Van Devere was born March 9, 1941[a] as Patricia Louise Dressel in Tenafly, New Jersey.[4] Her father owned a Pontiac dealership and real estate business, which was inherited by her mother after her father's death when Van Devere was 9 years old.[4] After attending Tenafly High School,[4] she graduated in 1958 from Northern Valley High School[5] before attending Ohio Wesleyan University, where she met and married fellow student Grant Van Devere.[4] The marriage lasted only 8 months, though she retained Van Devere as her stage name.[4]
Career
In 1966, Van Devere moved to New York City and began pursuing a career in acting,[4] studying at the Actors Studio.[6] She co-founded the Free Southern Theater with Scott Cunningham, an African American fellow actor, staging plays in fields and at churches in the Southern United States for indigent African Americans who had never seen live theater before.[4] Two years later, Van Devere and Cunningham founded an offshoot theater company, the Poor People's Theater in New York City, headquartered in the basement of Manhattan's Riverside Church, which held similar theatrical productions in churches, schools, and streets.[4]
Van Devere had her breakthrough portraying the original Meredith Lord in the soap opera One Life to Live in 1968 — the income from which she largely used to help maintain the Poor People's Theater Company.[4] In 1970, she co-starred with George Segal and Ruth Gordon in the comedy Where's Poppa? She subsequently garnered significant notice for her lead role in the film One Is a Lonely Number (1972), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe award.
^ abWhile numerous sources list Van Devere's birthday as March 9,[1][2] they vary regarding her birth year, with some citing 1943 or 1945; however, the California Marriage Index lists her age as 31, and birth year as 1941 when she married George C. Scott in 1972.[3]
^Willis, John; Monush, Barry, eds. (2002). Screen World 2001. Vol. 52. New York: Applause Books. p. 337. ISBN978-1-557-83478-2.
^California Marriage Index, 1960-1985. George C. Scott and Patricia L. Dressel, 14 Sep 1972; from "California, Marriage Index, 1960-1985," database and images; citing Los Angeles City, California, Center of Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento.
^"Actress Nurses Poppa", The Record, November 27, 1970 via Newspapers.com. Accessed June 14, 2020. "Miss Pat Dressel, a 1958 graduate of Northern Valley High School, is appearing in the movie Where's Poppa?, stariing Ruth Gordon and George Segal. She plays a nurse, using her stage name of Trish Van Devere."
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