Karen Morley

She died from pneumonia in Woodland Hills, California. Patrick died suddenly from a heart seizure on the day before her 81st birthday, at Laguna Beach, California. In December 1999, she appeared in the magazine Vanity Fair in an article about blacklist survivors. Starring George Segal as Sam Spade Jr., forced to continue his father's work, and to keep his increasingly sarcastic secretary, the film attempted to turn its revered predecessor into a comedy, and was a box office failure. She remained married to Gough until his death in 1984, and moved to the San Francisco Bay area late in life. Her final film role was a reprise of her Effie Perine character in a reworking of the Sam Spade story titled The Black Bird (1975). She maintained her political activism for the rest of her life, running unsuccessfully for government in 1954, but was never able to rebuild her acting career. Among her other films are Now, Voyager (1942), Mrs Parkington (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), Caged (1950), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), Vertigo (1958), Auntie Mame (1958), Pillow Talk (1959), and Summer and Smoke (1961).

Her career came to an end in 1947, when she testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to answer questions about her alleged Communist Party membership. As Effie Perine, the loyal and quick-thinking secretary of Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, Patrick created one of her most enduring film characterisations. In 1943 she married the actor Lloyd Gough. Over the next several years she played numerous supporting roles, without attracting much attention until she appeared in The Maltese Falcon (1941). She was a frequent player in films until the end of the decade, and was married to director Charles Vidor from 1932 until 1943. She remained in Hollywood, and appeared in Border Cafe (1937). Born Mildred Linton in Ottumwa, Iowa, Morley came to prominence in Hollywood films in the early 1930s, most notably in Mata Hari (1931), Scarface (1932), Arsene Lupin (1933), and Dinner at Eight (1934). Her disappointments continued when she was considered and then rejected for the lead role in Stella Dallas in favour of Barbara Stanwyck.

Karen Morley (December 12, 1909 - March 8, 2003) was an American film actress. Patrick had made her film debut in 1929 but since that time had not appeared in a single film, and RKO Studios were reluctant to allow an unknown actress to take a part in a film which they were beginning to realise had great potential. Eventually the part was rewritten and split from a single character into two characters which were played by Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Her success in Stage Door (1937) led her to Hollywood to reprise her role in the film version. For more than a decade she was constantly employed and established herself as a popular actress.

Born in New York, New York, Patrick began acting on Broadway in 1924. Lee Patrick (November 22, 1901 – November 21, 1982) was an American theater and film actress. Her difficulties in establishing a career as a leading actress were often attributed to a long standing fued Patrick had with gossip columnist Louella Parsons, about whom Patrick's husband, a journalist, had written very unfavourably. Shaving a decade off her age was a decision she made early in her career, and at the time of her death, many of her friends believed that she was in her early seventies.

After her death it was discovered that she was ten years older than she had ever revealed.