Micheline Patton

Micheline Patton (1912-2001) was an Irish actress who worked on radio, stage and television from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s.

Micheline Elizabeth Patton was born in Belfast in 1912, where she grew up and went to school. She then studied Modern History at St Hugh's College, Oxford, graduating in 1932. She was sometimes known to her family as "Betty," and a cousin was the Irish playwright and BBC producer Denis Johnston, with whom she briefly had an affair in 1943.

Patton died, aged 88, on 30 June 2001.

Between 1935 and 1947 Patton was regularly heard on BBC radio. She read several short stories for radio, including works by Katherine Mansfield,Anton Chekhov, and Helen Colvill. She acted in radio plays including playing the role of Winifred in the 1947 BBC Radio adaptation of In Chancery from The Forsyte Saga.

Patton also acted on early BBC television. In December 1937, she controversially appeared in a backless dress in the final episode of the early fashion documentary Clothes-Line. Patton was filmed from behind, giving an illusion of nudity, which led to outraged viewers writing in to complain. The episode was titled Grandmamma Looks Back, inspiring the co-presenter Pearl Binder's quip, "Grandmamma looks back but Micheline has no back to be seen."

She went on to appear in a November 1938 adaptation of Robert J. Flaherty's book The Captain's Chair (produced as The Last Voyage of Captain Grant), and in July 1939, a drama based on the Parnell Commission.

In 1947 Patton had a small role in Weep for the Cyclops, a biographical 1947 television drama on Jonathan Swift, which was written and produced by her cousin Denis Johnston.

Patton's final recorded BBC appearance was in 1958, with a role in The Ordeal of Christabel Pankhurst.

Patton's best received role was probably as Emily Brontë in The Brontës, by Alfred Sangster, produced by the Sheffield Repertory Company. She played this role from 1946-1949, receiving generally good notices. in 1946 a reviewer for the Brontë Society noted that Patton was so "exceptionally good that one suspected (perhaps too artlessly) a spiritual affinity. What strength that pale, frigid face reflected!" A reviewer for Punch commented on the "interesting" Patton's ability to "suggest dark churnings of the soul." Less enthusiastically, in 1947, a reviewer for Theatre World commented "Micheline Patton does all that could be done with her material," calling the part "poorly written."

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