Elmer Calvin "Hank" Patterson was an American actor and musician.
15 Facts About Hank Patterson
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Hank Patterson is known foremost for playing two recurring characters on three television series - stableman Hank Miller on Gunsmoke and farmer Fred Ziffel on both Petticoat Junction and Green Acres.
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Hank Patterson had intended to be a serious pianist, but instead became a vaudeville piano player.
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Hank Patterson entered the movie business as an actor during the 1930s.
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Hank Patterson's earliest identified screen work was an uncredited appearance in the Roy Rogers' Western film The Arizona Kid.
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Hank Patterson found plenty of movie work, mainly playing cantankerous types and blacksmiths, hotel clerks, farmers, shopkeepers, and other townsmen, usually bit roles and character parts in Republic Pictures Westerns, and then in popular TV Westerns such as The Cisco Kid, The Adventures of Kit Carson, The Lone Ranger, and Annie Oakley.
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Hank Patterson had small cameo appearances in a number of sci-fi movies by Bert I Gordon: Beginning of the End, The Amazing Colossal Man, Attack of the Puppet People, and Earth vs The Spider.
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In 1959, Hank Patterson appeared as a sodbuster in an uncredited role on Lawman.
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Hank Patterson made additional TV appearances, including in three episodes of The Twilight Zone as well as Perry Mason, Burke's Law, The Untouchables, Judd for the Defense, My Three Sons, and in later years The Mod Squad, Love, American Style, and Highway Patrol.
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In 1963, Hank Patterson first appeared in what became a recurring role as farmer Fred Ziffel on the popular CBS rural comedy Petticoat Junction.
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Hank Patterson even "talked" in a language that everyone in Hooterville seemed to understand except Oliver Wendell Douglas.
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Hank Patterson was married to Daisy Marguerite Patterson, a Kentucky native four years younger than Hank whose parents were both of German ancestry.
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Hank Patterson's great-grandfather, James Pearson, was an original settler of St Clair County, Alabama, as was his mother's great-grandfather, Thomas Newton.
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Hank Patterson died at age 86 on August 23,1975 of bronchial pneumonia.
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Hank Patterson is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood.