Joe E. (for Evans) Brown (1892-1973) brought his trademark rubber face and slapstick style to a number of film farces that were low in budget but high in hilarity. The big-mouthed comic also enjoyed scene-stealing smaller roles in some major productions. Born in Holgate, Ohio, Brown was a circus acrobat at age nine and a semipro baseball player in his early adulthood. After working his way up through burlesque and vaudeville onto Broadway, he made his movie debut in 1928.

Under contract to Warner Bros. from 1929-36, Brown made a series of popular knockabout comedies. Among his early vehicles was On With the Show (1929), an early talkie with Brown as the egotistical leading man of a Broadway-bound musical comedy. Eleven Men and a Girl (1930), whose original title was Maybe It’s Love, is a football musical with Brown stealing the show as a player whose every touchdown is accompanied by the yell of "Yeeeowww!" that would become a Brown trademark. He also put his athletic abilities to good use in a "baseball trilogy" that included Fireman, Save My Child (1932), Elmer the Great (1933) and Alibi Ike (1935). And he drew on his carnival experience in Circus Clown (1934). In Earthworm Tractors (1936), Brown was beautifully cast as Alexander Botts, the self-described "natural born salesman" from the The Saturday Evening Post stories.

Brown announced his retirement from the screen in 1943 but returned for occasional special projects including The Tender Years (1947), in which he played a rare dramatic role; Show Boat (1951), in which he was the lovable Captain Andy; and, most memorably of all, Some Like It Hot (1959), in which he romanced a cross-dressing Jack Lemmon and uttered the immortal closing line, "Well, nobody’s perfect!"

The films in TCM’s birthday tribute to Joe E. Brown are On With the Show (1929), Eleven Men and a Girl (1930), Top Speed (1930), Local Boy Makes Good (1931), You Said a Mouthful (1932), Fireman, Save My Child (1932), Son of a Sailor (1933), Circus Clown (1934), Earthworm Tractors (1936) and Sons o’ Guns (1936).