Pat Crowley, a Golden Globe winner who starred in the 1960s sitcom Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, appeared in many film and guested on scores of shows during a 60-year career, died Sunday in Los Angeles, two days before her 92nd birthday.
Her son, Jon Hookstratten, and EVP at Sony Pictures, said his mother died of natural causes.
Crowley had more than 100 film and TV credits from 1950 to the early 2010s but probably is best known for toplining Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, the 1965-67 NBC series based on the 1960 movie starring Doris Day. She starred opposite Mark Miller as Joan Nash, a newspaper columnist who pooh-poohed the era’s traditional “housewife” tropes and didn’t care who knew it. Housework? No thanks. Cooking for the family? Nah. Joan slept till through mornings — in the same bed as her husband, a first for TV — and did her own thing.
The show — which also featured a massive sheepdog named Ladadig — wasn’t a big anthem, not making the year-end leading 30 in the three-network universe, but was popular in reruns in the 1970s.
Before that, Crowley had guested on dozens of TV series ranging from Suspense, The Untouchables and Rawhide to Gunsmoke, Bonanza and Maverick. She also co-starred with Burgess Meredith and Robert Sterling in “Printer’s Devil,” an hourlong 1963 episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone.
After Daisies, she continued to guest on numerous popular TV shows well into the 2000s including The Rockford Files, Columbo, Hawaii Five-O, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hotel, Friends, Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, Frasier, Charmed and Murder, She Wrote. Crowley also played Mary Scanlon in more than 250 episodes of the daytime drama Port Charles, 60-plus of Generations and on other soaps including The Bold and the Beautiful, General Hospital and primetime’s Falcon Crest.
Born on September 17, 1933, in Olyphant, PA, Crowley moved to New York City and studied at the High School of the Performing Arts before beginning her career on stage and in modeling. Hollywood took notice and in 1954 she won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year after performances in Forever Female opposite Ginger Rogers and William Holden and in the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis film Money From Home.
Through the 1950s and ’60s, Crowley also appeared in a number of features films including the musical Red Garters, The Square Jungle and Douglas Sirk’s There’s Always Tomorrow. She appeared alongside such stars as Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Tony Curtis and Rosemary Clooney, transitioning easily among comedy, drama and musical roles.
Crowley’s last film appearance was Mont Reve in 2012, capping a career that bridged the golden age of Hollywood and modern television.
Along with her son Jon and his wife Marion, she is survived by her husband, Andy Friendly; daugher Ann Osher (Robert), five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
About the Author
