Biography for
Hank Patterson More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

9 October 1888, Springville, Alabama, USA

Date of Death

23 August 1975, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA (bronchial pneumonia)

Birth Name

Elmer Calvin Patterson

Mini Biography

Hank Patterson was born in Springville, Alabama to Green and Mary Newton Patterson. Hank's great-grandfather, James Pearson, was an original settler of St. Clair county, AL as was his mother's great-grandfather, Thomas Newton. Between 1894 & 1897, the family left AL to live in Taylor, Texas where Hank attempted to work as a serious musician only to settle for playing piano in traveling vaudeville shows. He worked his way out to California in the 1920's and here began his film career followed by long runs on two television series "Gunsmoke" (1955) and "Green Acres" (1965).

IMDb Mini Biography By: Denis Sherman<stidumsherman@yahoo.com>

Trivia

Great-uncle of Téa Leoni

He was a World War One veteran, in the United States Army, as a Calvary man. Like most cavalrymen, he had difficulty hearing the rest of his life, and was legally deaf by the time he started doing "Petticoat Junction". This caused difficulties on the set, so a special teacher, that taught deaf and blind children, was brought in to help him cue his lines.

He had featured roles in both of the 1950's science fiction movies that involved giant spiders: "Tarantula" (1955) at Universal and "Earth vs. The Spider" (1958) (aka "The Spider") for producer Bert I Gordon.