Rowland Brown(1897-1963)

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 Le chevalier de Londres (1934) by Alexander Korda, then by David O. Selznick from Une étoile est née (1937). Little heard of after 1940.