© 2021, Christian Cassidy
I've written about a number of Winnipeg's most famous actresses from yesteryear, including Carla Lehmann, Deanna Durbin, and Marjorie Guthrie (Marjorie White). Another is Dorothy Patrick who had a moderately successful acting career from 1944 to 1956.
Patrick's path to Hollywood wasn't as straightforward as some. She started off modelling and became a single mother of two boys before she got her big break.
Dorothea Wilma Davis was born at St. Boniface Hospital on June 3, 1921 to Richard and Eva Davis. Her father was a trainman, eventually becoming a conductor, for the CNR.
Growing up in Winnipeg, Davis attended Mulvey and Isbister schools before going on to Kelvin Technical High School. At the time of the 1926 census the family lived at the Spadina Court apartments on St. Mary Avenue, (now demolished), by 1933 they were at suite 16 of the Astoria Apartments at 445 Kennedy Street, and in 1937 they called suite 3 of the the Mall Plaza Apartments home.
Davis was a model from an early age. Her mother said in a 1939 Winnipeg Tribune interview, "She modelled from
the time she was a little girl. She was always keen on it." The work was primarily at local department store fashion shows and for mail order catalogues. She won a beauty contest at around age 13 at the annual caterers' picnic at Grand Beach.
Davis also took dance lessons at the Fleurette McCuaig dance studio on Smith Street.
August 17, 1937, Winnipeg Tribune
In 1937, the 17-year-old Davis and her mother decided to go to New York to further her modelling career. She was soon taken on by the influential John Powers Inc. whose stable of top models were referred to as the Powers Girls. She also took dramatic lessons and got some small parts on stage.
A radio show called Gateway to Hollywood came to New York in early 1938. Hosted by Jesse Lasky, it was similar to American Idol where contestants performed every week for a panel of judges, mostly agents and studio execs, to reach the final of their city’s heat. The city finalists then went up against each other with the eventual winner receiving a contract with RKO Pictures.
Davis entered the contest "on a lark" and ended up as the female winner of the New York series. She decided not to go onto the intra-city heats because of her upcoming marriage.
The Daily Item, (Sunbury, Pennsylvania), April 13, 1939
Davis met Lynn Patrick not long after arriving in New York. The Victoria, B. C. native played for the New York Rangers and was the son of team general manager Lester Patrick.
The two married on April 8, 1939 in New York and on March 7, 1940 had a son, Lester Lee Patrick. To cap off what was a pretty impressive year for him, a week after his first wedding anniversary Patrick hoisted the Stanley Cup in what would be the Rangers' last championship victory until 1994.
For Dorothy Patrick, (she changed her first name after moving to New York), the birth of Lester was a difficult one. Ten days later, she was still ill and Rangers centre Neil Colville went to her hospital to provide blood for a transfusion. Her father-in-law announced that night that her health had immediately started to improve.
Dorothy was well enough to travel back to Winnipeg in August with baby in tow for a family visit with her parents, maternal grandparents (the Johnstone's), and a maternal aunt, uncle, and cousin.
The Patrick marriage would not last. Dorothy was granted a divorce on August 17, 1942 on the grounds of "extreme cruelty" and was awarded custody of Lester. She soon remarried dentist Sterling Treveling Bowen and had a second son, Terrence, in 1944.
Lobby display ca. 1946 (City of Winnipeg Archives, i02313)
Patrick then decided to move to Hollywood with her mother to take
another shot at acting. Her father stayed in Winnipeg working for
the CNR and it is unclear if her husband joined them, (they divorced in 1948.)
A March 1945 article in the Winnipeg Free Press written by Marion Epton said that Patrick was acting in an amateur Hollywood theatre group play when discovered by scouts and signed a contract with MGM. At the time of the article, Patrick lived in a little house near the studio with her mother and her recently widowed grandmother, Hannah Johnstone, who had come from Winnipeg for an extended stay. The women looked after the boys, aged five and one, whilst Patrick was working.
Patrick's first credited film role was also her first film for MGM. Boys Ranch, was filmed in the autumn of 1945. It and her second film, Til the Clouds Roll By, were both released in 1946.
The Canadian premiere of Boys Ranch took place on July 19, 1946 at the Metropolitan Theatre in Winnipeg. Before the show, Patrick was interviewed over the phone by Frank Morriss, the Free Press' entertainment editor, and the conversation was carried on loudspeakers throughout the theatre. She thanked the audience, which included some family members, for their support.
MGM still for The Mighty McGurk, 1947 (source)
Frank Morriss visited Patrick in Los Angeles in August 1947. By this time she had already signed an extension to her MGM contract and lived with her mother and sons in Culver City, California. Patrick told Morriss she was determined to make a living as an actress, "I'm going to
be a good actress. It means a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifice,
but I intend to make it."
One of the distractions she said she would avoid was marriage, a sign that she had separated from Bowen.
Two or three Patrick films were released each year by MGM for the remainder of the 1940s. Though most would be considered "B movie" fare, she got to work with the likes of Wallace Beery in both The Mighty McGurk (1947) and Alias as a Gentleman (1948), and Robert Taylor in High Wall (1947). (For a filmography.)
The early 1950s saw Patrick appear in a lot more films, around ten in 1951 and the same again in1953, but among them were a number of uncredited roles, including as an
usherette in MGM's Singing in the Rain (1953). She had a lead role in Columbia's The Outlaw Stallion (1954), but the quality of her MGM fare appeared was unimpressive with small roles in Torch Song (1953), a widely panned film with Joan Crawford, and a bit part in Panther Squadron 8 (1954).
Patrick then turned her attention to
television and made a number of single episode appearances in various
dramas. According to Patrick's Imdb filmography her last credited movie role was a bit part in United Artist's The Peacemakers (1956) and her last credited TV role was an episode of the The People's Choice in 1956.
March 12, 1946, Winnipeg Free Press
What happened to Patrick's career?
Looking at the last few years of her career it is clear that she had not made the breakthrough into landing leading roles in smaller films or smaller roles in big films and she likely struggled to get meaningful work without a studio contract during the dismantling of Hollywood's studio system.
A landmark American judicial ruling in 1949
forced film studios to start selling off their respective theatre chains.
Without the need to churn out a steady stream of "B movies" and other small
features to fill their screens on a weekly basis there was no need for
the actors who starred in them. Hundreds of contract performers were let
go in the early 1950s.
For MGM, which was experiencing financial difficulties, the change meant dropping even their expensive top box office stars from their contracts. By the end of the 1950s MGM had no actors under contract.
According to the brief obituary
that appeared in the L.A. Times and AP wire service, Patrick retired from
acting in 1956 to raise her family. (She remarried in 1955 to third
husband, J. Hugh
Davis. They divorced in 1963 and she was married for a fourth and final
time in 1976 to Harold
Hammerman.)
Patrick's Wikipedia entry says she did some local theatre acting in the 1960s and was for a time a real estate agent in Beverley Hills.
Dorothy Wilma Patrick died on May 31, 1987 at the age of 65 from complications due to cancer and was interred at Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California.
Related:
Determined Lady Macleans, May 15, 1946
(Note that the reporter uses 1923, not 1921, as Patrick's birth year which puts her off by a couple of years throughout the article. This was likely Patrick's "studio birthday"; it wasn't uncommon for studios to shave a couple of years off the age of their female stars to make them seem younger than they were. Pre-fame articles and the 1926 census clearly show she was born in 1921.)
Patrick sings Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans? from New Orleans (1947)
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