Patricia Owens

• Name — Patricia Owens • Other Names — * Pat Owens • Patricia Owen • Born — 17 January 1925 • Birthplace — Golden, British Columbia, Canada • Died — 31 August 2000 • Place of death — Lancaster, California, U.S. • Occupation — Actress • Years Active — 1943–1968 • Father — Arthur Owens • Children — 1

Owens was born in Golden, British Columbia in 1925. Her family moved to England when she was eight-years-old, where Owens was raised. Her father was Arthur Owens, a notorious German-and-British double agent during the Second World War who operated under the codename "Snow". The elder Owens, who ran a company building ship batteries, had been recruited by the Abwehr in 1938. Upon the outbreak of World War II, he offered his services to Special Branch, but was initially imprisoned for espionage, before being recruited by MI5 to act as a double agent. As an adult, Patricia would downplay her relation to her father, who moved to Dublin with a new wife in 1948, where he would remain until his death in 1957.

Owens moved from Canada to England as a child. At 18, she made her motion-picture debut in the 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 a few years, Owens getting ever-larger roles in movies. Her career received a boost when she was seen by a 20th Century Fox executive while performing in a stage 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), followed by No Down Payment, both for Fox, after which Owens was lent to Warner Bros. to star (second-billed below Marlon Brando) in the critically-acclaimed romantic drama Sayonara (1957). Owens spent the rest of 1957 working mostly on loan, but a successful Fox production secured her best known role, as Hélène Delambre, the wife of scientist André Delambre in The Fly (1958). Owens carried much of that horror film's narrative, which was largely presented in flashback from her character's point of view. None of Owens' subsequent films ever attained the same level of success as The Fly. She co-starred in the 1960 war film Hell to Eternity, then in 1961 appeared in the threadbare, backlot P.O.W./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 starred in the 1959 episode "The Crystal Trench" of the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She was also in an episode of Tales of Wells Fargo titled "Assignment In Gloribee" in 1962. She plays an uptight, cynical Bostonian who is sent out west to write a "favorable" review of the west, on behalf of Wells Fargo. By 1965, Owens was working in Black Spurs, a B-Western produced by A. C. Lyles, who was renowned for using older stars in that genre. She retired from feature films in 1968 after portraying the love interest in the low-budget espionage thriller The Destructors. Later that same year, she made her last professional appearance in a televised episode of Lassie.

Owens was married and divorced three times. Her first husband, producer and screenwriter Sy Bartlett, and she were wed in 1956 and remained together for two years. She next married Jerome Nathanson in 1960, and they had one child before their divorce in 1961. Her third marriage was to John Austin from 1969 until their divorce in 1975.

Owens died in Lancaster, California on August 31, 2000, aged 75.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1955 — London Playhouse — Mary — Episode: "The Inward Eye" • 1956 — Colonel March of Scotland Yard — Betty Hartley — Episode: "The New Invisible Man" • 1959 — Alfred Hitchcock Presents — Stella Ballister — Episode: "The Crystal Trench" • Adventures in Paradise — Rusty Haynes — Episode: "The Raft" • 1960 — Alcoa Theatre — Kay Armory White — Episode: "Action Off Screen" • 1961 — Follow the Sun — Margaret Jackson — Episode: "Another Part of the Jungle" • 1962 — Tales of Wells Fargo — Katherine Anne Murdock — Episode: "Assignment in Gloribee" • Bus Stop — Connie Brooke — Episode: "The Ordeal of Kevin Brooke" • 1963 — The Untouchables — Marcy Devon — Episode: "The Charlie Argos Story" • 1964 — Gunsmoke — Nora — Episode: "Scot Free" • 1966 — Burke's Law — Sharon O'Brien — 2 episodes • Perry Mason — June Burgess — Episode: "The Case of the Avenging Angel" • 1968 — Lassie — Linda Monroe — Episode: "Lassie's Race for Life"

• Pick-Up Girl (1946, Prince of Wales Theatre and Hippodrome, London) - Mary (replacement) • Second Threshold (1952, Theatre Royal, Brighton and Vaudeville Theatre, London) - Thankful Mather