Mary Elizabeth Patterson

 Mary Elizabeth Patterson (November 22, 1874 – January 31, 1966)

She was a theater, film, and television character actress who gained popular recognition late in her career playing the elderly neighbor Matilda Trumbull on the television comedy series I Love Lucy. In 1913, she made her Broadway debut in the play Everyman. She remained active in New York City theatre through 1954. In 1926, at the age of 51, Patterson was cast in her first movie, a silent film, The Boy Friend. Transitioning successfully into the era of "talkies", she remained a very busy actress in Hollywood throughout the 1930s, averaging more than five films a year during that decade, usually in supporting roles. A few of her screen credits at that time include Tarnished Lady; Husband's Holiday; A Bill of Divorcement; So Big!; The Story of Temple Drake; Hold Your Man; Dinner at Eight; High, Wide, and Handsome; and No Man of Her Own. She also appeared in the role of Susan in two adaptations of John Willard's popular play The Cat and the Canary: The Cat Creeps in 1930 and The Cat and the Canary in 1939. In 1952, at the age of 77, Patterson made her first appearance on the hit CBS-TV sitcom I Love Lucy in the episode "The Marriage License". In that installment, Patterson's character, Mrs. Willoughby, is the wife of the Greenwich, Connecticut, justice of the peace (played by character actor Irving Bacon) who remarries Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. The following year she was cast in a featured guest role as Mrs. Matilda Trumbull in the episode "No Children Allowed". During the 11 years after that initial televised performance to her final role on television in 1961, she portrayed characters in a variety of other series, including Pulitzer Prize Playhouse, Studio One in Hollywood, General Electric Theater, Stage 7, Lux Video Theatre, Crossroads, The Star and the Story, The Adventures of Jim Bowie, and Adventures of Superman, among others.

On January 31, 1966, she died at age 91 in Los Angeles of complications from pneumonia. Her gravesite is at Savannah Cemetery in her hometown in Tennessee.