Neva Patterson

Lean-framed, arch, and edgy, somewhat hard-looking, dark-haired Neva Patterson, known better by face than by name, was a familiar presence in the heavily-styled drama of 1950s and 1960s radio, stage, film, and TV. Christened Neva Louise Patterson in 1920 (some sources incorrectly state 1922), she was born to a seamstress mother and mailman father and raised in Nevada, Iowa. She loved to put on plays at home with her brother Harlan and performed in high-school plays. Her interest was further spurred on when she found work as an usher at Nevada's Circle Theatre. Neva graduated from high school in 1937 and worked for a short time in Des Moines at secretarial jobs to manage until she moved to New York the next year. She worked long and hard at such jobs as secretary, radio/hotel singer, and bit-part performer before she finally made her Broadway bow in "The Druid Circle" in 1947. By this time she had married a professional dancer, only for them to divorce in 1948. More plays came her way: "Ring 'Round the Moon" (1950), "Susan and God" (1951), "The Cocktail Party" (1951), and "The Seven-Year Itch" (1952). Television became a viable medium for her during the "Golden Age" of TV; she would appear in more than 400 dramas during her career, including work from "The Colgate Theatre" (1950) through "In the Heat of the Night" (1988). Neva appeared very sporadically in movies with support roles in such prominent fare as Taxi (1953), her debut; The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956); Desk Set (1957); An Affair to Remember (1957), as Cary Grant's socialite fiancée; Too Much, Too Soon (1958) as Diana Barrymore's mother, writer Blanche Oelrichs (aka Michael Strange); David and Lisa (1962); Dear Heart (1964); and Counterpoint (1967), to name a few. A versatile talent, her ladies could be brittle and overwrought or exceedingly strong-minded and business-oriented. More often than not, they had dominant, overbearing personalities. Neva continued in this fashion with a flux of TV roles and graced such short-lived series as The Governor & J.J. (1969) as the secretary to governor Dan Dailey in 1969; Nichols (1971), wherein she played a powerful, corruptible matriarch opposite James Garner; and 1974's _"Doc Elliot" (1974)_, as a widow and frequent confidante to medic James Franciscus. None of these lasted more than a season. In 1980 the actress made a brief Broadway comeback as a replacement in "Romantic Comedy". She later had recurring roles in the TV movie V: The Final Battle (1984) and in the series Webster (1983), St. Elsewhere (1982), and Berrenger's (1985). Married three times, Neva adopted two children with her third husband, writer James Lee, who died in 2002. She retired in the early 1990s and passed away at age 90 of complications following a pelvic fracture in December of 2010.