Patricia Owens
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Patricia Owens (17 January 1925, Golden, British Columbia - 31 August 2000, Lancaster, California) 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.
Canadian-born actress Patricia Owens moved to England with her parents in 1933, 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 the next few years, Owens getting ever-larger roles in generally better movies (though not always—the same year in which she worked in the Launder-Gilliat production of The Happiest Days of Your Life, one of the funniest movies ever made in England, she also appeared in the abysmal Old Mother Riley, Headmistress).
Her career took a giant 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) 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 1958 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 story and drama, which were told in flashback from her character's point-of-view. The Fly was one of the most successful science fiction movies of the decade; the image of Owens unmasking her stricken husband and screaming at what she sees—and the shot of her horrified visage seen in a "fly's eye" view—became one of the defining moments in the genre.
Unfortunately for Owens, she never got another movie half as good as The Fly, from Fox or anyone else, 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 a 1968 episode of Lassie.
She was the third wife of screenwriter and producer Sy Bartlett.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Patricia Owens (actress), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 9.948 |
Birthday | 1925-01-17 |
Place of Birth | Golden, British Columbia, Canada |
Also Known As | Pat Owens, Patricia Molly Owens, |
1958
The Fly
7/542
Industrialist François Delambre is called late at night by his sister-in-law, Helene Delambre, who tells him that she has just killed her husband, And...
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The Fly
1953
Colonel March Investigates
6/2
This is a feature-length compilation of three short episodes taken from a TV series called 'Colonel March of Scotland Yard' (1954-56, 26 episodes) sta...
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Colonel March Investigates
1957
Sayonara
6.6/129
Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver (Marlon Brando) is reassigned to a Japanese air base, and is confronted with US racial prejudice against the Japanese peo...
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Sayonara
1957
Island in the Sun
6.5/17
A scandalous tale of politics, social inequality, interracial romance, and murder set on a fictitious British-owned Caribbean island.
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Island in the Sun
1958
The Law and Jake Wade
6.591/55
Jake Wade breaks Clint Hollister out of jail to pay off an old debt, though it's clear there is some pretty deep hostility between them. They part, an...
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The Law and Jake Wade
1959
These Thousand Hills
6.2/18
A cowboy tries for easy money with his partner, then tries ranching with a saloon hostess's money.
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These Thousand Hills
1958
The Gun Runners
6/17
Remake of "To Have and Have Not" based on Hemingway short story. Plot reset to early days of Cuban revolution. A charter boat skipper gets entangled i...
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The Gun Runners
1961
Seven Women from Hell
3.7/3
Seven women from different backgrounds, nationality, age, class, and marital status find themselves in New Guinea, February 1942 - when the Japanese a...
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Seven Women from Hell
1952
Crow Hollow
5.8/8
A greedy woman tries to poison her nephew's bride in a dark mansion.
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Crow Hollow
1954
The Stranger Came Home
5.5/11
Someone knocked out a man and left him for dead during a fishing trip in Portugal. That someone is either his fetching wife, or two business partners,...
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The Stranger Came Home
1957
No Down Payment
6.3/19
The marital difficulties of four couples living in a southern California housing development become intertwined. Among the unhappy couples are ne'er-d...
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No Down Payment
1952
Ghost Ship
5.2/19
Warned that it is haunted, a skeptical young couple buy a rundown yacht and fix it up to be their home-on-the-sea, only to slowly realize that it rea...
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Ghost Ship
1948
Things Happen at Night
4.3/7
A young girl finds herself possessed by the spirit of a mischievous demon.
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Things Happen at Night
1951
Mystery Junction
5.6/7
In this crime drama, an escaped convict is recaptured and charged with killing two people in a lonely waystation during a snowstorm. Fortunately, a no...
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Mystery Junction
1949
Paper Orchid
5/3
Paper Orchid is a 1949 British crime film directed by Roy Ward Baker, with a script written by Val Guest. It featured Hugh Williams, Hy Hazell and Gar...
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Paper Orchid
1959
Five Gates to Hell
4/3
A group of nurses, doctors and nuns are taken hostage in Vietnam and sent up river to a castle hideout so they can cure an ailing war general.
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Five Gates to Hell
1954
Tale of Three Women
0/0
A compilation of 3 stories, "The Wedding Gift", "The Thief of London" and "The Final Twist". Originally part of the Danziger Brothers series "Calling...
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Tale of Three Women
1950
Bait
0/0
John Bentley stars as a man who returns home to claim his inheritance. He soon learns his half brother has spent his fortune and is mixed up with jewe...
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Bait
1957
Alive on Saturday
0/0
A tycoon is conned into believing a homeless man is in actuality the exiled prince of a Balkan nation. The tycoon agrees to bank roll the revolution t...
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Alive on Saturday
1953
House of Blackmail
6/9
A blackmailer is murdered, and the police find that there is a long list of suspects who wanted to see him dead.
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House of Blackmail
1968
The Destructors
5.2/3
Foreign agents are after a substance called "laser rubies" that can power a killer laser beam. Government agents are dispatched to protect the rubies...
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The Destructors
1963
Walk a Tightrope
6.25/6
Meet Ellen Sheppard, an American living in Britain. Her English husband, Jason Sheppard, has been killed and she's under suspicion despite the appeara...
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Walk a Tightrope
1961
X-15
5.9/14
X-15 is a 1961 movie that tells a fictionalized account of the X-15 research rocket plane, the men who flew it and the women who loved them.
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X-15
1965
Black Spurs
6/15
A dissatisfied ranch hand becomes a bounty hunter. He conspires with a crooked town boss to dirty up a neighboring village where a valuable railroad f...
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Black Spurs
1960
Hell to Eternity
6.6/16
Based on the story about Guy Gabaldon, a Los Angeles Hispanic boy raised in the 1930s by a Japanese-American foster family. After Pearl Harbor, his fo...
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Hell to Eternity
1961
Gunfight at Black Horses Canyon
5.6/5
Feature-length Western based on the hit TV show 'Tales of Wells Fargo,' about a Wells Fargo Company troubleshooter who becomes the target of an outlaw...
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Gunfight at Black Horses Canyon
1953
Knights of the Round Table
5.9/75
In Camelot, kingdom of Arthur and Merlin, Lancelot is well known for his courage and honor. But one day he must quit Camelot and the Queen Guinevere's...
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Knights of the Round Table
1950
The Happiest Days of Your Life
6.333/33
Nutbourne College, an old established, all-boys, boarding school is told that another school is to be billeted with due to wartime restrictions. The s...
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The Happiest Days of Your Life
1943
Miss London Ltd.
5.2/5
Askey stars as a man trying to save his flagging escort agency. A new partner suggests getting some new girls in, just in time for the soldiers' leave...
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Miss London Ltd.
1954
The Good Die Young
6.4/33
An amoral, psychotic playboy incites three men who are down on their luck to commit a mail van robbery, which goes badly wrong.
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The Good Die Young
1944
English Without Tears
5.7/6
While Lady Christabel Beauclark, a bird fancier, is scurrying about demanding certain territorial rights for British birds from other countries, Her L...
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