Jim Brochu (born August 16, 1946) is an American actor, writer, director, and playwright. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. Brochu studied at Carnegie-Mellon University and received his B.A. from St. Francis College. His stage debut was in a production of William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. As a friend of Lucille Ball, he is the author of the unauthorized biography of Lucille Ball, titled Lucy in the Afternoon, and in this capacity, appeared on an episode of MythBusters.
He also co-wrote the musical The Big Voice: God or Merman with Steve Schalchlin.
Brochu wrote and starred Off-Broadway in Zero Hour, a one-person play about the life and career of actor and comedian Zero Mostel, from 2009–2010. For this performance, he won the Drama Desk award for Outstanding Solo Performance.
Biography
Jim Brochu is the only actor in America to win the New York Drama Desk Award, the Washington, DC Helen Hayes Award, the Los Angeles Ovation Award and the South Florida Carbonell Award as Best Actor in a Play, the play in question being Zero Hour about the actor/painter Zero Mostel.
Brochu spent much of 2008 in New York City, starring in his Off-Broadway play, The Big Voice: God or Merman? which the New York Times called, "a triumphant and very touching song of praise to everyday love and the funky glories of the show business life." In 2005, he was nominated by the Los Angeles Ovation Awards as Best Actor in a Musical for The Big Voice, an honor he won from both the Palm Springs Desert Star Awards and the Valley Theatre League ADA Awards. The Big Voice: God or Merman? was also given the Ovation Award as Best Musical, presented to himself and composer-partner, Steve Schalchlin, by the legendary Jerry Herman.
A native of Brooklyn, Brochu produced his first show, a charity revue featuring the Bay Ridge neighbourhood kids, at the age of thirteen and four years later was working on Broadway - selling orange drink at the back of the St. James Theatre during intermissions of Hello, Dolly! After studying drama at Carnegie-Mellon University, where one of his classmates was Stephen Schwartz, he returned to New York, got his BA in English from St. Francis College (Brooklyn) and made his Broadway debut (on stage at Town Hall) as Christopher Sly in a very bad revival of The Taming Of The Shrew. His off-Broadway credits include Berkeley Square with Christopher Reeve at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Robert Lowell's Endicott And The Red Cross at the American Place Theatre, Ephraim Kishon's Unfair To Goliath at the Cherry Lane, Skye at Lincoln Center and Frank Loesser's Greenwillow for the Equity Library Theatre.
While working as a stage actor, he appeared in two legendary television commercials - first as a dancing raisin for Post Raisin Bran and then as the "Lemon from Outer space" with Madge the Manicurist for Palmolive. His television work includes regular stints as Father James on All My Children, Judge Julius Weyburn on The Young and The Restless, Officer Jerry Chandler on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and the befuddled bailiff on NBC's Sirota's Court with Michael Constantine. He made his motion picture debut in The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight opposite another newcomer, Robert De Niro. His acting career has taken him to regional stages all over the United States, including the Washington Theatre Club in D.C., the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, two seasons at the Goodspeed Opera House where he originated the role of Flint in Something's Afoot, Theatre Building Chicago, Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, the Trinity Arts Center in Dallas and the DejaVu Theatre in Los Angeles where he won the Backstage West Award as Best Actor for his performance as Marvin in Robert Patrick's T-Shirts.