Celebrity Biographies
Patricia Morrison
With enormous eyes and long dark hair, she triumphed above all on the Broadway stage, in musicals where she exhibited her prodigious mezzo-soprano voice. And although she had time to shoot numerous film titles, she never revalidated the same success on the screen. Patricia Morison passed away at her Los Angeles residence on May 20, 2018, at the respectable age of 103.
Born on March 15, 1915, New Yorker Patricia Morison was the daughter of William Morison, playwright and actor, and Selena Fraser, who served as a British Intelligence agent. After graduating high school, she took acting classes at the Nighthood Playhouse, and made her stage debut in “Don’t Mind The Rain” revue. She was first recruited to Broadway in 1933’s “Growing Pains” as a replacement for the leading lady, Helen Hayes, though she never replaced her.
After several years on stage, Paramount’s ‘scouts’ noticed her for her exotic beauty, reminiscent of Dorothy Lamour, one of the main stars of the house at that time. After signing a contract with the company, she debuted as the protagonist of the forgotten thriller Persons in Hiding , based on a book written by J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI.
She was also a former girlfriend of John Garfield , hunted by the Nazis in The Fallen Sparrow , Czech resistance fighter in Hitler’s Madman , and society girl in the romantic comedy Loveless . Finally, she broke her contract, and began working for other companies, as a ‘freelancer’, playing above all an enigmatic thief who is looking for three music boxes, which hide a unique treasure, in Dressed to Kill (1946), the last film by Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes for Universal.
In 1948 he triumphantly returned to the theater as the lead in the musical “Kiss Me, Kate” by Cole Porter , alongside Alfred Drake. The work, inspired by “The Taming of the Shrew”, was hanging the “no seats” sign for two and a half years in New York, and more than a year in London. In the 1953 film version, she was replaced by Kathryn Grayson, but she did reprise in two telefilm versions.
She was again well received as the British governess Anna Leonowens in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I”, sharing the stage with Yul Brynner , as the monarch of Siam, present-day Thailand. The actor did reprise her role in the film adaptation, but she was replaced by Deborah Kerr .
In the 50s and 60s, Patricia Morison was lavished on television series. At the same time, she continued to appear in the theater at a good pace. She never married or had children. During the last years of her life, she dedicated herself to painting, her other great passion, inaugurating various exhibitions.