I have a new obsession. His name is Edward Brophy. Don’t beat yourself up if that peculiar moniker fails to ring a bell. I never heard it until a few months back. I was watching some old movies on TCM. Over the course of several nights, Brophy randomly appeared in three of them. While not exactly spooky, it certainly felt odd. But odder still, I knew him from somewhere, knew him very well, but couldn’t place where.
Brophy’s looks were distinctive: short, balding, round, with bug-eyes and flaring nostrils. All requisite features for a character actor. But his voice caught my attention. High-pitched, raspy, and mixed with a heavy Brooklyn accent. It sounded slightly reminiscent of Curly Howard (whom Brophy looks like a cousin to). An unmistakable and singular vocal tone. A voice I heard many times before and knew from childhood. A voice that seemed to always exist in my memory. But damn it, I didn’t know from where.
Of the three films I watched those nights, I spotted the voice first in It Happened on 5th Avenue (1934), a movie I’ve written about before. Here he plays a cop who finds people living in an abandoned mansion. Then a second night, he played Joe Morelli, a gangster in The Thin Man (1934). Both of these movies I watch once a year, but only this time did I perk up so specifically for Brophy.
The next night — when I felt certain some conspiracy was underway — he appeared in a comedy I was watching for the first time: Larceny, Inc (1934), starring Edward G. Robinson. Parodying his iconic tough guy roles, Robinson plays a gangster who plots to bust into a bank vault by buying the next door luggage store. Brophy plays one of Robinson’s flunkies. Of the three films, this one gives Brophy the most screen time. He is hilarious perfection as the blundering Stooge-like henchman, a role he performed many, many times with natural aplomb. A character type that he seemed physically designed to play.
Born in New York City on February 27, 1895, Brophy appeared in some minor movie roles before working behind the scenes as a second-unit and assistant director. While serving as a production coordinator on Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928), Brophy became a last minute replacement for an actor who failed to show up one day. Keaton so enjoyed Brophy’s performance that he worked with him on four more features.
With the skill to play both comedic and dramatic parts, Brophy turned into an established character actor, usually cast as dim-witted gangsters and cops. Of his many movie roles, he acted in Freaks (1932), Naughty Marietta (1935), and Mad Love (1935). If you can spot him, he has a small role in Frank Capra’s classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). But where did I know his voice from? His most famous (though uncredited) role as Timothy Q. Mouse in Disney’s Dumbo (1941).
Brophy would have turned 128 years old today. He died in 1960 during the production of John Ford’s Two Rode Together (1960). We often remember and tribute those actors whose names appeared above the titles, and whose devastatingly good looks continue to entrance us beyond their deaths. But it’s equally important to love, praise, and honor actors like Brophy. Those many who never achieved the same level of stardom, but who nonetheless deserve a little obsession as well.
I know I will continue to peruse TCM, watching and waiting to spot Brophy and hear the wonderful and unrivaled voice, 63 years after his passing.
-T.Z.
