Patricia Crowley, who starred as the harried suburban wife and mother of four kids and a sheepdog on the 1960s NBC comedy Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, has died. She was 91.
Crowley died Sunday of natural causes in Los Angeles, her son, Jon Hookstratten, executive vp administration and operations at Sony Pictures Entertainment, announced.
Crowley was “introduced” to the movie world in the Paramount comedy Forever Female (1953), playing a perky young actress who wants the role of an ingenue in a Broadway drama that a veteran actress (Ginger Rogers) wants the playwright (William Holden) to retool for her.
The Pennsylvania native also appeared in two Martin & Lewis comedies, Money From Home (1953) and Hollywood or Bust (1956), the duo’s final film together; starred opposite Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in the Douglas Sirk melodrama There’s Always Tomorrow (1956); and played Jeffrey Hunter’s terrified wife in Key Witness (1960), directed by Phil Karlson.
Her survivors include her husband, television producer and executive Andy Friendly (Entertainment Tonight, Tom Snyder’s The Tomorrow Show), whom she wed in 1986.
Before that, Crowley was married to the late Ed Hookstratten, the powerful sports and entertainment attorney who represented the likes of Elvis Presley, Johnny Carson, Tom Brokaw and Vin Scully.
On Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, which aired for two seasons and 58 episodes from 1965-67, Crowley portrayed Joan Nash, a newspaper writer who’s also the mother of four rambunctious boys (played by Kim Tyler, Brian Nash and twins Jeff and Joe Fithian) and wife of a college professor (Mark Miller). The family lived in a home that resembled a castle, and their giant sheepdog, Ladadog, created lots of mayhem.
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies was based on an entertaining 1957 book by Jean Kerr (the wife of famed drama critic Walter Kerr) and followed the popular 1960 movie version at MGM that starred Doris Day and David Niven.
Crowley later played the romantic interest of Lloyd Bridges on the 1975-76 CBS cop drama Joe Forrester, which emanated from an episode of the anthology series Police Story, and recurred as Emily Fallmont during the sixth season of the ABC primetime soap Dynasty in 1986. (Her run on the latter ended when her character, who was married to a senator and had an affair with his son, was struck by a taxi and killed.)
Crowley also portrayed the widow of home run king Roger Maris in the HBO biopic 61* (2001), directed by Billy Crystal.
Patricia Crowley was born on Sept. 17, 1933, in Olyphant, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a coal miner. She followed her older sister to New York City, who had landed a part in the chorus of Oklahoma! on Broadway, and attended the High School of Performing Arts.
While still a high school senior, Crowley made her Broadway debut in 1950 as the lead in the comedy Southern Exposure and stole the show in a live episode of CBS’ The Ford Theatre Hour opposite Jack Lemmon and Jack Albertson.
In 1951, the effervescent Crowley starred as a spoiled teenager on the ABC Saturday afternoon show A Date With Judy, which had been a popular radio program and then a 1948 movie that starred Jane Powell.
Later in the decade, she appeared in the Rosemary Clooney musical Red Garters (1954), the Tony Curtis boxing drama The Square Jungle (1955) and the Audie Murphy western Walk the Proud Land (1956). In 1954, she was on Sid Caesar‘s Your Show of Shows and the cover of Life magazine.
Crowley was a key asset at getting a TV series off the ground, guest-starring in the pilot episodes of The Untouchables in 1959 and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. in 1964.
Her appearances on television were many, with stints on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, 77 Sunset Strip, The Rockford Files, Friends, The Love Boat, Beverly Hills, 90210, General Hospital, The Bold and the Beautiful and dozens of other shows.
Her last onscreen appearance came in the film Mont Reve (2012).
In addition to her husband and son, survivors include her daughter, Ann; son-in-law Robert; daughter-in-law Marion; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.