Patricia Medina

Patricia Medina
Medina with her husband Joseph Cotten in 1973, by Allan Warren
Born	Patricia Paz Maria Medina 19 July 1919(1919-07-19) Liverpool, England
Died	28 April 2012(2012-04-28) (aged 92) Los Angeles, California
Other names	Patricia Medina Cotten
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1937-1978
Spouse	Richard Greene (m.1941-1951; divorced) Joseph Cotten (m.1960-1994; his death)

Patricia Paz Maria Medina (19 July 1919 – 28 April 2012)^[1] was an English actress.^[2] Her father was a Spaniard (Ramón Medina Nebot from the Canary Islands) and her mother was English. 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 for Hollywood.

Career

In 1950's Fortunes of Captain Blood, she teamed up with British actor Louis Hayward. She and Hayward subsequently appeared together in 1951's The Lady and the Bandit and Lady in the Iron Mask and Captain Pirate, both 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 petered out by the end of the decade. She performed in four episodes of Walt Disney's Zorro in 1958 as Margarita Cortazar. In 1958, she also appeared as "The Lady" Diana Coulter in two episodes of Richard Boone's Have Gun, Will Travel. In 1968, she returned to the big screen in Robert Aldrich's adaptation of the lesbian-themed drama The Killing of Sister George.^[3]

She and her husband, American actor Joseph Cotten, toured together in several plays and on Broadway in the murder mystery Calculated Risk. Her appearances on television include episodes of Bonanza titled "The Spanish Grant" (originally aired 6 February 1960) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour titled "See the Monkey Dance" (originally aired 9 November 1964). She also appeared in Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Lucky Loser" as Harriet Balfour which aired in 1958, and in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Foxes and Hounds Affair" as Lucia Belmont which aired in 1965.

Autobiography

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

Personal

Medina married British actor Richard Greene on 24 December 1941 in St. James's Church, Spanish Place, London. They divorced in 1951.^[4] Medina married Joseph Cotten on 20 October 1960 in Beverly Hills at the home of David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones.^[5][6]

Death

Medina died at age 92 on April 28, 2012 from natural causes at the Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles, California.^[7] She was interred at Blandford Cemetary in Petersburg, Virginia beside Joseph Cotten.

Partial filmography

Siren of Bagdad (1953) with Hans Conried and Paul Henreid

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Patricia Medina

• Patricia Medina at the Internet Movie Database
• Patricia Medina at the Internet Broadway Database
• Patricia Medina at the TCM Movie Database
• Patricia Medina at AllRovi
• Photograph