Joe E. Brown Filmography

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers, Dick Shawn, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton

Synopsis: With this all-star Cinerama epic, producer/director Stanley Kramer vowed to make "the comedy that would end all comedies." The story begins during a massive traffic jam, caused by reckless driver Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), who, before (literally) kicking the bucket, cryptically tells the Read More

Some Like It Hot

Actors: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Pat O'Brien

Synopsis: The launching pad for Billy Wilder's comedy classic was a rusty old German farce, Fanfares of Love, whose two main characters were male musicians so desperate to get a job that they disguise themselves as women and play with an all-girl band in gangster-dominated 1929 Chicago. In this Read More

The Rainmaker

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Katharine Hepburn, Wendell Corey, Lloyd Bridges, Earl Holliman

Synopsis: N. Richard Nash's play The Rainmaker has always attracted the most flamboyant of performers, and this 1956 film version is no exception. Burt Lancaster all but bursts from the screen with his arm-waving portrayal of a confidence artist who works the drought-ridden Southwest, promising to bring Read More

Around the World in 80 Days

Actors: David Niven, Cantinflas, Robert Newton, Shirley MacLaine, Charles Boyer

Synopsis: Razzle-dazzle showman Michael Todd hocked everything he had to make this spectacular presentation of Jules Verne's 1872 novel Around the World in 80 Days, the second film to be lensed in the wide-screen Todd-AO production. Nearly as fascinating as the finished product are the many in-production Read More

The Joe E. Brown Show

Screen Directors' Playhouse: The Silent Partner

Synopsis: "The Silent Partner" is, along with John Ford's "Rookie of the Year", perhaps the best-known episode of the TV anthology series Screen Directors' Playhouse. Buster Keaton stars as Kelsey Dutton, a former silent-film comedian fallen upon hard times. While visiting a neighborhood tavern, Kelsey is Read More

Show Boat

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ava Gardner, Joe E. Brown, Marge Champion

Synopsis: The third and (to date) last film version of the Edna Ferber/Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical Show Boat falls just short of greatness but is still a whale of a show. Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson are in fine fettle as irresponsible gambler Gaylord Ravenal and showboat ingenue Magnolia Read More

The Tender Years

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Richard Lyon, Noreen Nash, Charles Drake, Josephine Hutchinson

Synopsis: While appearing in the stage production Harvey, comedian Joe E. Brown was persuaded by director Harold Schuster to accept the atypically serious starring role in The Tender Years. Though hardly his first dramatic film appearance, it was undoubtedly Brown's best. The star is cast as kindly Read More

Casanova in Burlesque

Actors: Joe E. Brown, June Havoc, Dale Evans, Lucien Littlefield, Ian Keith

Synopsis: In this effervescent musical comedy, a stuffy college professor secretly works as a burlesque comedian during the summer. He, a professor of Shakespeare, manages to keep his secret, until a stripper shows up and threatens to blow his cover unless he gives her a starring role in his latest Read More

Pin-Up Girl

Actors: Betty Grable, John Harvey, Martha Raye, Joe E. Brown, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Despite the film's title, Pin-Up Girl offers surprisingly few glimpses of the famed Betty Grable "gams." This lively Technicolor musical casts Gable as Lorrie Jones, secretary at a USO canteen frequented by handsome servicemen. Falling in love with war hero Tommy Dooley (John Harvey), Lorrie Read More

Hollywood Canteen

Actors: The Andrews Sisters, Robert Hutton, Joan Leslie, Jack Benny, Julie Bishop, Bette Davis, John Garfield, Betty Brodel, Sydney Greenstreet, Barbara Brown

Synopsis: The West Coast's answer to Broadway's Stage Door Canteen, the Hollywood Canteen was created as a GI morale-booster by film stars Bette Davis and John Garfield. The Canteen was established so that Our Boys on leave in Tinseltown could have a good time with good food and good dancing -- and, as a Read More

Show Business at War

Juke Box Jenny

Actors: Ken Murray, Harriet Hilliard, Donald Douglas, Iris Adrian, Marjorie Gateson

Synopsis: Back in the 1940s, it was not uncommon for recording artists to cut records exclusively for the jukebox trade, and sometimes to perform musical numbers "live" to jukeboxes via telephone hookup. Perhaps it is necessary for one to know these things before viewing Jukebox Jenny, very much a product Read More

Shut My Big Mouth

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Adele Mara, Victor Jory, Fritz Feld, Don Beddoe

Synopsis: The best of Joe E. Brown's Columbia starring vehicles, Shut My Big Mouth is also one of Joe's funniest efforts since his heyday at Warner Bros. Brown is cast as wealthy easterner Wellington Holmes, who heads to the Wild West in search of peace and quiet (!) When Wellington's stagecoach is held up Read More

Joan of Ozark

Actors: Judy Canova, Joe E. Brown, Eddie Foy, Jr., Jerome Cowan, Alexander Granach

Synopsis: The sure-fire combination of Judy Canova and Joe E. Brown paid off in big laughs and excellent box-office returns in the bizarre wartime musical Joan of Ozark. While hunting quail near her home, hillbilly Judy (Canova) catches a carrier pigeon bearing a message for a ring of Nazi spies. She turns Read More

The Daring Young Man

Synopsis: In this war comedy, an army reject becomes a war hero by rounding up a ring of Nazi spies. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Chatterbox

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Judy Canova, Rosemary Lane, John Hubbard, Gus Schilling

Synopsis: Though it ain't Noel Coward, Chatterbox is the funniest of the two Judy Canova-Joe E. Brown vehicles for Republic. Brown is hilariously cast as Rex Vane, a pompous radio cowboy star who's never been any further west than his living room. When Rex is signed to appear in a film, it becomes painfully Read More

All-American Coed

Actors: Frances Langford, Johnny Downs, Marjorie Woodworth, Noah Beery, Jr., Esther Dale

Synopsis: This 48-minute Hal Roach "streamliner" represents a rare directorial assignment for veteran Hollywood choreographer LeRoy Prinz, who also produced the film. Johnny Downs stars as Bob Sheppard of Quinceton University, who is appointed by his frat brothers to get even with the snotty sorority gals Read More

Where Did You Get That Girl?

Actors: Leon Errol, Helen Parrish, Charles Lang, Eddie Quillan, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a motley band of musicians have only their extreme poverty in common. They end up writing a hit and getting a recording contract. The trouble is, the composer's works are never played without another band member doctoring them up to make them swingier. Fortunately, the Read More

So You Won't Talk

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Frances Robinson, Vivienne Osborne, Bernard Nedell, Tom Dugan

Synopsis: In this comedy of mistaken identity, a bookish literary reviewer bows to the desires of his lover and shaves off his whiskers. Suddenly he finds himself in trouble, for without the mustache, he is the spitting image of a gangster who has just been released from prison. When the mobster's gang sees Read More

Beware Spooks!

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Mary Carlisle, Clarence Kolb, Marc Lawrence, Don Beddoe

Synopsis: Though Joe E. Brown's starring vehicles of the late 1930s-early 1940s were on the whole decidedly inferior to his earlier Warner Bros. films, some were better than others. In the "better" category is Columbia's Beware Spooks!, a hectic comedy-mystery set on Coney Island. On the strength of the Read More

$1,000 a Touchdown

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Martha Raye, Eric Blore, Susan Hayward, John Hartley

Synopsis: This film should have been a press agent's dream: Hollywood's two greatest "big mouths," Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye, together in the same picture. Brown and Raye play a show business couple who inherit a near-bankrupt college. They decide to build up the school's scraggly football team in hopes Read More

Flirting with Fate

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Leo Carrillo, Beverly Roberts, Wynne Gibson, Steffi Duna

Synopsis: Flirting with Fate is one of the lesser Joe E. Brown vehicles for independent producer David L. Loew. Brown is cast as Dixon, the manager of a third-rate vaudeville troupe stranded in a mythical South American country. Completely broke, Dixon hits upon a plan to finance the actors' trip home Read More

The Gladiator

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Man Mountain Dean, June Travis, Dickie Moore, Lucien Littlefield

Synopsis: The most successful of Joe E. Brown's post-Warner Bros. efforts, The Gladiator finds cavern-mouthed Brown winning a cash prize at a movie theatre, then using his windfall to attend college. The son of a legendary athlete, clumsy Brown is unable to live up to his dad's reputation. Genially batty Read More

Wide Open Faces

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Jane Wyman, Alison Skipworth, Lyda Roberti, Alan Baxter

Synopsis: In this crime comedy, a fortune is stolen and every gangster in town is looking for it. They all end up staying at a young woman's inn. The crooks all end up jailed thanks to the work of an innocent fountaineer. Not only does he collect a substantial reward, he returns the missing loot and wins Read More

Fit for a King

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Helen Mack, Paul Kelly, Harry Davenport, Halliwell Hobbes

Synopsis: In this romantic comedy, a rookie reporter works for his uncle's newspaper and gets assigned to write a story about an elderly archduke. While interviewing him, the young journalist falls in love with the crown princess. He then exposes a conspiracy to kill her and her father. Mayhem ensues as he Read More

When's Your Birthday?

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Marian Marsh, Fred Keating, Edgar Kennedy, Maude Eburne

Synopsis: On the whole, Joe E. Brown's vehicles for independent producer David L. Loew were distinct retrogressions from his films at Warner Bros., but When's Your Birthday? still contains some very funny moments. This time, Joe plays Douglas Willoughby, a mild-mannered astrologer who through a series of Read More

Riding on Air

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Guy Kibbee, Florence Rice, Vinton Haworth, Anthony Nace

Synopsis: A lesser but no less amusing Joe E. Brown vehicle, Riding on Air was adapted from a series of Saturday Evening Post stories by Richard Macaulay. Brown and Vinton Hayworth play Elmer Lane and Harvey Schumann, two rival small-town newspaper reporters who spend half their time fighting over stories Read More

Sons O' Guns

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Joan Blondell, Beverly Roberts, Eric Blore, Winifred Shaw

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a pacifistic song-and-dance man is compelled to don a military uniform for one of his acts. Before he can blink, he finds himself fighting in Germany. Later he is tossed into jail after being accused of being an enemy spy. He escapes and somehow manages to capture a Read More

Polo Joe

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Carolyn Hughes, Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, Joseph King

Synopsis: At the time of its release, Polo Joe was critically lambasted as the worst Joe E. Brown starrer to date. Compared to his later non-Warners efforts, however, it's not so bad: the biggest criticism that can be levelled against it is that it's virtually indistinguishable from Brown's other 1930s Read More

Earthworm Tractors

Actors: Joe E. Brown, June Travis, Guy Kibbee, Dick Foran, Carolyn Hughes

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown was an ideal choice for the character of Alexander Botts, the brash, arrogant "natural born salesman" created for The Saturday Evening Post by William Hazlett Upton. As a representative for the Earthworm Tractor company, Botts tries to convince old-fashioned lumberman Guy Kibbee to Read More

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Actors: James Cagney, Ian Hunter, Grant Mitchell, Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney, Victor Jory, Ross Alexander, Joe E. Brown, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dick Powell

Synopsis: Max Reinhardt's legendary Hollywood Bowl production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was transferred to the screen by Warner Bros. in 1935. Like most of Shakespeare's comedies, the story contains several seemingly unrelated plotlines, all tied together by a single unifying event, in this Read More

Alibi Ike

Actors: William Frawley

Synopsis: In this rollicking adaptation of Ring Lardner's short story, Joe E. Brown plays an ace baseball player whose insistence upon making up excuses earns him the nickname "Alibi Ike." In the course of his first season with the Chicago Cubs, Brown also falls in love with Olivia De Havilland Read More

Bright Lights

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Ann Dvorak, Patricia Ellis, William Gargan, Joseph Cawthorn

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown's extensive circus and burlesque training serve him well in this familiar but likeable yarn. Brown and Ann Dvorak stars as small-time vaudevillians Joe and Fay Wilson, presently employed by a seedy burlesque troupe. Also on tour with the Wilsons is society girl Peggy (Patricia Ellis) Read More

6 Day Bike Rider

Six-Day Bike Rider

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Maxine Doyle, Frank McHugh, Gordon Westcott, Arthur Ayleswofth

Synopsis: A popular fad of the early 1930s provided the framework for this Joe E. Brown romp. Hoping to impress his girlfriend Phyllis (Maxine Doyle), champion bicyclist Wilfred Simpson (Brown) enters a bike-racing marathon at Madison Square Garden. Newsreel shots of genuine six-day races are incorporated Read More

The Circus Clown

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Patricia Ellis, Dorothy Burgess, William Demarest, Donald Dilloway, Gordon Westcott

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown plays a dual role in Circus Clown, as would-be circus entertainer Happy Howard and his rustic old father. When dad, a former circus man himself, disapproves of Happy hitting the sawdust trail, the boy does so anyway, smitten by a beautiful female bareback rider. So naïve is our hero Read More

A Very Honorable Guy

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Alice White, Robert H. Barrat, Alan Dinehart, Irene Franklin

Synopsis: A Very Honorable Guy is an interesting if not terribly funny change of pace for comedy star Joe E. Brown. This Damon Runyon adaptation casts Brown as Feet Samuels, a compulsive gambler known for his determination to keep his word at all costs. To pay off his mounting debts, Feet sells his body to Read More

Son of a Sailor

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Jean Muir, Thelma Todd, Johnny Mack Brown, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown is a sailor who hopes to match the accomplishments of his seaman father. Unfortunately, Joe is perhaps the clumsiest gob ever to sail the seven seas. Nor can he steer clear of trouble: Through a series of wholly unbelievable circumstances, Joe finds himself alone on deck of a ship Read More

Elmer the Great

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Patricia Ellis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd, Preston S. Foster

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown plays Elmer Kane, a rookie ballplayer with the Chicago Cubs whose ego is matched only by his appetite. Because he is not only vain but naive, Elmer's teammates take great delight in pulling practical jokes on him. Still, he is so valuable a player that the Cubs management hides the Read More

The Tenderfoot

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Ginger Rogers, Lew Cody, Vivien Oakland, Robert Greig

Synopsis: George S. Kaufman's sturdy stage comedy The Butter and Egg Man was the inspiration for no fewer than four Warner Bros. talkie versions. The first of these was The Tenderfoot, starring Joe E. Brown as a wealthy but naive cowboy alone in the Big Apple. The producers of a down-and-out musical revue Read More

Fireman, Save My Child

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Evelyn Knapp, Lillian Bond, George Meeker, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown plays a small town fireman who is also the town's star ballplayer--and an itinerant inventor on the side. Brown is offered a pitching contract with the St. Louis Cardinals; he accepts, reasoning that the money he'll earn will help finance his invention. While in spring training, Brown Read More

You Said a Mouthful

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Ginger Rogers, Preston S. Foster, Sheila Terry, Farina

Synopsis: The butt of many a practical joke at the office where he works as a clerk, Joe Holt (Joe E. Brown) is nonetheless determined to prove himself a brilliant inventor. His latest creation is an unsinkable swim suit, which works quite well in theory. In practice, however, it is another matter; Joe Read More

Sit Tight

Actors: Winnie Lightner, Joe E. Brown, Claudia Dell, Paul Gregory, Lotti Loder

Synopsis: Joe E. Brown had a fondness for playing milquetoast characters forced into situations calling for acute athletic prowess, mainly because he was an excellent athlete himself. In Sit Tight, our hero, a would-be wrestler named JoJo, is forced to enter the ring and face down a musclebound masked Read More

The Stolen Jools

Going Wild

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Lawrence Gray, Laura Lee, Walter Pidgeon, Ona Munson

Synopsis: In this comedy, a luckless newspaper reporter heads for a coastal resort and finds himself mistaken for a famous dare-devil pilot by two gorgeous girls. Though he knows, better, he willingly does nothing to deny it. Rollicking trouble follows when he discovers that someone is trying to kill the Read More

Local Boy Makes Good

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Dorothy Lee, Ruth Hall, Edward Woods, Eddie Nugent

Synopsis: Local Boy Makes Good was based on the J.C. and Elliot Nugent stage farce The Poor Nut, which had starred Elliot Nugent on Broadway and Jack Mulhall in the 1928 film version. This time Joe E. Brown stars as John Miller, a meek-and-mild college botany student who worships beauty-contest winner Julia Read More

Broadminded

Actors: Joe E. Brown, William Collier, Jr., Marjorie White, Holmes Herbert

Synopsis: In this comedy, a carefree carouser creates trouble for his cousin the chaperone as they go 'round the world. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Top Speed

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Bernice Claire, Jack Whiting, Frank McHugh, Laura Lee

Synopsis: In this musical comedy, a bored office clerk finds much-needed excitement by masquerading as a millionaire. To do so, he borrows the speedboat of his girl friend's father. Slapstick mayhem ensues on the water until the lad ends up winning the big race. Songs include: "Goodness Gracious," "I'll Read More

The Lottery Bride

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, John Garrick, Joe E. Brown, ZaSu Pitts, Robert Chisholm

Synopsis: Based on "Bride 66", a tone poem by composer Herbert Stothart, The Lottery Bride takes place in a distinctly Hollywoodized Norway. Ever on the lookout for extra cash, heroine Jenny Swanson (Jeanette MacDonald) coerces her sweetheart Chris Svenson (John Garrick) to participate with her in a Read More

Sunny

Actors: Marilyn Miller, Lawrence Gray, Joe Donahue, Mackenzie Ward, O.P. Heggie

Synopsis: Broadway star Marilyn Miller's second starring film was an adaptation of her 1925 stage hit Sunny. Flashing her celebrated dazzling smile at every possible occasion, Miller is cast as a circus bareback rider, in love with wealthy Tom Warren (Lawrence Gray). Naturally, Tom's aristocratic family are Read More

Hold Everything

Actors: Joe E. Brown, Winnie Lightner, Sally O'Neil, Edmund Breese

Synopsis: The opening attraction at New York's Hollywood Theatre, Hold Everything was adapted from the DeSylva-Brown-Henderson musical of the same name that had served as a vehicle for Bert Lahr. For the film, both Lahr and most of the score were jettisoned, replaced by Joe E. Brown and songs by Al Dubin Read More

Maybe It's Love

Actors: Joan Bennett, Joe E. Brown, James Hall, Laura Lee, Anders Randolf

Synopsis: Maybe It's Love is one of the many college football musicals which bred like minks in the early talkie era. A very young Joan Bennett tops the cast as Nan Sheffield, the daughter of a college president (George Irving). The nominal leading man is Tommy Nelson (James Hall), the black-sheep son of a Read More

Song of the West

Actors: John Boles, Vivienne Segal, Marie Wells, Joe E. Brown, Sam Hardy

Synopsis: Based upon an ambitious but unsuccessful stage operetta by Oscar Hammerstein and Vincent Youmans, Song of the West is set in the middle 1800s during the great western Gold Rush. At a fort in Kansas, Lt. Singleton is in love with Virginia, daughter of the fort's Colonel. Singleton encounters Capt. Read More

Painted Faces

Synopsis: A circus clown creates trouble when he serves on a jury and refuses to convict an innocent young woman for murder. His vote causes a hung jury for five long days. In the end, it is discovered why he is so sure the girl is innocent---it was he who killed the man for abusing his adopted daughter. Read More

On with the Show

Actors: Betty Compson, Louise Fazenda, Sally O'Neil, Joe E. Brown, Purnell Pratt

Synopsis: This early talkie antique is a backstage musical from Warner Bros. The plot involves the out-of-town tryout of a new musical comedy, and the people who perform therein: a bitchy leading lady (Betty Compson), an arrogant comedy lead (Joe E. Brown), and a starstruck chorus kid (Sally O'Neil). At the Read More

My Lady's Past

Actors: Belle Bennett, Joe E. Brown, Alma Bennett, Russell Simpson, Joan Standing

Synopsis: Not even Joe E. Brown's most fervent fans have much to say about his appearance in the 1929 part-talkie My Lady's Past -- mainly because the film seems to have long since disappeared. In her first talking role, Belle Bennett (who previously co-starred with Brown in Molly and Me) plays another of Read More

Sally

Actors: Marilyn Miller, Alexander Gray, Joe E. Brown, T. Roy Barnes, Pert Kelton

Synopsis: Recreating her famous Broadway role from 1920, former Ziegfeld star Marilyn Miller took to the Warner Bros. soundstages with the energy that had made her a household name. Miller is Sally Bowling Green, an orphan named after a telephone exchange. Slaving away in a New York coffee shop, she dreams Read More

Sunny Side Up

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, El Brendel, Marjorie White, Frank Richardson

Synopsis: The popular silent romantic team of Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor made a successful all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing debut in Sunny Side Up. The story is old bromide about a poor girl who falls in love with a rich man, then tries to pass herself off as a woman of wealth. This being a 1929