British-born actress Patricia Medina died 28 April 2012 of natural causes in Los Angeles, California. Born Patricia Paz Maria Medina on 19 July 1919 in Liverpool, England (to a Spanish father and English mother).
She began acting in the late 1930s, and started getting leading roles in the 1940s. After World War II, she moved to Hollywood, and signed a contract with MGM Studios. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “In her heyday, she starred in Orson Welles’ Mr. Arkadin, William Witney’s Stranger at My Door, and Francis, the comedy that launched the Francis the Talking Mule franchise.”
Her genre roles include: Latitude Zero (1969), Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961), two episodes of Thriller (1961), The Beast of Hollow Mountain (1956), Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), Siren of Bagdad (1953), Aladdin and His Lamp (1952), The Magic Carpet (1951), amd Francis (1950). She retired in the mid-1970s.
THR notes, “In 1960, Medina famously married actor Joseph Cotten. She went on to act on stage alongside the Citizen Kane and Shadow of a Doubt star, and the two remained married until Cotten’s 1994 death from pneumonia.” Previously, she had been married to actor Richard Greene from 1941 to 1951.
Medina wrote about her career and life with Cotten in the 1998 autobiography Laid Back in Hollywood. She leaves no immediate survivors.