Good things come in threes, and Warner Bros. was indeed fortunate in the late 1930s to have a trio of Lane Sisters—Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola—under contract at the same time. Together they made a potent attraction in films such as Four Daughters and Daughters Courageous. Separately, only Priscilla really commanded attention on the screen.
A bubbly personality, striking blonde hair and an uncanny resemblance to Ginger Rogers, to whom she was sometimes compared, proved to be the attractions that made Priscilla so popular with audiences. From her first film, she revealed a delightful flair for comedy and an appealing way with a song that helped give a lift to many of Warners’ lighter screen entries. Too often, though, she was wasted in inferior films. She eventually lost interest in making movies, instead preferring to devote herself full-time to her husband and four children, and she never looked back.
Priscilla Mullican was born on June 12, 1915, in Indianola, Iowa, a small college town south of Des Moines. Pat, as she came to be called by her family and friends, was the fifth and youngest daughter of Lorenzo A. Mullican, a local dentist, and his wife, Cora Bell Hicks.
Prior to marrying Lorenzo, Cora had worked as a reporter with a local newspaper in Macy, Indiana. However, her real love was acting, and she always harbored a desire to perform on the stage. Unfortunately, her parents were strict Methodists who looked upon show business as an undignified profession.
When Lorenzo and Cora were first married they settled in Macy, which was the birthplace of their three eldest daughters, Leota, Martha and Dorothy, who were born, respectively, in 1904, 1905 and 1906. The family then moved into a sprawling twenty-two room home in Indianola in 1907. A fourth daughter, Rosemary, arrived in 1913.
Pat was always close to her sisters and recalled her childhood with delight. “It was always open house for our friends. And we used to go on wiener and marshmallow roasts. In winter, after sleigh rides, we’d have oyster stew at home,” she said. “We had a big tree in our yard, and I used to climb up high in it, and tie notes and clues to branches. I’d hide clues all over the house, too. Each clue would give instructions for the next step in finding treasure—little trinkets I had buried.”
For fun-loving Pat, it’s no wonder that Indianola struck her as a quiet, straitlaced town back then. “It was against the law to dance anywhere in town. It was against the law to sell cigarettes there, too. And drinking—well, people didn’t even talk about it,” Pat recalled.
It was through Cora’s influence that four of her daughters ended up pursuing show business careers. Cora saw to it that Pat and her sisters participated in cultural activities, and the girls all studied music, which included lessons in both singing and playing a musical instrument. Martha was the only one who steered away from the entertainment world and instead eloped with a college professor with whom she had one child. The couple later divorced and she went to work as a medical secretary.
Leota departed for New York in the mid–20s with theatrical ambitions. Dorothy moved in with her in 1928, as she embarked on her own stage career. After going on several auditions, they both obtained parts in Greenwich Village Follies, a musical revue produced by Gus Edwards. It was Edwards who changed their names to Lane; consequently, Dorothy became Lola Lane.
Pretty Priscilla Lane used to get more fan mail than any Warners actress, except for Bette Davis.
Pat’s father was unhappy about his daughters’ theatrical careers, an issue that caused much friction between Cora and him. The situation between them only worsened when Pat also announced her plans to follow in her sisters’ footsteps. Pat graduated from high school in 1931 and spent that summer in New York with Leota, who was then appearing in a musical revue. Pat fell in love with New York, although many years later she admitted that New York was “a fascinating city, but because I’m not a city girl, I like leaving it.”
At the time, though, Broadway was a glittering place featuring shows with the likes of Katherine Cornell, Helen Hayes and George M. Cohan. Pat was taken with the magic of the theater, and decided she wanted to take dramatic lessons. Leota agreed to pay for her tuition at the nearby Fagen School of Dramatics. Pat appeared in several of Fagen’s productions, one of which was seen by Al Altman, a Hollywood talent scout. Impressed with Pat, he arranged for her to do a screen test for MGM, but it proved unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, the tension between Lorenzo and Cora became intolerable and she finally left him in 1932. Lorenzo then filed for divorce proceedings against his wife on the grounds of desertion. The divorce was granted the following year.
After leaving Indianola, Cora went to New York with Rosemary, now ready to try her luck on the stage. Cora acted as manager for Pat and Rosemary, but she had no luck landing an audition with Broadway producers. Instead, the girls got jobs as song pluggers with a music publishing company. It was there that Pat and Rosemary were discovered by bandleader Fred Waring in 1933. He heard the girls harmonizing and liked how they sounded. Their audition was a success and he offered them a contract. With Cora’s approval, Pat and Rosemary, who had by now also adopted Lane as their surname, signed with Waring and boarded the bus with him and his musicians, dubbed the Pennsylvanians. Cora also came along to act as her daughters’ chaperone.
Pat and Waring developed an immediate rapport, which began with her first performance. Pat was understandably anxious about performing for the first time before an audience and started chewing gum to help calm her nerves prior to going on stage. When it was time for her to sing, she forgot to remove the gum and couldn’t utter a note. Waring picked up on her predicament and began joking with her. Pat countered with a snappy ad lib. Waring was so taken with her spontaneity that the routine became a part of the act. As they toured, he worked in several other ad-libbed exchanges with Pat, which established her reputation as a sparkling comedienne.
Despite the hectic schedule of the band tours, not to mention the discomfort of traveling by bus and living out of a suitcase, Pat loved the excitement and unpredictability of life on the road. On one occasion the band traveled during a heavy snowstorm to reach the theater where they were scheduled to perform. When they arrived they learned that the show had been canceled because of the weather. The band then boarded the bus once again for their hotel, but on the way back stopped to help the occupants of a stranded car, who turned out to be members of a wedding party. Waring offered to take the group to the wedding via the bus. Since the band was now free for the evening, they stayed for the reception and performed for the guests.
In his spare time Waring was an inventor who had his greatest success with the Waring blender, from which he became quite wealthy. Pat, who shared Waring’s love of new gadgets, supposedly helped him work out ideas for some of his inventions, said her son, Joe Howard.
When Waring and his band were signed by Warner Bros. in 1937 to appear in Varsity Show, a Dick Powell musical, Pat and Rosemary headed west with the rest of the Pennsylvanians. The film was a pleasant affair, with Powell as a down on his luck producer recruited by the students of Winfield College to stage their annual varsity show. The highlight was the Busby Berkeley–staged finale, which featured the choreographer’s trademark overhead shots as hundreds of male and female dancers formed the insignias of various U.S. colleges and universities.
In the film, Rosemary played Powell’s romantic interest, while Pat got to clown around and perform in several musical numbers. Pat’s winning personality and photogenic features did not go unnoticed. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times remarked that Varsity Show “affords a long-delayed screen outlet for the Waring instrumentalists and vocalists, among whom is the attractive Priscilla Lane, a definite screen discovery.”
Warners evidently was also impressed with the work of both Lane Sisters and offered both studio contracts. Pat was reluctant to accept, and instead wanted to remain with the Pennsylvanians. Rosemary eventually convinced her to give movies a try, and Warners purchased both of their contracts from Waring. Lola, a veteran of thirteen films since her screen debut in 1929, was already under contract to Warners and had just scored with a sensational performance in Marked Woman (1937), opposite Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. Pat and Rosemary settled into a rented ranch home in the San Fernando Valley, which they shared with their mother.
Pat had a bigger role in Love, Honor and Behave (1938), a romantic comedy about a competitive man (Wayne Morris) who discovers the meaning of sportsmanship following a series of misadventures. In the film’s most amusing scene, Morris was required to give Pat a good spanking, for which she refused to have a double. “She insisted on taking that spanking in person. She’s a real trouper,” said Rosemary in an interview with The New York Times.
Warners’ publicity department thought Pat and Morris made an attractive couple and suggested that they be seen together in the Hollywood night spots. The two became fond of one another and dated briefly, but it never developed into a serious romance.
Still, Warners took advantage of the relationship by pairing them up again in Men Are Such Fools (1938), a domestic drama which should have been better than it was considering it was directed by Busby Berkeley and had Humphrey Bogart in a supporting role. Instead, the movie was an undistinguished seventy-minute programmer that suffered from a trite screenplay. Pat played an ambitious account executive with an advertising agency who marries a hulking ex-football star (Morris) with the understanding that she can continue her career. She eventually resigns when her husband becomes jealous of the attention her boss (Bogart) is paying her, but she quickly becomes disenchanted with both life as a housewife and her unambitious husband. She returns to her job and begins a romance with her boss. Her husband then tries to establish himself in the business world to try and win her back.
A bored Crowther pulled no punches: “For the benefit of those who like to know what a picture is about, we can only say that Men Are Such Fools is about an hour too long.”
Cowboy from Brooklyn (1938), her next venture, was somewhat better than its title indicated. In it, Dick Powell played a singing drifter who gets a job as a ranch hand and is discovered by a talent scout. Unfortunately, the plot seemed reminiscent of several recent Powell musicals, with only the western setting as a novelty. The film’s chief attraction was the song “Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride,” which became a staple of Warners Bros. Looney Tunes. Pat got to sing a few numbers in the film but otherwise had little to do.
Though the quality of Pat’s films at Warners varied greatly, there was always one constant: a pair of brown leather shoes that she wore in every scene of every movie she made. The superstitious Pat always considered them her good luck charm. They certainly did the trick with her next film, Four Daughters (1938), based on Sister Act, a Fannie Hurst tearjerker about the romances of four musically inclined sisters. The studio envisioned Because of a Man, as the film was originally called, as a property for Bette Davis. When she turned it down, Lola Lane approached Jack Warner about developing it as a starring vehicle for Pat, Rosemary and herself. Warner liked the idea and even agreed to test Leota to round out the quartet. When Leota proved unsuitable, contract player Gale Page was given the assignment.
Warner also felt that casting Errol Flynn as Felix, the charming suitor whom all of the sisters find themselves falling for, would be box-office insurance. Flynn, however, wouldn’t commit to the film until his part was expanded. Instead, he boarded his yacht and sailed as far away from the studio as possible. Van Heflin was next considered, but he was already committed to The Philadelphia Story in New York. The role finally went to dependable (if pallid) contract player Jeffrey Lynn, his first of many teamings with Pat.
Four Daughters was given all the best Warners trimmings, including the estimable Michael Curtiz as its director, a sensitive Lenore Coffee-Julius Epstein screenplay (adapted from Hurst’s novel), an evocative Max Steiner score and a supporting cast consisting of Warners’ most reliable character actors, including Claude Rains as the girls’ father, May Robson as Grandma and Frank McHugh as one of their suitors.
Although the film was meant to be a showcase for the Lane trio, it was newcomer John Garfield as Mickey Borden, a brooding musician who believes the fates are all against him, who attracted the most attention. Garfield had approached everyone from Curtiz to producer Henry Blanke to give him the role, which was originally planned for another newcomer, Eddie Albert. Garfield stole the notices and earned a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.
Pat, in the most dramatic of the film’s female roles, was the standout among the sisters. As Ann Lemp, torn between her true feelings for the reliable Felix (Jeffrey Lynn) and her compassion for the cynical Mickey, Pat was sincere without being syrupy. She was particularly moving during her scene with Garfield as she tries to comfort him shortly before he dies.
Despite an occasional overdose of sentimentality, Four Daughters was one of Warners’ most profitable films of 1938 and made several Ten Best lists. “One of the best pictures of anybody’s career,” raved Bosley Crowther of The New York Times. He also singled out Pat’s performance: “Four Daughters is also a triumph for Priscilla Lane, who is much more attractive, animated and intelligent than the run of ingenues.”
Equally successful was Brother Rat (1938), the amusing film version of the Broadway smash about three cadets at the Virginia Military Institute. Pat played Joyce, the visiting girlfriend of the mischievous “Brother Rat” (Wayne Morris), whose poorly calculated schemes always land him and his buddies (Ronald Reagan and Eddie Albert) in trouble. To give the film authenticity, Warners paid VMI $5,000 to shoot on location, and also drafted 700 cadets to work as extras.
In January 1939 Pat surprised everyone by eloping to Yuma, Arizona, with Oren Haglund, an assistant movie director. It was an impulsive decision that she soon regretted. Pat left Haglund the day after they were married and immediately filed for a divorce, though she didn’t release any details regarding the breakup.
One month after her impromptu marriage, Pat was making news again with her next movie, Yes, My Darling Daughter (1939), a seemingly innocent yarn that stirred up a tempest of controversy. The frothy comedy was adapted by Casey Robinson from Mark Reed’s Broadway hit about a free-thinker (Pat) who announces to her family that she plans to go away for a romantic weekend with her boyfriend (Jeffrey Lynn). While the premise would be considered tamer than an episode of Friends by today’s standards, the film at the time was considered quite racy and caught plenty of fire from the New York State Board of Censors, which held up its release. “The example which this picture affords is a very dangerous one to follow,” claimed Irwin Esmond, director of the State Education Department’s motion picture division. “The picture teaches young people the freedom from recognized convention that would be morally disastrous if generally practiced.”
The movie was further damned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, which branded it with a C rating, meaning they condemned the film for maintaining “an attitude contrary to the fundamental concepts of marriage, morality and parental authority.”
Warners eventually made some edits to the movie prior to its screening for the New York Boards of Regents, which, on February, 24, 1939, approved the film now that the “weekend interlude” was subjugated to a “minor” role and was made “less attractive.”
The following day, Yes, My Darling Daughter opened to packed houses at New York’s Strand and Globe Theaters. The negative publicity turned what might have been a forgotten film into a box-office smash for Warners. Even better was that after all the hoopla the movie also garnered favorable reviews. “William Keighley’s direction has paced it at a brisk farce tempo, except where the censors’ blows have struck, and although the picture isn’t at all naughty, it is rather nice,” wrote Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times. “The film is most amiably played, with Priscilla Lane as the starry-eyed Ellen.”
Up to that point, Pat’s most successful film had been Four Daughters with her sisters. Warners, which had bought the rights to the 1935 play Fly Away Home, decided it might make a good follow-up vehicle for all three Lanes. As it turned out, nearly the entire cast of Four Daughters was used in the film, with the addition of Fay Bainter as the girls’ mother. Daughters Courageous (1939), as the play was retitled for the screen, dealt with four sisters who meet the father (Claude Rains) who left their mother twenty years earlier and has now come home, as his former wife is about to be remarried. Also figuring into the proceedings is a moody drifter (John Garfield, who by now was specializing in this role) who romances Buff (Pat). Laced with more humor than Four Daughters, including one sweetly naughty moment when Buff’s bathing suit comes undone on the beach, Daughters Courageous did booming business.
Warners liked the chemistry between Garfield and Pat in their films together. Her sunny manner brought a certain degree of tenderness to his brusque, mad-at-the-world disposition. As such, they were partnered once more for Dust Be My Destiny (1939), one of the weaker entries in Warners’ series of society’s losers films of the ’30s.
Pat played Mabel, the stepdaughter of a drunken prison gang foreman (Stanley Ridges), who falls for Joe (Garfield), a falsely imprisoned inmate. When Joe is released, he and Mabel marry. Despite Joe’s efforts to reform, he becomes implicated in the murder of Mabel’s stepfather. Joe stands trial and is acquitted, paving the way for he and Mabel to begin a new life.
Neither Garfield nor Pat were particularly happy about doing Dust Be My Destiny, but they agreed to do it rather than take a suspension. Director Lewis Seiler did his best to give the film a realistic, gritty look. For the prison farm sequences the studio rented a nearby ranch for $125 a day. Nine cows and four horses were also rented for a daily fee of $5 per animal. Forty-five chickens were leased at 45 cents apiece each day. The studio also employed seven wranglers, at $8.25 a day, to look after the animals, and six extras who knew how to milk cows.
Despite the believable atmosphere on the set, the script veered away from the edginess of similar Warners entries, such as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) and The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933). Pat had little to do except stand by as Garfield tried to keep one step ahead of the law. She did shine in her one big scene as she offers a heartfelt plea before a jury to set Joe free.
“Although story is overlong and episodic, these deficiencies are partially overcome by excellent performances,” Variety enthused.
By contrast, The New York Times labeled the film, “the latest of the Brothers’ apparently interminable line of melodramas about the fate-dogged boys from the wrong side of the railroad tracks … we detect signs in Mr. Garfield of taking even his cynicism cynically, and of weariness in Miss Lane at having to redeem Mr. Garfield all over again. It’s no career for an actress.”
The Roaring Twenties (1939), however, was one of the real high points of Pat’s career at Warners, and the most versatile role the studio gave her. Raoul Walsh directed this tough gangster yarn about Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney), a World War I veteran who comes back home and finds that the only way he can make a decent living is as a bootlegger. He also becomes the owner of a speakeasy, whose employees include Jean (Pat), a sweet singer whom Eddie is in love with; Lloyd (Jeffrey Lynn), an honest lawyer and bookkeeper whom Jean loves; and Panama Smith (Gladys George), the speakeasy hostess wearing her heart on her sleeve for Eddie. Jean and Lloyd eventually break free and marry. When Prohibition is repealed, Eddie and Panama find themselves down on their luck. Lloyd, meanwhile, has become a district attorney out to prosecute some of the racketeers he had been involved with in his speakeasy days. When they threaten to kill him, Jean turns to Eddie for help, and he is shot in his effort to protect them.
Though The Roaring Twenties is more romanticized than Warners’ earlier gangster epics, such as Little Caesar (1930) and Public Enemy (1931), it’s still a solid indictment on the Prohibition Era. Cagney provides the film with much of its spark, and he and Pat play off each other quite nicely. Pat regarded Cagney as one of her favorite leading men, primarily because, like her, he was also a singer and dancer at heart. The bond between them brought believability to the relationship between Jean and Eddie, which was patterned loosely after that of torch singer Ruth Etting and gangster Moe “the Gimp” Snyder, a role Cagney played in Love Me or Leave Me (1955). As Jean, Pat was used to outstanding effect both dramatically and musically. Her renditions of the standards “It Had to Be You,” “Melancholy Baby” and “I’m Just Wild About Harry” were among the film’s many pleasures.
Pat was then back in more family-oriented fare with her siblings and Gale Page in Four Wives (1939), the first of two sequels to Four Daughters. In this outing, Ann Lemp (Pat) gets help from a budding psychologist (Eddie Albert) as she tries to get over the death of Mickey Borden (John Garfield seen in flashbacks from the previous film), for which she feels responsible. More heavy-handed and sluggish than Four Daughters, the sequel nonetheless proved popular.
After her recent string of successes, Pat had become so popular that her volume of fan mail was second only to Bette Davis. Pat was even considered for Melanie in Gone with the Wind but lost the part to Olivia de Havilland. She also felt that her $750 a week salary was insufficient in light of her growing stature at the studio, and demanded an increase. Warners, which had already been through a series of salary disputes with Edward G. Robinson, Cagney, Davis and a number of other contract players, was typically being tight fisted and refused Pat’s demand. As punishment, the studio offered Pat Money and the Woman (1939), a B-grade cops and robbers flick. Pat refused to do the film and was replaced by Brenda Marshall.
She also took a suspension rather than star in My Love Came Back (1940), director Kurt (Curtis) Bernhardt’s lively comedy about the romantic complications of a female violinist. This time she was replaced by Olivia de Havilland, whose relationship with Warners was also becoming strained. At one point Pat was also considered for Anne Shirley’s role in Saturday’s Children (1940). When that film’s star, John Garfield, heard that Pat was up for the role, he remarked, “I like Pat, and she could do the role OK, but they’d probably find some way to work in all of her sisters.”
Pat did finally get her raise, but in retaliation for what was considered difficult behavior, Warners began finding the worst possible scripts to assign her. Brother Rat and a Baby (1940) reunited the cast from Brother Rat in a lame effort in which the former cadets have to cope with life in the “real world.”
Three Cheers for the Irish (1940) was lukewarm corned beef and cabbage, with Pat as the daughter of an Irish policeman (Thomas Mitchell) who is forced to retire. The old man really gets his Irish up when his daughter marries the Scotsman (Dennis Morgan) who takes over his old beat.
“The brogues are thick enough to cut with a knife and so is the plot,” said Crowther. He added: “Miss Lane is the daughter who fixes everything as she has tended to do in her last two or three pictures, by being brought to child-bed. This time, by way of novelty, Miss Lane has twins.”
The only interesting thing about Pat’s next, Ladies Must Live (1940), was that audiences got to see her as a brunette. Otherwise, this adaptation of George M. Cohan’s The Hometowners was lightweight entertainment.
Pat finally got to work with Curtis Bernhardt on Million Dollar Baby (1941), but the film was an undistinguished affair with the unoriginal theme that money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness. Casey Robinson, Richard Macaulay and Jerry Wald prepared the screenplay from a story by Leonard Spigelgass; yet, for all that talent, the script lacked spark. Pat played a woman who is given a million dollars by a crotchety old biddy (May Robson). When her newfound riches end up driving away her boyfriend (Jeffrey Lynn), she tries to give away the money.
Crowther called Million Dollar Baby “one of the most formula-made pictures to ever come along.” He was equally dour on the performance of its leading lady: “There is Priscilla Lane looking and acting as much as possible like Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle. (Notice we say ‘as much as possible.’)”
Even an impending lawsuit, which resulted in a settlement that smacked of the handiwork of Warners’ publicity department, didn’t generate much interest in the movie. When the studio decided to change the working title of Miss Wheelwright Discovers America to Million Dollar Baby, members of the Earl Carroll Vanities lodged a complaint against Warner Bros. with the Supreme Court. The showgirls had formed the “Million Dollar Baby” Club in December 1940 “with the purpose of bettering relations with prospective millionaire husbands.” Club president Joy Barlow contended that she and her fellow members were “the sole and exclusive owners of the name ‘Million Dollar Baby’ Club,” and demanded that Warners refrain from using it.
Shortly after the injunction was submitted, Pat and studio representatives met with Barlow. As a compromise, Pat asked if the studio could use the title if she became a member of the club. Barlow informed her that membership was restricted to Earl Carroll girls only. The resolution was that Pat would appear in the Vanities for one night and then become eligible to join the club. As a bonus, Pat received six dollars and forty cents, her pay for a good night’s work, and a note from a customer inviting her to a late supper She declined and instead headed straight home to bed.
Pat’s next assignment was the engrossing musical drama Blues in the Night (1941), directed by Anatole Litvak. Robert Rossen adapted Edwin Gilbert’s play Hot Nocturne for his melodramatic screenplay about the problems that members of a jazz band encounter as they perform in one sleazy joint after another. In the midst of their musical performances they also become involved with a pair of gangsters (Howard da Silva and Lloyd Nolan) and their moll, Kay (Betty Field). Pat played Character, the band singer married to trumpeter Leo (Jack Carson), who develops feelings for Jigger (Richard Whorf), the band’s leader.
Despite its often bleak depiction of life on the road, Blues in the Night was a mature, well-acted film that stood out from the escapist musicals of the period. Its dark, smoky atmosphere served as a forefather to later, though less effective, jazz-themed musicals like Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955) and Young Man with a Horn (1950). A genuine asset was the movie’s excellent collection of Johnny Mercer-Harold Arlen numbers, including the title song and “This Time the Dream’s on Me.”
Warners’ working title for the film was Hot Nocturne, which was used on some of the pre-release publicity material. The studio then decided to call the movie New Orleans Blues, but during production, Jimmy Lunceford recorded “Blues in the Night,” which became a massive hit. Anxious to capitalize on the song’s popularity, Warners finally settled on the actual title. Wartime audiences were unprepared for this almost surreal film noir, which veered from the flashy, Technicolored song-and-dance confections they were used to, and the film fared poorly. Since then, it has attained cult status and is considered innovative for its time.
Pat’s last film for Warners was Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Frank Capra’s uneven version of the stage hit about two adorable old ladies who think nothing of slipping some arsenic into the elderberry wine drunk by the old men who rent a room in their Brooklyn home. Cary Grant played their nephew Mortimer (a part assayed by Allyn Joslyn in the stage play), who is afraid to marry his fiancée (Pat) out of fear that his family is nuts. As he puts it, “Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops!”
Capra originally planned to make the film at United Artists, but when that deal fell through he took the project to Warners, which jumped at the chance to film the black comedy. The macabre humor of the story seemed better suited to the talents of Hitchcock, as opposed to Capra, whose terrain was typically small-town Americana and films about the everyman. Capra’s uneasiness with the dark elements of the story was apparent throughout. Even worse was that the film contained one of Grant’s weakest performances, a hammy turn filled with enough yelps and squeals to make Robin Williams seem subdued. By contrast, Raymond Massey, in Boris Karloff’s stage role as Mortimer’s mentally unbalanced brother Jonathan, underplayed his part to the point of seeming somnambulant. Whatever zest the film has came from the delightful performances of the three members of the Broadway production: Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as Mortimer’s aunts, and John Alexander as Cousin Teddy, who thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt.
Pat, in effect, played straight woman to the assortment of loonies, which gave her few colorful moments. Still, as the semblance of normalcy in the proceedings, her restrained performance was a welcome relief to balance out Grant’s hyperactive behavior.
The film was further weakened by the Hays Office’s demands that some of the original dialogue be rewritten. The play’s famous tagline, “Darling, I’m a bastard!” which a gleeful Mortimer cries upon hearing that he’s not related to the nutty Brewster clan, was the first thing to go. Instead, the line was changed to the far sillier, “Darling, I’m the son of a sea cook!”
Arsenic and Old Lace was completed in early 1942, but because of a stipulation by the play’s producers that the film could not be released until the show had closed, the movie didn’t hit theaters until 1944. Despite its flaws, wartime audiences found Arsenic and Old Lace to be good escapist fare and made it a tremendous success. Pat regarded it among her most enjoyable films.
By early 1942 Pat had reached an impasse with Warners. The studio was no longer providing her with interesting roles, and seemed to also be hindering her from tackling outside projects. In one instance she was invited to appear on Bing Crosby’s radio program, but the studio refused to let her do the show. Things got worse that year when she became ill and was told by her doctor that she needed to rest a while to restore her health. Warners, which stipulated that she appear in a certain number of films each year, hounded her to return to work. The ensuing tension between Pat and the studio ended in a mutual agreement to terminate her contract.
She was fortunate to find herself in demand at other studios. Universal took advantage of her services and cast her in Saboteur (1942), a classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller that utilized one of the director’s favorite themes, that of an innocent man (Robert Cummings) on the run. In this case, he’s been accused of sabotaging the aircraft plant where he works and of killing his best friend in the process. His attempts to prove his innocence lead him on what Hitchcock called “a seven-reel chase” to uncover the Nazi spies behind the act of sabotage. Along the way he encounters a young woman (Pat) who at first doubts his innocence but eventually decides to help him. Borrowing from earlier Hitchcock films, most notably The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) and Foreign Correspondent (1940), Saboteur was vintage Hitchcock suspense that culminated in a thrilling chase between the hero and the actual saboteur (Norman Lloyd) atop the Statue of Liberty.
Hitchcock made no secret of the fact that he did not want either Cummings or Pat in the leads. He approached Universal’s front office about casting Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, both of whom were bigger box-office draws. Universal refused, much to Hitchcock’s annoyance. As such, Pat remembered him as being stern and gruff throughout the entire filming. By contrast, Pat found Cummings friendly and amusing. Despite Hitchcock’s behavior, Saboteur was one of Pat’s favorites of her films, and it contains what is arguably her best screen performance.
Saboteur was completed a few months after Pat’s divorce from Haglund had became final in May 1941. One month later she announced her engagement to John Barry, publisher of a weekly newspaper in Victorville, California. Since Barry was expected to be called for army training, no wedding date was set.
She surprised everyone when she broke the engagement in 1942. She instead became interested in Joseph Howard, a young Air Force lieutenant whom she met while vacationing at a dude ranch in the desert at Yucca-Loma, California. Following a brief courtship, they were married on May 22, 1942, by a justice of the peace in Las Vegas, at the home of the executive officer of an Army Air Force gunnery school. The newlyweds then settled in Victorville, although Pat traveled with her husband to various army bases, depending on his training assignment.
Pat made two films shortly after her marriage, both of which she had committed to months earlier. She appeared in her first western, The Silver Queen (1942), which producer Harry Sherman distributed through United Artists, as a devoted girl trying to raise money for her father, only to have it squandered by her husband on a worthless silver mine. The routine yarn resembled a Warner Bros. refugee camp, with former contract players Pat and George Brent in the leads, and director Lloyd Bacon at the helm.
She then appeared in one of her most enjoyable assignments, The Meanest Man in the World (1943), opposite Jack Benny at 20th Century–Fox. The frenetic farce had Benny as a kind-hearted lawyer who realizes that the only way he can become a success is by turning into an ogre. Although the movie was clearly a showcase for Benny, Pat, as his fiancée, earned her share of laughs as well. She found Benny to be just as amusing off the set and ranked him, along with Cagney, as one of her favorite co-stars.
The only ones who were not amused by The Meanest Man in the World were five lawyers in New Haven, Connecticut, who filed an injunction with the Superior Court to have the film barred from local screens on the grounds that it “debased, defamed and disgraced the legal profession.” Superior Court Judge Patrick B. O’Sullivan admired their zeal but ruled that there was no standing “to obtain the relief they seek.”
The Meanest Man in the World was the last movie Pat was to make for the next four years. Her new career as an army wife was now her top priority, and in no time at all she became popular among the citizens of Victorville. She was so beloved by the townsfolk there that she was appointed an Honorary Sheriff and even given a badge and a gun. Pat also accompanied Joe to various army bases over the next couple of years, depending on the assignment.
When the war ended, Joe, who had a degree in engineering, went to work as a building contractor. On December 31, 1945, Pat became a mother for the first time with the birth of her son Joseph Laurence Howard, whom she always called Larry. Motherhood was a new role for Pat, and as far as she was concerned, her most fulfilling one. “It’s so strange,” Pat said in 1948. “Babies … you don’t think about them, much. They’re cute, of course. Everybody knows that. But then, after you have one of your own—you wonder what you ever did without one!”
In December 1946 the Howards settled into a beautiful, roomy house in Van Nuys, California. A selling point was the huge garden, which consisted of sixty-one different varieties of camellias. Pat did an expert job of tending to her garden, which became a source of pride for her.
Although she was content, Pat couldn’t resist one last foray before the cameras. She accepted roles in two films—Fun on a Weekend (1947), a comedy for director Andrew Stone, and Bodyguard (1948), a gripping film noir at RKO opposite tough guy Lawrence Tierney.
“I didn’t realize how much I had missed it until I came back,” she said at the time. “I love this work, and I hope to make many, many more pictures.”
As it turned out, Bodyguard was her screen swan song. Pat opted to spend more time with her family, which soon also included her daughter, Hannah, who was born on April 17, 1950.
A few years earlier Joe had accompanied Pat on a personal appearance tour that included a stopover in Boston. From there the couple traveled to New Hampshire where Joe showed her the lake front property he owned in Derry, New Hampshire. Pat fell in love with New England, and in 1951 the Howards moved into a custom-built home in Andover, Massachusetts.
By the early 1950s several national magazines printed stories claiming that Pat had given up show business. “That’s not true. I never said it,” Pat countered in a 1952 interview. “I love show business, but my first duty is to a wonderful husband and two lovely children.”
Pat also had two more children—Judith, born on August 22, 1953, and James, who arrived on December 4, 1955. Her son Joe remembers Pat very much like the characters she often played on film—high-spirited and always in the mood for a good joke. One of his most vivid memories is when Pat staged a contest to see which family member could squirt the most whipped cream into someone else’s mouth.
Pat also devoted much of her time to community projects, including serving as a Girl Scout troop leader, directing school plays (as well as a production for Merrimack College in North Andover) and doing volunteer work at two local hospitals, the Parkland Medical Center and Holy Family Hospital. She was also an avid reader, with a special fondness for mysteries and westerns, and enjoyed listening to classical pieces.
In 1958 Pat starred in The Priscilla Lane Show, a morning television program in Boston, in which she interviewed guests and screened old movies. The program lasted just one season. She also filmed a few commercials in New York a few years later before officially retiring from show business. Although she did receive other offers for work, she turned them all down. She also continued to receive fan letters, but she only answered them selectively.
Throughout the years Pat also kept in close contact with her sisters, although she only made one return trip to California after moving to New England. Pat’s father had died in 1938, and her mother passed away in January 1951 at her San Fernando Valley home.
In 1972 Pat and her husband left Andover and moved to the Howards’ family farm in Derry, New Hampshire. On May 18, 1976, Pat’s husband died at the age of sixty-one. He was buried with full military honors at the Arlington National Cemetery. For Pat, it was a crippling loss, one from which she never fully recovered. “I’m still trying to pull myself together,” she said in a 1977 interview with The Boston Herald American.
One source of comfort for Pat was the close relationships she had with her children, all of whom had developed successful careers. Her son Joe became a computer Systems Engineer in the private sector and at the same time achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve. Hannah became a commercial artist, Judith became a doctor of family medicine and James started his own heavy construction business.
Pat continued to lead a busy, active life for many more years. In 1994 she was told that she had lung cancer. A strong-willed Pat refused radiation or chemotherapy treatments and instead chose to go on with her life as usual until February 1995. She then moved in with her son Joe and his family in Andover, but by the next month her cancer had advanced and she required hospitalization. Later that month she was discharged from the hospital and sent to the Wingate Nursing Home in Andover. She died one week later, on April 4, from cancer and chronic heart failure. She was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia next to her husband.
Even though Pat died six years ago, she still has not been forgotten. Her son Joe still receives about four to six letters each year from fans who have vivid memories of her performances. To Pat, though, her real legacy was her four children and six grandchildren she left behind. Joe’s daughter, Jennifer, is the only one to follow in her grandmother’s footsteps by entering the entertainment field. She is currently a modern dancer with Lucinda Childs in New York. Ironically, Pat had once said that her secret desire was to be “the greatest dancer in the world, dancing especially to symphonic accompaniment.”
Pat’s warmth and playful nature come through in each of her roles, and it’s something that film buffs can still appreciate today. Her son Joe, more than anyone, understood the secret of her continued popularity: “Her greatest qualities as an actress and as a person were her great sense of humor and her ability to not take herself too seriously.”
Varsity Show (Warner Bros., 1937) Directed by William Keighley. Cast: Dick Powell, Rosemary Lane, Priscilla Lane, Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, Ted Healy, Walter Catlett.
Love Honor and Behave (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by Stanley Logan. Cast: Wayne Morris, Priscilla Lane, John Litel, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O’Neil, Mona Barrie, Dick Foran.
Men Are Such Fools (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by Busby Berkeley. Cast: Wayne Morris, Priscilla Lane, Humphrey Bogart, Hugh Herbert, Johnny Davis, Penny Singleton, Mona Barrie.
Cowboy from Brooklyn (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Dick Powell, Pat O’Brien, Priscilla Lane, Dick Foran, Ann Sheridan, Johnny Davis, Ronald Reagan, Emma Dunn.
Four Daughters (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by Michael Curtiz. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Lola Lane, Rosemary Lane, Gale Page, Claude Rains, Jeffrey Lynn, John Garfield, May Robson.
Brother Rat (Warner Bros., 1938) Directed by William Keighley. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Wayne Morris, Johnny Davis, Jane Bryan, Eddie Albert, Henry O’Neill, Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman.
Swingtime in the Movies (Warner Bros., 1938) Short subject directed by Crane Wilbur. Cast: Fritz Feld, Katherine Kane, John Carroll, Charlie Foy, Jerry Colonna, Helen Lynd, Irene Franklin, John Harron, Eddie Kane and Faye McKenzie. Guest appearances by George Brent, Marie Wilson, Pat O’Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Leo Gorcey, Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, John Garfield, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell and Bobby Jordan.
Yes, My Darling Daughter (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by William Keighley. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Jeffrey Lynn, Roland Young, Fay Bainter, May Robson, Genevieve Tobin, Ian Hunter.
Daughters Courageous (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by Michael Curtiz. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Lola Lane, Rosemary Lane, Gale Page, John Garfield, Claude Rains, Jeffrey Lynn, Fay Bainter
Dust Be My Destiny (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by Lewis Seiler. Cast: John Garfield, Priscilla Lane, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Charley Grapewin.
The Roaring Twenties (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: James Cagney, Priscilla Lane, Humphrey Bogart, Gladys George, Jeffrey Lynn, Frank McHugh.
Four Wives (Warner Bros., 1939) Directed by Michael Curtiz. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page, Claude Rains, Jeffrey Lynn, Eddie Albert, May Robson, Dick Foran.
Brother Rat and a Baby (Warner Bros., 1940) Directed by Ray Enright. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Wayne Morris, Jane Bryan, Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, Eddie Albert, Peter B. Good.
Three Cheers for the Irish (Warner Bros., 1940) Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Dennis Morgan, Thomas Mitchell, Alan Hale, Virginia Grey, Irene Hervey, Frank Jenks.
Four Mothers (Warner Bros., 1941) Directed by William Keighley. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page, Claude Rains, Jeffrey Lynn, Eddie Albert, May Robson.
Million Dollar Baby (Warner Bros., 1941). Directed by Curtis Bernhardt. Cast: Jeffrey Lynn, Ronald Reagan, May Robson, Lee Patrick, Helen Westley, George Barbier, Nan Wynn.
Blues in the Night (Warner Bros., 1941) Directed by Anatole Litvak. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Richard Whorf, Betty Field, Lloyd Nolan, Jack Carson, Elia Kazan, Wallace Ford, Peter Whitney.
Saboteur (Universal, 1942) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings, Otto Kruger, Alma Kruger, Alan Baxter, Pedro de Cordoba, Vaughan Glaser.
The Silver Queen (United Artists, 1942) Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Cast: George Brent, Priscilla Lane, Bruce Cabot, Lynne Overman, Eugene Pallette, Janet Beecher, Guinn Williams.
The Meanest Man in the World (20th Century–Fox, 1943) Directed by Sidney Lanfield. Cast: Jack Benny, Priscilla Lane, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Edmund Gwenn, Anne Revere.
Arsenic and Old Lace (Warner Bros., 1944) Directed by Frank Capra. Cast: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Jack Carson, Peter Lorre.
Fun on a Weekend (United Artists, 1947) Directed by Andrew Stone. Cast: Eddie Bracken, Priscilla Lane, Tom Conway, Allen Jenkins, Arthur Treacher, Clarence Kolb, Alma Kruger.
Bodyguard (RKO-Radio, 1948) Directed by Richard O. Fleischer. Cast: Lawrence Tierney, Priscilla Lane, Philip Reed, June Clayworth, Elisabeth Risdon, Steve Brodie.