Patricia Owens
- For the former mayor of Grand Forks, North Dakota, see Pat Owens
| Patricia Owens | |
|---|---|
 Owens in 1958 | |
| Born |
January 17, 1925 Golden, British Columbia, Canada |
| Died |
August 31, 2000 (aged 75) Lancaster, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1943–1968 |
| Spouse(s) |
Sy Bartlett (1956–1958) Jerome Nathanson (1960–1961) 1 child John Austin (1969–1975) |
| Children | Adam Nathanson (b. 1961)[1] |
Patricia Molly Owens (January 17, 1925 – August 31, 2000) was a Canadian-born American actress, working in Hollywood.[2] She appeared in about 40 films and 10 TV episodes in a career lasting from 1943 to 1968.
Owens moved to England in 1933 with her parents (her father Arthur Owens who was later to become an MI5 double agent),[3] and ten years later, at age 18, she made her motion-picture debut in Val Guest's musical comedy Miss London Ltd. The following year, she had a small role in Harold French's social satire English Without Tears. Her career continued in this manner for a few years, Owens getting ever-larger roles in movies.
Her career took a great step upward when she was seen by a 20th Century Fox executive while performing in a theatrical production of Sabrina Fair and was offered a screen test. The result was a contract with the studio and a move to Hollywood. Her first American film was Island in the Sun (1957) which was soon followed by No Down Payment both for Fox, and then Owens was loaned out to Warner Bros. to play opposite Marlon Brando in the drama Sayonara (1957), one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year. Owens spent the rest of 1957 working mostly on loan-out, but it was a Fox production that secured her place in motion picture history—as Helene Delambre, the wife of scientist Andre Delambre in The Fly (1958), co-starring with David Hedison and Vincent Price. Owens carried much of the film's narrative, which was largely told in flashback from her character's point of view.
She never had another movie that was of the calibre of The Fly, and in 1961 was reduced to working in the threadbare, backlot POW/jungle chase drama Seven Women from Hell. Owens made occasional television appearances, on series such as Perry Mason and Burke's Law, but these were relatively infrequent. Owens also starred in one of the 17 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents directed by Hitchcock himself, "The Crystal Trench" (1959). By 1965, she was working in Black Spurs, one of producer A.C. Lyles' B-Westerns, renowned for their use of aging genre stars, and Owens retired from movies after portraying Richard Egan's love interest in the low-budget espionage thriller The Destructors (1968). Her last professional appearance was in an episode of Lassie (1968).[4]
She was the third wife of screenwriter and producer Sy Bartlett.
References
- ↑ http://www.glamourgirlsofthesilverscreen.com/show/393/Patricia+Owens/index.html
- ↑ Born: 1925, VancouverDied: November 2000, Lancaster, Calif. "Patricia Owens | BFI | BFI". Explore.bfi.org.uk. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
- ↑ Shaw, Ceri (2011-12-10). "AmeriCymru: Welsh Double Agent Arthur Owens - An Interview With Madoc Roberts, Author of 'Snow'". Americymru.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
- ↑ "Patricia Owens Biography". Fandango. 1925-01-17. Retrieved 2014-05-12.
External links
- Patricia Owens at IMDB
- Patricia Owens at AllMovie
- Patricia Owens at the TCM Movie Database
- Patricia Owens at Find a Grave
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