Virginia Patton, who played Ruth Deakin Bailey, the sister-in-law of Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey, in Frank Capra’s Christmas classic. It’s a wonderful life, died. He was 97 years old.
Patton died Thursday at an assisted living facility in Albany, Georgia, Matthews Funeral Home said.
In the 1946 film, Patton’s character is married to Harry Bailey (Todd Carnes), and his big scene takes place at the Bedford Falls train station when he meets George and Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell).
As crew members lit up his scene, filmed at the now-defunct Santa Fe Railroad Lamanda Park station in Pasadena with its booth, he wondered how he was eating his buttered popcorn while wearing white gloves.
“She was dressed like a young matron. I was wearing a hat, a suit and white gloves, I came to meet my new son-in-law,” she recalled in 2016. “And I was going to eat buttered popcorn with white gloves?
“We went through rehearsal and Frank didn’t say anything about it, his assistant didn’t say anything, the cameraman didn’t say anything about it. I was sitting there thinking, ‘What am I going to do? I’m gonna put popcorn in those gloves. … I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll just say everybody’s eating buttered popcorn with gloves on, and everybody’s buttering themselves up.’”
Virginia Ann Patton was born in Cleveland on June 25, 1925. She grew up in Portland, Oregon, graduating from Jefferson High School in 1942 before moving to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.
He signed a contract with Warner Bros. and made his film debut in a musical. Thank your lucky stars (1943), starring Eddie Cantor and All Stars, and appeared in small roles in other films, including Jenny (1944), hollywood restaurant (1944) and Jack Benny The horn sounds at midnight (1945).
The niece of World War II General George Patton, she starred in a play written by William De Mille, brother of Cecil De Mille, while attending USC, and this put her on Capra’s radar. he was playing It’s a wonderful lifeThe first film he would direct for his new production company, Liberty Films.
“I read it to her and she signed it,” he said in 2013, adding that she was “the only girl he signed in my entire career.” His contract with Warner had ended, and all the other adult actors were working on loan from other studios.
From left: Todd Carnes, Virginia Patton, Jimmy Stewart and Thomas Mitchell in It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946
Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Later It’s a wonderful life Spending Christmas several times a year for decades, Patton used to joke that “I’ve probably been home more than Santa Claus”.
Patton was led by a woman burnt cross (1947), a film about the Ku Klux Klan and flying eagle (1948), a western, later retired from acting after a supporting role. hard luck (1949).
She left Hollywood and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, after marrying auto industry executive Cruz W. Mose in 1949 and they had three children. They were married for 69 years before her death in 2018.
Patton has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and as president and director of Patton Corp., a real estate and investment holding company.
In a 2012 interview, Patton noted that Capra asked her to think twice about leaving show business, but said she was comfortable with her decision.
“I have a wonderful letter [Capra] He wrote to me because I was in a relationship with him,” she said. “She wrote, ‘I knew you would be a wonderful mother to three babies and a wonderful husband.’
Source: Hollywood Reporter
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