Patricia Lake

Parentage She was born in a hospital outside Paris, France. Her date of birth is not known; according to her Los Angeles Times obituary, "The year was sometime between 1920 and 1923; Lake never knew exactly."

According to Magazine Americana, published by the Institute for the Study of American Popular Culture, after Rose and George Van Cleeve had separated, he kidnapped Patricia in 1924 and went into hiding. Hearst's detectives located the pair after five years and the girl was returned to Rose's custody. She was returned to Van Cleeve's custody after a court decision.

Patricia attended Lawlor Professional School in Hollywood. The Lake family asserts that when Patricia lived with the Van Cleeves, Hearst paid the bills and arranged for her education at schools in New York and Boston. Introduced as Marion Davies' niece, Lake socialized with such notables as Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson. Lake lived with Marion Davies for the major portion of her life, and Hearst financially supported Lake all of her life. When Davies died in 1961, half of her $20 million estate was left to Lake as an inheritance.

Her features, "suspiciously similar" to those of Hearst, did not go unnoticed. Lake never made any public comment on the subject, even after the deaths of Hearst and Davies.

Marriage Patricia first met actor Arthur Lake when he was visiting at Marion Davies's beach house. They married in 1937 at Hearst's San Simeon estate. Davies and Hearst jointly gave her away at the marriage ceremony. and Marion Rose Lake (born October 6, 1944).

Both Patricia and her husband are interred in the same crypt as Marion Davies at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. In 1954, Lake also co-starred with her husband in an early television sitcom he created called Meet the Family.

Lake was selected by the Motion Picture Publicists Association to be one of the MPPA 'Baby Stars' of 1940, an award similar to the WAMPAS Baby Stars selections of 1922 through 1934.