Lee Patterson

As good looking as the exotic locales behind him on the show, his own good looks carried him much further, going on to star in a number of guest spots and earning a slew of soap opera roles along the way, most notably on One Life to Live (1968) as Erika Slezak's one-time husband. He grew into a reliable character actor and was also seen on the stage in later years.

Manly actor Lee Patterson will always be remembered by American audiences as the hunky detective alongside equally hunky detectives Van Williams and Troy Donahue on Surfside 6 (1960) from the early 1960s. But, prior to that, he had a solid second-string career in British films playing Americanized parts. Born in British Columbia, he went to a college in Ontario before crossing the ocean and settling in England.

The monumental success of the private eye series 77 Sunset Strip (1958) and the hair-combing Edd Byrnes "Kookie" craze instigated a number of imitations with Surfside 6 (1960) being just one of them. It lasted a rather short two seasons but it did establish Lee here in America.

A former stage manager and theatre publicist in his salad days, he was a rock-solid presence in such "B" films as Terror Street (1953) (aka Terror Street), The Good Die Young (1954), Reach for the Sky (1956), The Mailbag Robbery (1957) (aka The Mailbag Robbery) and Jack the Ripper (1959).