Elizabeth Patterson (actress)

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Mary Elizabeth Patterson (born November 22, 1874 in Savannah , Tennessee , † January 31, 1966 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American theater and film actress .

Life

Elizabeth Patterson was born in Tennessee in 1874 to Mildred (née McDougal) and Edmund Dewitt Patterson, a soldier from the Confederate States of America . Elizabeth Patterson attended local high school in Hardin County , where her father later served as a judge. At the colleges in Pulaski and Columbia she discovered her love for the theater, whereupon, contrary to the ideas of her strict parents, she decided to become an actress. A stay in Europe, where she saw plays at the Comédie-Française , strengthened her decision. In Chicago she finally joined an acting company, the Ben Greet Players, with whom she made her theater debut in 1907 and then went on tour in the United States and Canada . In 1913 she first appeared on New York's Broadway , where she was on stage several times until 1954. For his play The Intimate Strangers , which was performed 91 times on Broadway from 1921 to 1922, the writer Booth Tarkington personally selected her for the role of Aunt Ellen after seeing her on stage in other plays.

At the age of 51, she starred in her first film in 1926. In the film musicals The Smiling Leutnant (1931) and Schönste, liebe mich (1932), she appeared in small supporting roles with Maurice Chevalier in front of the camera in the early 1930s . Other films in which she was mostly cast as an old maid, aunt, or grandmother were High, Wide, and Handsome (1937), Meine Sister Ellen (1942), Meine Frau, die Hexe (1942), Kleine bravere Jo (1949) and Pal Joey (1957). In keeping with her Tennessee origins, she also played southern ladies more often, for example in the William Faulkner film adaptations The Story of Temple Drake (1933) and Griff in den Staub (1949). From 1950 she was also used regularly as a character actress on television. Patterson is best known to American audiences today as Mrs. Trumball in the sitcom I Love Lucy , in which she appeared in eleven episodes from 1952 to 1956.

Elizabeth Patterson, who was called Patty by her friends, was never married. She died of pneumonia in 1966 at the age of 91 at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles . She was buried in her hometown of Savannah.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Elizabeth Patterson in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  2. ^ A b c Scott Cohen: Elizabeth Patterson (1875–1966) . In: The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture , Jan. 5, 2010.
  3. ↑ Axel Nissen: Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Forties . McFarland & Company Inc., 2007, ISBN 0-78642-746-9 , p. 156.
personal data
SURNAME Patterson, Elizabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Patterson, Mary Elizabeth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American theater and film actress
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Savannah , Tennessee , United States
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1966
Place of death Los Angeles , California , United States