His name isn't remembered by many people today, but Joe E. Brown was an actor, comedian, and baseball nut. He was also one of the biggest movie stars in America during the 1930s.

He made his mark in a series of baseball movies, and in his two biggest box office hits ("Elmer, the Great" and "Alibi Ike") he portrayed fictional players on the Chicago Cubs. Both of those films were written by the great baseball writer Ring Lardner, and filmed in LA's Wrigley Field.

Brown called the character of Elmer his all-time favorite: a lovable, walking, talking, egocentric braggart. He may become an all-time favorite for any Cubs fan who watches him too. Elmer does something in the movie that we can only dream of witnessing...he hits a grand slam to win the World Series for the Cubs.

Several real-life Cubs were in that movie too: Babe Herman, Larry French, Tuck Stainback, and the man who allegedly served up the pitch for Babe Ruth's called shot: Charlie Root.

Brown was already a huge baseball fan before he filmed "Elmer the Great," but after he got to know the players he started hanging out with the Cubs during their spring training at Catalina Island. (In this rare video footage, you can see him chatting and goofing around with Cubs great Hack Wilson). During this time period he became such a big baseball nut, he had it written into his contract with the studio that they had to provide a team for him to scrimmage against. That practice payed off, because Brown did a remarkably good job with the baseball portion of the films, unlike his friend William Bendix who later portrayed Babe Ruth.

In his next baseball movie, "Alibi Ike," Brown played another Chicago Cubs player, pitcher Francis X. Farrell. They called him Alibi Ike because he had an excuse for everything. One of his famous lines: "I coulda won more than 30 games last year, but I had malaria half the season."

Brown's Ike is a clowning excuse maker that forgets what made him who he is as he pursues his rookie season with the Chicago Cubs. But, like all of Brown's characters, Ike has a heart of gold, and eventually gets back together again with his estranged girlfriend (Olivia de Havilland). Ike realizes that she is more important to him than wearing a Cubs uniform, and it's not until he realizes it that he fulfills his baseball potential.

Although Elmer was based on White Sox hurler Ed Walsh, and Alibi Ike was based on a combination of Cardinals star Dizzy Dean and Phillies star Harry Covaleskie, the characters in the movies were both Cubs, so that's the team people associated most with Joe E. Brown.

The question is: Why did Lardner and Brown choose to have their comic clowns become members of the Chicago Cubs?

Maybe it's best summed up by Brown's most immortal movie line. In one of his final movie roles, he played Osgood Fielding III in Billy Wilder's classic "Some Like It Hot." Brown's character gets to deliver the punchline for the whole movie when Jack Lemmon reveals that he isn't a woman.

Brown replies: "Well, nobody's perfect."

It seems like Cubs fans say that about their team every year.