Peter Brocco

Career

Brocco appeared as a criminal type in several episodes of Adventures of Superman. He holds the distinction of having been killed off in two of them, a relative rarity for villains in the series. In the first, The Secret of Superman, he deduces that Kent is Superman, but is killed in a police shootout soon after. In The Clown Who Cried, he falls off a building and Superman is unable to save him. He also appeared as "The Spector" in The Phantom Ring, where the criminals developed a machine that can make them invisible. Finally, in that episode, he survives, albeit rather banged up by Superman. He appeared as Claymare, an Organian council member, in the Star Trek episode "Errand of Mercy", which established the uneasy treaty of peace between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire.

Brocco displayed a comedic talent portraying "Peter The Waiter" for 8 episodes of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show on CBS during their 1955-1956 New York City season.

Brocco played Colonel Matterson, a wheelchair-bound patient suffering from dementia, in the Academy Award-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). He also appeared as the patient in the hospital, Mr. Eagane, in the Happy Days 1974 episode "Hardware Jungle". In 1983 he played Ali MacGraw's father in the epic TV miniseries The Winds of War.

Brocco lived for some 40 years in Laurel Canyon,in a 1920s Spanish style home on Laurel Canyon Blvd. near the Country Store. He had his ceramics studio in the ground floor,a source of income when he was blacklisted for a while during the red scare of the early 1950s. Brocco died from a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, on December 20, 1992, aged 89.