Eileen Patricia Augusta Fraser Morison (March 19, 1915[1] – May 20, 2018) was an American stage, television and film actress of the Golden Age of Hollywood and mezzo-soprano singer.

[2] She made her feature film debut in 1939 after several years on the stage, and amongst her most renowned were The Fallen Sparrow, Dressed to Kill opposite Basil Rathbone and the screen adaptation of The Song of Bernadette.

It was only when she returned to the Broadway stage that she achieved her greatest success as the lead in the original production of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate and subsequently in The King and I.

[5] Her father William was a playwright and actor from Belfast while her mother, Selena Morison (née Fraser), worked for British Intelligence during World War I.

[6] After graduating from Washington Irving High School in New York, Morison studied at the Arts Students League while taking acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

While appearing in The Two Bouquets, Morison was noticed by talent scouts from Paramount Pictures, who were looking for exotic, dark-haired glamorous types similar to Dorothy Lamour, one of their star commodities.

Despite Morison's promising beginnings, she was assigned to several second-tier pictures such as Rangers of Fortune (1940) and One Night in Lisbon (1941), both with Fred MacMurray, and The Round Up (1941) with Richard Dix and Preston Foster.

In November of that year she joined Al Jolson, Merle Oberon, Allen Jenkins, and Frank McHugh on a USO Tour in Great Britain.

[10] Returning to films once again, Morison continued to be cast in supporting roles, all too often as femme fatales or unsympathetic "other women", including the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn vehicle, Without Love (1945), and the Deanna Durbin comedy-mystery Lady on a Train (1945).

She played the female antagonist in Tarzan and the Huntress (1947), the penultimate film starring Johnny Weissmuller as Edgar Rice Burroughs' title character.

Her role was cut from the final print, over censorship concerns and the producers' reputed belief that audiences at that time were not ready for a scene depicting suicide.

Cole Porter had heard her sing while in Hollywood and decided that she had the vocal expertise and feistiness to play the female lead in his new show, Kiss Me, Kate.

Lawrence was subsequently replaced by Celeste Holm, Constance Carpenter, Annamary Dickey, and finally Morison, who appeared in The King and I until its Broadway closing on March 20, 1954, and then continued with the production on the national tour, which included a stop at the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera (from May 5, 1954).

These included both musical and dramatic plays, among them Milk and Honey, Kismet, The Merry Widow, Song of Norway, Do I Hear a Waltz?, Bell, Book and Candle, The Fourposter, Separate Tables, and Private Lives.

In July 1985, Morison traveled to New Zealand to star in the role of Alika in the Michael Edgley revival of Sir Robert Helpmann & her friend Eaton Magoon Jr's Hawaiian musical Aloha at His Majesty's Theatre, Auckland, directed by Joe Layton and musically directed by Derek Williams, who had also orchestrated and conducted the world première at Hamilton Founders Theatre in 1981.

[20] In conjunction with her 100th birthday, the Pasadena Playhouse sponsored an evening with Patricia Morison on March 15, 2015, including an audience Q & A session and selections from Kiss Me, Kate performed by the guest of honor.