[citation needed] He appeared in a number of films during the 1950s and 1960s, including The Good Die Young (1954), Above Us the Waves (1955), Reach for the Sky (1956), The Key Man (1957), Time Lock (1957) The Golden Disc (1958), Cat & Mouse (1958), Jack the Ripper (1959) and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960).

He left but returned to the UK to appear as hard-bitten navigation expert Captain Randolph Southard in the play version of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial at The Queen's Theatre, London, directed by Charlton Heston in 1985.

Later that year, he was cast as the fictional detective Dave Thorne in another ABC/WB series, Surfside 6, set on a houseboat anchored at Miami Beach, Florida, which co-starred Van Williams, Troy Donahue, Diane McBain and Margarita Sierra.

After that show was cancelled in 1967, he joined the original cast of One Life to Live, a move that reunited him with Doris Quinlan, the producer of The Nurses.

Patterson died in Galveston, Texas, of congestive heart failure with complications from lung cancer and emphysema, on 14 February 2007; he was aged 77.