesses would put up the money for uniforms and equipment. And of course Joe played the game himself.

In fact Joe was a player of near professional caliber and even branched into the semi-professional leagues. The story is that the New York Yankees even considered taking him into their minor league farm clubs. Joe's enthusiasm continued in the family and his son, Joe L. Brown was the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates for twenty years. Two of Joe E.'s other films Fireman, Save My Child (1932) and Elmer the Great (1933) had baseball featured prominently in their plots.

But you can't make 70 films just about the national pastime. Joe's most popular films were from the 1920's through the 30's while those made during the 40's were not as successful. But that's probably to be expected since during the war, Joe spent much of his time entertaining the troops.

Admittedly many of Joe's films - Earthworm Tractors, The Tenderfoot, Son of a Sailor, $1000 a Touchdown - aren't remembered by the general public. But he was in the early release of A Midsummer's Night Dream (also in 1935) as Flute the Bellows Mender who is one of the players rehearsing their play to perform at Theseus's wedding (Jimmy Cagney plays Bottom the Weaver). In the 50's and 60's Joe took smaller roles, and his penultimate film was The Comedy of Terrors in 1963 (where he also gives his famous yell). This was followed by The Greatest Show on Earth the next year. Some critics maintain these later films - which included It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Around the World in 80 Days - are among his best performances particularly Some Like It Hot with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.

Joe appeared on stage, of course, most notably as Elwood Dowd in the original run of Harvey, a play about a kind and gentle man living with his sister and niece who are driven to exasperation since Elwood is convinced his best friend is a giant rabbit named Harvey. At the end of the play even the audience isn't sure if Harvey is real or not.

The most famous Elwood, of course, is Jimmy Stewart who reprised the role for the film. On Broadway Jimmy took over after Joe who himself had been a replacement for Frank Fay, the actor who created the role.

Features as suitable for exaggeration as Joe's are rare, and there are certain eras that are more caricature friendly than others. One was, of course, Joe's time - the Golden Age of Hollywood. You had actors with features as distinguishable as those of Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant and Clark Gable as well as Bette Davis, Tallulah Bankhead, and Jessie Tandy. Some critics have noted our modern celebrities are a particular challenge for visual artists - a number of reasons can be given why this is so - but some of the stars in the era of the silent films, 1910 to the mid-1920's, can also be also quite a challenge.

References

Joe E. Brown: Film Comedian And Baseball Buffoon, Wes Gehring, 2006.

"Joe E. Brown", Hometowns to Hollywood, March 16, 2020.

Alibi Ike, Joe E. Brown (actor), Olivia de Havilland (actor), William Frawley (actor), Warner Brother, 1935, Internet Movie Data Base.

Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Ramon Navarro (actor), Francis X. Bushman (actor), MGM, 1925, Internet Movie Data Base.

Harvey, Mary Chase (playwright), Joe E. Brown (actor, replacement), Francis X. Bushman (actor), 48th Street Theatre, November 1, 1944 - January 15, 1949., Internet Broadway Data Base.

"Why Do All Celebrities Look the Same?", Hadley Freeman, The Guardian, July 15, 2006.