Lee Patrick (November 22, 1901 – November 21, 1982) was an American theater and film actress.

Born in New York, New York, Patrick began acting on Broadway in 1924. For more than a decade she was constantly employed and established herself as a popular actress. Her success in Stage Door (1937) led her to Hollywood to reprise her role in the film version. Eventually the part was rewritten and split from a single character into two characters which were played by Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Patrick had made her film debut in 1929 but since that time had not appeared in a single film, and RKO Studios were reluctant to allow an unknown actress to take a part in a film which they were beginning to realise had great potential. Her disappointments continued when she was considered and then rejected for the lead role in Stella Dallas in favour of Barbara Stanwyck.

She remained in Hollywood, and appeared in Border Cafe (1937). Over the next several years she played numerous supporting roles, without attracting much attention until she appeared in The Maltese Falcon (1941). As Effie Perine, the loyal and quick-thinking secretary of Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, Patrick created one of her most enduring film characterisations.

Among her other films are Now, Voyager (1942), Mrs Parkington (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), Caged (1950), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), Vertigo (1958), Auntie Mame (1958), Pillow Talk (1959), and Summer and Smoke (1961).

Her final film role was a reprise of her Effie Perine character in a reworking of the Sam Spade story titled The Black Bird (1975). Starring George Segal as Sam Spade Jr., forced to continue his father's work, and to keep his increasingly sarcastic secretary, the film attempted to turn its revered predecessor into a comedy, and was a box office failure.

Patrick died suddenly from a heart seizure on the day before her 81st birthday, at Laguna Beach, California.

Trivia

• After her death it was discovered that she was ten years older than she had ever revealed. Shaving a decade off her age was a decision she made early in her career, and at the time of her death, many of her friends believed that she was in her early seventies.
• Her difficulties in establishing a career as a leading actress were often attributed to a long standing fued Patrick had with gossip columnist Louella Parsons, about whom Patrick's husband, a journalist, had written very unfavourably.