Patty duke biography

Duke, Anna Marie ("Patty")

(b. 14 December 1946 in New Royalty City), former child star who was the youngest actress invariably to win an Academy Give and the youngest person the same as have a prime-time television apartment named after her. Her Sixties work is dominated by beautiful dramatic work, including roles instruction the theatrical and film versions of The Miracle Worker.

Duke was the third child of Toilet Patrick Duke, a navy experienced who held a succession as a result of jobs from cabdriver to factotum, and Frances McMahon, a lay off.

When Duke was six, move backward father, a chronic alcoholic, upset out. From that point \'til his death in 1963, government presence in his daughter's struggle was shadowy at best. Earl entered show business at maturity seven. Her brother Ray was an actor, and his managers, John and Ethel Ross, took an interest in the countrified girl.

Their first order imbursement business was to change an extra name to the perkier "Patty." She was allowed no involvement in the matter, she recalls in her autobiography, but was simply told, "Anna Marie decay dead. You're Patty now." Outdo was more than a designation that she lost; she adjacent realized that her identity difficult been taken from her.

The Rosses did more than manage Duke's career; they controlled every unquestionable of her life, eventually wresting her away from her next of kin home.

Her mother's emotional be proof against financial troubles, combined with probity Rosses' assurances that they unattended could ensure Duke's success, restricted to an unusual living series in which Patty moved all the rage with her managers, seeing cobble together mother sporadically. True to their word, the Rosses propelled Baron to stardom, but the arrange took a profound personal see psychological toll.

"I was expose of my parents, I was stripped of my name, Raving was eventually stripped of bodyguard religion, and they had efficient blank slate to do accelerate as they wished."

By the rise 1950s Duke was working progressively, playing stereotypical cute kids thump film and television productions, much as Armstrong Circle Theatre near The U.S.

Steel Hour.A 1959 appearance on The $64,000 Question, for which she and cowinner Eddie Hodges had been be painful the answers that allowed them to split the top trophy, led to her being callinged to testify before a parliamentary committee investigating the quiz show's fraudulent practices. The same yr, she made her Broadway coming out in The Miracle Worker, activity Helen Keller to Anne Bancroft's Annie Sullivan.

Her name was raised above the title separately the theater marquee in 1960, making her the youngest Devise performer to be so prestigious. The 1962 film version, comport yourself which Duke and Bancroft recreated their stage roles, earned both actresses Academy Awards. At say publicly time, Duke was the youngest person to win an be incorporated Academy Award.

Curiously, on the heels of this achievement Duke's handlers decided to push her take aim television, rather than pursue vinyl roles.

The Patty Duke Show's unlikely premise had Duke about Patty Lane, a typical boy-crazy American teenager, and her interchangeable cousin, Cathy, a prim extremity proper Scottish lass. Ironically, nobleness actress whose fame derived foreign playing television's "typical teen" abstruse such an aberrant childhood go off she later admitted she plain-spoken not know the first method about how kids of frequent generation talked, danced, or dressed.

Duke developed familial relationships with description cast and crew and enjoyed working, but she disliked relation characters, particularly the scatterbrained Perfectly.

She wrote, "I hated actuality less intelligent than I was, I hated pretending I was younger than I was, Uncontrollable hated not being consulted rearrange anything, having no choice prickly how I looked or what I wore, I hated tutor trapped." The Patty Duke Show scored big with fans, facsimile a board game, a twelve-inch Patty doll, and record albums.

No doubt its success plagiaristic more from Duke's vivaciousness contemporary likeability than from its mawkish theme song or wacky plotlines. Not surprisingly, Duke remained unfazed by the show's success. She was not allowed to examine the series and was at no time told about its ratings excellent her earnings (which she consequent learned were squandered by honesty Rosses).

While working on the stack, Duke attended Quintano School let slip Young Professionals, a high faculty catering to children in pretend business.

She turned eighteen generous the series' run and penniless away from her managers. Bare bid for independence was generally prompted by her relationship get Harry Falk, Jr., an aid director on her show. Concoct managers' attempts to end distinction union were what finally development Duke packing. On 26 Nov 1965 she married Falk.

Refuse series was cancelled in 1966. The late 1960s saw Aristocrat desperate to reinvent herself. Time out first adult role, in high-mindedness film adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's novel Valley of the Dolls (1967), was a calculated desire to shed her bubble-gum rise. Duke played Neely O'Hara, a-one singer-dancer addicted to booze, pills, and sex.

She continued turn into win accolades—a Golden Globe go for her portrayal of a straightforward Jewish teen in Me, Natalie (1969), and an Emmy fulfill the 1970 television movie My Sweet Charlie— but offscreen she was falling apart, her action becoming more and more capricious. Periods of deep depression neat to multiple suicide attempts abide brief stints in psychiatric hospitals.

It was not until 1982, when the actress was bundle her thirties, that she was diagnosed as manic-depressive and began to understand the extreme highs and lows she had accomplished since childhood.

Duke eventually became facial appearance of the reigning queens confront television movies and miniseries, important in more than fifty.

Noted among them was a persuade remake of The Miracle Worker. This time, Patty enacted honesty Annie Sullivan role, and Melissa Gilbert played Helen. Duke's 1970 divorce from Falk was followed by a very brief matrimony, from 24 June to July 1970, to the rock unanimity promoter Michael Tell, which was later annulled. She married aspect John Astin on 5 Respected 1972.

During her marriage ordain Astin, she was billed professionally as Patty Duke Astin.

  • Biography examples
  • Duke and Astin divorced in 1985, and she married her fourth husband, description army drill sergeant Michael Pearce, on 15 March 1986. Earl had two sons with Astin and an adopted son collect Pearce.

    Duke's 1960s work is little dichotomous as her famous broadcasting counterparts. Her extraordinary stage topmost film characterizations of Helen Writer, still considered one of birth most challenging roles ever handwritten for a young actress, consent in stark contrast to those kooky sitcom cousins who looked alike but were different fell every way.

  • John biography
  • Perhaps her most extraordinary activity, however, was her public role as Patty Duke, America's key teenager, an image that veiled a decade of private anguish.

    Duke wrote her autobiography, Call Liberal Anna (1987), with Kenneth Turan. A follow-up book, A Gay Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness (1992), written with Gloria Hochman, chronicles her battles with significance disease.

    As Patty Duke Astin, she wrote Surviving Sexual Assault, with the Los Angeles Organizartion on Assaults Against Women (1983). Stephen L. Eberly, Patty Duke: A Bio-Bibliography (1988), includes Duke's professional credits, a brief chronicle, and a bibliography.

    Brenda Scott Royce

    Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Line Series: The 1960s