Born December 14, 1946, Anna Marie Duke was the youngest of three children of a cashier and her husband, a handyman and cab driver. When she was 8 years old, her mother threw her alcoholic father out of the house and turned Anna over to talent managers John and Ethel Ross who were looking for a girl to add to their stable of child actors. The Rosses abused and exploited her, shaving two years off her age and changing her name to “Patty” in hopes of duplicating the success of child actress Patty McCormack, a sensation in The Bad Seed.

Duke appeared in several films as a child actress, most notably 1958’s The Goddess. In 1959 she landed the role of Helen Keller in the Broadway version of The Miracle Worker opposite Anne Bancroft as her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Ironically it was Patty McCormack who originated the role on TV opposite Teresa Wright. Overnight Duke became a bigger star than the one she was named after. The 1962 film version would bring her an Oscar, making her at 16 the youngest competitive award recipient to date. The following year she became a TV star playing look-alike cousins on The Patty Duke Show. The show was a hit, lasting three seasons. She earned the first of her 11 Emmy nominations the first season.

Emancipated at 18, she discovered the Rosses had squandered most of her earnings in violation of the Coogan law. She married director Harry Falk in 1965 and had success on the big screen in that year with Billie. She also embarked on a successful recording career that lasted four years. In 1967, wanting to change her image, she starred in the successful, but critically panned Valley of the Dolls. Divorced from Falk in 1969, that year’s Me, Natalie won her a Golden Globe, but the film was not successful and her screen career was virtually ended, with only one more starring role ahead of her, 1972’s You’ll Like My Mother. TV would be her salvation.

The actress won an Emmy for 1970’s My Sweet Charlie and made headlines off-screen, rebounding from an affair with 17-year-old Desi Arnaz, Jr. when she was 23 to a relationship with actor John Astin and a 13 day marriage to music promotor Michael Tell. Son Sean was born in February, 1971. She married Astin in 1972 and he adopted the baby Duke thought was either his or Arnaz’s. A 1994 DNA test revealed Tell was the father. Second son Mackenzie Astin was born in 1973. They would divorce in 1985.

Duke continued to act on TV, winning a second Emmy for 1976’s Captains and the Kings and a third for 1979’s The Miracle Worker in which she played Annie Sullivan to Melissa Gilbert’s Helen Keller. In 1982 she was diagnosed with manic depressive illness (now called bipolar disorder). From 1985 to 1988 she was president of the Screen Actors Guild. In 1986 she met and married fourth husband Michael Pearce, an Army drill sergeant and consultant on a TV movie in which she played a helicopter pilot. They adopted a son in 1989 and would remain married until her death.

Duke’s later career included the TV movies Call Me Anna as herself, Always Remember I Love You and Harvest of Fire as well as guest appearances on numerous TV series.

Patty Duke died of sepsis from a burst intestine on March 29, 2016. She was 69.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE MIRACLE WORKER (1962), directed by Arthur Penn

William Gibson’s play first saw the light of day as a 1957 production of Playhouse 90 with Teresa Wright as Annie Sullivan, Patty McCormack as Helen Keller and Katharine Bard and Burl Ives as her parents. Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke made Annie and Helen their own in the 1959 Broadway version with Patricia Neal and Torin Thatcher as the parents. Bancroft and Duke won Oscars for the film version with Inga Swenson and Victor Jory as the parents. This remains the most moving of all the various versions before and after with Bancroft and Duke forming one of the screen’s greatest duos.

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967), directed by Mark Robson

Jacqueline Susann’s novel was trash. Helen Duetsch’s screenplay didn’t improve things and the acting, particularly of Patty Duke in her first grownup role was abysmal, yet there was something about the torrid affair that struck a chord with audiences that have made it a camp classic. Duke plays a foul-mouthed, pill-swallowing, booze-addicted, speech-slurring, tantrum-throwing prima donna in the film’s key role with Sharon Tate and Barbara Parkins as her contemporaries and Susan Hayward as the old pro Duke pulls the wig off of and throws down the toilet. Duke’s career, at the time, seemed to be going down the toilet as well.

ME, NATALIE (1969), directed by Fred Coe

Duke abounded with the critics, if not at the box-office with her heartfelt portrayal of an ugly duckling from Brooklyn trying to find herself in the Greenwich Village of the 1960s. James Farentino, Martin Balsam, Elsa Lanchester, Salome Jens and Nancy Marchand co-starred with Al Pacino in a brief but unforgettable role in his film debut. Duke’s performance earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy at a time when she needed all the encouragement she could get. Sadly, the Globe win didn’t lead to an Oscar nomination and her starring career in films hurtled to a premature end.

MY SWEET CHARLIE (1970), directed by Lamont Johnson

Duke had great success on TV not just with with The Patty Duke Show, but in mde for TV movies and in guest appearances on numerous shows as well as a few later failed series. She received a total of 11 Emmy nominations and 3 Emmys for her work, winning her first for this moving portrait of a pregnant teenager and a black lawyer (Al Freeman, Jr.) on the run in Texas. Basically a two character study, both Duke and Freeman turn in fine performances. The film premiered on TV in January, 1970 and a month later opened theatrically in the U.S., one of very few films to ever have that distinction.

CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS (1976), directed by Douglas Heyes, Allen Resiner

Duke’s finest TV performance was in this richly detailed nine part mini-series in which she played an unloved wife and mother driven to alcohol and madness. Richard Jordan, in his greatest role, won a Golden Globe as the Irish immigrant who rises to wealth and power, but it was Duke who won an Emmy, her second, for her amazing portrayal of his wife. There were good performances, too, from Perry King as their son, Blair Brown, Charles Durning and Jane Seymour among others, but it is the star performances of Jordan and Duke that keep you enthralled. Duke would excel in many other TV performances but this was her at her zenith.

PATTY DUKE AND OSCAR

• The Miracle Worker (1962) – Oscar