Old-fashioned Comics: Johnny Mack Brown (Dell Four Color Comics) 13 issues (Complete Series)

Johnny “Mack” Brown (September 1, 1904 – November 14, 1974)

was an American college football player and film actor originally billed as John Mack Brown at the height of his screen career.

His good looks and powerful physique saw him portrayed on Wheaties cereal boxes and in 1927, brought an offer for motion picture screen tests that resulted in a long and successful career in Hollywood. He played silent film star Mary Pickford’s love interest in her first talkie, Coquette (1929), for which Pickford won an Oscar.

He appeared in minor roles until 1930 when he was cast as the star in a Western entitled Billy the Kid and directed by King Vidor. An early widescreen film (along with Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail with John Wayne, produced the same year), the movie also features Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett.

Brown was billed over Beery, who would become MGM’s highest-paid actor within the next three years. Also in 1930, Brown played Joan Crawford’s love interest in Montana Moon.

Brown went on to make several more top-flight movies under the name

John Mack Brown, including

The Secret Six (1931) with Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, and Clark Gable, as well as the legendary Lost Generation celebration of alcohol, The Last Flight (1931), and was being groomed by MGM as a leading man until being abruptly replaced on Laughing Sinners in 1931,

with all his scenes reshot, substituting rising star Clark Gable in his place.

MGM and director Woody Van Dyke screen tested him for the lead role of Tarzan the Ape Man but Van Dyke didn’t feel he was tall enough.

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