Marilyn Patterson
Marilyn Patterson (b. 1935) was an actress.
Biography
Marilyn Patterson was born in Montreal, Canada to Howard and Margaret Patterson on 22 November 1935 and came to South Africa with her parents in 1938, where her American-born father worked for the Coca-Cola Company. She went to school in Johannesburg and in June 1954 left for the United States to study literature at St. Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. However, before that she had already started her stage career when Taubie Kushlick cast her as a 15-year-old who is put on trial for sleeping with a much older man in the controversial play Pick-up Girl (1952), with Colin Stamp as the judge.
Upon her return she acted in Come Live With Me (1957), produced by John Boyd-Brent and then in Look Back in Anger (1957), again for Taubie Kushlick. Following that she had a productive relationship with the Johannesburg Reps in a number of plays directed by Hugh Goldie: Hot Summer Night (1959), Affairs of State (1959), Under Milk Wood (1959), Sabrina Fair (1959), The Sound of Murder (1960) and One Wild Oat (1960). In October 1960 she was in England and had a role in a television film called The House Where Time Had Stopped (as did fellow South African Brian Murray), but it is not known whether she had much of an acting career after that.
In November 1958 she had married the British film director Robert Hartford-Davis, but the marriage didn’t last and the couple were divorced in 1960. Her next marriage to attorney James Kantor lasted just a few days and in December 1960 she married actor/comedian Garth Meade in England. In 1974 a Marilyn Patterson and Kenneth David Phillips were divorced.
Sources
Percy Tucker. 1997. Just the Ticket. My 50 Years in Show Business. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
Affairs of State theatre programme, 1959.
Sunday Times, 14 December 1958
Sunday Times, 26 June 1960
Sunday Times, 11 September 1960
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