Dennis Patrick

Dennis Patrick, born Dennis Patrick Harrison on March 14, 1918, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was an American character actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television. He died on October 13, 2002, at the age of 84, when a fire swept through his four-story home in Hollywood Hills, California. At the time of his death, Patrick was suffering from cancer and required kidney dialysis, and he rarely left the house. He was found next to his pet poodle. He had married fellow Dark Shadows actor Barbara Cason in 1970; the couple had two children before Barbara's death in 1990. Prior to his acting career, Patrick served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, where he worked on naval training films.

Patrick's Broadway career ran from 1955 to 1972 and included four productions. He received a Theatre World Award in 1955 for his starring role in The Wayward Saint. His other Broadway credits included Saint Joan, Children! Children!, and The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, in which he portrayed Jean-Paul Marat.

Despite his stage work, Patrick became most widely recognized as a television character actor, accumulating more than 1,800 guest appearances across a four-decade career. His earliest television credits included Kraft Theatre, which ran from 1949 to 1957, and Tales of Tomorrow in 1952. He went on to appear in a broad range of series throughout the 1950s and 1960s, among them Gunsmoke, Playhouse 90, Sugarfoot, Peter Gunn, Bonanza, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Virginian, Laramie, and Lost in Space, in which he played Keema in the episode titled "The Golden Man." He made four appearances on Perry Mason between 1959 and 1966, three of them as murder victims: Martin Selkirk in "The Case of the Deadly Toy" (1959), Martin Somers in "The Case of the Tarnished Trademark" (1962), and golf pro Chick Farley in "The Case of the Golfer's Gambit" (1966). His fourth Perry Mason appearance cast him as Prosecutor Darryl Teshman in the 1960 episode "The Case of the Prudent Prosecutor."

Patrick played the recurring roles of Jason McGuire and Paul Stoddard in the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows from 1967 to 1970, and he reprised his connection to that property on film, portraying Sheriff George Patterson in House of Dark Shadows in 1970. Additional television roles included Mac in the daytime drama Somerset, Patrick Chase in the syndicated series Rituals beginning in 1984, Jack Breen in the ABC crime drama Bert D'Angelo/Superstar in 1976, Sergeant Pat O'Dennis in the syndicated comedy The Cliffwood Avenue Kids in 1977, and Vaughn Leland in CBS's Dallas, a role he held from 1979 to 1984. He also appeared in three episodes each of Emergency!, Quincy M.E., and Barnaby Jones, as well as in The Rockford Files, where he played Walter Hart in the season two episode "The Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company," and in The Incredible Hulk, where he portrayed big game hunter Buck Hendricks.

Patrick's film work included The Time Travelers (1964), Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1969), Joe (1970), Dear Dead Delilah (1972), and Nightmare Honeymoon (1974).