Lee Patrick

In its heyday, Hollywood showcased dozens upon dozens of wonderful character actresses.  As with their male counterparts, most of them fell into “types,” roles for which they were well suited and extremely competent and reliable. Looking for a ditzy dame? Call upon Joyce Compton (The Awful Truth [1938], Christmas in Connecticut [1945]) or Barbara Nichols (Sweet Smell of Success [1957], Pal Joey [1957]). Need a high-toned, fussy society woman? Get in touch with Florence Bates (Heaven Can Wait [1943], The Devil and Miss Jones [1941]) or Edna May Oliver (Ann Vickers [1933], Pride and Prejudice [1940]). Want the ultimate kind, gentle, and understanding mother? Look no further then Fay Bainter (Young Tom Edison[1940], The Human Comedy [1943]) or, if the child in question is Jimmy Stewart, Beulah Bondi (Stewart’s onscreen mother in a record four films: Vivacious Lady[1938], Of Human Hearts [1938], Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939], and It’s a Wonderful Life [1946]).

And that’s fine. It’s the way it should be. As an audience, we look to these women to fulfill a specific role with great competence and gentle dignity (yes, even the ditzy dames).

What we don’t often see is the onscreen growth from one type of character into another. And another. But that’s exactly the sort of metamorphosis that character actress Lee Patrick achieved throughout the course of her long tenure as a bona fide character actress in Tinsel Town.

Patrick was born in New York in 1901, the daughter of a trade paper editor. Thanks to him, her interest in the theatrical arts was sparked, and, by the age of 21, she had snagged a role as a part of the ensemble cast in the Broadway review The Bunch and Judy. The leads? Fred Astaire and his sister, Adele. Not a bad place to start. Over the next decade, she would become something of a fixture on the Broadway stage, appearing in 26 productions including a co-staring role (and off-stage romance) with future film great Humphrey Bogart in Baby Mine (1927) and the lead role in the smash hit Stage Door (1936).

The prospect of starring in the 1937 RKO film adaptation of Stage Door ultimately lured Patrick to Hollywood, but her hopes were dashed when the studio demurred from taking a chance on a newcomer and ultimately rearranged the cast list and chose to spotlight the talents of Ginger Rodgers and Katherine Hepburn as the leads. To be fair, at the age of 38, Patrick’s ingénue days in Hollywood were well behind her. She wasn’t graced with leading lady looks at this point, although she did have a set of amazing cheekbones that would serve her well in front of the camera for years to come. However, even as an “older women” her dreams of mega-movie stardom were quelled when she lost out on the title role in Stella Dallas (1937) to slightly younger and more bankable leading lady, Barbara Stanwyck.

There were more disappointments to come. Patrick’s husband, writer and journalist Thomas Wood, penned a frank and unflattering piece about Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons. According to conventional wisdom, the powerful Parsons fought back by using her considerable influence to keep Patrick stuck mostly in B pictures.

Lee Patrick as Effie lights one up for her boss, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) in The Maltese Falcon.

Despite her feud with Parsons, Patrick had a long and successful career as a character actress, and over the course of three decades, appeared in scores of movies and television shows. In her performances, Patrick displayed a versatility that was rare even among the most gifted character actors. Three films in particular illustrate her range. In the first, The Maltese Falcon (1941), Patrick portrays Effie, the reliable and quick-witted Girl Friday of detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart). Her onscreen time is brief, but in it, she matches Bogart in snappy banter and adds just the right amount of brightness to a film cloaked in murder, deceit, and the fog of San Francisco.

Patrick uses all her tricks to lure a fellow inmate into her web of vice in Caged.

Throughout the 1940s, Patrick appeared on screen steadily, albeit mostly in second-tier films. There were a few supporting roles in A movies thrown into the mix, such as Now, Voyager (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945), and The Snake Pit (1948). Then, in 1950, she portrayed Elvira Powell, the “vice queen” sentenced to serve some time in lockdown in director

John Cromwell’s Caged, celebrated as the first bona fide entry into the genre of women’s prison films. Patrick doesn’t appear until well into the movie’s second act, but her impact is immediate and unforgettable. Filmgoers who knew her as Sam Spade’s helpful assistant would be excused for not recognizing her here. Her portrayal of a steely and resourceful incarcerated madam, bent on recruiting soon-to-be-paroled prisoners to work for her on the outside, deftly skirts campiness as her character cooly plots the ultimate downfall of two fellow inmates; first, the leader of her cellblock whose position she ruthlessly usurps, and second, the once naive heroine who finally succumbs to Elvira’s seductive bribes. It is a nuanced performance in a sub-genre where that term is seldom, if ever, used.

Patrick (left) as Doris Upson, uses all her charms to welcome Rosalind Russell to the bucolic suburban life in Auntie Mame.

In the 1950s, Patrick successfully found her way into television, and was celebrated for her portrayal as the scatterbrained wife of the title character in the series “Topper,” based upon the 1937 film and the character originally played by Billie Burke. It’s not a stretch to suggest she parlayed this new characterization into her film role as Doris Updike in the Warner Brother’s hit Auntie Mame (1958). Surely, no one could be expected to top the wonderful Rosalind Russell, but Lee Patrick easily holds her own in two delicious scenes with Russell as Doris Upson, an upper-middle-class matron completely bent upon seeing her bourgeois lifestyle perpetuated through the marriage of her vapid daughter to Mame’s unsuspecting nephew. With her “New Look” style dresses (already hopelessly outdated by the end of the decade) and her hair swept into a classic French roll, Patrick epitomized the vacuity of a particular sect of the post-war generation long before it was stylish to do so, all with an infectious charm and goofiness so unlike her characterizations in Caged and The Maltese Falcon.

Lee continued her work in film and television up until 1975 and spent her remaining years battling health problems while still pursuing her various hobbies including her love for painting. She died one day before her 81st birthday in 1982 and was survived by her husband of 45 years.

Lee Patrick may not have become the most recognizable of character actresses in film, but that’s a great part of what made her so special.  Find Patrick’s name in a movie’s opening credits, and you are assured of a solid and satisfying performance – as well as one that just might surprise you.

Gene Lockhart was such a character actor. Born in 1891 in Ontario, Canada, Lockhart benefited from parents who were musical and artistic, especially his father who sang tenor in the 48th Highlanders’ Regimental Band. Young Gene had the opportunity to study music and theatre in London, and, upon returning to North America, he sang in concert, often on the same bill with the reknown Beatrice Lillie. In 1917, at the age of 25, he first appeared on Broadway and went on to continue his stage work, both onstage and behind the scenes as a writer and lyricist. He studied at the Juilliard School of Music and taught classes there as well. In 1924, he married British actress Kathleen Arthur and, one year later, the couple celebrated the birth of their only child, June Lockhart.

Hollywood beckoned briefly in 1922, when Lockhart made his screen debut in Smiling Through, but it wasn’t until 1934 when his career in Tinsel Town really took off. By then, he had developed physically into the jowly and pleasingly plump personage that would serve him well for the next three decades. Lockhart alternated between two “types”: insidious villains in films such as Algiers (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor) and somewhat shy, bumbling characters, typified by his portrayal as Bob Cratchit in the 1938 MGM version of A Christmas Carol, in which he appeared with his wife as Mrs. Cratchit and his daughter June, making her screen debut as one of the Cratchit children.

What made Lockhart so special as a character actor was his ability to blend the two types for which he was famous, that of the overtly sinister villain and the bumbling nice guy, into a unique and compelling mix that never failed to delight. He did this again and again in numerous films such as His Girl Friday, Carousel, They Died with Their Boots On, Meet John Doe, Leave Her to Heaven, and, perhaps most memorably, the perennial Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street where, as Judge Henry X Harper, he almost single handedly saves Christmas.

OK, John Payne helped a little.

While Lockhart was known best for his work in film, he also had an impressive career on the stage, including his much-lauded performance as Willie Loman in the original Broadway production of Death of a Salesman (taking over from Lee J. Cobb). Before that, he appeared with George M. Cohan and another great character actor, Elisha Cook, Jr., in the Broadway debut of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness. All told, he had sixteen Broadway plays to his credit. Add that to his numerous television appearances and his more than a hundred film appearances, and it is clear that Lockhart rightly earned his place in the pantheon of great character actors.

Earlier, I mentioned his work as a lyricist. Think you don’t know any of his stuff? Oh yes, you do. I’ll let Les Paul and Mary Ford prove it as they perform one of Lockhart’s most famous songs…Presented by Listerine!

The song was originally published in 1919. Musical luminaries such as Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Django Reinhardt covered it over the years. Les Paul and Mary Ford’s version was a million seller in 1949. The classics! They endure!

Carson snagged a contract with RKO and worked there steadily throughout the rest of the decade, mostly in bit parts like “Policeman” (Everybody’s Doing It and Condemned Woman, both in 1938), “Truck Driver” (It Could Happen to You, 1937), and even “Roller Coaster Ride Attendant” (Maid’s Night Out, 1938).

Still, even in the smallest part, Jack’s star quality shines through.  Take, for example, his very small, uncredited bit as “Minnesota — a Sailor” in the 1939 Gregory La Cava comedy, 5th Avenue Girl, starring Ginger Rogers, Walter Connolly, and a very young Tim Holt.  Somewhere in the film’s third act, Ginger and Tim are inhabiting a bench in Central Park, desperately trying to deny their attraction toward each other.  Their park-bench-hogging squeezes out the more committed spooners in the vicinity, including Minnesota and his lady friend.  Jack Carson has all of ninety seconds of screen time (if that much), but he makes the most of it as he indignantly clarifies to Ginger and Tim that they are taking up much-needed make-out space.

By the 1940s, frustrated with his progress at RKO, Jack made the move to Warner Brothers and fared much better.  He had some impressive co-starring roles in two James Cagney vehicles, The Strawberry Blonde and The Bride Came C.O.D. (both 1941).  He submitted a fine dramatic performance in The Hard Way (1943), a role he had also done on stage.  1945 was a turning point, however, as he was cast as the sleazy but somehow reliable real estate agent Wally Fay in Mildred Pierce.  He tirelessly pursues Joan Crawford, effortlessly banters with Eve Arden, and knowingly sneers at Ann Blyth.  Score!

Jackaboy went on to actually star in a few vehicles, including Doris Day’s film debut in Romance on the High Seas (1948).  Try as he might (and did) Carson was just not cut out to be leading man material.  During this era, however, he made a number of buddy-film comedies (now known as “bromances” to you kids out there) with his real life buddy, Dennis Morgan.  Apparently, Warners thought they could provide their answer to the Paramount Hope/Crosby films.  It didn’t quite take, but the efforts are amusing and fun to watch.

In the 1950s, television called and Jack answered.  But he also kept his film chops sharp, particularly in his role as studio PR director, Matt Libby, in 1954′s A Star is Born.  This film is a favorite of Judy Garland fans, of course, but Jack adds an extra shadow to the already darkish plot.  Throughout most of the film, we see him as the beleaguered go-to boy for the studio head, as he is forced to cover up for Norman Maine’s (James Mason) indiscretions.  But when Maine has finally reached near rock bottom, and still complains, Libby lets him have it in the kisser in a scene that portrays all the years of frustration he has bottled up inside of him.

Carson’s private life appeared to be something less than blissful.  Apparently, there was a lot of alcohol and many (well, four) wives…not to mention a failed between-marriages affair with Doris Day that ended when she choose to marry producer Martin Melcher.  In 1962, he collapsed on stage during a dress rehearsal for Critics Choice.  He had stomach cancer, a condition which was diagnosed after he collapsed and one he revealed to almost no one until the very end.  He passed on January 2, 1963, at the age of 53.

Jack Carson had the gift that all great character actors possess.  When he comes into frame, even if it’s only for a moment or two, everything about the film is suddenly enhanced.  If it’s already a good film, now it’s even better.  If it’s a not-so-great effort, it has at least received a quick transfusion.  Although he was taken from us at a relatively young age, we still have him with us, onscreen, and that’s something to celebrate…Because Jack Carson was such a Character!

PostScript:  A quick look at Carson’s  filmography on IMDB reveals a small gold mine of  film gems.  Imagine all of those in a month-long TCM film festival.  Frances Redmond has, in her respectful tribute website to Carson, and she’s asked for help in convincing TCM to make Jack one of its “Stars of the Month.”  You can join the campaign by going here, and writing a quick comment of support.  I did it.  How ’bout you?

I’ll end with a short clip from It’s a Great Felling.

I do that in all my pictures.  Classic!