Patricia Owens
| Patricia Owens | |
|---|---|
Owens in 1958
|
|
| Born |
January 17, 1925 Golden, British Columbia, Canada |
| Died | August 31, 2000 (aged 75) Lancaster, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1943–1968 |
| Spouse(s) |
Sy Bartlett (1956–1958) Jerome Nathanson (1960–1961) 1 child John Austin (1969–1975) |
| Children | Adam Nathanson (b. 1961) |
Patricia Molly Owens (January 17, 1925 – August 31, 2000) was a Canadian-born American actress, working in Hollywood. She appeared in about 40 films and 10 TV episodes in a career lasting from 1943 to 1968.
Owens moved to England in 1933 with her parents (her father Arthur Owens was later to become an MI5 double agent), and ten years later, at age 18, she made her motion-picture debut in Val Guest's musical comedy Miss London Ltd. The following year, she had a small role in Harold French's social satire English Without Tears. Her career continued in this manner for a few years, Owens getting ever-larger roles in movies.
Her career took a great step upward when she was seen by a 20th Century Fox executive while performing in a theatrical production of Sabrina Fair and was offered a screen test. The result was a contract with the studio and a move to Hollywood. Her first American film was Island in the Sun (1957), soon followed by No Down Payment, both for Fox, after which Owens was loaned out to Warner Bros. to play opposite Marlon Brando in the drama Sayonara (1957), one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year.
Owens spent the rest of 1957 working mostly on loan-out, but it was a Fox production that secured her place in motion picture history—as Helene Delambre, the wife of scientist Andre Delambre in The Fly (1958), co-starring with David Hedison and Vincent Price. Owens carried much of the film's narrative, which was largely told in flashback from her character's point of view.
She never had another movie that was of the calibre of The Fly. She co-starred with Jeffrey Hunter and David Janssen in a 1960 war film, Hell to Eternity, then in 1961 was reduced to working in the threadbare, backlot POW/jungle chase drama Seven Women from Hell. Owens made occasional television appearances, on series such as Perry Mason and Burke's Law, but these were relatively infrequent. Owens also starred in one of the 17 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents directed by Hitchcock himself, "The Crystal Trench" (1959).
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