by Hal Erickson
biography
The stepdaughter of theatrical producer Alexander Leftwich, Patricia Ellis was barely a teenager when she made her stage debut. She came to films in 1932, playing a variety of ingenues opposite such Warner Bros. contractees as James Cagney, Dick Powell, George Arliss, Paul Muni and Joe E. Brown. Most of her post-Warners roles were unremarkable, though she demonstrated that she could carry a picture when she starred in the innocuous Republic musical Rhythm in the Clouds (1937), and proved a worthy foil to Laurel and Hardy in Block-Heads (1938). Patricia Ellis retired from films in 1941 to marry a Kansas City business executive.
