Poché Pictures

Candace Dean Brown was born June 15, 1980, in Culver City, California, one of those L.A. patchwork neighborhoods where sunlight hits everything like a spotlight even when nobody’s watching.  Some places online toss around different birth years, but the industry bios and her longtime comedy home base land on 1980.  Either way, she came up … Read More “Candace Dean Brown — the kind of comic actress who sneaks into your favorite shows, steals a scene, and slips back out before you can ask her last name” »

Barbara Ann Brown came into the world on October 18, 1901, Los Angeles-born, which sounds glamorous until you remember what Los Angeles was back then: more dust than dreams, more orange groves than red carpets. She grew up in a city still deciding what it wanted to be, and maybe that’s why she never seemed … Read More “Barbara Ann Brown — a stage-bred lifer who slipped into films like she’d always been there.” »

Octavia Broske was born June 4, 1886, and if you want to imagine the start of her story, don’t picture velvet curtains and spotlights. Picture San Francisco at the turn of the century: streetcars clanging, fog rolling in like a tired animal, theaters smelling of powder and sweat and cheap cigars. That’s where her stage … Read More “Octavia Broske — a vaudeville spark who learned how to last in the footlights” »

She entered the world in Saint Paul and grew up in Apple Valley, where the suburbs stretch out like polite sentences and dreams have to shout a little louder just to be heard. For a while she tried the college thing—St. Olaf, snow and structure—but Los Angeles whispered its usual poison, and by nineteen she … Read More “Brianna Brown – the Minnesota girl who crossed state lines, then studio lines, then genre lines, always carrying that steel-spined smile you only get from growing up somewhere winter teaches you not to flinch” »

She came into the world as Virginia Cecelia Labuna on June 26, 1904, in Brooklyn, a place where noise never slept and ambition had to push through cement. Later, her name would appear in magazines and on marquees as “Virginia Brown Faire,” but that came later, after she slipped into a contest called Fame and … Read More “Virginia Brown Faire – the girl who stepped out of a Brooklyn walk-up and into the silent-era dream machine, carrying nothing but a new last name and the kind of hope that makes a person believe Hollywood might actually keep its promises.” »

Phyllis Brooks – the blonde smile with a backbone of steel, the Ipana girl who wandered into Hollywood like it was a party she wasn’t sure she’d been invited to, and ended up dancing anyway. She began life as Phyllis Seiler, born July 18, 1915, in Boise, Idaho—a place that barely seems real when you … Read More “Phyllis Brooks – the blonde smile with a backbone of steel, the Ipana girl who wandered into Hollywood like it was a party she wasn’t sure she’d been invited to, and ended up dancing anyway” »

Bobbie Jean Brown was born in Baton Rouge in 1969, a place where humidity clings to you like bad decisions and every cheerleader learns early how to smile through a storm. She grew up the oldest kid in a family where divorces hit like summer thunderstorms—loud, sudden, and leaving everyone soaked. By the time high … Read More “Bobbie Brown — the girl who became a guitar riff” »

Rebecca Broussard was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on a cold January day in 1963, in a country that still believed in movie stars and happy endings, and hadn’t yet figured out that both of those things charge interest. She grew up far from Hollywood, in a place where the bright lights were neon beer signs … Read More “Rebecca Broussard – The girl in the green sweater who walked through the blast radius” »

Louise Brooks was born in Cherryvale, Kansas, in 1906, a place she later described as the kind of town where people “prayed in the parlor and practiced incest in the barn.” That’s the sort of sentence you only write if you’ve seen too much, too early. Her father buried himself in law books, her mother … Read More “Louise Brooks – The girl who cut her hair, burned the world, and then watched it forget her” »

She came into the world on September 8, 1924, in Cape Town, South Africa, which is a place built out of sea wind and old ship stories. Her father was a sea captain. That sounds romantic until you remember what the sea takes. It took him early. Hazel was three when he died, and that … Read More “Hazel Brooks — a comet in satin who learned the sky doesn’t love you back.” »