Patricia Medina Biography

Patricia Paz Maria Medina (19 July 1919 " 28 April 2012) was an English actress. Her father (Ramón Medina Nebot was from the Canary Islands) was Spanish and her mother was English. Born in Liverpool, Lancashire, Medina began acting as a teenager in the late 1930s. She worked her way up to leading roles in the mid-1940s, whereupon she left her native land for Hollywood.

Career

In 1950's Fortunes of Captain Blood, she teamed with British actor, Louis Hayward. She and Hayward subsequently appeared together in 1951's The Lady and the Bandit, Lady in the Iron Mask and Captain Pirate from 1952.

Darkly beautiful, Medina was often typecast in period melodramas such as The Black Knight. Two of her more notable films were William Witney's Stranger at My Door and Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin, based on episodes of the radio series The Adventures of Harry Lime, itself derived from The Third Man film.

Although prolific during the early 1950s, her film career faded away by the end of the decade. In 1958, she performed in four episodes as Margarita Cortazar on Walt Disney's ABC series, Zorro. In 1958, she also appeared as "The Lady" Diana Coulter in Richard Boone's CBS western series, Have Gun, Will Travel. She was then cast in an episode of Darren McGavin's NBC western series, Riverboat. In 1960, she was cast as different characters in two episodes ("Fair Game" and "The Earl of Durango") of the ABC western series, The Rebel. Medina also made television appearances on Perry Mason ("The Case of the Lucky Loser", 27 September 1958); Bonanza ("The Spanish Grant", 6 February 1960) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour ("See the Monkey Dance", 9 November 1964).

In 1968, she returned to the big screen in Robert Aldrich's adaptation of the lesbian-themed drama, The Killing of Sister George.

Medina and her husband, American actor Joseph Cotten, toured together in several plays and on Broadway in the murder mystery Calculated Risk.

Autobiography

In 1998, Mrs. Cotten published an autobiography, Laid Back in Hollywood: Remembering.

Personal

Medina married British actor, Richard Greene, 24 December 1941, in St. James's Church, Spanish Place, London; they divorced in 1951. Medina married Joseph Cotten on 20 October 1960, in Beverly Hills at the home of David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones. No children were born from either marriage.

Death

Medina died at age 92 on 28 April 2012, from natural causes at the Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles, California. Her remains are buried at Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia, USA, beside Joseph Cotten.

Partial filmography

• Mr. Satan (1938)
• Hotel Reserve (1944)
• Don't Take It to Heart (1944)
• Kiss the Bride Goodbye (1945)
• The Secret Heart (1946)
• The Foxes of Harrow (1947)
• The Three Musketeers (1948)
• Children of Chance (1949)
• Francis (1950)
• Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950)
• The Jackpot (1950)
• Valentino (1951)
• Botany Bay (1953)
• Sangaree (1953)
• Plunder of the Sun (1953)
• Siren of Bagdad (1953)
• Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954)
• The Black Knight (1954)
• Mr. Arkadin (1955)
• The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956) (Miami Expose 1956)
• Uranium Boom (1956)
• The Buckskin Lady (1957)
• Battle of the V-1 (1958)
• The Californians as Lola Montez in episode "Lola Montez" (NBC-TV, 1958)
• Count Your Blessings (1959)
• Rawhide (CBS-TV, 1960)
• Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961)
• The Killing of Sister George (1968)
• Latitude Zero (1969)