When’s Your Birthday

702. WHEN’S YOUR BIRTHDAY? (1937-usa). WITH joe e. brown, marian marsh, edgar kennedy, fred keating, margaret hamilton, frank jenks, maude eburne. Joe E. Brown, with his trademark mile-wide smile, was one Of the movies’ funniest slapstick comedians back in the 1930s. He’s his typically clownish, bumbling self in this entertaining farce, which opens with him as a canvasback’ prizefighter who is obsessed with stars; in fact, he sees them after his bouts if his astrological signs are not in his favor. The joke Of it is that Brown looks as much like a boxer as Groucho Marx; he’s an innocent who skips through life unaffected by the events around him. He can get into mischief when playing with a stray dog (which, Of course, he promptly adopts), or bussing tables at the local night spot, or hurling astrology- related puns at one and all. The final sequence, in which our boy manages to find himself fighting for the middleweight championship Of the world, is a real pip. Edgar Kennedy, master Of the slow bum, is perfect as Brown’s well-tuned second fiddle, and Maude Eburne does a fine comic turn as Edgar’s better half. The fine-quality print is marred by an annoying scratch in the beginning. 76 minutes. Comedy