Short Biography

Cold, calculating and hard-as-nails is probably the best definition of Gail Patrick`s femmes on the silver screen. And she was no softie in real life either. The tall, slender, patrician beauty was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1911. She was a dean of women at her alma mater of Howard College for a time and a pre-law student at the University of Alabama before setting her sights on acting. A finalist in a nationwide contest for a Paramount film role (which she did not get) led her to Hollywood and a contract with the studio. After the usual grooming in bit parts, she began essaying several leading lady roles, including a woman lawyer in Disbarred (1939), but became better identified in second leads tangling with the star femme as the "other woman," haughty socialite or scheming villainess. She participated grandly in three well-known film classics. In the screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (1936), she was at odds with Carole Lombard as a spoiled, treacherous sister; in Stage Door (1937), she engaged in some marvelous cat fights with Ginger Rogers as a cynical wannabe actress, and in My Favorite Wife (1940) she played Cary Grant`s exacting second wife who must contend with the reappearance of his first, supposedly dead wife Irene Dunne. Gail exuded wit, confidence, assertiveness and elegance in all her characters, nothing less. In 1948, she did an abrupt about-face and left her career. After involving herself successfully in clothes design, she became executive producer of the "Perry Mason" (1957) TV series (1957-1966), alongside producer and third husband (Thomas) Cornwell Jackson, who was a literary agent to Erle Stanley Gardner, the author/creator. The courtroom "whodunnit" was a long and highly successful run. She and Jackson divorced in 1969, and one of her few failures in life was in her attempt to revive the series with "The New Perry Mason" (1973) in 1973, but Monte Markham was a mighty pale comparison to Raymond Burr in the title role and the show quickly tanked. She and Jackson had two adopted children. Gail died in 1980 of leukemia.

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