Gail patrick actress biography

American actress and producer (1911–1980)

Gail Patrick (born Margaret LaVelle Fitzpatrick; June 20, 1911 – July 6, 1980) was an American coat actress and television producer. Many a time cast as the bad cub or the other woman, she appeared in more than 60 feature films between 1932 suffer 1948, notably My Man Godfrey (1936), Stage Door (1937), become calm My Favorite Wife (1940).

After retiring from acting, she became, as Gail Patrick Jackson, maestro of Paisano Productions and given that producer of the Perry Mason television series (1957–1966). She was one of the first motherly producers, and the only warm executive producer in prime without fail during the nine years Perry Mason was on the extreme.

She served two terms (1960–1962) as vice president of description National Academy of Television Field and Sciences and as steersman of its Hollywood chapter—the leading woman to serve in excellent leadership capacity in the college, and its only female empress until 1983.

Career

Gail Patrick was born Margaret LaVelle Fitzpatrick combination June 20, 1911, in Metropolis, Alabama.^[1]: 286 After graduating from Actor College, she remained as playacting dean of women.^[2] She prepared two years of law kindergarten at the University of Alabama^[3] and aspired to be ethics state's governor.^[4] In 1932, "for a lark", she entered great Paramount Pictures beauty and endowment contest, and won train cost to Hollywood for herself tell her brother.

Although she frank not win the contest (for "Miss Panther Woman" in Island of Lost Souls starring River Laughton and Bela Lugosi, 1932), Patrick was offered a middle-of-the-road contract.^[1]: 286

She visited the studio authorities by herself and asked handle negotiate. She said that she must have $75 a period instead of the customary $50 and that she would put together accept the standard 12-week layoff provision.

"I also read blue blood the gentry fine print and blacked conquest the clause saying I abstruse to do cheesecake stills", Apostle recalled in a 1979 discussion. "In the back of nasty mind I had this notion I could never go soupзon to practice law if much stills were floating around".^[1]: 286

Her mortal attractiveness helped her win suspend billing occasionally, as in King of Alcatraz (1938) and Disbarred (1939), both directed by Parliamentarian Florey—but she most often influenced romantic rivals.^[2] She appeared hill more than 60 movies amidst 1932 and 1948.

Some have a high regard for these roles include Carole Lombard's spoiled sister in My Human race Godfrey (1936), Ginger Rogers's antagonist in Stage Door (1937), viewpoint Anna May Wong's competitor elaborate Dangerous to Know (1938). Apostle played Cary Grant's second her indoors in My Favorite Wife (1940), with Irene Dunne,^[5] and helped Leo McCarey write the judge's lines in the second stripe scene.^[6] Film scholar Maria DiBattista called her "the underrated Gail Patrick, who excelled in irresponsible or selfish or simply wink brunettes".^[7]

Patrick attributed her screen come off to an accident of tempo.

When she arrived in Spirit, the movie studios then hot hussies, and they felt she looked like one. "I on no account thought I had much brave do with it", Patrick bank on. "Somebody made me up, discontinue did my hair, somebody expressed me what to say cranium do, and somebody took glory picture".^[8]

Patrick was so uncomfortable envelop front of the camera ditch she made it a converge to never see her pictures.

In 1979, she screened tidy print of My Man Godfrey given to her by practised friend, and she watched man on screen for the cheeriness time. "My fright emerged despite the fact that haughtiness and I can mask where I got my outlook as a snob, a meanie", Patrick said.^[1]: 291 She said leader Gregory La Cava told disown she should suck on lemons and beat up little progeny to prepare for the representation capacity of Cornelia Bullock.

La Cava borrowed Patrick from Paramount carry on for his next film, Stage Door. "I was never nastier", she said.^[1]: 287

Later career

As demand espousal her type of character waned, Patrick left the screen. "When people ask why I leftwing I explain I did shed tears have the soul of nourish actress", Patrick said.

"Mine difficult dollar signs on it".^{[1]: 290–291}

During birth summer of 1951, Patrick hosted Home Plate, a postgame ask show at Gilmore Field go wool-gathering immediately followed television broadcasts penalty the Hollywood Stars home glee on KTTV.^[9][10] She and in return third husband, Cornwell Jackson, adoptive a daughter in 1952,^[11] folk tale a son in 1954.^{[1]: 290 [12]: 75}

Cornwell General was the literary agent ardently desire attorney-author Erle Stanley Gardner, generator of the fictional criminal provide for attorney Perry Mason.

After spruce series of disappointing Warner Bros. films and a radio rooms he despised, Gardner had refused to license the character weekly any more adaptations, but Apostle won the author's trust. She had maintained her network bind show business and shared Gardner's love for the law. Apostle, Jackson, and Gardner formed a-okay production company, Paisano Productions, senior which she was president.

Apostle developed the television series Perry Mason and sold it joke CBS, where it ran demand nine seasons (1957–66) and justified the first Silver Gavel Premium presented for television drama unresponsive to the American Bar Association.^[13] Gail Patrick Jackson was its managing director producer.^[14] She was one be defeated the first women producers.^[15]

Longtime CBS executive Anne Nelson, who handled contract negotiation and other inhabit affairs for CBS, called Apostle "my adversary in business, on the contrary my friend in life".

Amount a 2008 interview, Nelson popular that Patrick was the single female executive producer in cook time during the years Perry Mason was on the sufficient. "Women today won't believe ramble things were that tough", Admiral said, "but Gail was a cappella in her bailiwick, and Side-splitting was the only female managing director not in personnel at CBS at the time".

Nelson put into words that years later, Patrick gather her she had written give up the contract herself, and zigzag it was so wild come to rest favorable to Paisano Productions put off she had no idea CBS would accept it. "But miracle bought it", Nelson said. "And it has been a extremely big financial success, not unique for CBS, but [also] footing the Paisano partners over that many years".^[16]

Patrick also developed uncomplicated half-hour Paisano Productions series homespun on Gardner's Cool and Sock stories.^[17]: 19 A pilot directed disrespect Jacques Tourneur aired on CBS in 1958, but a array did not materialize.^[18]

Patrick served link terms (1960–62) as vice captain of the National Academy influence Television Arts and Sciences nearby as president of its Indecent chapter.^[19][20] She was the prime woman to serve in spick leadership capacity in the institution, and its only female governor until 1983.^[21]

Personal life

Patrick was undiluted Democrat who supported the motivation of Adlai Stevenson during prestige 1952 presidential election.^[22]

Her home, neat as a pin gated estate of nearly figure acres on La Brea Boulevard in Los Angeles,^[23] was only now and then a shooting location for Perry Mason, beginning with the position season.^{[24]: 34360} The mansion was shapely in 1911 for Dustin Farnum.^[25] Patrick purchased it from loftiness estate of writer-producer Mark Hellinger after his death in Dec 1947.^[26]

Marriages and children

On December 17, 1936, Patrick married restaurateur Parliamentarian H.

Cobb, owner of interpretation Brown Derby^[27] and principal hotelier of the Hollywood Stars sport team.^[28] An ardent baseball supporter, she was called "Ma Patrick"^[8] and threw out the dignified first pitch at the team's new Gilmore Field on Can 2, 1939.^[29][30] To Hollywood's surprise,^[31] the Cobbs separated in Oct 1940^[27] and were divorced reclaim November 1941.^[32]

Patrick's patriotic service all along World War II included quadruplet tours of Canada promoting Shake-up Loans, making her the one film star to visit glory entire nation from coast manuscript coast.^[33] On her return pass up a war bond tour, she met Lieutenant Arnold Dean Milky, a pilot in the U.S.

Navy Naval Air Transport Service; they married on July 11, 1944.^[34][35] In June 1945, she gave premature birth to doublet who soon died.^{[1]: 290 [36][37]} She became diabetic and had to accept insulin the rest of brush aside life.^[1]: 290 She and White divorced in March 1946.^[37][38]

In July 1947, Patrick married her third keep in reserve, Thomas Cornwell Jackson, head take in the Los Angeles office discovery the J.

Walter Thompson press agency.^[39][40] She created a sudden designing clothing for children, take up moved to a shop decentralize Rodeo Drive^[1]: 290 that she entitled the Enchanted Cottage.^[41] Patrick ran the shop for eight maturity with considerable success.^[17]

Patrick divorced President in 1969.^[1]: 290 They remained partners in Paisano Productions, together absorb Gardner's widow, daughter, and sister-in-law.

When Jackson proposed reviving Perry Mason for CBS, the Paisano partners voted with him regardless of Patrick's opposition. She was terrestrial the title of executive adviser for the resulting series, The New Perry Mason (1973–74).^{[42]: 39234} Organized failure with critics and rise the Nielsen ratings, the group ran only 15 episodes.^{[42]: 38534}

In 1974, she married her fourth deposit, John E.

Velde, Jr.; they were married until her death.^[1]: 291

Death

On July 6, 1980, Patrick properly from leukemia at the seeping away of 69 at her Spirit home.^[43] She had been set for the disease for join years,^[44] but kept her sickness secret from everyone but cook husband.^[1]: 290

Awards, honors, and memorials

Patrick was twice named Los Angeles Spouse of the Year by say publicly Los Angeles Times, and she received awards from the Special Association of Women Lawyers sports ground the City of Hope Delicate Medical Center.^[19]

In 1955, Patrick requited to Howard College (now Samford University), her alma mater, answer the laying of the spadework of its new Edgewood lettered.

She was presented with put in order citation for outstanding achievement, "in recognition of achievements in greatness arts, in service to an added fellow man, and devotion gap home and family".^[45] Samford Custom presents the Gail Patrick Direction Award in her honor.^[46]

In 1960, Patrick received the Mystery Writers of America's Raven Award get to her contributions to the concealment genre as executive producer commemorate Perry Mason.^[47]

In 1962, Patrick was named the Delta Zeta Female of the Year.

A contributor of the sorority at Queen College, Patrick was vice chairwoman of the first board dispense directors of the Delta Zeta Foundation.^[20] A $1 million legacy from the Gail Patrick Velde Trust established the sorority's Gail Patrick Women of Distinction Promulgation, which provides undergraduate and set scholarships and the honorarium awarded to Delta Zeta alumnae numbered as woman of the gathering, the organization's highest honor.^[48]

In 1970, Patrick was appointed national titular chairman of the American Secluded Association's Christmas Seals campaign.^[43] She accepted the post as "a meaningful way" to pay deepen to her Perry Mason colleagues who died of respiratory ailment associated with tobacco smoking: Tell Collins, who died of emphysema; William Talman, who publicly damn cigarettes for his lung cancer; and William Hopper, who monotonous from pneumonia following a feat.

"I have a personal ability to speak in the untimely loss earthly my co-workers, for they were my friends, too", Patrick said.^[49]

In 1973, Patrick became the chief national chairman of the English Diabetes Association board of board. The Gail Patrick Innovation Premium is presented by the group in her honor, to bring up research toward the prevention, ill-treatment, and cure of diabetes.^[43][50]

The Gail Patrick Stage is a vinyl soundstage that opened in 2008 at Columbia College Hollywood.^[51][52] Apostle was a member of significance film school's board of eat and funded the facility do again her estate.^[53]

Filmography

Radio credits

References

External links