Patricia Owens

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Nationality Canada
Birth 17 january 1925 at Golden (Canada)
Death 31 august 2000 (at 75 years) at Lancaster (USA)

For the former mayor of Grand Forks, North Dakota, see Pat Owens

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 who 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) which was soon followed by No Down Payment both for Fox, and then 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, and 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). By 1965, she was working in Black Spurs, one of producer A.C. Lyles' B-Westerns, renowned for their use of aging genre stars, and Owens retired from movies after portraying Richard Egan's love interest in the low-budget espionage thriller The Destructors (1968). Her last professional appearance was in an episode of Lassie (1968).

She was the third wife of screenwriter and producer Sy Bartlett.

Biography

En 1933, ses parents et elle quittent le Canada pour s'établir au Royaume-Uni. Aussi, Patricia Owens débute au cinéma (un petit rôle) dans un film musical britannique sorti en 1943, Miss London Ltd. de Val Guest. En tout, elle contribue à vingt-et-un films britanniques, le dernier (Alive on Saturday) sorti en 1957.

À la faveur d'un contrat avec la 20th Century Fox, elle se rend alors aux États-Unis, à Hollywood, où elle participe à un deuxième film américain, Une île au soleil de Robert Rossen (1957, avec James Mason et Joan Fontaine). Observons ici qu'elle tient un petit rôle non crédité dans un premier film américain, Les Chevaliers de la Table ronde de Richard Thorpe (1953), mais tourné en Angleterre.

Installée définitivement aux États-Unis, elle apparaît au total dans quinze films américains, le dernier (The Destructors) sorti en 1968, année où elle se retire. Mentionnons Sayonara de Joshua Logan (1957, avec Marlon Brando), le western Le Trésor du pendu de John Sturges (1958, avec Robert Taylor et Richard Widmark), La Mouche noire de Kurt Neumann (1958, avec Vincent Price), ou encore X-15, premier film de Richard Donner (1961, avec Charles Bronson).

À la télévision, entre 1955 et 1968, elle collabore à treize séries, les deux premières britanniques, les suivantes américaines.