Patricia Morison

Born on March 19, 1915, in New York City to a family already entrenched in entertainment, Patricia Morison counted an actor and playwright as her father and a theatrical agent as her mother. She trained at drama school while also receiving dance instruction from Martha Graham. Her Broadway bow arrived in the early 1930s, after which Paramount Pictures signed her late in the decade. Stage appearances included The Two Bouquets in 1938, while her screen credits featured The Magnificent Fraud in 1939, One Night in Lisbon in 1941, Beyond the Blue Horizon in 1942, The Fallen Sparrow and The Song of Bernadette in 1943, Lady on a Train in 1945, Dressed to Kill in 1946, and Song of the Thin Man in 1947. She made periodic returns to New York for productions such as Allah Be Praised in 1944, yet persistent casting in lackluster films led her to refocus on Broadway, where she landed the lead in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate in 1948. In the dual role of Lilli Vanessi/Katherine she shared the stage with Alfred Drake and introduced the songs “Wunderbar,” “So in Love,” and “I Hate Men.” The musical delivered both commercial success and a personal breakthrough for Morison. Thereafter her career centered on the stage; she assumed the part of Anna in The King and I in 1954 and toured in that production. She and Drake later repeated their roles in a critically praised 1958 NBC-TV presentation of Kiss Me, Kate. Additional films followed, among them Song Without End in 1960 and Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood in 1976. She continued concert appearances into the 1990s, performing the Porter numbers most closely identified with her. Morison died on May 20, 2018, in West Hollywood, California, at the age of 103.