Patsy Ann McClenny aka Morgan biography

Real biography: On February 3rd 1950, a girl was born to a southern middle-class couple of Scotch-Irish decent. They named her Patsy Ann McClenny. Her mother, Martha, worked as a High School English Teacher, her father, Milton, worked as an Engineer for the Ford Motor Company, and later became a Sales Representative for Texas Instruments. Less than two years after Patsy was born, the young professional couple welcomed their second daughter whom they named Cathryn. The McClenny's were a close family who made their home in a Dallas, Texas suburb called Lake Highlands.

As a child, Patsy was a shy, quiet, plain little girl with white hair and skin, and who wore very thick poindexter glasses. She suffered from asthma, and a slight hearing impairment due to many colds and ear infections. Having a genius I. Q. by age 11 of 147, she made good marks in school and was often the teacher's pet. Reading became her favorite past-time, particularly books pertaining to the natural sciences. Patsy was fascinated by Paleontology, Anatomy, and Anthropology. Louis Pasteur was an early idol, she had aspirations of one day becoming a Paleontologist or a Doctor.

Patsy was so introverted as a child that she preferred to live within her own fantasies. She dreamed of growing up to be a dark and dangerous looking brunette like Sophia Loren. The first glimpse of young Patsy's future came when her mother decided she could attend a Halloween Party as a Gypsy. She sat quietly as Martha painted her face, and curled her hair, {this was during the height of the "Cleopatra " era} and when the makeover/costume was complete, she opened her eyes to see a different person staring back at her in the mirror, someone who looked … much to her surprise …pretty? Patsy attended the Halloween party that evening, still being ignored by the boys in her class, but their father's were staring incessantly. This was the first time she had ever experienced attention like that, and it all made her very uncomfortable until one of the fathers came up to her and said, "little girl, your gonna make one hell of a beautiful woman someday!" This was the first time a grown-up man had noticed the shy little girl, and she never forgot it.

At the tender age of 10, Patsy was to give an oral book report to her fifth grade class, but she was so shy and nervous that she became physically ill and was unable to speak. This behavior concerned Martha, as the family came from a long line of Attorneys and Debaters. Martha decided young Patsy would attend the "Junior Player's Guild" to help bring her out of her shell. Here, she would be required to recite a lot of poetry, things with lots of consonants such as "The Bells" by Edgar Allen Poe. At the end of the year, the class performed a stage version of the children's classic tale "Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs" in which young Patsy made her acting debut, cast by Frank Coniff, as a dancing wood nymph, she followed that by performing the lead in "Cinderella," and later starred in "The Reluctant Dragon". In the next few years, Patsy continued acting in children's theatre, dinner theatre, in local industrial films and in summer stock productions in and around her Dallas home. Patsy starred in several productions at Theatre Three such as, "Stop the World, I Want To Get Off" along with her sister Cathryn. Also, under the Founder and direction of Jac Alder, "Arsenic and Old Lace", "Alice In Wonderland", "Heidi", "Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd", "A Musical Mania from Transylvania." She also starred in "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum", where she was physically abused by a woman co-star that would deliberately elbow young Patsy in the stomach every night backstage, until she found the courage, with her mother's advice, to stand up to her nemesis!

By the time she turned 14, Patsy had transformed her appearance by dieting, contact lenses, and cosmetics. She really began to blossom, competing in beauty pageants, honing her acting skills, and going to concerts seeing the likes of the unparalleled James Brown, (she was mesmerized by his ability to capture and hold the audience). Placing runner up in the Miss Teen Dallas Pageant where she performed a scene from "St. Joan of Arc", the judges told her mother that she was "too sexy to be a Miss Teen anything!"

Still acting by the age of 16, {in addition to modeling} Patsy was chosen to be the double for Faye Dunaway in the feature film "Bonnie & Clyde". She originally had one scene with Warren Beatty in the movie that eventually ended up on the cutting room floor. {darn that editing!} Warren Beatty, became enchanted with Patsy whom he dated all during production. Although she was horrified at the lack of morals that she found on the movie set, with then little known co-stars like Gene Wilder and Gene Hackman, the film became a milestone for Patsy, she realized that acting could be her way of living out the fantasies of her life. Acting had become her career of choice. By the next year, she worked as stand-in for Jane Fonda in the Sci-fi cult classic "Barbarella".

Having hated High School, Patsy, who is fluent in French, took summer classes every year to enable her to graduate a year early, which she did in 1967. At the age of 17, at what would have been the fall of her senior year in school, she married a rock-music promoter named Jack Calmes. The newlyweds had a house in Dallas and maintained an apartment in New York City. In their home they entertained many classic rock celebrities such as "Grand Funk Railroad", "Jimi Hendrix", and the incomparable "Janis Joplin". During the early years of her marriage, she attended college at "Southern Methodist University". She also continued her career in modeling. Patsy Calmes worked for the prestigious "Eileen Ford Agency", "Wilhelmina", and she also did catalog work for the chic "Neiman Marcus" store chain.

In 1970, at the age of 20, the young married model and housewife, endured a shattering experience. During one of her first visits to New York City, a street pimp, and a drug-pusher, which grabbed her off of a crowded street corner in broad daylight, abducted her. Patsy kicked and screamed as they shoved her into a taxi, the two thugs held her between them and drove around for hours, filling her head with horror stories of their plans to turn her into a drug-junkie, and then force her to be their sex slave and into prostitution. She kept calm, and acted bored instead of scared, just kept telling them jokes and wisecracking, until one thug said to the other, "Hey, she's funny! Why don't we let her go?" They told the cab driver to pullover, then both of them got out of the taxi, paid the driver, and told him " She's a very funny lady, take her wherever she wants to go!"… Still in shock, an extremely rattled Patsy asked the driver to take her straight home, where she hibernated out of fear for several days. The abduction made her realize that she could simply vanish without a trace and no one would ever know what happened.

Soon after that major altercation, she went home to Dallas where she saw the Bruce Lee film "Enter The Dragon". From that point on, Patsy became convinced that she would learn the martial art of Kung-Fu, {Kung-Fu was originally called "Wu-Shu" which has the meaning - a way to stop the violence.} "In Kung-Fu, one learns to control one's mind and energy". She was very impressed by Bruce Lee's total focus of energy that was displayed in the film, and upon returning to the "Big Apple" she traveled alone via the subway from Manhattan to Chinatown three nights a week over the next four years to be trained by Wes Chen, Paul Vizzio and "Master of Si-fu", Wai Hong at the Fu-Jow-Pai School.

After 6 years of marriage, Patsy filed for divorce at the age of 23. That same year she decided to devote herself full-time to her acting career. A new name was first on the agenda. She adopted her first name "Morgan" from the 1966 British film "Morgan, A Suitable Case For Treatment" starring David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave. "Morgan" depicted a man who lived within his own fantasies. Patsy's early life helped her to identify with that film. Some time after her first name was chosen, she went out to "Gordo's Pizza Parlor" in Dallas with her friend Camilla Carr. When she asked Camilla what would be a good name to complement "Morgan"-{which means Sea-Witch}, Camilla suggested "Fairchild". The two young ladies both liked the name and thought it helped to soften and glamorize the first name choice.{In those days, Morgan was traditionally thought of as a man'sfirst name} In need of an interesting and professional name, the once Patsy Ann McClenny, then Patsy Calmes, became "Morgan Fairchild" legally!

Now based in New York, the young lady now known as Miss Morgan Fairchild, spent her days knocking on doors, and going to countless auditions, in some cases standing in line for hours in the snow, waiting to see a casting agent or producer, only to be turned away. They all kept saying to her, "You'll never work", "You look too porcelain", "Nobody will ever be able to identify with you", "You just don't look real!" This kind of treatment went on for months until she eventually started getting work in dinner theatre. Morgan Fairchild was cast in such productions as "The Seven Year Itch" co-starring Arte Johnson, "Take Me Along", "Mame", "Barefoot In The Park", "The Last Of The Red Hot Lovers", "My Three Angels", "Plaza Suite", and "The Tender Trap" co-starring Tab Hunter. Finally, Morgan's big break came in 1973 when her then, modeling agent, "Eileen Ford", sent her to an audition for the longest running daytime drama at that time {it debuted back in 1951}, the CBS soap opera, "Search For Tomorrow".

The day after Thanksgiving in 1973, Miss Fairchild was cast as "Jennifer Pace", her character later became wildly popular as the paranoid-adulteress-housewife-turned murderess "Jennifer Pace-Phillips", this was the key role which put the new television career of Miss Morgan Fairchild on the map. By 1974, she had won quite an audience (including me!), even James Brown! After admiring his stage presence for over a decade, a chance meeting at the studio elevator led him to confess he was her biggest fan. Imagine that coming from the Godfather of Soul! WOW! The shy "Little Bird" of a child had dreamed of one day living fantasy. Now, as the result of much hard work, determination, perseverance, and support from her mother, that same "Little Bird" now a beautiful swan named Morgan Fairchild, has been able to spread her proverbial wings, and experience life as a great adventure, with unlimited horizons!

Courtesy of Frank Holmes from www.MorganFairchildTribute.com