Gail Patrick (born Margaret LaVelle Fitzpatrick; June 20, 1911 – July 6, 1980) was an American film actress and television producer.

Often cast as the bad girl or the other woman, she appeared in more than 60 feature films between 1932 and 1948, notably My Man Godfrey (1936), Stage Door (1937), and My Favorite Wife (1940).

After retiring from acting, she became, as Gail Patrick Jackson, president of Paisano Productions and executive producer of the Perry Mason television series (1957–1966).

Although she did not win the contest (for "Miss Panther Woman" in Island of Lost Souls starring Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi, 1932), Patrick was offered a standard contract.

[1]: 286 Her physical attractiveness helped her win top billing occasionally, as in King of Alcatraz (1938) and Disbarred (1939), both directed by Robert Florey—but she most often played romantic rivals.

Some of these roles include Carole Lombard's spoiled sister in My Man Godfrey (1936), Ginger Rogers's rival in Stage Door (1937), and Anna May Wong's competitor in Dangerous to Know (1938).

[6] Film scholar Maria DiBattista called her "the underrated Gail Patrick, who excelled in feckless or selfish or simply second-best brunettes".

[1]: 291  She said director Gregory La Cava told her she should suck on lemons and beat up little children to prepare for the role of Cornelia Bullock.

[1]: 290 [12]: 75 Cornwell Jackson was the literary agent for attorney-author Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of the fictional criminal defense attorney Perry Mason.

In a 2008 interview, Nelson reported that Patrick was the only female executive producer in prime time during the years Perry Mason was on the air.

"Women today won't believe that things were that tough", Nelson said, "but Gail was alone in her bailiwick, and I was the only female executive not in personnel at CBS at the time".

Nelson said that years later, Patrick told her she had written up the contract herself, and that it was so wild and favorable to Paisano Productions that she had no idea CBS would accept it.

[22] Her home, a gated estate of nearly seven acres on La Brea Terrace in Los Angeles,[23] was occasionally a shooting location for Perry Mason, beginning with the third season.

[28] An ardent baseball fan, she was called "Ma Patrick"[8] and threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the team's new Gilmore Field on May 2, 1939.

[33] On her return from a war bond tour, she met Lieutenant Arnold Dean White, a pilot in the U.S. Navy Naval Air Transport Service; they married on July 11, 1944.

[37][38] In July 1947, Patrick married her third husband, Thomas Cornwell Jackson, head of the Los Angeles office of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency.

[39][40] She created a business designing clothing for children, and moved to a shop on Rodeo Drive[1]: 290  that she called the Enchanted Cottage.

The Gail Patrick Innovation Award is presented by the organization in her honor, to advance research toward the prevention, treatment, and cure of diabetes.