In Remembrance: Patricia Roc

     Patricia Roc, one of Britain's top female screen idols in the 1940s and 1950s, died Tuesday December 30, 2003 in Switzerland. She was 88.

     Born Felicia Herold in 1915 London, Roc was adopted as a baby by Andre Riese, a wealthy Dutch-Belgian stockbroker. She received an exclusive education at top schools in England and Paris and studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

     She made her stage debut in 1938 in a London production of the comedy "Nuts in May". Movie mogul Alexander Korda was impressed by her performance and gave Roc a role in the 1938 costume epic The Rebel Son even though Roc had little stage experience. Korda was responsible for launching Roc’s 40-film movie career that catapulted her to international stardom during World War II.

     Sir Noel Coward once described the screen siren Roc as "a phenomenon, an unspoiled movie star who can act."

     She appeared in a trio of Edgar Wallace thrillers, The Gaunt Stranger (1938), The Mind of Mr. Reeder (1939) and The Missing People (1940).

     Her first major success was in the 1943 classic film Millions Like Us. For 10 consecutive years from 1943 she was one of Britain's top 10 box-office stars, becoming a worldwide sensation co-starring with Sir Michael Redgrave and Sir John Mills with hits like The Wicked Lady (1945) and The Brothers (1947).

     In 1946, Roc made headlines when she became the first homegrown British star to go to Hollywood under a "lend-lease" deal between Rank and Universal Studios. Her American film debut was in the western Canyon Passage that year, starring alongside Susan Hayward and Ronald Reagan.

     She moved to Paris in 1949 and married French cinematographer Andre Thomas and worked in European cinema. One of her more famous roles during this time was opposite Ray Milland in French director Jacques Tourneur’s pre-film noir classic Circle of Danger (1951) She returned to Britain in 1954 shortly after being widowed and continued her work in English film.

     In 1962, she appeared in the first episode of television’s The Saint, alongside Roger Moore.

     She retired from acting in 1963 before moving to Switzerland. It is known that Roc married three times. Among her lovers was the future President Ronald Reagan, who romanced her while she was shooting Canyon Passage.

-John Gibbon