Virginia Patton, best known for her role as Ruth Dakin Bailey in the holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” has died. She was 97.
A funeral home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, confirmed that Patton passed Thursday, Aug. 18 in an assisted living home. No additional details or cause of death has been released.
Patton, whose uncle was the iconic World War II General George Patton, dazzled screens in the 1940s, starring as the female lead in 1947’s “The Burning Cross” and 1948 Western “Black Eagle.”
Born in 1925 in Cleveland, the Ohio-native was raised in Portland, Oregon, before moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Just a year after Patton graduated high school in 1942, she made her film debut with an ensemble role in “Thank Your Lucky Stars” (1943) and signed a contact with Warner Bros.
She went on to appear in minor roles in “Janie” (1944), “The Last Ride” (1944), “Hollywood Canteen” (1944) and “The Horn Blows at Midnight” (1945).
By 1946, Patton had starred in a play at USC written by William C. De Mille (brother of Cecil B. De Mille) that brought her to the attention of Frank Capra, who was one of the most highly-respected directors at the time. That lead her to being cast as the sister-in-law of George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, in the classic holiday film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
That film gave her film career a boost, as Patton went on to star as the female lead in “The Burning Cross,” a movie about the horrors created by the KKK, and “Black Eagle,” a Western starring William Bishop. She also had a supporting role in 1949 film “The Lucky Stiff.”
Despite her success, Patton retired from acting in 1949 after marrying automobile executive Cruse W. Moss and moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan. There, she had three children with Moss and the pair were married for 69 years before Moss passed away in 2018.
In Ann Arbor, Patton worked as a docent at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and was involved with several organizations local to the area.
Despite leaving Hollywood, Patton crossed paths with Capra later, when he was a speaker for the Young Presidents’ Organization. Patton shared in a 2012 interview that Capra kept in touch with her even after she left show business.
“I have a beautiful letter that (Capra) wrote me because I kept in touch with him and he said, ‘I just knew you’d be a wonderful mother with three little bambinos and a wonderful husband,’” Patton said.