Rowland Brown (November 6, 1900 – May 6, 1963), born Chauncey Rowland Brown in Canton, Ohio, was an American screenwriter and film director, whose career as a director ended in the early 1930s after he started many more films than he finished. He walked out of State's Attorney (1932), starring John Barrymore. He was abruptly replaced as director of The Scarlet Pimpernel. As a writer, he was credited with twenty or so films including two Academy Award nominations, one in the 11th Academy Awards for Best Original Story Angels with Dirty Faces and another in the 4th Academy Awards for Doorway to Hell.

Early life

Chauncey Rowland Brown was the first child of Hannah and Samuel Gilson Brown, native Ohioans. In 1900, the year Rowland was born, his father was a thirty-year-old electrician in Canton, Ohio. Twelve and a half years later he had become a successful realtor in the same town. Then, on April 4, 1913, the family was packed and ready to leave for Panama, when Samuel Gilson Brown had a massive heart attack. He was rushed to and Akron hospital, where he died.. Samuel Brown's unexpected death left his widow, Hannah Rowland Brown, to raise their four children, Chauncey, Samuel Gilson, Marguerite, and Jean) alone. By default, twelve-year-old Chaunce had become the "man of the family." In 1915, Hannah married Walter J. Maytham, a successful engineer, who brought along his own five children. Two years later, on April 6, 1917 when the U.S. declared war on Germany, forty-year-old Walter Maytham and sixteen-year-old Rowland Brown rushed to enlist. Both were turned down, Maytham because of a "deformed toe" and Brown because he was too young. November 9, 1917, three days after Chaunce turned sixteen, Hannah gave birth to her third son, John Rowland Maytham.