John Mack Brown
John (Johnny, as he was later known) Mack Brown was
born in Dothan, AL, and was a star football player on his high
school team going on to the University of Alabama on a scholarship
and becoming a standout player there. Winning the NCAS Division
1-A championship, his team went on to win the Rose Bowl with Brown
being named the game's Most Valuable player after scoring two
of his team's three touchdowns that day. This national attention
brought him a movie offer from MGM where he co-starred with some
of the major stars on the lot - Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford,
Anita Page, and others. In 1929, he was Mary Pickford's love interest
in her first talkie, "Coquette" (1929). He was chosen
to star in King Vidor's prestigious "Billy the Kid"
(1930). Although he was featured in several more MGM films in
the early 1930's, he was never considered a great actor, and his
career never really took off. By 1932, he was making B westerns
and finding his niche for a long and prosperous career as a cowboy
hero. He starred in dozens of these films in the 1930's and 1940's,
made several television appearances and appeared in his last film
in 1965. Brown married Cornelia Foster in 1926, a marriage that
lasted until his death in 1974 at age 70.
Selected films of this star available for viewing:
Our Dancing
Daughters (1928)
A
Lady of Chance (1928)
A Woman
of Affairs (1929)
The
Single Standard (1929)
Return to photos page