Despite starring in a string of successes at Warner Brothers (where he was the studio's top money-earner in 1936), and rising halfway to the summit of Hollywood's box office top ten, comedian Joe E. Brown elected in 1937 to sign with independent producer David L. Loew. The son of motion picture pioneer Marcus Loew, founder of both the Loew's Theaters and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Loew fils had promised Brown $100,000 per picture - with the first film by the new partners being When's Your Birthday? (1937). Based on an unproduced stage play by Broadway scribe Fred Ballard, the film featured Brown as a low nightclub busboy obsessed with astrology, whose Candide-like peregrinations find him picking dog race winners for a well-heeled gambler and hiding out from gangsters while posing as a sideshow mind reader. Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, the modestly-budgeted When's Your Birthday? benefited from the production value of standing sets and received a gala premiere at Radio City Music Hall. Originally exhibited in Technicolor, the film's cartoon prologue was the work of Looney Tunes producer Leon Schlesinger and animator Bob Clampett. Brown's leading ladies are Marian Marsh, Trilby to John Barrymore's Svengali (1931), and The Devil Bat's (1940) Suzanne Kaaren - with Margaret Hamilton stealing an early scene as a hatched-faced housemaid named Mossy.

By Richard Harland Smith