Lee Patterson | |
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Patterson as Dave Thorne in Surfside 6 (1962)
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Born |
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
March 31, 1929
Died | February 14, 2007 Galveston, Texas, USA |
(aged 77)
Cause of death | Congestive heart failure |
Occupation | Film and television actor |
Years active | 1953–1994 |
Lee Patterson (March 31, 1929 – February 14, 2007) was a Canadian film and television actor.
Patterson was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. His birth name: Beverley Frank Atherly Patterson. After attending Ontario College of Art, Patterson moved to Britain, where he specialised in playing virile American types in British films. He appeared in a number of films during the 1950s and 1960s, including The Good Die Young (1954), Above Us the Waves (1955), Reach for the Sky (1956), Time Lock (1957) and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960).
After moving to the United States in the early 1960s, Patterson worked mainly on television. In 1960, he was cast in two episodes of the ABC/Warner Brothers western television series The Alaskans, starring Roger Moore. Patterson played Tom Kirk in the episode "Behind the Moon" and Jeff Warren in "Sign of the Kodiak", a reference to the Kodiak bear. Later that year, he was cast as the fictional detective Dave Thorne on another ABC/WB series, Surfside 6, set on a houseboat anchored at Miami Beach, Florida. His co-stars during the two-year run of Surfside 6 from 1960 to 1962 were Van Williams as Kenny Madison, Troy Donahue as Sandy Winfield, II, Diane McBain as socialite Daphne Dutton, and Margarita Sierra as the singer Cha Cha O'Brien. After Surfside 6 folded, Donahue was transferred to another ABC/WB series, Hawaiian Eye, which aired its fourth and final season from 1962 to 1963. Early in 1966 Patterson appeared on Perry Mason as Dan Thorne in "The Case of the Midnight Howler."