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Patricia Crowley, best known for her role as Joan Nash in the 1960s NBC sitcom Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, died in Los Angeles on Sunday. She was 91.
She died of natural causes two days before her 92nd birthday, her son Jon Hookstratten, executive VP administration and operations at Sony Pictures Entertainment, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
Born Patricia Crowley on 17 September 1933 in Olyphant, Pennsylvania, she studied at the High School of the Performing Arts after going to New York with her sister.
Crowley began acting while still a teenager, making her Broadway debut in 1950 as the lead in Southern Exposure.
Her early TV work included a starring role in the ABC series A Date With Judy (1951), adapted from the radio show and 1948 film of the same name. She appeared in a 1953 episode of The Ford Theatre Hour opposite Jack Lemmon and Jack Albertson and was featured on Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar in 1954.
Crowley broke into film with Paramount’s Forever Female in 1953, playing a young actress who wants the lead role in a play, alongside Ginger Rogers and William Holden.
That same year, she starred in Money From Home with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in 1954 for her performances.
She went on to appear in Red Garters (1954), The Square Jungle (1955), There’s Always Tomorrow (1956), Hollywood or Bust (1956), Key Witness (1960), and Walk the Proud Land (1956), often playing romantic or comedic leads opposite major stars of the era such as Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Tony Curtis, and Audie Murphy.
Her most recognisable role came in 1965 when she was cast as Joan Nash in Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, adapted from Jean Kerr’s bestselling book and the subsequent 1960 film of the same name starring Doris Day. Crowley played a newspaper columnist and mother of four children and one enormous sheepdog named Ladadig, living in a chaotic suburban home with her college professor husband, played by Mark Miller.
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Patricia Crowley’s most recognisable role came in 1965 when she was cast as Joan Nash in ‘Please Don’t Eat the Daisies’ (Everett/Shutterstock)
The show wasn’t a ratings hit during its two-season run, but became widely familiar to audiences through reruns in the 1970s .
Throughout her six-decade career, Crowley guest-starred in more than 100 television shows. Her extensive credits included The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, Rawhide, Maverick, The Rockford Files, Columbo, Fantasy Island, Hotel, Frasier, Friends, Melrose Place, Charmed, and Murder, She Wrote.
She was also a recurring presence on daytime television. Crowley played Mary Scanlon in more than 250 episodes of the ABC soap Port Charles, appeared in around 60 episodes of Generations, and held roles in General Hospital, The Bold and the Beautiful, and Falcon Crest.
She also had a recurring role in the sixth season of Dynasty in 1986, playing Emily Fallmont, the younger wife of Senator Buck Fallmont who has a brief affair with Ben Carrington while her husband is away.
In later years, she played the widow of baseball legend Roger Maris in HBO’s 61* and made her final screen appearance in the 2012 film Mont Reve.
Crowley was once married to entertainment attorney Ed Hookstratten, who died in 2015. In 1986, she married television producer Andy Friendly.
She is survived by Friendly; her son Jon and daughter-in-law Marion; her daughter Ann and son-in-law Robert; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.