The Clown Prince of Warner Brothers
Joe E. Brown was the clown prince of Warner Brothers during the 1930s. With his oversized mouth and squinty little eyes, The Big Mouth parlayed slapstick buffoonery into box office success in dozens of B pictures loved by the public and shunned by critics. The generally amiable comic eventually became vexed by his trademark stating, "I've seen a lot of funny looking people who were not comedians." Brown felt he was more than a one-note comic relying on an outlandish mouth emitting loud noises.Nevertheless that mouth was Brown's gimmick and made The Big Mouth a wealthy man. The routine was born in vaudeville when Brown hit a blank point while performing. He opened his mouth into an impossibly huge cavern and let out a wailing shriek of frustration. Inspiration or desperation? Whatever, the act wowed and astonished audiences. Brown developed a persona he repeatedly played on the screen and it was a long time until moviegoers grew tired of his antics.
He was born Joe Evan Brown July 28, 1892 in Holgate, Ohio to house painter Mathias Brown and wife Ann Evans. One of seven children, Joe grew up in poverty with the family surviving one winter living on rabbit meat. "I don't remember that I knew the taste of butter," he recalled, "except occasionally in some prosperous neighbor's home or when we visited a relative. We used lard spread on bread and sprinkled with a little salt or on rare treats, sprinkled with a little brown sugar."
While living in Toledo, ten-year-old Joe was recommended by a neighbor boy for an acrobat job with Sells and Downs Circus. Joe possessed natural skill at handsprings and somersaults and was accepted as one of the Five Marvelous Ashtons for $2.50 a week. The act consisted of three boy marvels being tossed back and forth forty feet in the air between two men. Joe loved being in the circus and contributing to the family income although it came at a brutal cost.
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