Patricia Kirkland

Patricia Kirkland (July 18, 1925 – August 14, 2000) was an American actress.

Early years Kirkland was born on July 18, 1925, in New York City, As a child, she primarily lived in Hollywood, but she moved frequently with her family "between the Coast, New York and a farm in Pennsylvania." Kirkland had not planned to be an actress. She said: "It just happened. Someone offered me a job in a show when I was 17, and I took it." She did not study acting but said, "I learned what I know the hard way — as I went along." After she graduated from high school, she again portrayed Archer, this time in the Chicago company of Kiss and Tell,

During the summer of 1946, Kirkland acted as part of Helen Hayes's company in Alice Sit-by-the-Fire. After Ruth Gordon saw her in that capacity, she signed Kirkland to play the young Ruth Gordon in Years Ago. Kirkland's Broadway performance in that role led a reviewer to write in The Sydney Morning Herald, "Young Miss Kirkland brought a delightful spirit of freshness and anxious youthful questing to this undistinguished comedy of a young girl's ambition to go on the stage." Kirkland's other Broadway credits include For Keeps (1944), Snafu (1944), Round Trip (1945), You Never Can Tell (1948), Magdalena (1948), and The Young and Fair (1948). TV Soundstage, Suspense and The Egg and I. and in 1971 she became casting director at CBS.

Mary MacArthur Memorial Committee Kirkland and actress Bethel Leslie co-chaired the Mary MacArthur Memorial Committee, which raised funds for research and treatment of respiratory polio. Mary MacArthur, the daughter of Charles MacArthur and Helen Hayes, was an actress who died of respiratory polio in September 1949. The Mary MacArthur Memorial Fund was administered by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. The fund's first project was a respirator research center that was added to the Children's Medical Center in Boston.

Personal life and death Kirkland married Donald Bevan, an artist and a playwright, in November 1948. Each of them roomed with a friend until Bevan's roommate moved out. She died on August 14, 2000, in Los Angeles, California.