Joe E. Brown
By David Bruce
Laughter is a Wonderful Thing, by Joe E. Brown. As told to Ralph Hancock. New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1956. 308 pages. Many photographs.
In a celebrity autobiography, I expect to learn something of the celebrity's life, read some of the celebrity's opinions, and listen in on a lot of name-dropping. And, of course, I expect to read many, many anecdotes, especially if the celebrity is a comedian. Joe E. Brown's autobiography gives me all of that.
To those not in the know (and they may be numerous, since Mr. Brown was born in 1892 and died in 1973), Joe E. Brown was a very famous comedian, known especially for his very large mouth. He played in "Show Boat "and played Elwood P. Dowd in "Harvey" (one of Jimmy Stewart's best screen roles). In addition, Mr. Brown was known for playing Alibi Ike and Elmer the Great, two characters created by Ring Lardner.
Mr. Brown was born and grew up near Toledo, Ohio. While growing up, he was poor and sometimes hungry. His father was a honest house painter, which apparently was not a good thing to be in the winter. Mr. Brown remembers one winter when the family depended on the father coming home each day with a rabbit. As Mr. Brown remembers it, that was about the only meat the family ate that winter.
In addition, Mr. Brown writes, "I don't remember that I knew the taste of butter except only occasionally in some more 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."
(When my mother was growing up poor in the South in the late 1930s and early 1940s, she also used to eat lard sandwiches. As you may guess, I strongly support Welfare.)
Mr. Brown also had it rough when he started into show business as an acrobat at age 10. Very often he was abused and beaten by the men he worked for. This part of the autobiography is sad, but Mr. Brown glosses over some of the pain he felt. He doesn't leave out the abuse, but he seems very forgiving of the men who inflicted the abuse on him.
For example, William Ashe, the man who gave Mr. Brown his first job as an acrobat, would occasionally beat him. This was something Mr. Ashe apparently had no problem with. If a person in your troupe and "family" messed up, you would punish them. In the summer of 1952, Mr, Brown was given a birthday cake at a Rotary Club luncheon in Toledo. He knew that Billy Ashe was in a nursing home and not doing well, so Mr. Brown decided to take the cake to him.
Mr. Brown writes, "I loved Billy despite all the things he did to me and I learned a lot from him. He was a foster father to me during my formative years. And if there is a key to my success it is in the lessons he taught me -- stubborn persistence in the face of defeat and enjoyment in a job well done.
"I'm glad I took the cake to Billy and had a chance to tell him these things. He died the following April, at the age of 82."
Mr. Brown is known as a clean comedian, but he admits the influence that playing in burlesque had on him: "The public's low opinion of burlesque today has caused more than one prominent star to soft-pedal his (or her) humble beginnings in this field. I am much too grateful for the things I learned in burlesque to belittle its importance in my story."
Mr. Brown tells a wonderful anecdote about the time his mother came to see the burlesque. Mr. Brown always worked clean, but the other acts, of course, were pretty dirty. When Mr. Brown's mother wrote him a letter saying that she would see the show in Detroit, he was ready to collapse because he "knew that two minutes of burlesque would kill her."
So Mr. Brown went to his boss, Frank Murphy, and the whole company worked together to clean up the show -- which meant pretty much rewriting the entire show. It worked -- Mr. Brown's mother was "charmed," and "the laughs were just as loud though not as raucous."
Eventually, Mr. Brown went into the movies.
The only movie of Mr. Brown's I have ever seen is the A Midsummer's Night Dream (1935), in which Mr. Brown played Flute, one of the members of the working class who wish to put on a tragedy (mixed with comedy) for Theseus, leader of Athens. This part of the play is low comedy, and Mr. Brown and the others do a wonderful job. (Bottom, who is given the head of an ass by fairies, is played by James Cagney!)
When Mr. Brown's agent called to say Warner Brothers wanted him to play in the movie and said, "Well, you know, Shakespeare might offer a good thing," Mr. Brown replied, "Is he in it?" As Mr. Brown tells the story, "The only Shakespeare I knew played for Notre Dame, but I didn't know he could act."
Mr. Brown calls A Midsummer's Night Dream "one of the most successful things" he ever did. One reason was that the actors playing in the low comedy decided to keep to their roots in burlesque, vaudeville, the chorus, and the circus. Mr. Brown writes, "I really believe Shakespeare would have liked the way we handled his low comedy. The Bard's words have been spoken better, but never bigger or louder."
There's much more in Mr. Brown's autobiography than I have indicated here. He does tell stories of the famous people he has known, plus he tells of his son's death in World War II and the many performances he was able to give our servicemen. As usual, I have used the excuse of a review to retell my favorite stories from the book.
One more anecdote will provide a fitting conclusion to this article:
Mr. Brown was loved by children. (Perhaps a result of keeping his comedy clean?) He tells about a letter written by one of the mothers of those children. Just six years old, the child saw one of Mr. Brown's movies, then asked his mother, "Mommy, when Joe E. Brown dies, will he go to heaven?" The mother replied, "Why, of course, darling." "Golly, Mommy," the child said. "Won't God laugh!"