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Pat Paterson

Patricia Paterson
ActressPatPaterson.jpg
Born Eliza Paterson
(1910-04-10)10 April 1910
Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, UK
Died 24 August 1978(1978-08-24) (aged 68)
Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.
Cause of death brain cancer
Years active 1931–1939
Spouse(s) Charles Boyer (1934-1978)
Children Michael Charles Boyer (1943-1965)

Pat Paterson (10 April 1910 – 24 August 1978) was an Anglo-Scottish film actress, born in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Though she made over 20 films, she is most famous for being the wife of French-born actor Charles Boyer and for the death of their only child, Michael, by self-inflicted gunshot at the age of 21.

She was born Eliza Paterson on 10 April 1910 at No.74 Fitzgerald Street, Horton, a suburb of Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire. Her mother, Hannah Holroyd (b. 4 February 1888, Bradford) was English, her father, John Robb Paterson (b. 1888, Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland) was a Scot. Eliza was the second of three children.

From infancy, Eliza was called Cis (to rhyme with kiss) or Cissie, a traditional English nickname given to girls named Elizabeth or some variant thereof (Eliza, Elspeth, etc.). By the time she was twelve years old she had built up a portfolio of child-acting and modeling work in the local area.

In 1928, although aged only 18 (the legal age of adulthood in the UK at that time was 21) she persuaded her parents to allow her to leave for Hollywood. She arrived in 1929 and was signed by Fox Studios as a contract player and immediately began to obtain film roles. She was renamed Patricia (almost immediately shortened to Pat) Paterson, as the Pat-Paterson sound had an ear-catching alliterative rhythm. From 1930 to 1934 she appeared in many studio pictures, in roles of increasing prominence. In the 1935 20th Century Fox film Charlie Chan Goes To Egypt, starring Warner Oland as Chan, she played the female lead, Carol Arnold. This was intended by the studio to serve as her break-out role for leading parts. In early 1934, as production on Charlie Chan Goes To Egypt was wrapping, Maurice Chevalier persuaded his lifelong best friend, fellow French actor Charles Boyer, to attend a Fox Studios post-New Year dinner party at which Pat Paterson was a guest. In interviews over the years, Boyer declared their meeting to have been a case of love at first sight. They married within four weeks of the party, on St. Valentine's Day, 14 February 1934, in Yuma, Arizona.


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