Hillary Brooke

Hillary Brooke was born on Sep 08, 1914 in USA. Hillary Brooke's big-screen debut came with New Faces of 1937 directed by Leigh Jason in 1937. Hillary Brooke is known for The Abbott and Costello Show directed by Jean Yarbrough, Bud Abbott stars as Bud Abbott and Lou Costello as Lou Costello. The most recent award Hillary Brooke achieved is Walk of Fame. The upcoming new tvshow Hillary Brooke plays is The Abbott and Costello Show - Season 1 which will be released on Sep 14, 1957.

Hillary Brooke's image as the epitome of glacial, regal, upper-class British gentility is muted somewhat by the fact that she was born Beatrice Sofia Mathilda Peterson to a middle-class American family in Long Island, New York. She was the sister of actor Arthur Peterson, best-known as the demented "Major" on the soap-opera satire Soap (1977). Always a beauty, she had a successful career as a photographer's model before breaking into show business. Her "British" accent came about when she realized that she was just one of innumerable tall, good-looking blondes vying for roles, and needed something to make her stand out among them. She came up with affecting a British accent and it worked; she began to get more and more roles that called for a "British" blonde, so she kept the accent.Her film debut was in New Faces of 1937 (1937), in which -- billed as "Beatrice Schute" -- she played a showgirl. She began working steadily in films in the early 1940s, and appeared in such major productions as La femme en vert (1945), Bien faire... et la séduire (1948), Indiscrétions (1940), Dr. Jekyll et Mr. Hyde (1941), La sentinelle du Pacifique (1942), Jane Eyre (1943) and Le Cottage enchanté (1945), in addition to the usual run of "B" westerns and thrillers in which many up-and-coming young actresses had to put in time. In the early 1950s she began appearing on television including 23 appearances on The Abbott and Costello Show (1952) as "Hillary Brooke", the object of Lou Costello's affections. She had worked previously with the duo in their second color film, Les joyeux pirates (1952), in which she played a pirate chief.She had no compunctions about taking a pie in the face, a vase on the head, a pratfall, or tussling with Bingo the chimp, and more than held her own. She also had a similar role as the girlfriend of Vern Albright (Charles Farrell) in My Little Margie (1952) and alternated between television and film roles in the 1950s. One of her better-known roles was as little David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt)'s mother, Mary, who is taken over by the Martians in the sci-fi classic Les Envahisseurs de la planète rouge (1953). She also played Doris Day's character's best friend in L'homme qui en savait trop (1956), and, the next year, had her final film role in Spoilers of the Forest (1957), after which she turned exclusively to television.She retired from the film industry in 1960, after marrying film executive Raymond A. Klune, and died in Bonsall, California, aged 84, in 1999.