Biography

Resembling Hedy Lamarr with her brunette sultry looks, beautiful second-string actress Patricia Dane possessed a rough and rowdy exterior, which worked much better for her in front of the camera than off of it. Born Thelma Patricia Ann Pippen in Jacksonville, Florida, her father died shortly after her birth, and the infant was placed in the care, for a time, of her grandparents. When her mother remarried a man named Byrnes, young Thelma went back to live with her and was raised with the new name of Thelma Byrnes. Following graduation from Andrew Jackson High School in Jacksonville, Patricia entered the University of Alabama. She moved to New York in 1938 to be a fashion designer, but her dark-eyed beauty instead led her to instant money with modeling jobs. This opened a few doors and she quickly got caught up in the New York whirlwind "high life," becoming known around town as a feisty party girl. Casted in her first role as a well-endowed Ziegfeld Girl in MGM's splashy, musical aptly named Ziegfeld Girl (1941), the studio immediately signed her up. She made minor impressions in Life Begins for Andy Hardy (1941) and as gangster Robert Taylor's girl in Johnny Eager (1941), which led to co-star billing in the "B" films Grand Central Murder (1942), as a volatile, cold-hearted actress who meets a nasty end, _Northwest Rangers (1942) and _Manhattan Melodrama (1942)_. Patricia was squired about town with several eligible bachelors but on April 8, 1943, she became Mrs. Tommy Dorsey. Following a role in the Red Skelton vehicle I Dood It (1943), she left films per the renowned bandleader's insistence. The marriage was stormy, to say the least, with some grand knockout fights that made headlines as both were pretty wild tipplers (she would often refer to themselves as "The New Battling Bogarts"). This marriage had little chance for survival and on August 26, 1947, it was finished. She never remarried. Patricia could now return to films and did so with the minor entries Joe Palooka in Fighting Mad (1948) and Are You with It? (1948). Nothing came of it. She made more unattractive news in 1949 when she and MGM actor Robert Walker were arrested for driving erratically, public drunkenness, and resisting arrest. After this, all she could find were unbilled parts in Road to Bali (1952) and A Life of Her Own (1950). Moving to Blountstown, Florida, Patricia's life quieted down considerably becoming, of all things, a librarian in town. She died completely out of the limelight of lung cancer on June 5, 1995.