Person:Melody Patterson (1)

Biographical Summary

Melody Patricia Patterson was an American actress known for her role as Wrangler Jane in the 1960s television series F Troop, and for her role as Ellie in the cult horror film Blood and Lace (1971).

Patterson was the daughter of machinist Pat Patterson and the former Rosemary Wilson, an official in the Miss Universe contest. Her mother had been a dancer with Warner Bros., who "doubled for Joan Crawford in several films."

Patterson wrote and directed a play at the age of 5. Before turning 10 she had also been a photographer's model, an actress and an ice skater. In the ninth grade, she enrolled in the Hollywood Professional School. She continued her education in the Warner Bros. school while she acted on F Troop.

Patterson was 16 years old when she first appeared on F Troop, having obtained the role with the help of a forged birth certificate that indicated her age was 18. After the 1967 cancellation of F Troop, Patterson worked in television, radio, and the theater. She also appeared on Mr. Novak and Shindig! In the 1970s, she appeared in three episodes of Hawaii Five-O, and began modeling and appearing in television commercials.

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1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} "Melody Patterson, Wrangler Jane on ‘F Troop,’ Dies at 66", in The New York Times. (New York, New York)
   article by Daniel E. Slotnik. (Alain Delaquérière contributed research), 27 Aug 2015.

   Melody Patterson, a winsome actress best known for playing Wrangler Jane on the sitcom “F Troop” in the 1960s, died on Aug. 21 in Hollister, Mo. She was 66. Ms. Patterson died after a long illness, said Jason Bradley of Cremations of the Ozarks, which is handling her funeral arrangements. On “F Troop,” a comedy set in the Old West that ran on ABC from 1965 to 1967, Ms. Patterson played a feisty postmistress and storekeeper for a squadron of scheming incompetents at Fort Courage, a fictional Army outpost. Her character was also the love interest of the fort’s captain, Wilton Parmenter, played by Ken Berry. “F Troop” also starred Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch as bumbling officers. In a 2001 interview with The Asbury Park Press, Ms. Patterson said she did not mind the innuendo between her character and Mr. Berry’s, even though she was a teenager at the time. “It wasn’t raunchy,” she said. “It was an innocent sexy.”

   A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 29, 2015, on Page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: Melody Patterson, 66, Actress Who Starred in ‘F Troop’.

2. ↑ Melody Patterson Miller, in Branson News
   25 Aug 2015.

   Melody Patterson Miller, 66, of Hollister, died Aug. 21, 2015. No services are planned at this time. Arrangements and cremations are under the direction of Cremations of the Ozarks in Hollister.
   
   bransontrilakesnews.com
   200 Industrial Park Drive
   Hollister, MO 65672
   U.S.A.
   Phone: 417-334-3161
   Email: internet@bransontrilakesnews.com

3. ↑ Melody Patterson, in California, United States. California Birth Index, 1905-1995. (Sacramento, CA, USA: California Department of Health Services, Center for Health Statistics.)
   16 Apr 1949.

   Name Melody Patterson
   Event Type Birth
   Event Date 16 Apr 1949
   Event Place Los Angeles, California, United States
   Gender Female
   Mother's Name Wilson

   Citing this Record: "California Birth Index, 1905-1995," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VGNK-56D : 27 November 2014), Melody Patterson, 16 Apr 1949; citing Los Angeles, California, United States, Department of Health Services, Vital Statistics Department, Sacramento.

4. ↑ "Melody Patterson, Who Played Wrangler Jane on 'F Troop,' Dies at 66", in Hollywood Reporter
   by Mike Barnes, 22 Aug 2015.

   She started on the 1960s ABC series at just 15 and later married 'Hawaii Five-0' star James MacArthur.
   
   Melody Patterson, who played the sharpshooting Wrangler Jane on the screwball ABC comedy F Troop, has died, her co-star Larry Storch said on Facebook. She was 66. “It’s with a heavy heart that we can let you know our beloved Wrangler Jane, Melody Patterson passed away. Our hearts are sad today. RIP Sweet Melody. We love you,” Storch, 92, who played Corporal Randolph Agarn on the show, wrote. Patterson died of multiple organ failure at Point Lookout Nursing & Rehab in Hollister, Mo., according to a local report. A friend said on Facebook that the actress had been in poor health after breaking her back a few years ago. Patterson was married to Hawaii Five-O star James MacArthur, the adopted son of famed actress Helen Hayes, from 1970-75. She portrayed a Hollywood starlet opposite him in the 1968 film The Angry Breed, and she guest-starred in three episodes of his CBS show. F Troop, set in an Army fort on the western frontier in the years after the Civil War, ran on ABC for just two seasons, from September 1965 to April 1967, but was a big hit in syndication for decades after that. The blonde Patterson, a native of Inglewood, Calif., auditioned for the part of Jane when she was just 15 (she had told the producers that she was 18). Her tomboy character, which ran the trading post in town, was smitten with the bumbling Captain Wilton Parmenter (Ken Berry), but he was too shy to acknowledge her affections. When she did manage to kiss him, Wilton said, “Please, Jane, not in front of the men.” “She was extremely independent,” Patterson said of her character in Tom Lisanti’s book Drive-in Dream Girls: A Galaxy of B-Movie Starlets of the Sixties. “She owned her own store, she ran the mail and she could outride and outshoot anybody else in town. She was a very self-reliant teenager, which I always saw her as.” Just before F Troop, Patterson had an uncredited role as a dancer in the film version of Bye Bye Birdie (1965). She enrolled in the Hollywood Professional School in the ninth grade, left for Downey High School and then filmed the pilot for F Troop during Christmas vacation. She said that by the time producers realized she was not 18, the series was already on the air and doing well. After F Troop, she did a show on Armed Forces Radio for troops in Vietnam and starred in The Cycle Savages (1969), with Bruce Dern as the leader of a biker gang. Posters for the film, executive produced by Casey Kasem, said: "Hot steel between their legs … the wildest bunch on wheels." Survivors include her third husband, Vern Miller.