Susan Douglas
/Patricia Garland - Update
Pat Garland
I had a nice email from Susan Douglas’s eldest son this week, after his daughter found her grandmother’s profile page by accident. He has been kind enough to fill in a few gaps for me. Some details I will cover here, but I have updated her page to reflect others.
Susan (Pat) sadly passed away 22nd February 2010 when she was 73, I am now also able to correct her date of birth to April 1938. I am told, though, that she would have been delighted that we always thought her younger than she really was! Susan Douglas was not her real name of course, She was really Patricia Garland, which I think we all knew anyway (but she did prefer to be called Pat). She decided on the name Susan Douglas so she was harder to trace - with Susan coming from a friend’s daughter and Douglas coming from the actor Kirk Douglas, whose films she was fond of.
Susan was one of the most photographed ToCo models. She was born and lived reasonably close to the Croydon office and was obviously well in with the staff, as she and her family used to holiday in Cornwall at the editors (Staples) house. It would appear that when she wasn’t modelling she helped in the offices and advised other models on their make up and clothes, Susans oldest son used to go along to the Croydon office in the school holidays when his mum was working. It would also appear that Staples ran a sweatshirt printing business and we can see Susan modelling one of his shirts in Spick No 180, possibly leaning against his Jaguar.
One other thing that always intrigued me about Susan was that bangle that she frequently wore on her left arm above her elbow. The bangle was her Grandmother’s and was a lucky charm to her. Susan was always fond of jewellery and was always one for doing things her own way.
Luckily for us.