Film Actresses from Alabama Before 1960 (2): Gail Patrick

Christian Esquevin, who writes "Silver Screen Modes", a blog devoted to classic Hollywood films, has called her "The Forgotten Star." Gail Patrick's screen career lasted 16 years, 1932 until 1948. She appeared in such films as Mississippi [1935] with W.C. Fields, Bing Crosby and Joan Bennett; My Man Godfrey [1936] with William Powell and Carole Lombard; and My Favorite Wife [1940] with Cary Grant, Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott. She often played the "other woman" or as Esquevin says, the "perfect bitch." 

Before she ever left for Hollywood, Patrick had established herself in a rather unusual way for a woman in early 20th century Alabama. She was born Margaret Lavelle Fitzpatrick in Birmingham on June 20, 1911. The family can be found living at 432 40th Street in the 1920 U.S. Census. Her father Laurence Fitzpatrick was born in Kentucky and worked as a fireman. Her mother "Larul" was a Mississippi native. At that census Margaret was listed as age 8; older brother Laurence Jr. was 14 and younger brother Richard was 4. All three children were Alabama natives.

By the 1930 census the family had relocated to 208 59th Place. The city of Birmingham now employed Laurence as a fire inspector. The mother's name had been corrected to LaVelle. The household had expanded by two members, a 20 year-old female lodger and a 13 year-old female listed as "lodger/orphan."

In that census Margaret's age was given as 19. By then she had probably already graduated from Woodlawn High School and entered Howard College in East Lake [now Samford University in Homewood]. After graduation from Howard, she joined the faculty and served as Acting Dean of Women for a period. 

She had begun to take pre-law courses at the University of Alabama when she decided to enter an acting contest. The event was sponsored by Paramount Studios and held at the Alabama Theatre. Paramount was looking for "Miss Panther Woman". Margaret did not get the part, but the studio offered her a contract and in the summer of 1932 she headed to Hollywood. 

In her first role she played a secretary in the film If I Had a Million. If you look at the film's entry at the Internet Movie Database, you'll find her near the bottom of the full cast list. Her part was uncredited, but she's already going by "Gail Patrick." She made eight films that first year in Hollywood.

By the late 1940's she had retired from acting. She began designing children's clothes and opened a shop on Rodeo Drive called Enchanted Cottage. Patrick and her business were included in a 1947 short film Unusual Occupations. Several of her famous customers and their children were featured. The store operated for eight years. 

By that time her first two marriages were also behind her. The first husband was Robert Howard Cobb, owner of the famed Brown Derby restaurant; that union lasted from 1936 until 1940. Arnold Dean White was her second husband; they married in 1944 and divorced the following year.

In 1947 Patrick married Cornwell Jackson, who just happened to be the literary agent for Earle Stanley Gardner. Gardner was a prolific author best known for his series of Perry Mason novels. Jackson secured the film rights to those novels, and through his company Paisano Productions Patrick became producer of the very successful Perry Mason television series. Gardner had disliked a series of film adaptations done in the 1930's, and wanted no more appearances by his character outside his novels. Apparently Patrick talked him into changing his mind.

The series premiered on September 21, 1957, and ended its run on CBS on May 22, 1966. That last episode, "The Case of the Final Fade Out", featured Patrick as a courtroom spectator and Gardner as one of the judges. 

Her marriage to Jackson ended in 1969. She married her last husband John E. Velde, Jr., in 1974. Patrick died of leukemia on July 6, 1980. According to her entry at the Find-A-Grave site, Patrick's ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. 

In her will she left over a million dollars to the Hollywood Wilshire YMCA, which named a teen center and park after her. She also gave a million dollars to the Delta Zeta sorority. 

You can read the transcript of an interview with Patrick done a year before her death here. Wikipedia has an entry for her, as does the BhamWiki. You'll find her Internet Movie Database entry here. I've include a number of Gail Patrick photographs below, along with comments as needed.

This blog post is part of a series I'm doing. The first one featured Lois Wilson.  

Update 3 August 2019: You can read about Patrick's role in one of her early films, the 1934 craziness that is Murder at the Vanities in my blog post about it here.

Until 1957 this building was "Old Main" on the Howard College campus in the East Lake area of Birmingham. In that year the school moved to its current campus in Homewood and became Samford University in 1965.  

Source: BhamWiki.com 

Source: BhamWiki.com 

A 1939 studio publicity photo

Source: Wikipedia

Patrick on the left is an "Alabama campus belle with what it takes" in this spread on "the Southern Gal" in Modern Screen, February 1939

Advertisement for one of her films from Motion Picture Herald in 1946

Patrick in a two-page spread with actor Robert Donat in Modern Screen in 1939. 

Gail Patrick stands beside a statue on the lower right, posing in Movie Classic October 1935; her new picture is Smart Girl.

Patrick in Photoplay December 1936

Patrick poses with a turkey in this spread from Photoplay in 1938

Source: Find-A-Grave

Jackson in 1961 as Executive Producer of Perry Mason

Source: Wikipedia

Gail Patrick Jackson's Final Fade-Out

On May 22 1966, the final episode of the classic TV series Perry Mason aired on CBS. "The Case of the Final Fade-Out" was the 271st episode overall and the 30th of that ninth and last season. I recently re-watched the episode, which is probably one of the best series finales in dramatic television history. Of course, there's also an Alabama connection. Let's investigate....

In August 2015 I posted an item on actress Gail Patrick, born in Birmingham as Margaret Lavelle Fitzpatrick on June 20, 1911. After graduating from Woodlawn High School and Howard College, she headed to Hollywood. You can read about that change and her acting career at the blog post and Wikipedia page linked above. She appeared in more than 60 films between 1932 and 1948, including classics like My Man Godfrey [1936] and My Favorite Wife [1940]. I recently saw that latter film, which is delightful, even if Irene Dunn does get husband Cary Grant back in the end. Patrick is outstanding as the other wife.

Patrick had a second career as producer of the Perry Mason TV series that ran 1957-1966. Let me quote myself to explain how that happened:

"In 1947 Patrick married Cornwell Jackson, who just happened to be the literary agent for Earle Stanley Gardner. Gardner was a prolific author best known for his series of Perry Mason novels. Jackson secured the film rights to those novels, and through his company Paisano Productions Patrick became producer of the very successful Perry Mason television series. Gardner had disliked a series of film adaptations done in the 1930's, and wanted no more appearances by his character outside his novels. Apparently Patrick talked him into changing his mind."

"The Case of the Final Fade-Out" is a self-referential episode unusual for its day and still fun to watch. The murder takes place on the set of a popular TV series; the victim is the insufferable male star, who's made enemies of everyone. The first half  unfolds mostly on the set as police question other actors in the cast and various crew members. Those crew workers and others seen in the background of shots were actually Perry Mason workers. As noted below, even Executive Producer Patrick, one of her fellow producers and her husband appear in a bar scene. 

In addition to the series regulars, the main cast has several film and television veterans. Jackie Coogan began his career as a child in a 1921 Charlie Chaplin film; he later played Uncle Fester in the The Addams Family TV series in the 1960's. English actress Estelle Winwood performed on stage in London before moving to the U.S.; she made numerous film and television appearances until she was 100 years old. She was also a long time friend of Alabama native Tallulah Bankhead. Denver Pyle played first a suspect then a victim in this episode, the last of five appearances he made on the series. He was a prolific film and tv actor perhaps best remembered as patriarch of the Darling family in The Andy Griffith Show. Dick Clark took time out from his duties on American Bandstand to perform in a rare dramatic role. 

Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason character has cut a wide swath through American popular culture. The first novel The Case of the Velvet Claws appeared in 1933; the eightieth was published in 1969. Two more appeared after Gardner's death. Many of the novels were serialized in a popular magazine of the day, the Saturday Evening Post. Gardner was a very prolific author and published much before he created Mason and other novels in between the Mason ones. He also published non-fiction and worked a legal career in there somewhere. When Gardner died in 1970, he was the best-selling American author. 

Mason quickly jumped to other media. In the 1930's Warner Brothers released six films featuring the character, with three different actors in the role. A weekday radio series on CBS ran from 1943 through 1955. Four different actors played Mason. CBS wanted to create a show for daytime television and retool the character for the soap opera audience, but Gardner refused. Instead, CBS used that potential show's writers and staff to create The Edge of Night, which ran for thirty years on television. CBS gave Gardner a show more to his liking which ran 1957-1966.

In 1958 Patrick attempted to bring a second Gardner property to television based on the Bertha Cool and Donald Lam novels. A pilot episode was produced and broadcast, but did not proceed  to series. In 1969 she and Jackson divorced, but the two and Gardner's daughter remained partners in their production company. Jackson later proposed a Perry Mason series revival, and Patrick was the only holdout. She was given a credit of executive consultant on The New Perry Mason but had nothing else to do with it The program, starring Monte Markham in the title role, did not please either critics or audience and only fifteen episodes were made for the 1973-74 series.  

The character returned to success in the 1980's. A television film series began in 1985; thirty films were made by 1995. Burr starred in the first 26. In the final four, Paul Sorvino in one and Hal Holbrook in the final three played lawyer friends of Mason's. Barbara Hale returned as Della Street and her son, William Katt, played Paul Drake, Jr., in the first nine films. 

In 2015 a publishing arm of the American Bar Association began returning the Mason novels to print. On June 21, 2020, the first episode of a new Perry Mason miniseries premiered on HBO. Set before the first novel, Mason is not yet a lawyer and is eking out a living as a sleazy private eye working for an attorney whose secretary is named Della Street. The series is gorgeously filmed, and I'm enjoying Matthew Rhys' performance as the down-and-out Mason. We're learning a lot of the character's back story, including service in World War I. 

Who knows what the future holds for Perry Mason. But one thing's for sure--a woman from Alabama played a major role in creating the most iconic non-print expression of Gardner's character. 

A Patrick glamour shot

Source: Travalanche blog

Patrick in a modest little dress in the film Mississippi [1935] which also starred a couple of guys named Bing Crosby and W.C. Fields. 

Source: Wikipedia

Patrick in Gallant Sons [1940]

Source: Wikipedia

William Hopper and Patrick in a Paramount Pictures publicity photo July 1936. Hopper would take the role of private detective Paul Drake in the Perry Mason series Patrick produced. 

Source: Wikipedia

Cary Grant and Gail Patrick in My Favorite Wife [1940]

Jackie Coogan [1914-1984]

Estelle Winwood [1883-1984]

Denver Pyle  [1920-1997]

Dick Clark [1929-2012]

Producer Art Seid & Patrick are seen quickly in the bar scene. That's Patrick's husband Corney Jackson in the background as the bartender. Anne Nelson, a CBS executive, and Lester Salkow, Raymond Burr's agent, also appear in this scene. 

In the late 1940's Patrick had purchased a gated estate in Los Angles with almost seven acres. The mansion, constructed in 1911, was used in some Mason episodes. 

Source: Jim Davidson's Pinterest board

District Attorney Hamilton Burger, played by William Talman, makes a point to the judge, played by the author of the Perry Mason novels, Erle Stanley Gardner. 

Another shot of Gardner as the judge

And so "The Case of the Final Fade-Out" and the series itself reaches the end. Here we see the main characters together one final time. William Talman played District Attorney Hamilton Burger, Richard Anderson as police Lt. Steve Drumm, Raymond Burr as Mason, William Hopper as private detective Paul Drake and Barbara Hale as secretary Della Street. All but Anderson had been with the series since the first episode. 

Source: Pinterest

In the final shot Mason is talking to Drake and Street about their next case. The source for this image is a blog post from 2014 that discusses this final episode and notes that exteriors were shot at the Chaplin Studios in Hollywood. 

Patrick, Erle Stanley Gardner and columnist Norma Lee Browning on the set of the final episode, April 1966

Source: Wikipedia

Jackson as Executive Producer

Source: Pinterest

March 1958

Source: Pinterest

This pattern was apparently one of several promoting actresses that ran in newspapers; see a few more at the source below. 

Source: Pinterest

Gail Patrick in "The Preview Murder Mystery"

One of the topics I bring out from time to time on this blog is film actresses from the state whose careers began before 1960. I've covered some others after that date, too, but today's post fits that group. 

One of those pre-1960 actresses is Birmingham native Gail Patrick. A career overview I posted in 2015 is here. In 2019 I wrote about her role as a private detective [really!] in Murder at the Vanities, a truly bonkers 1934 pre-code film. In 2020 I posted about her post-acting career as Executive Producer on the classic Perry Mason TV series and her appearance in the final episode. In 2021 I wrote about her role as the femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon--a radio version, but still....

Now we come to her role in The Preview Murder Mystery from 1936. I watched this one recently on TCM and really enjoyed it. There's a rather interesting framing device--it's a movie about the making of a movie and features quick action, witty dialog and some murders. Director Robert Florey would helm over 50 movies and numerous episodes of TV shows in his long career. By the time he made this one, he had already directed such classics as the Marx Brothers first feature, The Cocoanuts [1929] and Murders in the Rue Morgue [1932]. 

The film being filmed is "Song of the Toreador", and we get to see some extensive scenes in its preview screening. We also see even longer scenes involving the filming process, so that the cast and crew of "Toreador" are much of the cast and crew of Preview. Very meta. "Song" is a remake of a silent film starring the late husband of Patrick's character, Claire Woodward Smith. 

A lot of this film's snap, crackle and pop is courtesy of the performances by and dialog written for Reginald Denny and Frances Drake as they play the studio publicity head and his secretary. A running gag is Denny's constant proposals of marriage, and refusals by Drake, whose character is an astrology nut and keeps telling him the stars are not aligned properly.

Catch this movie if you have a chance. It's only an hour long and is available on YouTube. 

Some more comments are below. 

The entrance to the movie company's lot is actually the entrance to Paramount Studios, lightly disguised. 

The film has a number of shots making interesting compositions. Florey's cinematographer was Karl Struss, who worked on numerous Hollywood films and was a pioneer in 3-D. 

And here she is, ladies and gentlemen, Gail Patrick!

Now we see Patrick as she appears in "Song of the Toreador". 

And now we see Patrick in the preview audience watching herself onscreen.

As the murders mount up, Patrick is questioned by police. 

This film has a lot of shadow-and-light interplay in various scenes.