| Patricia Neal | |
|---|---|
in The Fountainhead (1949) |
|
| Born | January 20, 1926 Packard, Kentucky, United States |
| Died | August 8, 2010 (aged 84)[1] Edgartown, Massachusetts, United States |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1946–2010 |
| Spouse | Roald Dahl (m.1953–1983) |
| Partner | Gary Cooper |
| Children | Olivia Dahl, born on April 20, 1955, died on November 17, 1962 (aged 7) Tessa Dahl, born on April 11, 1957 Theo Dahl, born on July 30, 1960 Ophelia Dahl, born on May 12, 1964 Lucy Dahl, born on August 4, 1965 |
Patricia Neal (January 20, 1926 – August 8, 2010)[1] was an American actress of stage and screen. She was best known for her film 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), middle-aged housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud (1963), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and her TV role as Olivia Walton in the 1971 made-for-television film The Homecoming, A Christmas Story.
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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.
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 the 1947 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, in the first ever presentation of the Tony awards.[2]
In 1949, Neal made her film debut in John Loves Mary. That year, Ronald Reagan was her co-star in The Hasty Heart. 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 with John Garfield in The Breaking Point, The Day the Earth Stood Still with Michael Rennie and Operation Pacific, starring John Wayne. 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 of Film and Television Arts.
Neal was reunited with John Wayne in Otto Preminger's In Harm's Way (1965), winning her second BAFTA Award. Her health took another turn in 1965, when she suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms during pregnancy, and was in a coma for three weeks. She was offered the role of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), but turned it down, feeling she had not recovered enough.
Neal worked sparingly in the following years. She returned to the big screen in The Subject Was Roses (1968), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She starred as Olivia Walton in the television movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), which was the pilot episode for The Waltons. Her health issues did not get in the way of another strong performance, with Neal winning a Golden Globe for her performance. 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 the weekly television series, which clarifies why she was not invited to reprise the role in the series (the part went to Michael Learned). 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 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.)
Having won a Tony Award in their inaugural year (1947) and eventually becoming the last surviving winner from that first ceremony, Neal often appeared as a presenter in later years. Her original Tony was lost, so she was given a surprise replacement by Bill Irwin when they were about to present the 2006 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play to Cynthia Nixon. 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. In her final years she would appear in a number of health-care videos, including The Healing Influence.[5]
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.[6] At one point in their relationship, Cooper slapped Neal in the face after he caught Kirk Douglas trying to seduce her.[7]
The affair ended, but not before Cooper's daughter, Maria (now Maria Cooper Janis, born 1937), spat at Neal in public.[8] 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 author 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.[9]
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 turbulent marriage ended in divorce in 1983 after Dahl's affair with Neal's friend, Felicity Crosland (Dahl married Crosland that same year).[10] 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. Neal's autobiography, As I Am, was published in 1988. In later years, Neal became Roman Catholic.[11]
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.
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[12] where her friend the early 1960s actress Dolores Hart had become a nun and ultimately prioress. Neal had been a long time supporter of the abbey's open air theatre and arts program.
| 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 UK title: The Road Builder | 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 |