Patricia Neal [1] was an American actress of stage and screen died of lung cancer.she was , 84. She was best known for her roles as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and middle-aged housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud (1963), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. (January 20, 1926 – August 8, 2010) |
Early life
Neal was born Patsy Louise Neal, in Packard, Whitley County, Kentucky, to William Burdette and Eura Petrey Neal.[2][3] She grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she attended Knoxville High School,[4] and studied drama at Northwestern University. In later years, she became Catholic.
Career
After moving to New York, she accepted her first job as understudy in the Broadway production of The Voice of the Turtle. Next she appeared in Another Part of the Forest (1946), winning a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play, in the first presentation of the Tony awards.[2]
In 1949, Neal made her film debut in John Loves Mary. Her appearance the same year in The Fountainhead coincided with her on-going affair with her married co-star, Gary Cooper. By 1952, Neal had starred in The Breaking Point, The Day the Earth Stood Still and Operation Pacific. She suffered a nervous breakdown around this time, following the end of her relationship with Cooper, and left Hollywood for New York, returning to Broadway in a revival of The Children's Hour, in 1952. She also acted in A Roomful of Roses in 1955 and as the mother in The Miracle Worker in 1959. In films, she starred in A Face in the Crowd (1957) and co-starred in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).
In 1963, Neal won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Hud, co-starring with Paul Newman. When the film was initially released it was predicted she would be a nominee in the supporting actress category, but when she began collecting awards, they were always for Best Leading Actress, from the New York Film Critics, the National Board of Review and a BAFTA award from the British Academy. Three years later, in 1965, she was reunited with John Wayne in Otto Preminger's In Harm's Way winning her second BAFTA Award.
Neal was offered the role of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), but turned it down, feeling it came too soon after her three 1965 strokes. She returned to the big screen in The Subject Was Roses (1968), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.
She later starred as Olivia Walton in the television movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), which was the pilot episode for The Waltons. Although she won a Golden Globe for her performance, she was not invited to reprise the role in the television series; the part went to Michael Learned. (In a 1999 interview with the Archive of American Television, Waltons creator Earl Hamner said he and producers were unsure if Neal's health would allow her to commit to the grind of a weekly television series.) Neal played a dying widowed mother trying to find a home for her three children in a moving 1975 episode of NBC's Little House on the Prairie.
In 1978, Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center in Knoxville dedicated the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center in her honor. The center serves as part of Neal's advocacy for paralysis victims. She appeared in Center advertisements throughout 2006.
In 2007, Neal worked on Silvana Vienne's innovative critically-acclaimed art movie Beyond Baklava: The Fairy Tale Story of Sylvia's Baklava, appearing as herself in the portions of the documentary talking about alternative ways to end violence in the world. Also in 2007, Neal received one of two annually-presented Lifetime Achievement Awards at the SunDeis Film Festival in Waltham, Massachusetts. (Academy Award nominee Roy Scheider was the recipient of the other.)
She often appeared on the Tony Awards telecast, possibly because she was the last surviving winner from the first ceremony. Her original Tony was lost, so she was given a replacement by Bill Irwin when they presented the Best Actress Award to Cynthia Nixon in 2006.
In April 2009, Neal received a lifetime achievement award from WorldFest Houston on the occasion of the debut of her film, Flying By. Neal was a long-term actress with Philip Langner's Theatre at Sea/Sail With the Stars productions with the Theatre Guild.
Personal life
During the filming of The Fountainhead (1949), Neal had an affair with her married co-star, Gary Cooper, whom she had met in 1947 when she was 21 and he was 46. By 1950, Cooper's wife, Veronica, had found out about the relationship and sent Neal a telegram demanding they end it. Neal became pregnant by Cooper, but he persuaded her to have an abortion.[5] Shortly after the abortion Cooper punched Neal in the face after he caught Kirk Douglas trying to seduce her.[6]
The affair ended, but not before Cooper's daughter, Maria (now Maria Cooper Janis, born 1937), spat at Neal in public.[7] Years after Cooper's death, Maria and her mother Veronica reconciled with Neal.
Neal met British writer Roald Dahl at a dinner party hosted by Lillian Hellman in 1951. They married on July 2, 1953, at Trinity Church in New York. The marriage produced five children:[2] Olivia Twenty (April 20, 1955 – November 17, 1962); Chantal Tessa Sophia (b. 1957); Theo Matthew (b. 1960); Ophelia Magdalena (b.1964); and Lucy Neal (b. 1965). Her granddaughter Sophie Dahl is a noted actress and model.
In the early 1960s the couple suffered through grievous injury to one child and the death of another. On December 5, 1960, their son Theo, four months old, suffered brain damage when his baby carriage was struck by a taxicab in New York City. On November 17, 1962, their daughter, Olivia, died at age 7 from measles encephalitis.
While pregnant in 1965, Neal suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms, and was in a coma for three weeks. Dahl directed her rehabilitation and she subsequently relearned to walk and talk ("I think I'm just stubborn, that's all"). On August 4, 1965, she gave birth to a healthy daughter, Lucy.
Neal and Dahl's 30-year marriage ended in divorce in 1983 after Dahl's affair with Neal's friend, Felicity Crosland.[8]
Neal's autobiography, As I Am, was published in 1988. In 1981, Glenda Jackson played her in a television movie, The Patricia Neal Story which co-starred Dirk Bogarde as Neal's husband Roald Dahl.
Death
Neal died at her home in Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, August 8, 2010, of lung cancer at age 84.[1] She had converted to Catholicism four months before her death and was laid to rest in the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut[9].
Filmography
Film
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 | John Loves Mary | Mary McKinley | |
| The Fountainhead | Dominique Francon | ||
| It's a Great Feeling | Herself | cameo | |
| The Hasty Heart | Sister Parker | ||
| 1950 | Bright Leaf | Margaret Jane Singleton | |
| The Breaking Point | Leona Charles | ||
| Three Secrets | Phyllis Horn | ||
| 1951 | Operation Pacific | Lt. (j.g.) Mary Stuart | |
| Raton Pass | Ann Challon | ||
| The Day the Earth Stood Still | Helen Benson | ||
| Week-End with Father | Jean Bowen | ||
| 1952 | Diplomatic Courier | Joan Ross | |
| Washington Story | Alice Kingsley | ||
| Something for the Birds | Anne Richards | ||
| 1954 | Your Woman | Contessa Germana de Torri | |
| Stranger from Venus | Susan North | ||
| 1957 | A Face in the Crowd | Marcia Jeffries | |
| 1961 | Breakfast at Tiffany's | 2-E (Mrs. Failenson) | |
| 1963 | Hud | Alma Brown | Academy Award for Best Actress BAFTA Award National Board of Review Award New York Film Critics Nominated – Golden Globe |
| 1964 | Psyche '59 | Alison Crawford | |
| 1965 | In Harm's Way | Lt. Maggie Haynes | BAFTA Award |
| 1968 | Pat Neal Is Back | Herself | short subject |
| The Subject Was Roses | Nettie Cleary | Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actress | |
| 1971 | The Night Digger | Maura Prince | |
| 1973 | Baxter! | Dr. Roberta Clemm | |
| Happy Mother's Day, Love George | Cara | ||
| 1974 | "Kung-Fu; Blood of the Dragon" | Sarah | TV 2-part episode |
| 1975 | B Must Die | Julia | |
| 1977 | Widow's Nest | Lupe | |
| 1979 | The Passage | Mrs. Bergson | |
| 1979 | All Quiet on the Western Front | Paul's Mother | |
| 1981 | Ghost Story | Stella Hawthorne | |
| 1989 | An Unremarkable Life | Frances McEllany | |
| 1991 | Preminger: Anatomy of a Filmmaker | Herself | documentary |
| 1993 | "Heidi" | Grandmother | |
| 1999 | Cookie's Fortune | Jewel Mae 'Cookie' Orcutt | |
| From Russia to Hollywood: The 100-Year Odyssey of Chekhov and Shdanoff | Herself | documentary | |
| 2000 | For the Love of May | Grammy May | short subject |
| 2003 | Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There | Herself | documentary |
| Bright Leaves | Herself | documentary | |
| 2007 | The Fairy Tale Story of Sylvia's Baklava | Herself | documentary feature film |
| 2008 | Shattered Glory | Mrs. Wyatt | |
| 2009 | Flying By | Margie |
Television
- Strindberg on Love (1960)
- Special for Women: Mother and Daughter (1961)
- The Untouchables: The Maggie Storm Story(1962)
- ESPIONAGE ---- The Weakling (1963)
- The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971)
- Ghost Story: Time of Terror (1973)
- Things in Their Season (1974)
- Eric (1975)
- Little House on the Prairie (1975)
- Tail Gunner Joe (1977)
- A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story (1978)
- The Bastard (1978) (miniseries)
- All Quiet on the Western Front (1979)
- The Patricia Neal Story (1981) (cameo)
- Love Leads the Way: A True Story (1984)
- Glitter (1984) (pilot for series)
- Shattered Vows (1984)
- Caroline? (1990)
- A Mother's Right: The Elizabeth Morgan Story (1992)
- Heidi (1993)
Bibliography
- Encyclopedia of Kentucky. New York, New York: Somerset Publishers. 1987. pp. 182–183. ISBN 0403099811.
- Neal, Patricia (1988). As I Am: An Autobiography. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671625012.
- Shearer, Stephen Michael (2006). Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813123917.
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