[2] As a teen, Patrick was a professional photographic model for young ladies' fashions in Creed's, Hudson's Bay and Sears department store catalogues, popular in Canada.

[2] With a movie contract in hand, she moved to Hollywood with her mother and young son to live in Culver City, California and work at nearby MGM studios.

[3] As a "Queen of the Bs," she continued to appear in films produced in the 1940s and 1950s, including High Wall (1947) with Robert Taylor; New Orleans (1947) with Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday; The Mighty McGurk (1947) with Wallace Beery; Follow Me Quietly (1949) with William Lundigan, and the Fritz Lang-directed noir classic, House by the River (1950).

In the early days of television, she made guest appearances on the locally produced TV game show, Mike Stokey's Pantomime Quiz.

At Columbia Pictures, Patrick co-starred with Preston Foster and Wayne Morris in an oil wild-catting yarn, The Big Gusher (1951), and in a modern-day western, Outlaw Stallion (1954), opposite Billy Gray with Phil Carey.

Republic films she made include 711 Ocean Drive (1950) with Edmond O'Brien, Joanne Dru and Otto Kruger; the "true life" crime drama Lonely Heart Bandits (1950) with John Eldredge, a "Gringos go south-of-the-border" comedy, Belle of Old Mexico (1950); and the genre western Thunder Pass (1954) with Dane Clark, John Carradine and Andy Devine.