Bunney Brooke
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Bunney Brooke (born 9 January 1921 Golden Square, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia - died 2 April 2000, Sydney, New South Wales) was an Australian actor best known for her television acting roles including the long-running role of Flo Patterson in soap opera Number 96 in the 1970s.
Brooke was adopted at an early age and had an unhappy early life. As a young adult she saw marriage as a means of escape, marrying Leonard Brooke in 1946. However this union fizzled after four years and Brooke switched to the carefree life of a beachcomber with little money and few possessions. After becoming disillusioned with this existence Brooke sought conventional employment.
In the early 1950s Brooke managed the Prompt Corner coffee lounge in Melbourne with her then girlfriend. At that time several city coffee lounges implicitly catered specifically for gay and lesbian people at a time when few other commercial venues existed for them. Prompt Corner also held poetry evenings and aside from gay and lesbian patrons it attracted the theatrical and bohemian crowd.
Brooke later found work as a typist with Melbourne-based television production company Crawford Productions. The association with Crawfords awoke Brooke's creative side, and she became interested in scripts and joined an amateur theatrical group. A year later she travelled to the UK and within a week of arriving had secured work in the repertory theatre and doing radio and television shows.
Brooke's acting career continued to flourish in the 1970s. In the early 1970s she made several guest starring appearances in the Crawfords police drama series of the day. She was working as director of the Adelaide Theatre Company when she was asked to audition for a role in Number 96. The makers of the show were having trouble filling the role of Flo, a friend and comic foil of gossip Dorrie Evans (Pat McDonald), but 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 offscreen apartment in a neighbouring suburb and moved Flo into Dorrie and Herb's flat permanently where she became a key character in many of the serial's comedy storylines.
In real-life the portrayers of Dorrie and Flo also became close friends and soon became real-life housemates sharing a house in Wahroonga in the northern suburbs of Sydney. As stars of a top-rated television serial their domestic situation was widely reported in the press and magazine articles featured photospreads of their home and reported on their international holidays together. What was not made explicit by these articles was the fact that the two were lesbians living in a relationship.
Brooke continued with Number 96 until the series ended in 1977. After this she remained a frequent face on Australian television with roles in television programs such as soap operas The Young Doctors and The Restless Years in the late 1970s. She also played various roles in films, miniseries and TV movies. By the early 1980s she was living in Melbourne and again working for Crawford Productions, this time in casting. She also made acting appearances in Crawfords shows of the day with roles in Skyways and Carson's Law. Brooke also owned a lesbian jazz bar in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton until it burnt down.
She later had an ongoing role in children's series Round the Twist (1989) and in 1990 played the on-going role of Auntie Vi in 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 played in Round the Twist 2 (1992) and guest starred in some of the later episodes of A Country Practice.
Brooke died from cancer in a Manly hospital. She had one daughter and one son.
