Patty Duke
Patty Duke on The Patty Duke Show, 1965.
Born	Anna Marie Duke (1946-12-14) December 14, 1946 (age 65) Elmhurst, Queens, New York, United States
Other names	Patty Duke Astin Anna Duke-Pearce
Occupation	Actress, author, mental health advocate
Years active	1956–present
Spouse	Harry Falk (m. 1965–1969) «start: (1965)–end+1: (1970)»"Marriage: Harry Falk to Patty Duke" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Patty_Duke) Michael Tell (m. 1970–1970) «start: (1970)–end+1: (1971)»"Marriage: Michael Tell to Patty Duke" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Patty_Duke) John Astin (m. 1972–1985) «start: (1972)–end+1: (1986)»"Marriage: John Astin to Patty Duke" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Patty_Duke) Michael Pearce (m. 1986) «start: (1986)»"Marriage: Michael Pearce to Patty Duke" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Patty_Duke)
Website
http://www.officialpattyduke.com/

Anna Marie "Patty" Duke (born December 14, 1946) is an American actress of stage, film, and television. First becoming famous as a child star, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 16, and later starring in her eponymous sitcom for three years, she progressed to more mature roles upon playing Neely O'Hara in the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls. She was later elected president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1985 to 1988.

Duke was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982; since then she has devoted much of her time to advocating and educating the public on mental health issues.

In 1996, Patty Duke was ranked #40 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.^[1]

Early life[link]

Duke was born in Elmhurst, Queens, New York, the daughter of Frances (née McMahon), a cashier, and John Patrick Duke, a handyman and cab driver.^[2][3] Her father was Irish American and her maternal grandmother was German.^[3]

Duke and her older brother Raymond experienced a childhood of hard times. Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother suffered from clinical depression and was prone to violence. When Duke was 6, her mother threw her father out; when she was 8, her mother turned Duke's care over to John and Ethel Ross, who became her managers. The Rosses recognized her talent and promoted her as a child actress.^[4]

The Rosses' methods were often unscrupulous and exploitive; they consistently billed Duke as two years younger than she was, and padded her resume with some false credits.^[5] It was Ethel Ross who gave the sweeping name-change order, "Anna Marie is dead, you are Patty now," hoping the change in her first name would allow her to duplicate the success of child actress Patty McCormack.^[6] This act would have painful repercussions for Duke in the decades to come.^[6]

Career[link]

Acting[link]

1950s - 1990s[link]

Duke in 1959.

One of Duke's first acting jobs was on the soap opera The Brighter Day, in the late 1950s. She also appeared in print ads and in television commercials. At the age of twelve, Duke appeared on The $64,000 Question and won $32,000. Three years later, it was revealed that the game show was rigged and she was called to testify before a congressional panel.^[7]

Duke's first major starring role was playing Helen Keller (with Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan) in the Broadway play The Miracle Worker, which ran for nearly two years (October, 1959 – July, 1961). Midway through the production-run, her name was placed above the title on the marquee. The play was subsequently made into a 1962 film, for which Duke received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. At 16, Duke was the youngest person at that time to receive an Academy Award in a competitive category.

In 1961, Duke returned to television in her teenage years, starring with Laurence Olivier and George C. Scott in a television production of The Power and the Glory.

Two years later, in 1963, Duke was given her own series titled The Patty Duke Show, in which she played both main characters: Patty Lane, an American teenager occasionally getting into minor trouble in school and at home, and her 'prim and proper' "identical cousin" from Scotland, Cathy Lane. The show featured co-stars William Schallert as Patty Lane's father, Jean Byron as her mother, Paul O'Keefe as her brother and Eddie Applegate as her boyfriend, Richard, as well as featuring such high-profile guest stars as Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Paul Lynde, and Sal Mineo. The series lasted for three seasons and earned Duke an Emmy Award nomination.

Duke with musician Jeremy Clyde on The Patty Duke Show.

Despite the success of her career, Duke was deeply unhappy during her teenage years. Efforts were taken by the Rosses to portray her as a normal teenager, but Duke later indicated in her memoirs that she was their virtual prisoner and had little control over her own life and earnings. The Rosses kept control over Duke and her mother by allowing them only a small amount of money to survive on. The Rosses also began providing Duke with alcohol and prescription drugs when she was 13, which, along with her undiagnosed bipolar disorder, contributed to substance abuse problems she experienced throughout her young adult life. As an adult, Duke accused both John and Ethel Ross of sexual abuse. Upon turning 18, Duke legally became free of the Rosses, only to find that they had squandered most of her earnings.

In 1967, with The Patty Duke Show cancelled, Duke attempted to leave her childhood success behind and begin her adult acting career by playing Neely O'Hara in Valley of the Dolls. The film was a box office success, but audiences and critics had a difficult time accepting all-American-teenager Duke as an alcoholic, drug-addicted singing star. While the film has since become a camp classic—thanks in large part to Duke's over-the-top performance^{[3][page needed]}--it almost ruined her career at the time.

Duke starred in Me, Natalie, a 1969 film in which she played an "ugly duckling" Brooklyn teenager struggling to make a life for herself in the Bohemian world in Greenwich Village. One of her co-stars was a young actor making his screen debut, Al Pacino. The film was a failure at the box office, but Duke won the Golden Globe for Best Actress (Musical or Comedy) for the role.

Duke returned to television in 1970, starring in a made-for-TV movie, My Sweet Charlie. Her sensitive portrayal of a pregnant teenager on the run won Duke her first Emmy Award, but her acceptance speech was rambling, angry, and disjointed, and led many in the industry to believe she was using drugs. In fact, Duke was in the throes of a manic phase as part of her then-undiagnosed bipolar disorder, which would remain undiagnosed until 1982.^[3]

Duke worked primarily in television from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. She received her second Emmy for the TV miniseries Captains and the Kings in 1977, and her third in 1980 for a TV version of her 1979 stage revival of The Miracle Worker, this time playing Annie Sullivan to Melissa Gilbert's Helen Keller. Her turns in the made-for-TV movies The Women's Room (1980) and George Washington (1984) both garnered her Emmy nominations.

In 1982, Duke was cast alongside Richard Crenna in the ABC sitcom It Takes Two, from Soap and Benson creator Susan Harris. The socially topical series depicted Duke and Crenna's characters as a modern career couple (she a lawyer, he a surgeon) and the moral and personal challenges that abounded from their professions. Helen Hunt and Anthony Edwards played their teenaged children. Although It Takes Two was praised, ABC canceled the series after one season due to low ratings.

Duke would subsequently work with Susan Harris on a new ABC series, Hail to the Chief, which premiered in April 1985. She played the first female President of the United States in the ensemble, all-star series (the cast featured Dick Shawn, Herschel Bernardi, Glynn Turman and Ted Bessell as Duke's husband, among others), and the material was topical yet off-the-wall, much in the fashion of Soap. Hail to the Chief was even less successful than the star and producer's previous effort of It Takes Two, and was canceled after seven episodes. In 1987, Duke returned to series television in another short-lived comedy, Karen's Song, which aired on the fledgling Fox network.

While between series in 1986, Duke starred in the made-for-TV movie A Time to Triumph, the true story of Concetta Hassan, a middle-aged woman struggling to support her family after her construction worker husband suffers an on-the-job injury, eventually becoming a United States Army helicopter pilot. On-set, Duke became good friends with Army drill sergeant Michael Pearce, who was a technical advisor for the production; the couple married on March 15, 1986.

Duke became the second woman (actress Kathleen Nolan was the first) to be elected as President of the Screen Actors Guild in 1985, and would hold the post until 1988.

In 1990, Duke's autobiography, Call Me Anna, was adapted for television; she played herself from her mid-30s onward.

Though Duke's primary medium from the late-70s to the mid-2000s was television, she continued to take small roles in movies. Her 1982 portrayal of a lesbian fashion designer in the Canadian film By Design garnered her a Genie Award nomination for Best Foreign Actress. Duke would later portray the mother of Meg Ryan's character in the 1992 film adaptation of the play Prelude to a Kiss. Her appearances in 3 episodes of Touched by an Angel resulted in a nomination in 1999 for an Emmy Award.

2000s[link]

Duke gradually reduced her work schedule throughout the first decade of 2000, but took occasional TV and film roles. She returned to the New York stage in 2002, playing Aunt Eller in a revival of Oklahoma!. She returned to New York in 2005, but not for any role; she instead attended a memorial for Anne Bancroft, who had died from uterine cancer.

On November 2, 2004, Duke announced that she would undergo single cardiac bypass surgery in Idaho. The surgery was successful.

On October 4, 2007, Duke appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, talking about her bipolar disorder to a guest, advising the guest to seek out a support group.

In early 2009, Duke reprised her role(s) as Patty Lane and Cathy Lane in PSAs about retiring for The Social Security Administration.^[8][9]

On March 24, 2009, she replaced Carol Kane as Madame Morrible in the San Francisco production of the musical Wicked. She left the production on February 7, 2010.

On July 20, 2009, Duke was given a tribute in her honor at The Castro Theatre in San Francisco titled "Sparkle, Patty, Sparkle!" During the evening, Duke met and posed for pictures with over one thousand fans and was interviewed on stage by comic Bruce Vilanch. In addition to showing clips from her long career, Duke's 1967 film Valley of the Dolls was screened at the end of the evening. The event sold out the 1400 seat theater.

In 2010, Duke recorded a series of PSAs for the Social Security Administration to help promote applying online for Medicare, including one with George Takei.

In May 2011, Duke directed the stage version of The Miracle Worker at Interplayers Theatre in Spokane, Washington.^[10]

In June 2011, TVLine announced Duke will be joining the cast in Lifetime’s drama The Protector playing the role of Beverly, the mother of Ally Walker’s titular homicide detective. The series was cancelled not long after this announcement was made.

She played the mother of a murdered deep-sea diver on the Oct. 10, 2011, episode of Hawaii Five-0.

Singing[link]

Duke had a successful singing career, including two Top 40 hits in 1965, "Don't Just Stand There" (#8) and "Say Something Funny" (#22).^[11] Another recording was "Dona Dona" in 1968, which she performed as the second song on The Ed Sullivan Show. Also during 1968, she had appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and after George Jessel's comic appearance, she was introduced and sang an old Irish song, "Danny Boy". She also sang songs on such shows as Shindig!, Kraft Music Hall, The Mike Douglas Show, and The Merv Griffin Show. She sang in the 1965 feature film Billie and sang on the soundtrack of the 1966 feature film, The Daydreamer, in which she voiced the character of Thumbelina. She has recorded a string of six LP's in her musical career.

Mental health advocacy[link]

In 1987, Duke revealed in her autobiography that she was diagnosed with manic depression (now called bipolar disorder) in 1982. Her treatment, which included lithium as a medication and therapy, stabilized Duke's life and put her on the road to recovery. She became the first celebrity to go public with her bipolar disorder diagnosis, and has contributed to de-stigmatizing bipolar disorder. Duke has since become an activist for numerous mental health causes. She has lobbied the United States Congress and joined forces with the National Institute of Mental Health and National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in order to increase awareness, funding, and research for people with mental illness.^[3]

Patty Duke's character in the 2011 series The Protector is shown struggling with accepting her bipolar disorder, mimicking her real life condition.

Public service announcements[link]

As of early 2011, Duke appears in PSAs promoting the Social Security Website. In several, she appears as Patty & Cathy using split-screen effects. In others, she appears with George Takei wearing a Star Trek-like costume.^[12]

Other achievements[link]

Duke is the author of two books: Her autobiography, Call Me Anna (ISBN 0-553-27205-5), and Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive Illness (ISBN 0-553-56072-7).

On August 17, 2004, Duke received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to the motion picture industry.

In December 2007, Duke was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of North Florida for her work in advancing awareness of mental health issues.^[13]

On March 6, 2010, Duke was awarded the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life[link]

In 1965, Duke married her first husband, director Harry Falk, who was 13 years her senior. During their marriage, she was constantly having mood swings, a symptom of bipolar disorder, and like many bipolar sufferers, she self-medicated; she drank heavily, became anorexic, and overdosed on pills a number of times.^[4] The couple separated in 1969 and were divorced on March 3, 1970.

In early 1970, at the age of 23, Duke had an affair with 17-year old Desi Arnaz, Jr..^[4] The couple's relationship became tabloid fodder, due in part to the vocal and public opposition of Arnaz's mother, Lucille Ball. By late spring, Duke and Arnaz had broken off their relationship, and she began dating actor John Astin, who was 16 years her senior. Around the same time, Duke developed an intimate relationship with rock promoter Michael Tell. In June 1970, in the midst of a manic phase, Duke learned she was pregnant. Unsure whether Arnaz^{[3][page needed]} or Astin^[4] was the father of her unborn child, Duke married Michael Tell on June 26, 1970 in order to "give (her child) a name". Their marriage lasted 13 days before ending in an annulment on July 9, 1970;^[4] Duke claimed the marriage was never consummated.^{[3][page needed]} Her son, actor Sean Astin, was born on February 25, 1971. Though Duke said in her 1987 autobiography that John Astin was Sean's biological father, she later stated that she had always believed that Desi Arnaz, Jr. was Sean's actual biological father.^{[3][page needed]} It turned out that neither statement was correct; in 1994, Sean Astin underwent biological testing to determine his paternity, and the results showed that Astin's father is actually Michael Tell.^[14][15]

Duke and John Astin were married in August 1972. Astin adopted Sean, and the couple had another son, actor Mackenzie, in 1973. Duke and Astin worked together extensively during their marriage, and she took his name professionally, becoming "Patty Duke Astin". The couple divorced in 1985.

Duke married her fourth husband, drill sergeant Michael Pearce, in 1986. The couple moved to Hayden, Idaho, and adopted a son, Kevin, who was born in 1988. Pearce became a firefighter. Since her marriage to Pearce, Duke occasionally uses the name "Anna Duke-Pearce" in her writings and other professional work.

Duke has three granddaughters by her son Sean: Actress Alexandra Astin (who played Elanor Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, opposite her father, who played Samwise Gamgee), Elizabeth Astin, and Isabella Astin.

Filmography[link]