Disastrous Demise: Patty Duke 1946-2016

Here we are again, on the heels of George Kennedy's passing, addressing the death of one of the members of the '70s Disaster Movie Club (an organization that exists solely in my own mind and applies to those performers who starred in a big-screen disaster movie between 1970-1980.) Patty Duke's career, however, extended far beyond the work she did in this arena and we will address part of it in this photo tribute. Duke was taken from us far too soon at only age sixty-nine following an infection after a burst intestine.

Like many successful actors, Duke came from an unhappy home consisting of an alcoholic father and a depressed and sometimes violent mother. Her brother having done some minor acting, she was induced into the field as well by a pair of married, domineering agents who informed the young girl that Anna Marie (her birth name) "was dead" and that Patty Duke would be her name. The little girl, who was greatly adept nonetheless, began working on the daytime soap The Brighter Day (1958-1959) and in many TV programs and specials (portraying Tootie to Jane Powell's Esther in a television rendition of Meet Me in St. Louis, 1959.)

In 1959, Duke was cast in the life-changing role of young, blind, deaf & mute Helen Keller in the Broadway production of The Miracle Worker. Though it was really a showcase for Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan (who won a Tony while Duke was not even nominated), her ferocious work was still attention-getting and the play ran 719 performances.

After the play's closing in 1961, a movie version was filmed with both stars recreating their Broadway roles. Released in 1962, The Miracle Worker allowed still more people to witness, up close and personal, the visceral work that she had by now perfected as the unruly and tormented child of affliction.

With special child performance Oscars having been discontinued after 1961, Duke had to "duke it out" with the big girls when it came to the Best Supporting Actress race, but she won (as did Bancroft for Best Actress.) She's seen here with prior year's winner for West Side Story (1961) Rita Moreno and Best Supporting Actor winner Ed Begley (for Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962.) Interestingly, neither Bancroft nor Duke won Golden Globes that year. Geraldine Page (for Sweet Bird of Youth) and Angela Lansbury (for The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) took home those statuettes.

Duke had attempted a second Broadway production early in 1962 called Isle of Children, which failed after one week, but her varied work on TV and the occasional movie led writer Sidney Sheldon to create The Patty Duke Show (1963-1966) for her.

Sheldon had noticed (quite perceptively) that the actress seemed to possess two sides to her personality and developed the series so that she played dual roles of identical cousins, Patty (boisterous and a bit meddlesome) and Cathy (prim and refined.) The show was a hit and Duke was Emmy-nominated in 1964 (losing to Mary Tyler Moore for The Dick Van Dyke Show.)

During a hiatus from The Patty Duke Show, she starred in the tomboy teen musical Billie (becoming something of an iconic role model for young lesbians in the process), though the movie was only a moderate success at the box office. Shown with her here is costar Warren Berlinger.

After the cancellation of her TV series, Duke (now twenty) was eager to branch out into adult roles and when she took the plunge, she went off the high dive! Valley of the Dolls (1967), about a trio of female showbiz aspirants, was a high-gloss, high-camp, high-voltage assault on the (non)senses that droves of audiences enjoyed, but which critics outdid themselves lambasting!

Duke's performance as the talented, but strident, drug-addled and unpredictable, singer-actress Neely O'Hara was fascinating, yet scarcely modulated. A combative relationship with her director Mark Robson and a chilly one with veteran costar Susan Hayward, with whom she took part in not only a verbal sparring match, but a wig-pulling catfight, made the experience an unpleasant one for Duke and left her movie career in virtual shambles.

A rare feature film at this time came with the bittersweet romance Me, Natalie (1969) in which her quirky, unconventional character falls in love with an artist played by James Farentino. The role earned her a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical.

Having had to run for cover to mostly television movies and guest appearances, Duke's work was nonetheless considered award-worthy. In 1970, she won an Emmy for her portrayal of a pregnant Southern girl living with a Black militant refugee in My Sweet Charlie. Her disjointed, pause-laden acceptance speech, however, mirrored one of Neely O'Hara's bizarre meltdowns and raised many a Hollywood eyebrow. It also put co-presenter Julie Sommers in the same, "What the fuck just happened?" category that Liv Ullmann later entered when Sacheen Littlefeather came to decline Marlon Brando's Oscar for The Godfather (1972) - and that's surely the first and last time you'll ever hear Sommers and Ullmann mentioned in the same breath! Duke was thought to be drunk or on drugs, but was actually suffering the ill-effects of undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

Although Duke was still working steadily on TV (including browbeating Virginia Mayo on Night Gallery, 1971) and the occasional movie such as You'll Like My Mother (1972), her personal life was often out of control thanks to her undiagnosed condition. One example is her broken engagement to Desi Arnaz Jr. followed by a 13-day marriage to Michael Tell, including a pregnancy in which she didn't know the identity of the father! She later married John Astin, who adopted the boy Sean, who was eventually determined to be Tell's biological son. Duke and Astin divorced in 1985.

It was as Patty Duke Astin that I first knew her. Seen here on Match Game, she could bring startling electricity to her TV roles, but could also spiral into a babbling, raving personality at times on talk shows and game shows.

In 1976, Duke was won another Emmy for her work in the epic, generational miniseries Captains and the Kings (which starred Richard Jordan.) Jordan's character was inspired by Joseph Kennedy and, as his wife, Duke's character was beset by tragedies similar to that of Rose Kennedy, though the characters weren't identical.

Duke earned her place in the Disaster Movie Club when she accepted Irwin Allen's offer to partake in the all-star hot mess The Swarm (1978.) She played a (very!) pregnant waitress whose army husband is felled by the killer bees, leaving her in the kindly hands of doctor Alejandro Rey. Duke had already costarred in Allen's Fire! (1977) and would later appear in Hanging By a Thread (1979) as well, further solidifying her place in the '70 disaster stratosphere.

A bit of ingenious stunt casting led to Duke portraying Annie Sullivan this time in the 1979 telefilm The Miracle Worker. Her old role of Helen was enacted by Melissa Gilbert, shown here being introduced to (a "half-pint?" of) water. Ironically, both Duke and Gilbert would later serve as presidents of the Screen Actors Guild, Duke from 1985-1988 and Gilbert from 2001-2005.

During the 1980s, Duke performed in a plethora of TV-movies and a number of short-lived series. One that I enjoyed as a kid was It Takes Two (1982-1983) with Richard Crenna, which was created by Susan Harris, who later dreamed up The Golden Girls (1985-1993.) Having finally discovered the mental imbalance that had plagued her for many years and receiving treatment for it, Duke could busily continue acting (including returning to Broadway in 2002 as Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!) and enjoy a happy thirty-year final marriage.

Patty Duke faced almost as many challenges as her famed character Neely O'Hara, but unlike Neely she didn't end up face down in an alley. She wrote a cathartic autobiography ("Call Me Anna") and, unlike many folks who've taken part in lunatic camp spectacles such as Valley of the Dolls, developed the ability to laugh at the product and at herself, which can be a helpful form of salvation.