Life and career

Patterson was born in Whittier, California, where she attended Rio Hondo College for a single semester. Patterson began her professional career while still in high school, performing melodrama at The Bird Cage Theatre at Knott's Berry Farm. She is a founding member of the Musical Theatre Guild and has appeared in many stage musicals.

She played Randy, the blonde stewardess in the 1980 comedy Airplane! She co-starred with Tony Randall in the 1981 television pilot Sidney Shorr: A Girl's Best Friend. By the time this became the television series Love, Sidney, she had won the lead role in the 1981-1983 television version of the film Private Benjamin, so her Sidney Shorr role was played in Love, Sidney by Swoosie Kurtz. Earlier, she had been a regular on two short-lived series, Working Stiffs and Goodtime Girls. She also played Liz Drever in 1984, in Royal Flying Doctor Service, episodes 2, 3 and 4, in Australia.

Patterson was married to actor Robert Ginty. (Patterson worked with Ginty's first wife, Francine Tacker in the 1980 series Goodtime Girls, which also starred a pre-Designing Women Annie Potts and Georgia Engel.) She is currently married to actor/director Michael Lembeck, and the couple have two children.

Patterson converted to Judaism a few years after marrying Lembeck, after having developed an interest in the religion and completing courses in the Louis and Judith Miller Introduction to Judaism Program, a division of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University. In 2009 she received her cantorial ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religion in Los Angeles.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]