Biography

Temperamental screenwriter and occasional director of the 1930s. Moved to Hollywood in the mid-'20s, finding work as a prop boy on the Universal lot. By 1926 he was working as a gagman for 'Reginald Denny'. He wrote several moderately successful gangster movies in the early 1930s, their "authentic feel" rumored to have been enhanced by his having been a bootlegger with mob ties during Prohibition. Career stalled after being fired, first from directing The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) by Alexander Korda, then by David O. Selznick from A Star Is Born (1937). Little heard of after 1940.

Studied at the University of Detroit and the Detroit School of Fine Arts.

Rowland Brown was the original director of The Devil Is a Sissy (1936), but he was replaced after one week by W.S. Van Dyke, who reshot most of Brown's footage. He was not credited for his time spent on The Devil is a Sissy. This was the 4th time another director completed a film which Brown started.

Wrote and produced a Broadway play, "Johnny 2x4" (1942). Among the cast Brown gave a 17-year-old fashion model named Betty Joan Perske (the future Lauren Bacall) her first acting role, a walk-on.

In 1938 Lewis Milestone and Brown purchased the screen rights to Of Mice and Men (1939), and the two planned to co-produce the film version with Brown writing the screenplay and Milestone directing. Brown sold his share of the project to Milestone and had no hand in the film.