Mahone Bay Old School_A Life and Times_Bob Sayer

Patricia Wentzell[ Patti Morgan], Copacabana
Dancer, Hollywood Starlet
The 1948 poster says and shows it all. The glamour look of the 1940s. Local girl
fulfills the dream: a Hollywood contract. Patricia’s folks were from Indian Point and
the old family house is still there. Her parents moved into Town, at the house at the
corner of Hedge and Maple Streets..
• Her mother Mrs. Arch Wentzell was a long time teacher at the Old School, from
the mid 1920s to the early 1940s. It was from her mother she inherited the theatrical
flair and the determined ambition Even in the early class photos she has the pose, the
flashing smile, the plucked eyebrows.
• She graduated from grade 11 in 1936, composing the ‘Class Prophecy’ [see page
103]. She stayed on for grade 12, graduating in ‘38 and delivering ‘The Class Will
and Testament.’ She moved to New York to attend dance and drama school in 1939,
and got her first professional engagements in Montreal. • When the Copacabana club
opened in New York, she auditioned and was selected as one of the elite ‘Copa Girls’
at America’s most famous nightclub. They were beautiful, extravagantly dressed, very
well paid and not allowed to mix with the customers. It was there that she was offered
a Hollywood contract with Universal Studios.
• She never made it big, but she had tasted “the celebrity life.” She finished her career
as head of the Elisabeth Arden cosmetics department at a large New York store. Max
Zwicker remembers her constantly blowing fuses with her “latest American gadgets”
at the old home in Indian Point.
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