Patricia Morison

Eileen Patricia Augusta Fraser Morison was born in Manhattan on March 19, 1915, and died on May 20, 2018. A mezzo-soprano singer and stage, film, and television actress, she built her career across several decades, ultimately achieving her greatest recognition on the Broadway stage. Her father William was a playwright and actor from Belfast, and her mother Selena, née Fraser, served with British Intelligence during World War I. After completing her education at Washington Irving High School in New York, Morison trained at the Arts Students League and took acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse, also studying dance under Martha Graham. During this period she worked as a dress shop designer at Russeks department store in Manhattan.

Morison's Broadway career spanned 1933 to 1965 and encompassed productions including Victoria Regina, The Two Bouquets, Allah Be Praised!, Kiss Me, Kate, and The King and I. Her first notable stage appearance came in 1938 with The Two Bouquets, a musical that ran for 55 performances and featured Alfred Drake among its cast members. While performing in that production, talent scouts from Paramount Pictures took notice of her, and she subsequently signed a contract with the studio. She made her feature film debut in the 1939 picture Persons in Hiding, and that same year Paramount considered her for the role of Isobel in Beau Geste, a part that ultimately went to Susan Hayward. The following year she appeared opposite Ray Milland in the Technicolor production Untamed.

Her time at Paramount placed her largely in second-tier pictures, among them Rangers of Fortune and One Night in Lisbon, both with Fred MacMurray, and The Round Up with Richard Dix and Preston Foster. On loan to 20th Century-Fox she took on a villainess role in Romance of the Rio Grande, starring Cesar Romero as the Cisco Kid. She departed Paramount after a succession of unrewarding assignments. By 1942 she had joined a USO tour in Great Britain alongside Al Jolson, Merle Oberon, Allen Jenkins, and Frank McHugh.

Working subsequently as a freelance performer, Morison appeared in a supporting role as Empress Eugénie in the 1943 Jennifer Jones film The Song of Bernadette, and that same year she appeared in The Fallen Sparrow with John Garfield and Maureen O'Hara. She was frequently cast as femme fatales and antagonists, a pattern that continued through roles in the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn vehicle Without Love and the Deanna Durbin picture Lady on a Train, both from 1945. She played villainous characters in the final entries of Universal's Sherlock Holmes series, Dressed to Kill opposite Basil Rathbone, and in MGM's Song of the Thin Man. Additional film credits from this period include Tarzan and the Huntress, The Prince of Thieves, Queen of the Amazons, and Kiss of Death, in which she played Victor Mature's wife in a role that was ultimately cut from the final print. She also appeared in the 1948 espionage film Sofia and, after a lengthy absence from cinema, portrayed George Sand in the 1960 Franz Liszt biopic Song Without End.

In 1944, Morison interrupted her film work to return to Broadway, opening at the Adelphi Theatre in the musical comedy Allah Be Praised!, which closed after only 20 performances. Her return to the stage proved far more consequential in 1948, when Cole Porter, having heard her sing while she was in Hollywood, cast her as Lilli Vanessi in his new musical Kiss Me, Kate. The role reunited her with Alfred Drake, her former Two Bouquets castmate, and required her to portray a volatile stage diva whose temperament mirrored that of Kate from The Taming of the Shrew. The production featured songs including "I Hate Men," "Wunderbar," and "So in Love," and ran on Broadway from December 30, 1948, through July 28, 1951, for a total of 1,077 performances. Morison also performed in the London production of Kiss Me, Kate, which ran for 400 performances.

In February 1954, Morison assumed the role of Anna Leonowens in the Rodgers and Hammerstein production of The King and I, joining Yul Brynner, who played the King of Siam. The musical had originally opened in 1951 with Gertrude Lawrence in the lead role, and Morison followed a succession of replacements that included Celeste Holm, Constance Carpenter, and Annamary Dickey. She remained with the production through its Broadway closing on March 20, 1954, then continued with the national tour, which included a stop at the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera beginning May 5, 1954, and a run at the Municipal Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri, opening June 11, 1959.

During the 1950s and 1960s Morison made multiple television appearances, including a production of Rio Rita on Robert Montgomery Presents in 1950, a segment from The King and I on a 1955 broadcast of The Toast of the Town hosted by Ed Sullivan, and a 1952 Christmas Party episode of the Honeymooners segment of Jackie Gleason's show, in which she played herself as Trixie Norton's former Vaudevillian friend. She also appeared in the General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein, broadcast on March 28, 1954, across all four American television networks then in operation. Morison and Alfred Drake later recreated their Kiss Me, Kate roles in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production broadcast in color on November 20.