He was born Louis Borach on October 26, 1893, in Manhattan, New York City, the brother of Fannie Brice. He was the youngest of four children born to Rose Stern, a Hungarian Jewish woman who emigrated to America at age ten; and Alsatian immigrant Charles Borach. Charles and Rose were saloon owners and had four children, Philip (born 1887), Carrie (born 1889), Fania, and Louis.[1][2]
Brice married actress Mae Clarke on February 26, 1928; the union ended in divorce in 1930.[3]The Public Enemy, released in 1931, would contain one of cinema's more famous (and frequently parodied) scenes, in which James Cagney pushes a half grapefruit into Clarke's face, then goes out to pick up Jean Harlow.[4]The film was so popular that it ran 24 hours per day at a movie theatre in Times Square upon its initial release; four months after the premiere, The Hollywood Reporter informed readers that Brice claimed to have seen the film more than 20 times (and at least twice per week) and that Brice "says he goes to see the scene wherein Mae Clarke gets hit in the eye with a grapefruit—and that it's a plazure!"[5][a]
^In an article published in Variety more than two years after the film's release, Brice's total number of claimed viewings had somehow dwindled to eight.[6] In James Cagney's 1976 autobiography, he claims that Clarke's disgruntled ex—mistakenly dubbed Monte Brice—soon had the grapefruit scene timed so as to arrive shortly beforehand and depart immediately thereafter.[7]
