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Lee Patrick (November 22, 1901 – November
21, 1982) was an United States|American theater
and cinema|film actor|actress.

Born in New York, New York, Patrick began acting
on Broadway in 1924. For more than a decade she
was constantly employed and established herself as
a popular actress.  Her success in Stage Door
(1937) led her to Hollywood, California|Hollywood
to reprise her role in the film version. 
Eventually the part was rewritten and split from a
single character into two characters which were
played by Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. 
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.  Her
disappointments continued when she was considered
and then rejected for the lead role in Stella
Dallas in favour of Barbara Stanwyck.

She remained in Hollywood, and appeared in Border
Cafe (movie)|Border Cafe (1937).  Over the next
several years she played numerous supporting
roles, without attracting much attention until she
appeared in The Maltese Falcon (1941).  As Effie
Perine, the loyal and quick-thinking secretary of
Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, Patrick created one
of her most enduring film characterisations.  

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 final film role was a reprise of her Effie
Perine character in a reworking of the Sam Spade
story titled The Black Bird (1975).  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.

Patrick died suddenly from a heart disease|heart
seizure on the day before her 81st birthday, at
Laguna Beach, California.

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