Luana Patten

Luana Patten (July 6, 1938 – May 1, 1996) was an American film actress.

Patten was born in Long Beach, California, to Harvey T. Patten and Alma (née Miller) Patten, natives of Enid, Oklahoma. She attended Burbank High School and Hollywood Professional School.

At the age of three she was a model and later was hired by Walt Disney. Patten made her first film appearance in the 1946 musical Song of the South with Bobby Driscoll. They also appeared together in Song of the South's sister film So Dear to My Heart.

She appeared again with Bobby Driscoll in the Pecos Bill segment of Disney's Melody Time. In 1947, she appeared with Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, and Mortimer Snerd during the live action scenes in Fun and Fancy Free. When she grew up, she played Jody Weaver in Joe Dakota and Priscilla Lapham in Disney's 1957 Johnny Tremain. In 1958, Patten portrayed Elizabeth Buckley in the episode "Twelve Guns" of NBC's Cimarron City western television series. It was on Cimarron City that she met her future second husband, John Smith, whom she married two years later. The couple divorced in 1964.

In 1959, she played Abbie Fenton in the episode "Call Your Shot" of Wanted: Dead of Alive, starring Steve McQueen and the same year played Ruth in "The Ruth Marshall Story" season 3, episode 13 of Wagon Train that aired Dec 30, 1959. In 1960, she played Libby Halstead in Vincente Minnelli's Home from the Hill. In 1966, she played saloon girl Lorna Medford in the episode "Credit for a Kill" of Bonanza. In 1966, she had a small part as Nora White, the new bride of Whitey in Follow Me, Boys!. She also appeared in Fun and Fancy Free, A Thunder of Drums, and the Rawhide episode "Incident of the Druid Curse" on CBS. That year she also appeared on Perry Mason as defendant Cynthia Perkins in "The Case of the Scarlet Scandal". She retired from the film industry in 1968 except for a brief cameo in the 1988 film Grotesque.

Patten died from respiratory failure at Long Beach Memorial Hospital, aged 57. She is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Long Beach, California.