Pat Paterson

 Pat Paterson, born Eliza Paterson (April 10, 1910 – August 24, 1978)

Born in England, she moved to Hollywood at a young age to become an actress. She arrived in 1929 and was signed by Fox Studios as a contract player and immediately began to obtain film roles. She was renamed Patricia (almost immediately shortened to Pat) Paterson, as the Pat-Paterson sound had an ear-catching alliterative rhythm. From 1930 to 1934 she appeared in many studio pictures, in roles of increasing prominence. In the 1935 20th Century Fox film Charlie Chan Goes To Egypt, starring Warner Oland as Chan, she played the female lead, Carol Arnold. In early 1934, as production on Charlie Chan Goes To Egypt was wrapping, Maurice Chevalier persuaded his lifelong best friend, fellow French actor Charles Boyer, to attend a Fox Studios post-New Year dinner party at which Pat Paterson was a guest. In interviews over the years, Boyer declared their meeting to have been a case of love at first sight. They married within four weeks of the party, on St. Valentine's Day, February 14, 1934, in Yuma, Arizona. She continued to appear in at least one film per year until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, when she and her husband, Charles Boyer, as Europeans, devoted themselves to supporting the war effort of Britain and France.

On December 9, 1943, two years after her husband Charles became an American citizen, she gave birth to their only child, Michael Charles Boyer, in Los Angeles, California. In 1965, Michael Charles Boyer, 21 years old, died of a single gunshot to his right temple at his Coldwater Canyon home. His girlfriend had just told him that she did not want to see him any more. Michael replied that he could not live without her and called himself a "loser". At the time, Charles Boyer was filming in Paris and returned to Los Angeles after he phoned his wife and was told of the incident. In 1978, Paterson was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and died that year on August 24th. Two days later, a grief stricken Boyer took his own life by overdose. They are buried together, next to their son Michael, at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.