Patricia Neal Dead at 84

[Ray]

It has just been announced on the BBC TV news, not much information unfortunately. You have to be a pop star or model to make the headlines these days!



R.I.P. Patricia.

[didi-5]

Reunited with The Coop at last - RIP Patricia. Always remembered for Hud and Breakfast at Tiffany's, and that ridiculous Fountainhead. Weird that there was a feature on her marriage to Roald Dahl in the Telegraph only this weekend.

[will.15]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUzk-...eature=related

[Windthrop]

RIP Pat - great actress and a survivor against the odds

[wellendcanons]

A great actress and an incredible life.



Patricia.



wec

[wadsy]

A great actress. In "Hud" she was so smoulderingly sexy! R.I.P. Patricia!

[moonfleet]

deleted

[theuofc]

Here's an obit from the LA Times. Ms. Neal had amazing courage throughout her life and especially in successfully recovering from her stroke. The 1981 biopic portrayed her brave struggle to come back, The Patricia Neal Story with Glenda Jackson as Neal and Dirk Bogarde as her husband Roald Dahl.





My link



Obituary: Patricia Neal dies at 84; Oscar-winning actress



The actress, who won an Academy Award for her role in the 1963 film 'Hud,' persevered through a life that was marked by a succession of tragedies.

August 08, 2010|By Jack Jones

• American Movie Classics

Actress Patricia Neal, who rebuilt a troubled career to win an Academy Award only to face a more desperate battle for survival when three strokes left her paralyzed and unable to speak or remember, has died. She was 84.



Neal died Sunday of lung cancer at her home in Edgartown, Mass., her family said in a statement.



A succession of tragedies marked the life of the actress whose bright promise on Broadway in the mid-1940s took her to Hollywood and into a succession of lackluster films, as well as a desperate love affair with actor Gary Cooper and marriage to British writer Roald Dahl.



Her infant son's brain was damaged when his stroller was struck by a New York City taxicab, a daughter died as a result of measles and then — only a year after she finally won critical acclaim and an Oscar for her portrayal of the weary housekeeper in the 1963 film "Hud" — she suffered three strokes that appeared to end her career. With the determined help of her husband, Neal recovered sufficiently to return to films, but then lost Dahl to another woman whom she had accepted as a friend.



"I am bitter, yes," she told an interviewer in 1984, the year after she divorced Dahl. "But I keep remembering that Roald and I had some good times together … and he did so much for me after my strokes .... It was a terrible blow when I found out."



After 30 years of living in England with Dahl, she moved to a house on Martha's Vineyard and wished for more opportunities to perform. "My problem is convincing people that I'm well again and able to work," she said. "Of course, the right side of my body has been a bit of a mess since my strokes, but otherwise I'm fine."



She never really got over Cooper, the great love of her life. In her 1988 autobiography, "As I Am," she wrote, "He is one of the most beautiful things that ever happened to me in my life. I love him even now."



But Cooper remained a married man until his death, and the affair left Neal crushed.



She was born Patsy Louise Neal on Jan. 20, 1926, in a Packard, Ky., mining camp where her father was transportation manager for a coal company. In Knoxville, Tenn., where the family moved while she was in grammar school, she was precocious and showed talent in reciting monologues at church gatherings.



Her parents encouraged her, and she received dramatic coaching at 12. She performed with the Tennessee Valley Players and then studied drama at Northwestern University.

[theuofc]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QisgIkKFrk[/media]

[wellendcanons]

Thanks for the obit and the tribute Barbara.



wec

[theuofc]

name='wellendcanons' timestamp='1281345086' post='462143']

Thanks for the obit and the tribute Barbara.



wec

Hi, Wec,



Thanks for the nice words. Pat Neal was an inspiration to me. It must have been a daunting challenge, there she was half paralyzed, speech impaired (terrible for an actress known for her voice!), but she dug in and climbed that mountain.



What courage it must have taken. A message for all of us in facing Life.



Take care,



Barbara

[wellendcanons]

name='theuofc' timestamp='1281345626' post='462148']

Hi, Wec,



Thanks for the nice words. Pat Neal was an inspiration to me. It must have been a daunting challenge, there she was half paralyzed, speech impaired (terrible for an actress known for her voice!), but she dug in and climbed that mountain.



What courage it must have taken. A message for all of us in facing Life.



Take care,



Barbara

I totally agree Barbara. She was an inspiration to us all.



You take care too.



wec

[Santonix]

A fine actress and an inspirational person. R.I.P.

[seeall]

Patricia Neal, an Oscar Winner Who Endured

Tragedy, Dies at 84





FROM: The New York Times ~

By Aljean Harmetz



Patricia Neal, the molasses-voiced actress

who won an Academy Award and a Tony

but whose life alternated surreally between

triumph and tragedy, died at her home in

Edgartown, Mass., on Sunday. She was 84

and lived in Manhattan.



The death was announced by a friend,

Edward S. Albers.



In 1964 Ms. Neal received an Oscar as best

actress for her performance as the tough,

shopworn housekeeper who did not succumb

to Paul Newman's amoral charm in "Hud."

But a year later she had three strokes, leaving

her in a coma for three weeks. Although she

was semiparalyzed and unable to speak

afterward, she learned to walk and talk again.



Despite a severely impaired memory that made

it difficult to remember dialogue, she returned

to the screen in 1968 as the bitter mother who

used her son as a weapon against her husband

in the screen version of Frank Gilroy's play"

The Subject Was Roses." Once again, she was

nominated for an Academy Award.



Her career had started swiftly and brilliantly.

Before she was 21, she had swept the major

acting prizes for her Broadway debut in Lillian

Hellman's "Another Part of the Forest."

As the rapacious Regina Hubbard who could

hold her own in a family of vipers, Ms. Neal

received a Tony, a Donaldson Award and

a New York Drama Critics Award.

Her photograph was on the cover of Life

magazine.



Signed to a seven-year contract by Warner

Brothers, she went to Hollywood as the

sought-after young actress of her day. She had

talent, a husky, unforgettable voice and an

arresting presence but no training in acting in

front of a camera. Of her movie debut opposite

Ronald Reagan in the comedy "John Loves

Mary" (1949), Bosley Crowther, the movie

critic for The New York Times, wrote that she

showed "little to recommend her to further

comedy jobs" and added, "Her way with

a gag line is painful."



Yet Ms. Neal had already been assigned the

role that Barbara Stanwyck and other top

actresses coveted - the leonine Dominique

in the film adaptation of Ayn Rand's

best-selling novel "The Fountainhead" (1949).

As Dominique was swept away by the

uncompromising, godlike architect Howard

Roark, the 23-year-old actress fell passionately

in love with the 48-year-old movie star who

played Roark, Gary Cooper. Their affair

burned brightly for three years but ended

when Mr. Cooper chose not to leave his wife

and daughter.



"The Fountainhead" was a failure. Ms. Neal

saw it at a Hollywood premiere. "You knew,

from the very first reel, it was destined to be

a monumental bomb," she said. "My status

changed immediately. That was the end of

my career as a second Garbo."



Ms. Neal's next movie, "Bright Leaf"

(1950), an epic story of a 19th-century

tobacco farmer played by Mr. Cooper, was

also a failure. Ill served by Warner Brothers,

Ms. Neal acquired screen technique while

being wasted in a series of mediocre movies.

The exceptions were the screen version of

John Patrick's play "The Hasty Heart"

(1950), in which she played a nurse who tries

to comfort a dying soldier, and

"The Breaking Point"(1950), based on Ernest

Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not,"

in which she played a tramp opposite John

Garfield.



"Warners finally let me know they weren't

so keen on my staying on," Ms. Neal said

in an interview. "They didn't fire me. I took

the hint."



Ms. Neal was 27 years old and apparently

washed up in Hollywood after five years and

13 movies when Lillian Hellman insisted that

Ms. Neal star in the Broadway revival of her

play "The Children's Hour" in 1952. And it

was at Ms. Hellman's house that Ms. Neal

met a writer of macabre short stories, Roald

Dahl - the man she would marry in 1953

and who would be the father of their five

children during a troubled, 30-year marriage

that was marred by tragedy.



In 1957, Ms. Neal triumphantly returned to

the screen in Elia Kazan's "A Face in the

Crowd." Demonstrating an authority, a range

and a subtlety that she had lacked before,

she won acclaim for her portrayal of a radio

reporter who builds the career of a folksy

guitarist (played by Andy Griffith).



As the 1950s ended, she appeared to great

acclaim in "Suddenly Last Summer" in

London and "The Miracle Worker" on

Broadway then went on to even greater

screen success in "Hud" and "In Harm's

Way" with John Wayne. Riding the crest,

she signed to star in the John Ford movie

"Seven Women." But at 39 and pregnant with

her fifth child, she was struck down by the

strokes.



Patsy Lou Neal was born in the coal mining

town of Packard, Ky., on Jan. 20, 1926, to

a mine manager for the Southern Coke and

Coal Company and the daughter of the town

doctor. Ms. Neal was raised in Knoxville,

Tenn. At 10, she attended an evening of

monologues in the basement of the Methodist

church and wrote a note to Santa Claus:

"What I want for Christmas is to study

dramatics." By the time she entered high school,

Patsy Neal was giving monologues at every

Knoxville social club and had won the

Tennessee State Award for dramatic reading.



In 1942, the summer before her senior year,

she was chosen to apprentice at the

prestigious Barter Theater in Virginia. After

two years as a drama major at Northwestern

University, Ms. Neal learned that the Theater

Guild needed a tall girl to play the lead in

Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon for the

Misbegotten" and headed for New York.

Alfred de Liagre, the producer of "Voice

of the Turtle," gave her a job understudying

the two female leads and insisted that his

patrician-looking new actress should call

herself Patricia.



Success came quickly and easily. Ms. Neal

replaced Vivian Vance in the road company

of "Voice of the Turtle" and she had fourth

billing in "Bigger than Barnum,"

a Broadway-bound play that closed in

Boston. When she played a backwoods girl

who allies herself with the devil in "Devil

Takes a Whittler" in summer stock in

Westport, Conn., she was seen by Eugene

O'Neill, who became her mentor, and much

of the Broadway theater establishment.

In less than 24 hours, she had two offers

to star on Broadway. Ms. Neal turned down

Richard Rodgers' offer of the lead in "John

Loves Mary" for "Another Part of the Forest."



During her affair with Cooper, she became

pregnant. She had an abortion and according

to her 1988 autobiography, "As I Am,"

(written with Richard DeNeut), she cried herself

to sleep for 30 years afterward. "If I had only

one thing to do over in my life," she wrote,

"I would have that baby."



Desperate to have children, she married

Mr. Dahl even though, she wrote in her

autobiography, she did not then love him.

A former R.A.F. fighter pilot who later became

a renowned writer of edgy children's books

("James and the Giant Peach," "Charlie and

the Chocolate Factory"), Mr. Dahl took control

of Ms. Neal's life. After their four-month-old

son, Theo, was left brain-damaged when his

pram was crushed between a taxicab and

a bus on a New York street in December 1960,

Mr. Dahl decided that they would move

permanently to the village of Great Missenden

in England. Two years later, their eldest

daughter, Olivia, who was 7, died of measles

encephalitis, perhaps for want of sophisticated

medical care that would have been available

in a big city.



Ms. Neal survived the aneurysm because

of the knowledge Mr. Dahl had acquired

during the years when Theo had eight brain

operations. After the shunt that drained fluid

from Theo's brain kept clogging, Mr. Dahl

worked for two years with a retired engineer

and a neurosurgeon to design and manufacture

a better one, the Wade-Dahl-Till valve.



When Ms. Neal collapsed in their rented Beverly

Hills house, Mr. Dahl knew enough about her

symptoms to immediately call one of the

leading neurosurgeons in Southern California.

Fourteen days after a seven-hour operation

to stop the bleeding, the neurosurgeon told

Mr. Dahl that his wife would live. But he added,

"I'm not sure whether or not I've done her

a favor."



Mr. Dahl badgered his wife into getting well.

He nagged her into walking, held things out

of her reach until she managed to ask for

them, arranged for hours of physical and

speech therapy each day. She learned to

read again. When Ms. Neal could not

understand a Beatrix Potter book she was

reading to her son, her husband told her not

to mind because"The Tale of Pigling Bland"

was "Potter's toughest book." Six months

after her brain operation, Ms. Neal gave birth

to a healthy daughter and Mr. Dahl insisted

that the brace on which she relied be taken

off her shoes.



Early in 1967, he announced that she was

ready to perform and that she would give

a speech in New York that spring at

a charity dinner for brain-damaged children.

Terrified, Ms. Neal worked day after day to

memorize the speech, which she delivered

to thundering applause. As she wrote in her

autobiography, "I knew at that moment that

Roald the slave driver, Roald the bastard,

with his relentless scourge, Roald the Rotten,

as I had called him more than once, had

thrown me back into the deep water. Where

I belonged."



The story of Ms. Neal's illness and recovery

was made into a television movie in 1981,

with Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde

playing Pat and Roald. Two years later,

Ms. Neal and Mr. Dahl were divorced after

Ms. Neal discovered that her husband had

been having a long affair with one of her best

friends. Mr. Dahl died in 1990.



Information on survivors was not immediately

available.



In her later years, Ms. Neal put her time and

energy into raising money for brain injured

children and adults. In dozens of speaking

engagements, she demonstrated that a brain injury

was not necessarily the end of life or of joy.

"I can't see from one eye," she said in 1988.

"I've been paralyzed. I've fallen down and broken

a hip. Stubbornness gets you through the bad times.

You don't give in."

[RogerThornhill]

She was a fine actress and a very determined woman, a real fighter. All those personal tragedies would have overcome others but she kept fighting back whatever fate threw at her. I have huge admiration for her, R.I.P. Patricia, you were certainly one of a kind.

[ShirlGirl]

She was a wonderful woman with amazing strength and determination.

A special person I will always remember and admire.

[Zlatna]

Oscar-winner Patricia Neal dies at age 84; as well-known for her health battles as fine acting



Chicago Tribune







FILE - In this April 21, 2008 file photo, actress Patricia Neal is shown during an interview in Nashville, Tenn. Neal, who won an Oscar in 1964 for "Hud" and later fought back from crippling strokes, died Sunday, Aug. 8, 2010, at age 84. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File) (Mark Humphrey, AP / April 21, 2008)



By Associated Press



5:51 a.m. CDT, August 9, 2010



KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Patricia Neal, the willowy, husky-voiced actress who won an Academy Award for 1963's "Hud" and then survived several strokes to continue acting, died on Sunday. She was 84.



Neal had lung cancer and died surrounded by her family at her home in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard.



"She faced her final illness as she had all of the many trials she endured: with indomitable grace, good humor and a great deal of her self-described stubbornness," her family said in a statement.



Neal was already an award-winning Broadway actress when she won her Oscar for her role as a housekeeper to the Texas father (Melvyn Douglas) battling his selfish, amoral son (Paul Newman).



Less than two years later, she suffered a series of strokes in 1965 at age 39. Her struggle to once again walk and talk is regarded as epic in the annals of stroke rehabilitation. She returned to the screen to earn another Oscar nomination and three Emmy nominations.



The Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center that helps people recover from strokes and spinal cord and brain injuries is named for her in Knoxville, where she grew up.



"She never forgot us after she went to Hollywood," said 85-year-old Bud Albers, who graduated with Neal from Knoxville High School in 1943, and still lives in the city.



Whenever she was in town, a bunch of her friends would always get together and have dinner, Albers said. She had wanted to be there next week for a golf tournament that benefits the center, he said.



"She was so courageous," he said of her battling back from her illnesses and losing her 7-year-old daughter to measles in 1962. "She always fought back. She was very much an inspiration."



In her 1988 autobiography, "As I Am," she wrote, "Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison."



Neal projected force that almost crackled on the screen. Her forte was drama, but she had a light touch that enabled her to do comedy, too.



She had the female leads in the 1949 film version of Ayn Rand's novel "The Fountainhead," the classic 1951 science fiction film "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and Elia Kazan's 1957 drama "A Face in the Crowd."



She made a grand return to the screen after her strokes in 1968, winning an Oscar nomination for her performance in "The Subject Was Roses."



In 1971, she played Olivia Walton in "The Homecoming: A Christmas Story," a made-for-TV film that served as the pilot for the CBS series "The Waltons." It brought her the first of her three Emmy nominations.



"You can't give up," she said in a 1999 Associated Press interview. "You sure want to, sometimes."



In 1953, she married Roald Dahl, the British writer famed for "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," ''James and the Giant Peach" and other tales for children. They had five children. They divorced in 1983 after she learned he was having an affair with her best friend and he died in 1990.



Even before her illnesses, her life often was touched by misfortune. Besides her daughter's death, an infant son nearly died in 1960 when his carriage was struck by a taxi.



Neal also suffered a nervous breakdown, and had an ill-fated affair with Gary Cooper, who starred with her in "The Fountainhead."



"I lived this secret life for several years. I was so ashamed," she told The New York Times in 1964.



The strokes at first paralyzed her and impaired her speech. After recovering, she limped and had bad vision in one eye. A 1991 biopic about her travails starred Glenda Jackson as Neal.



Her family said her dedication to the rehab center and advocacy for stroke sufferers was a great source of hope for them and their families and a "constant inspiration to our family."



In 1999, she starred in her first feature film in 10 years in the title role in Robert Altman's "Cookie's Fortune."



She said at the time that movie offers had been scarce in recent years.



"I don't quite understand it, but nobody calls me and nobody wants me. But I love to act."Neal was born in a mining camp in Packard, Ky., the daughter of a transportation manager for the South Coal & Coke Co. After leaving Knoxville, she attended Northwestern University and then struck out for Broadway.



Her Broadway credits included "A Roomful of Roses," ''The Miracle Worker" (as Helen Keller's mother, Kate) and a revival of Lillian Hellman's drama "The Children's Hour."



She made her screen debut in 1949's "John Loves Mary," that also starred Jack Carson and Ronald Reagan.



Her three Emmy nominations were all for roles in notable drama specials: Besides "The Homecoming," they were "Tail Gunner Joe," a 1977 drama about Sen. Joe McCarthy, and a version of the tragic World War I story "All Quiet on the Western Front."



Among Neal's children is Tessa Dahl, who followed in her father's footsteps as a writer. Tessa Dahl's daughter is the model and writer Sophie Dahl.



Friends said her sorrows gave her an inner toughness that brought new power to her screen roles.



"I don't lie down. ... I'm fightin' all the way," she said in 1999.



The statement from Tessa, Theo, Ophelia and Lucy Dahl and others said that the night before her death, Neal told them, "I've had a lovely time."



___



Associated Press Writer Carol Druga in Atlanta contributed to this report.







Wonderful actress.....

[John Llewellyn Moxey]

A remarkable and talented lady. I consider myself lucky to have spent time with her.



Rest In Peace



John

[smudge]

An incredible lady whose struggle achieved so much for her personally and for so many others since.



Respect,



Smudge

[Marky B]

Patricia Neal RIP

Mark