Edward Brophy

Edward Brophy (February 27, 1895–May 27, 1960) was an American character actor. Small of build, balding and raucous-voiced, Brophy was known for portraying gangsters, both serious and comic.

In 1928, with only a few minor film roles to his credit, Brophy was working as a junior production executive for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer when he was chosen to appear with Buster Keaton in one sequence of Keaton's film The Cameraman. As two clients in a bath-house, Brophy and Keaton attempt to undress and put on bathing suits while sharing a single tiny changing room with only one hook. Each time Keaton attempts to hang his clothes on the hook, Brophy removes the clothes and hands them back to Keaton. Appearing only in this one brief scene, Brophy attracted enough attention to receive more and better roles. Most of his long and prolific career was spent at MGM.

He played the title role's loyal manager in The Champ, a Rollo Brother in the movie Freaks, Joe Morelli from The Thin Man and Nick Charles' friend Brogan from The Thin Man Goes Home

Modern viewers today remember Brophy for what is arguably his best known role, that of the diminutive Timothy Q. Mouse from the Disney animated film Dumbo.

The role played by Brophy in Mad Love (1935) is probably the same person whom Brophy had played three years earlier in Freaks (1932), although these two horror movies made by MGM are otherwise unrelated. In Freaks, Brophy plays one of the two Rollo Brothers who own a circus traveling through Europe. The Rollo Brothers (the other played by Matt McHugh) have Brooklyn accents and are presumably Americans even though the film takes place in Europe. Brophy is seen wearing a leotard costume, indicating that his character is a circus performer as well as the co-owner, but the tubby Brophy is unlikely to be an acrobat or an aerialist. Three years later, in Mad Love, Brophy portrays a circus performer—a knife-thrower—who has murdered his own father while in France, and who is again named Rollo. In his only scene in this movie, Brophy speaks in his usual Brooklyn accent, and the film's dialogue clearly identifies this Rollo as an American. His circus is not identified here, but, if it is the Rollo Brothers troupe from Freaks, then this would explain how the knife-thrower's father—presumably also an American—would be in France when he was murdered: if the Rollo Brothers had inherited the circus from their father, the older man might still travel with the company.

Brophy died on May 27, 1960 during the production of Two Rode Together.