Pat Crowley(I)
- Actress
- Soundtrack
A very pleasing and thoroughly enjoyable vision on 1950s film and 1960s
TV, Patricia Crowley effortlessly lit up her surroundings with a warm,
inviting personality and fresh-faced attractiveness that she still
carries today. At her peak she courted top TV stardom in the mid-'60s
as the beleaguered wife and mom on the successful series
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1965)
and easily made the original Doris Day
film role her own. Both she and TV husband
Mark Miller made a handsome couple
and the series deserved more than its two-season run. Perhaps audience
taste, which was changing rapidly with the counterculture era taking
over, triggered its somewhat quick demise.
Born September 17, 1933 (some sources incorrectly list 1929), in
Olyphant, Pennsylvania, to Vincent, a coal mining foreman, and Helen
(Swartz) Crowley, it was her older sister
Ann Crowley (born October 17, 1929) who
triggered Pat's interest in performing when, during Ann's appearance in
a Chicago musical production, the ten-year-old Pat was given a walk-on
part. Ann Crowley would go on to have a promising musical career
appearing in such late 40s/early 50s N.Y. shows as "Carousel",
"Oklahoma!" and "Paint Your Wagon". By age 11, Patricia had become a
photographer's model and subsequently attended New York's High School
of Performing Arts. She won her first major TV part scarcely out of
high school and seemed destined to become an important teen star as the
bobbysoxer lead in the Saturday morning TV series
A Date with Judy (1951),
which was adapted from the highly popular radio series of the 1940s.
When the series moved to prime time, however, another actress replaced
her.
Like her sister, Patricia was also musically inclined and appeared in a
few tuneful stage shows such as "Tovarich" and "Kiss Me Kate" (as
Bianca). Billed as "Pat Crowley", she made an auspicious Broadway debut
with the relatively short-lived comedy play "Southern Exposure" in
1950, earning the 1951 Theatre World Award for "promising personality".
She followed this with another short run (one day) in the comedy "Four
Twelves Are 48".
After a number of early 1950s TV assignments, Pat was brought out to
Hollywood to co-star with
Dean Martin and
Jerry Lewis in one of the pair's
typical slapstick outings
Money from Home (1953). In it,
she played a feisty lady veterinarian. She then moved engagingly into
the show business comedy
Forever Female (1953) co-starring
William Holden and
Ginger Rogers. As the young aspirant who
is vying with the long-in-the-tooth Rogers for a prime Broadway ingénue
role, Pat made the most of her role and earned a Golden Globe award for
"best promising female newcomer". From there, she played the second
female lead in the musical
Red Garters (1954) but crooning
headliners Rosemary Clooney and
Guy Mitchell got most of the songs.
Pat did have a dance number, however, opposite Mitchell with the tune
"Meet a Happy Guy".
While much of her work came from dramatic TV showcases, Pat continued
in movie roles co-starring as the girlfriend of
Tony Curtis in the boxing yarn
The Square Jungle (1955),
appearing as the female ingénue in the sudsy drama
There's Always Tomorrow (1956)
opposite veterans Barbara Stanwyck,
Fred MacMurray and
Joan Bennett, and reuniting with
Martin & Lewis in their very last film
Hollywood or Bust (1956) before
the pair's professional breakup.
When her film career started to lose steam in the late 50s (she did
appear to good effect, however, with
Jeffrey Hunter in the crime drama
Key Witness (1960) as a couple
terrorized by gang leader Dennis Hopper),
Pat found steadier work on TV and guested on many of the popular shows
of the day both drama Bonanza (1959),
Cheyenne (1955),
The Twilight Zone (1959),
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964))
and the occasional comedy
(The Tab Hunter Show (1960)).
It was in the sitcom vein that Pat achieved her biggest success when
she was cast as "Joan Nash", the nontraditional, harried wife/columnist
of an English professor whose four precocious sons and huge sheep dog
added greatly to the mayhem in
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1965).
Based on the best-selling Jean Kerr
book, it was a role that suited Pat (now billed Patricia) to a tee and
made her a household name at the time.
Since then, Patricia has continued to maintain a strong visibility
especially on TV, although she was not given the star-making
opportunities like this again. Crowley is best known to a later
generation of viewers for her regular roles on daytime's
Generations (1989) (1989-1990),
Port Charles (1997) (1997-2003)
and
The Bold and the Beautiful (1987)
(2005). A guest on such sitcoms as
Frasier (1993),
Roseanne (1988) and
Friends (1994), recurring roles on
Joe Forrester (1975) (perfectly
paired with Lloyd Bridges),
Dynasty (1981) and
Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990)
also showed Pat to good advantage. More recently, she has graced
episodes of "The Closer" and "Cold Case" and a featured role in the film Mont Reve (2012).
In 1958 Patricia married
Ed Hookstratten, a successful attorney
for top entertainment and sports icons. They had a son, Jon, and a
daughter, Ann, named after her sister. After their two-decade marriage
ended, she went on to marry producer
Andy Friendly in 1986. While many
understandably agree that Patricia Crowley's talents deserved perhaps a
better serving in Hollywood, particularly on film, she has nevertheless
proved herself a lovely, lively and still ingratiating presence.
TV, Patricia Crowley effortlessly lit up her surroundings with a warm,
inviting personality and fresh-faced attractiveness that she still
carries today. At her peak she courted top TV stardom in the mid-'60s
as the beleaguered wife and mom on the successful series
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1965)
and easily made the original Doris Day
film role her own. Both she and TV husband
Mark Miller made a handsome couple
and the series deserved more than its two-season run. Perhaps audience
taste, which was changing rapidly with the counterculture era taking
over, triggered its somewhat quick demise.
Born September 17, 1933 (some sources incorrectly list 1929), in
Olyphant, Pennsylvania, to Vincent, a coal mining foreman, and Helen
(Swartz) Crowley, it was her older sister
Ann Crowley (born October 17, 1929) who
triggered Pat's interest in performing when, during Ann's appearance in
a Chicago musical production, the ten-year-old Pat was given a walk-on
part. Ann Crowley would go on to have a promising musical career
appearing in such late 40s/early 50s N.Y. shows as "Carousel",
"Oklahoma!" and "Paint Your Wagon". By age 11, Patricia had become a
photographer's model and subsequently attended New York's High School
of Performing Arts. She won her first major TV part scarcely out of
high school and seemed destined to become an important teen star as the
bobbysoxer lead in the Saturday morning TV series
A Date with Judy (1951),
which was adapted from the highly popular radio series of the 1940s.
When the series moved to prime time, however, another actress replaced
her.
Like her sister, Patricia was also musically inclined and appeared in a
few tuneful stage shows such as "Tovarich" and "Kiss Me Kate" (as
Bianca). Billed as "Pat Crowley", she made an auspicious Broadway debut
with the relatively short-lived comedy play "Southern Exposure" in
1950, earning the 1951 Theatre World Award for "promising personality".
She followed this with another short run (one day) in the comedy "Four
Twelves Are 48".
After a number of early 1950s TV assignments, Pat was brought out to
Hollywood to co-star with
Dean Martin and
Jerry Lewis in one of the pair's
typical slapstick outings
Money from Home (1953). In it,
she played a feisty lady veterinarian. She then moved engagingly into
the show business comedy
Forever Female (1953) co-starring
William Holden and
Ginger Rogers. As the young aspirant who
is vying with the long-in-the-tooth Rogers for a prime Broadway ingénue
role, Pat made the most of her role and earned a Golden Globe award for
"best promising female newcomer". From there, she played the second
female lead in the musical
Red Garters (1954) but crooning
headliners Rosemary Clooney and
Guy Mitchell got most of the songs.
Pat did have a dance number, however, opposite Mitchell with the tune
"Meet a Happy Guy".
While much of her work came from dramatic TV showcases, Pat continued
in movie roles co-starring as the girlfriend of
Tony Curtis in the boxing yarn
The Square Jungle (1955),
appearing as the female ingénue in the sudsy drama
There's Always Tomorrow (1956)
opposite veterans Barbara Stanwyck,
Fred MacMurray and
Joan Bennett, and reuniting with
Martin & Lewis in their very last film
Hollywood or Bust (1956) before
the pair's professional breakup.
When her film career started to lose steam in the late 50s (she did
appear to good effect, however, with
Jeffrey Hunter in the crime drama
Key Witness (1960) as a couple
terrorized by gang leader Dennis Hopper),
Pat found steadier work on TV and guested on many of the popular shows
of the day both drama Bonanza (1959),
Cheyenne (1955),
The Twilight Zone (1959),
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964))
and the occasional comedy
(The Tab Hunter Show (1960)).
It was in the sitcom vein that Pat achieved her biggest success when
she was cast as "Joan Nash", the nontraditional, harried wife/columnist
of an English professor whose four precocious sons and huge sheep dog
added greatly to the mayhem in
Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1965).
Based on the best-selling Jean Kerr
book, it was a role that suited Pat (now billed Patricia) to a tee and
made her a household name at the time.
Since then, Patricia has continued to maintain a strong visibility
especially on TV, although she was not given the star-making
opportunities like this again. Crowley is best known to a later
generation of viewers for her regular roles on daytime's
Generations (1989) (1989-1990),
Port Charles (1997) (1997-2003)
and
The Bold and the Beautiful (1987)
(2005). A guest on such sitcoms as
Frasier (1993),
Roseanne (1988) and
Friends (1994), recurring roles on
Joe Forrester (1975) (perfectly
paired with Lloyd Bridges),
Dynasty (1981) and
Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990)
also showed Pat to good advantage. More recently, she has graced
episodes of "The Closer" and "Cold Case" and a featured role in the film Mont Reve (2012).
In 1958 Patricia married
Ed Hookstratten, a successful attorney
for top entertainment and sports icons. They had a son, Jon, and a
daughter, Ann, named after her sister. After their two-decade marriage
ended, she went on to marry producer
Andy Friendly in 1986. While many
understandably agree that Patricia Crowley's talents deserved perhaps a
better serving in Hollywood, particularly on film, she has nevertheless
proved herself a lovely, lively and still ingratiating presence.