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 Peterson to a middle-class American family in Long Island, NY , and died in Bonsall, CA, in 1999, only a few months before she would have turned 85.
Prior to her acting career, she worked as a photographers model.
Although she spoke with an English accent, she was not British; she was actually from Astoria, New York. She said that she cultivated that accent at the beginning of her career in order to set her apart from all the other tall blondes she would be competing with for roles. The tactic worked so well that producers who hired "the blonde with the British accent" expected to hear a blonde with a British accent on the screen, so she was forced to use the accent whenever she worked, and wound up using it all the time, even off screen.
Producers tended to think of her as too intelligent and self-possessed to be sexy, so she never got the lead and seldom got the man. However, she displayed a real flair for comedy and appeared with Bob Hope ( Monsieur Beaucaire ) and Red Skelton ( The Fuller Brush Man ) and, of course, was a regular as Lou Costello s semi-girlfriend on "The Abbott and Costello Show" (1952) . Some other notable pictures in which she was cast include The Philadelphia Story , Lady in the Dark , Jane Eyre , Ministry of Fear , The Enchanted Cottage and The Man Who Knew Too Much .
She is best remembered for her incongruous role as Lou Costello s girlfriend (of sorts) on "The Abbott and Costello Show" (1952) as well as Vernon Albright (Charles Farrell )s girlfriend on "My Little Margie" (1952) . Both shows are still seen today in syndication and on home video. With her regal British accent--even though she was not British--and upper-class, ladylike demeanor, Brooke was treated as a goddess by Costello and Bud Abbott on the show and was seldom subject to the usual slapstick other actresses on the show were. Even off screen, she was treated the same way by the team. They were notorious for their love of practical jokes, which they often played on cast and crew. However, Brooke was never on the receiving end of any of their pranks even though, as she once noted in an interview, she would love to have been.
In The Man Who Knew Too Much , she played the character Jan Peterson, a friend of Doris Day s character. Peterson was Brookes real birth name.
Attended and graduated from Columbia University in New York City.
She was appearing in television commercials long before it was fashionable (and profitable) for movie stars to do, namely promoting the Foodarama Refrigerator by Kelvinator in the mid-1950s. During this time, Cinerama was being made famous in movie theaters and everything from laundramats to trailer parks became "launderama" and trailerama" in hitching their wagon to the Cinerama star.
Passed away on May 25, 1999, less than four months from what would have been her 85th birthday on September 8.
She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6311 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.
Sister of Arthur Peterson.
