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A dainty but nevertheless feisty character actress, southern-bred (Mary) Elizabeth Patterson was born in Savannah, Tennessee, on November 22, 1874, and started her career over her strict parent's objections. She became a member of Chicago's Ben Greet Players, performing Shakespeare at the turn of the century. This followed college at Martin College where she studied music, elocution and English, and post-graduate work at Columbia Institute in Columbia, Tennessee.

Elizabeth eventually traveled for well over a decade in stock tours before given the opportunity to debut on Broadway with the short-lived play "Everyman" in 1913. She continued in such other Broadway comedies and dramas as "The Family Exit (1917), "The Piper" (1920), "Magnolia" (1923), "The Book of Charm" (1925), "Spellbound" (1927), "Rope" (1928), "The Marriage Bed" (1929), "Her Master's Voice" (1933), "Yankee Point" (1942), "But Not Goodbye" (1944) and "His and Hers" (1954).

By the time the veteran player finally advanced to the screen, she was 51 years of age. Starting with the silent films The Boy Friend (1926) and The Return of Peter Grimm (1926), she would be best recalled for her series of careworn ladies, playing a host of dressed-down, small-town folk -- grannies, aunts, spinsters, gossips, teachers, frontier women -- and other sweet-and-sour types. She added greatly to the atmosphere of such popular talking films as The Cat Creeps (1930), Penrod and Sam (1931), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Doctor Bull (1933), So Red the Rose (1935), High, Wide and Handsome (1937), Bulldog Drummond's Peril (1938) (and series: as Aunt Blanche), Anne of Windy Poplars (1940), The Cat and the Canary (1939), Remember the Night (1939), Tobacco Road (1941) (her most famous film role: as Ada Lister), Her Cardboard Lover (1942), I Married a Witch (1942), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), Out of the Blue (1947), The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947), Little Women (1949), Intruder in the Dust (1949), Pal Joey (1957), and her final, Tall Story (1960).

In the television arena, she appeared on several anthology shows ("Armstrong Circle Theatre," "Chevron Theatre," "Four Star Playhouse," "General Electric Theatre," "Pulitzer Prize Playhouse") and such regular shows as "The Adventures of Superman," "The Adventures of Jim Bowie," "77 Sunset Strip" and "Playhouse 90." She became a familiar household face, however, as the elderly neighbor and part-time babysitter, Mrs. Trumbull, on the I Love Lucy (1951) TV series.

The never-married Elizabeth, who lived at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel her entire TV and film career, died on January 31, 1966, after contracting pneumonia. The 91-year-old lady was buried in a hometown cemetery.

Live television is the hardest work I ever did and I was a nervous wreck. You really have no time for learning and rehearsals. Swallowing the play whole, hanging on and just hoping that you will come on in the right place and say the right thing.

Quotes

Elizabeth Patterson

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