Edward Santree Brophy was born on February 27, 1895, in New York City and attended the University of Virginia.

As two occupants of a bath-house, Brophy and Keaton attempt to undress and put on bathing suits while sharing a single tiny changing room.

His subsequent films for MGM cast him in the same vein: comic foils in four more Keaton features; the loyal fight manager in The Champ (1931); a circus proprietor in Freaks (1932); and as a hired gun in The Thin Man (1934).

Very rarely was he called upon to display dramatic ability, as in the police procedural Arson, Inc. (1949), in which he played a potentially dangerous firebug.

Brophy was the model for comic-book character Doiby Dickles,[2] the cab-driving sidekick to Green Lantern in the 1940s.