Earlier career (1940s–1970s)

Brooke later worked as a typist with Melbourne-based television production company Crawford Productions. The association with Crawford awoke Brooke's creative side, and she became interested in scripts, joining an amateur theatrical group. A year later, she traveled to the UK and, within a week of arriving, had secured work in the repertory theatre as well as radio and television shows. Her first Magic Circle Club guest appearance, as a Southern belle with two suitors, led to a recurring role as Aunty Vale (an enchantress) in the children's television series. She later became a mime artist whilst in Europe as studied under Marcel Marceau in Paris. In the late-1940s it is believed one year later Brooke returned to Australia and gained her legal name "Bunney Brooke", which would later become her much well known name.^[10]

Brooke's acting career continued into the 1970s. She was working as director of the Adelaide Theatre Company when she was asked to audition for a role in Number 96. The producers of the show were having trouble filling the role of Flo, a friend and comic foil of gossip Dorrie Evans (Pat McDonald), and Brooke fit the part. Initially seen as a frequent visitor to the flat of Dorrie and her husband Herb, the writers soon burnt down Flo's off-screen apartment in a neighbouring suburb and moved Flo permanently into Dorrie and Herb's flat, where she became a key character in many of the serial's comedy stories.

Brooke continued with Number 96 until the series ended in 1977, also appearing in the film adaptation in 1974. After this she remained a frequent face on Australian television, with roles in television programs like the soap operas The Young Doctors and The Restless Years in the late 1970s. Brooke was specially written into the Young Doctors episode as a clown, she so impressed Grundy Organization executive Reg Watson with her knowledge of clownsmanship. Ten years prior, she wrote a play about a clown in a bid to entice the very young into theatrical appreciation about a clown who had a skip acting parlance from a clothes basket. So successful was the play she did another naming her clown Trumbo and had him looking for his red nose. Finding such enthusiastic responses from audiences in small theater venues around Melbourne, Brooke then wrote a third clown play.^[11] She also played various roles in films, miniseries, and TV movies. She acted in the feature film Dawn!, about Olympic Swimmer Dawn Fraser, playing the role of Fraser's mother.

Later career (1980s–1990s)

By the early 1980s, Brooke was living in Melbourne and again working for Crawford Productions, this time as a casting agent. She also had acting roles in the Crawford shows Skyways and Carson's Law. In the 1980s, she cast a relatively unknown Kylie Minogue for The Henderson Kids.^[12] In November 1980, Brooke won the Penguin Award of "BEST SINGLE PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS" – Rock Pool, ABC^[13]

Next Brooke was known to a new generation of viewers with an ongoing role in the children's series Round the Twist (1989) as Nell Rickards, and, in 1990, acted at the same time as the ongoing role of Auntie Violet "Vi" Patchett in the soap opera E Street. When she left that series in 1991, her character was written out by accepting the marriage proposal of old friend Johnny Little, played by former Number 96 actor Johnny Lockwood in a guest role. She later appeared in the second series of Round the Twist (1992) and guest starred in some of the later episodes of A Country Practice. Brooke, alongside previous co-star Joyce Jacobs from A Country Practice, acted in a short called Heaven on the 4th Floor (1998), credited as "Bunny Brooke". (Note that is with the letter "e" missing from the first name as sometimes credited in other various previous works.) This would be her last known acting credit; she was subsequently diagnosed with cancer, and her eventual death followed in 2000.

Brooke, esteemed acting career spanned 50 years from the late 1940s and she to had at least 69 known acting credits to her name in theatre work, spanning four decades ranging from 1956 to 1989.^[2]

Tributes

Charlie Little, director, had Brooke reflect on her life to him not long before she died as her illness worsened. Little recalls, she said "I've done all the things I've wanted to do in my life. I've been a very lucky woman". He also said Brooke was "Quite Chaplin-esque".^[16]

Elisabeth Kirkby, fellow Number 96 cast-member and former NSW Politician, said: "Brooke's performance was mesmerising. There was no dialogue. It was just the expression on her face. It was almost as [if] it was actually happening".

Elaine Lee, another Number 96 cast-member, said Brooke "was about laughter, laughter, laughter. We used to laugh a lot, she was a very funny lady". Mark Mitchell, comedian and fellow Round The Twist star, said it was "impossible not to learn from Bunney. You could turn to her in a moment of exasperation knowing she would impart something very timely, if humbling".

Frankie J. Holden, another Round The Twist star, said Brooke "Could play with the kids, be a serious actress opposite the adults and that night drink the crew under the table".

Joanna Milosz (also known as Joanna Milosz-Piekarska), Brooke's long-time agent, said: "Nearly everyone in the industry of the older generation knew Brooke, worked with Brooke, was taught by Brooke or directed by Brooke" and "she had an incredible impact on the industry".^[10]

Film

Television