Peter Brocco (January 16, 1903 – December 20, 1992) was an American film and TV character actor for nearly 60 years.

Career

He 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.

For fans of those two series, it is noteworthy that he and Jeff Corey appeared in both series, and that both men were blacklisted for a while during the red scare of the early 1950s.

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 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 during the McCarthy era. Brocco died from a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, on December 20, 1992, aged 89.

Selected filmography

• Appointment with Murder (1948)
• Search for Danger (1949)
• The Narrow Margin (1952)
• Spartacus (1960)
• The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962)
• Dark Intruder (1965)
• Our Man Flint (1966)
• Enter Laughing (1967)
• Some Kind of a Nut (1969)
• A Time for Dying (1969)
• Papillon (1973)
• The Killing Kind (1973)
• Homebodies (1974)
• One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
• Raid on Entebbe (1977)
• Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again (1982)
• Throw Momma from the Train (1987)
• The War of the Roses (1989)
• Other People's Money (1991)