Today's featured actress enjoyed a more than four-decade career on stage, in movies and on TV. She shared the screen with various notable names from Spencer Tracy to Judy Holliday to Rock Hudson to Geraldine Page and more. She was also a regular on a few short-lived TV shows. Yet, she's primarily known for one supporting part opposite Cary Grant along with a featured role in a cult-favorite TV miniseries. Our gal's name is Neva Patterson and this post is in tribute to her and her career.
Neva Louise Patterson came into this world on February 10th, 1920 in the town of Nevada, Iowa. The couple had previously created a boy named Harlan. Mr. Patterson was a letter carrier while his wife was a seamstress. Neva's name had nothing to do with their town of Nevada, but was actually named for one of her mother's friends. She enjoyed performing in school plays and began to develop an interest in acting, something that was accelerated by a teen job at the local movie house.
In 1938, when Patterson was eighteen and after saving money via a secretarial job, she moved from Iowa to "The Big Apple," New York, New York where her brother had already migrated. For the whole of her career as an actress, she would waver between playing sophisticated, cosmopolitan, well-heeled ladies and rural, plain-spoken, unadorned gals. She married for the first time in 1944 to a dancer and worked a variety of odd jobs as she pounded the pavement, eager for a job on Broadway.
Late in 1947, one came her way when she was cast in a John Van Druten play, The Druid Circle. Not long after that moderate success, she replaced Joan Tetzel in Strange Bedfellows. By 1948, her marriage had reached its end. The following year, she appeared on The Great White Way again in the flop The Ivy Green. Later in 1949, she took a replacement role in the Alfred Lunt-Lynn Fontanne play I Know My Love.
Though she wasn't becoming a household name, she remained busy on Broadway during the early 1950s, with parts in Ring Round the Moon (opposite Denholm Elliott), the very short-lived The Long Days and Lace on Her Petticoat. Television was becoming a viable option for out of work stage actors and she dove into that full throttle, too, performing in many a (now long lost) live program. It became a signature of hers to have her raven-black hair pulled up into a chignon, either tautly tightened or offset with thick wings framing her face. I don't believe I've EVER seen her with her hair down, for any reason...
Real success on stage came in 1952 with The Seven Year Itch as Tom Ewell's neglected wife, he with his mind on a sexy neighbor played by Vanessa Brown. She received a positive nod from reviewer Bosley Crowther who deemed her "delightful." (Ewell later starred in the film version opposite Marilyn Monroe while Evelyn Keyes inherited Patterson's part.)
She continued to work on TV in things like
Lux Video Theatre and, as seen here,
Suspense. She portrayed a brash comic book creator who, in the midst of significant success including a tie-in doll launch, decides to put and end to the character (called "Sally Forth") and in the process winds up coming to the end of her own life! The cramped quarters of the set sometimes caused her face to be right up into the camera to an unintentionally comic degree!
Patterson made her debut on the big screen in 1953 in the New York filmed B picture
Taxi, which starred Dan Dailey and Constance Smith. In it, Irish lass Smith is searching for her estranged beau, a writer, and eventually realizes that he's fallen for his female publisher, played by the beguiling Patterson. (She can be seen at far left, middle, of this magazine spread.) This same year she wed a second time, though the union would only last until 1956.
Multiple TV appearances continued, including a role in the Betty Hutton debacle
Satins and Spurs, a big, splashy spectacular broadcast in color at a time when practically everyone had a black & white television and didn't understand why the program wasn't living up to its multi-hued claims! Broadway continued to provide a living of sorts with brief-run plays like Double in Hearts and Speaking of Murder.
In 1956, she landed a supporting part in
The Solid Gold Cadillac, a former smash hit on Broadway. This time, as Judy Holliday's on-screen pal, it was her turn to play a movie role that had been originated by someone else on stage. The story had Holliday taking on a bunch of crooked stockholders after she becomes one (on a lesser scale.)
The next year, she popped up in the colorful Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn romantic comedy
Desk Set. In this film, Tracy wants to computerize Hepburn's research department and Patterson plays the rather uptight computer expert and assistant to him.
1957 was also the year that a supporting part in a high profile romance ensured that her face would be seen and her voice heard for decades and decades after...
The film was the Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr tearjerker
An Affair to Remem- ber. She makes her entrance, as seen above, on a boat dock welcoming her fiance Grant home from a long oceanic crossing. A socialite, used to having her photo taken often, she is capable of carrying on her reunion while also angling for the appropriate flash photo.
Back at her impressive family mansion, she startles Grant with the presence of TV interviewer John Q. Lewis (playing a mildly annoying version of his mildly annoying self!) Check out her chic hat, trim waistline and dazzling jewels. Grant has little to no interest in any of this hubbub, especially since he has a secret.
While the world, including former shipmate Kerr and her own fiance Richard Denning, watches on TV, Grant offhandedly disobeys and practically dumps Patterson on air, sending a coded message to Kerr that he will meet HER in six months and they will wed. Things don't work out as planned at all, though, and before long Grant is on his own again.
Patterson coaxes the depressed Grant to leave the house again and join her for a night at the theatre. Throughout her performance, she is determined to wring every single glance and nuance out of it that is humanly possible. This is exemplified further when she implores Grant not to schedule anything for "after the show" and rolls over on her back and begins to writhe gently on the bed!
That night at the theatre, she is decked out to the nines in furs and jewelry. The blonde behind her cannot keep her own eyes off of Grant and coos to her hapless date, "I just love our seats..." This prompts Patterson to turn around and shoot her a look that we the audience don't get to see, but based upon countless other performances of hers, we can easily guess at!
I think what makes this small role stand out to me is that, in the final analysis and after several viewings over the years, I've come to realize that it's practically a prototype for the part that
Eleanor Parker enacted in
The Sound of Music about eight years later. Not only does Patterson share the same quality of Parker's in making every conceivable gesture, expression and motion count, but she has the same sort of regal, arch, glamorous, yet conciliatory, bearing that Parker portrayed. She even has the very same departure line of "Auf Weidersehen" (!) delivered in a similarly smoky voice.
In 1957 Patterson wed for a third and final time to a man named James Lee, who she'd met a few years earlier when he was working props on The Seven Year Itch. With Lee, she adopted an infant daughter (Megan) as well as a thirteen year-old Italian boy (Filippo.)
1958 brought the film
Too Much, Too Soon, a semi-biographical film about Diana Barrymore, in which she played star
Dorothy Malone's mother. The controlling, disapprov- ing, highly-glamorous role exemplifies the sort of characters that would keep her active on screen for many a year to come.
The movie spans a fairly long stretch of time (not that any of the clothes indicate such!) and she, along with a few other cast members such as a young Martin Milner, are given age makeup as a result. But whatever age her character was, she retained the sparkling elegance that she had by now perfected (along with the down-turned, irritated mouth.)
More TV appearances followed including an installment of
Playhouse 90 which had amongst the cast Hugh O'Brien,
Jack Lord, Martha Hyer and Frances Farmer! As the 1960s dawned, she appeared on the popular medical drama
Ben Casey as loyal secretary to patient Chester Morris, who's suffering from a brain tumor as well as a potential corporate takeover of his company.
More films came her way in 1962 including
The Spiral Road with Rock Hudson, all about a doctor treating leprosy patients in the jungle and warding off a local witch doctor. Also there was
David and Lisa, a hit movie about romance between a disturbed young man (
Keir Dullea) and a girl who can only speak in rhymes (Janet Margolin) at a mental institution.
Once again, Patterson was on-hand as the domineer- ing, disapproving, though concerned, mother of Dullea. Her character wanted everything to be "normal" and just so, which wasn't going to be in the cards, thus she was destined to be disappointed at the way things were headed with her troubled son.
All through the 1960s, Patterson guest-starred on TV (in shows like
Naked City,
The Defenders,
The Lieutenant and
The Patty Duke Show) while also appearing in the occasional film.
Dear Heart had her as a much-married friend of Geraldine Page's. She also portrayed one of the orchestra members in
Counterpoint, in which she, along with conductor Charlton Heston and others, are forced to perform for Nazi commandant Maximilian Schell in a POW camp. (You can almost see her in a red coat in this shot to the right of Heston.)
In 1969, she took part in her first regular TV series role. The comedy
The Governor and J.J. concerned Dan Dailey as the slightly staid officeholder of the title who has no first lady, so he enlists his young, effervescent, groovy daughter J.J. (Julie Sommars) to fill in the duties. Patterson played Dailey's efficient and loyal secretary.
That series only lasted a season, but she was back on regular TV in 1971 for James Garner's western
Nichols. This unusual show (set in 1914 rather than in the "old west") failed to catch on and was off the air within one season as well. In it, she played the aged, crotchety town matriarch who coerced him into serving as town sheriff. That same year, she popped up in Garner's con-man comedy film
Skin Game.
She had won the role on
Nichols as a result of a dinner party at which she, the Iowa-born actress, and Garner, an Oklahoman, were jokingly chatting in "country talk"for the fun of it. When the series rolled around shortly afterwards, he remembered her and saw that she was granted the part.
Continuing to make the rounds on various 1970s TV shows, she did
Cannon,
The Paul Lynde Show,
Ironside and the excellent horror anthology
Circle of Fear. In it, she was the head of an office staff that tormented newcomer
Shirley Knight and turned out to be a coven of Satan worshipers! Note the unusual frost job she was sporting on her iconic hair during this time (and the way the fish-eye lens captures her face much the way it did back in her live TV days on
Suspense!) I LOVE the way she looks in the photo below during one of the group's rituals.
Viewers could see Patterson on TV in all varieties, from
Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law and
The Snoop Sisters to
Apple's Way and
The Rockford Files (which reunited her with
Nichols costar James Garner.) She also popped up on
Maude as one of
Bea Arthur's old school pals who has now emerged as a militant feminist. Even the ultra-liberal Maude could barely take Patterson's severe viewpoints, which leads to a bit of a stand-off.
She worked with a variety of performers including Cloris Leachman, Barbara Baxley, Mabel Albertson, Patricia Hitchcock (!) and Zohra Lampert in the 1975 TV-movie
Ladies of the Corridor, based on a play by Dorothy Parker.
In 1976, Patterson had a small part in
All the President's Men as a key political figure who refuses to be interviewed by intrepid reporters Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford and, in fact, closes the door in their faces.
Top television shows of the day such as
All in the Family and
Charlie's Angels (in which she played the warden/ madame who locks up the trio of P.I.s in the famous "Angels in Chains" episode!) featured guest turns by Ms. Patterson.
She made three separate appearances on
Barnaby Jones, once playing one of four townspeople who are so desperate to keep their one-horse burg going that they draw lots to kill whichever person gets in the way of their goals. Patterson also appeared on
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and had parts in
The Domino Principle with Gene Hackman and
The Buddy Holly Story with Gary Busey.
A season one episode of
The Dukes of Hazzard centered around her character "Swamp Molly," a moonshiner who is in fact running guns! This grungy, corn pone role was at the opposite end of the spectrum in which she typically found herself, but she always embraced all sorts of parts. She also made one final trip back to Broadway to replace Carole Cook in the Mia Farrow-Anthony Perkins play Romantic Comedy.
The 1980s dawned and Patterson won roles on
Hawaii 5-O,
Cagney and Lacey and was again utilized by James Garner on his short-lived western series
Bret Maverick, an update of his earlier success. She also worked in TV-movies as well as portraying a Playboy magazine executive in the controversial drama
Star 80, about the success and murder of Dorothy Stratton.
In 1983, the highly-successful miniseries
V was aired, all about a massive invasion of Earth by "friendly" aliens wishing to use our planet's waste as fuel for their own home planet, but whose actual purpose is complete takeover. Patterson had a costarring role - quite a glamorous one - as a conniving social-climber who wants her husband's refinery to be used by the visitors.
She befriends the alien leaders, including Andrew Prine, while her photo- journalist son Marc Singer works from the opposite end, trying to expose the cretins for what they truly are (lizard-like beings who eat live mice for snacks!)
The program was successful enough to warrant a follow-up called
V: The Final Battle, in which she also starred, and even a regular series for a brief while (which she was not a part of as her character had not survived the sequel.) She had a guest role on the hit series
Dynasty, followed by a part in the Steve Martin-Lily Tomlin comedy
All of Me.
Playing attorney Dana Elcar's amorous secretary, she and the actor shared some goofily raucous moments for people their age (in an era when gross-out jokes with dirty old people was far from the norm.) Note in the courtroom scene shown here her white fox stole. She was still dripping in jewelry and furs decades after her showy role in
An Affair to Remember.
She played a devious corporate spy in the short-lived prime-time soap
Berrenger's, all about a ritzy department store and its employees. Patterson also showed up three times on
Webster as Susan Clark's mother and guest-starred on
Remington Steele,
Amen and
Hotel.
As the 1980s drew to a close, Patterson was still working (there was a four episode arc on
St. Elsewhere, a top medical drama series of the time), but by 1992 she was ready to retire from the screen at age seventy-two. No Tinseltown bubblehead she, Patterson had taught herself how to speak and understand six languages! In 2002, her husband of forty-five years passed away and eight years later, Ms. Patterson succumbed to complications from a pelvic fracture at age ninety.
She had provided the world with countless perfor- mances as anything from the wealthiest and glitziest heiresses to the grittiest, most backwoods hags imaginable and most everything in between. Her peculiarly down-turned frown was utilized many a time and we're always happy to see it whenever one of her perturbed characters comes onscreen.
Likewise, we enjoy her effervescent and sparkling roles as well. Had their been no Anne Baxter, Patterson might have seen her TV profile rise even higher, but one suspects she enjoyed playing smaller roles to the hilt and moving on to the next project.
