Luana Patten
Luana Patten (July 6, 1938 - May 1, 1996) was an American actress, best known for co-starring in Walt Disney's first live action pictures ’’Song Of The South’’, 1946 and ’’So Dear To My Heart’’, 1948, both at the side of child partner and Academy Juvenile Award winner Bobby Driscoll.
In 1948 she temporarily retired from acting in order to get a school education. After graduation she made the step back onto the screen in the 1957 Walt Disney release Johnny Tremain, with which she could re-start an adult career in Teenage movies, dramas and Westerns like Rock Pretty Baby, 1956, Joe Dakota, 1957, The Restless Years, 1958, and The Young Captives, 1959.
She finally retired from the film industry in the late 1960s, but continued performing in television series like Daniel Boone, Dragnet 1967, and Adam 12 until 1970. Her last known appearance was the role of a gothic old lady in the opening film-within-a-film segment of the 1988 horror production Grotesque, starring Linda Blair and Tab Hunter. [1]
She died from a respiratory failure in her home at Long Beach, California at the age of 57 and is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Long Beach, California.