Patricia Morison

During her time as a screen actress she was lauded for her patrician beauty, with her large eyes and extremely long, dark hair among her most notable physical attributes. During this period of her career, she was often cast as the femme fatale or "other woman." It was only when she returned to the Broadway stage that she achieved her greatest success as the lead in the original production of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate.

Patricia Morison was Eileen Patricia Augusta Fraser Morison born in New York City. Her father, William Morison, was a playwright and occasional actor who billed himself under the name Norman Rainey.Her mother, Selena Morison (née Fraser) worked for British Intelligence during World War I. After graduating from Washington Irving High School in New York, Morison studied at the Arts Students League while taking acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse. She also studied dance under Martha Graham. During this time she was employed as a dress shop designer at Russeks Department Store. Read Less

In April of that year, she opened at the Adelphi Theatre in a musical comedy, Allah Be Praised! The play, however, was unsuccessful and closed after a very brief run of only 20 performances.

Returning to films once again, Morison continued to be cast in supporting roles, all too often as a femme fatale or an unsympathetic "other woman." These included the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn vehicle Without Love (1945) and the Deanna Durbin comedy-mystery Lady on a Train (1945). She also played the villainess in the final installments of Universal's Sherlock Holmes series and MGM's Thin Man series - respectively, Dressed to Kill (1946), starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, and Song of the Thin Man (1947), starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. In addition to these, she appeared as a villainess in Tarzan and the Huntress (1947), the penultimate film starring Johnny Weissmuller as Edgar Rice Burroughs' jungle hero. Read Less