Natural around New York, New York, Patrick began acting on Broadway in 1924. For to the higher degree a decade she was constantly listed & established herself as a popular actress. Her profits around Stage Door (1937) led her to Hollywood to reprise her role in the film version. Finally a section was rewritten & split from either one character into 2 characters which were played by Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Patrick experienced processed her film debut around 1929 but since that time experienced non appeared within one film, & RKO Studios were reluctant to allow an unknown actress to take the part inside a film which it were beginning to realise got nifty expected. Her disappointments continued whilst she was considered so rejected for the lead role inside Stella Dallas in favour of Barbara Stanwyck.

She remained around Hollywood, & appeared around Border Cafe (1937). All over a next many years she played many supporting roles, forgoing attracting very much attention until she appeared in The Maltese Falcon (1941). When Effie Perine, a fast & fast-thinking secretary of Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, Patrick created one of her most enduring film characterisations.

Among her more films come Now, Voyager (1942), Mrs Parkington (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), Caged (1950), ''There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), Vertigo (1958), Auntie Mame (1958), Pillow Talk (1959), and Summer and Smoke (1961).

Her final film role was the reprise of her Effie Perine character inside the reworking of the Sam Spade story titled The Black Bird'' (1975). Starring George Segal as Sam Spade Jr., forced to continue his father's act, & to keep his progressively sarcastic secretary, the film attempted to turn its venerable predecessor into the comedy, & was a pack professional failure.

Patrick died suddenly from either the heart seizure on the day before her 81st birthday, at Laguna Beach, California.

Trivia
After her demise it was found that she was 10 years older than she got ever revealed. Shaving a decade off her age was the guide she processed early inside her career, & at the period of her dying, several of her friends believed that she was inside her early seventies. Her difficulties within establishing the career as a leading actress were typically attributed to an extended standing feud Patrick got sustaining gossip columnist Louella Parsons, about whom Patrick's married man, the journalist, experienced written super unfavorably.