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1926-2010
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Remembering a chat
with the Oscar-winner
of TheColumnists.com
Even after a series
of strokes Patricia Neal remained quite a life force. Just a
few weeks ago, that life force finally winked out at age 84 after
a battle with lung cancer.
But I clearly remember how she was on that day I talked with
her as we sat on a park bench in a downtown Toronto parkette
interviewing the Oscar winner in the last days of summer, 1973.
She looked wan and wistful up close, hardly the dazzler of her
long ago Warner days or even the older seductress in "Breakfast
At Tiffany’s".
She was in town to promote a little seen Canadian movie "Happy
Mother’s Day, Love, George," directed by TV actor Darren
McGavin, co-starring Ronnie Howard as her son, Cloris Leachman
and Neal’s own daughter, Tess Dahl, in a small part.
“Everyone wants the story,” she sighed meaningfully.
She meant the story of how she’d survived multiple brain
aneurisms in 1965–her condition was so serious Variety ran
her obit by mistake.
“But I survived. I’m still here. Well, parts of
me, that is.”
She looked out at the passing traffic and sipped her hot tea.
“The thing is I want to work. Oh, how I’d love to
rerurn to Broadway, but I can’t be sure that up there on
that stage I could remember all the lines.”
I asked her about her wonderful turn as Olivia Walton in the
TV movie "The Happening." She’d been memorable,
one of the key reasons this 1971 CBS TV movie had surged to the
Top 10 that week.
But When CBS bought the project for a continuing series--"The
Waltons"--Neal and Andrew Duggan (her co-star) were quietly
replaced by the much younger Michael Learned and Ralph Waite.
CBS sources whispered the network wasn’t convinced Neal
could deliver on a weekly basis.
“I could have,” Neal muttered with some bitterness.
“I would have.”
She had started out so promisingly, a 22-year-old who was a smash
in her first Broadway play, Lillian Hellman’s prequel to
"The Little Foxes"--"Another Part of the Forest."
She’d jumped from Packard, Kentucky, to Broadway with seeming
ease and won a coveted Tony.
Then Warners offered her a star contract and she headed west
to co-star with Ronald Reagan in the comedy "John Loves
Mary". Nina Foch had played the part on Broadway.
“He was not a good actor," she said of Reagan,
"but he was charming, so full of himself, sheer delight
to know." (When we talked Reagan had yet to be elected
U.S. president.)
Neal didn’t think she was much in that film and she said in subsequent roles, “I really lost it. That Jack Warner! He blabbed that Eleanor Parker, Ruth Roman and I were the new WB stars and we were going to make audiences forget Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck. It didn’t exactly turn out that way.”
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romances Gary Cooper in "The Fountainhead" --and began a real life affair with him, too. |
But what about the second movie, 1949’s "The Fountainhead," from the famous Ayn Rand novel?
“What a stinker. Barbara Stanwyck had gotten Jack to buy it for her. Then he publically gave it to me. The knives were out for me because all the gossip columnists loved Barbara. I was miscast. The film was terrible. I had that sinking feeling at the premiere that I was going to get it. But I also met Gary Cooper on that one.”
Neal was 23, Coop was 48 and they began a tempestuous three-year affair. They continued at it during the making of 1950’s "Bright Leaf"(“another dud”) and then Neal made "The Breaking Point" ("Quite something. Johnny Garfield’s last big film,”) "The Hasty Heart" (“Good, back with Reagan.”) plus "Three Secrets," "Operation Pacific," "Raton Pass," all failures in 1950-51.
After three years Cooper returned to his wife and daughter and Neal was temporarily distraught. In her autobiography she talked candidly about the abortion Cooper insisted she undergo but would never speak ill of him. “He was my everything.” And friends noticed the physical resemblance between Cooper and Neal’s husband, writer Roald Dahl.
“Jack Warner dropped me just like that. In less than three years I’d gone from being the next Bette Davis to a has-been. But Fox picked me up.”
Her Fox flicks were just as bad: "Week-End
With Father" (1951), "Diplomatic Courier" (1952),
"Washington Story" (1952), "Something For the
Birds" (1952) and then Fox dropped her.
However. Neal made one of her most enduring classics for director
Bob Wise at Fox: “'The Day The Earth Stood Still.' I
still get fan letters for that one. It worked because we were
so low budget there were few special effects, so Bob had to concentrate
on story points. And Michael (Rennie) made a wonderful visitor
from another place.”
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"The Hasty Heart" with Richard Todd as a doomed Scottish soldier. |
I begged Neal to say her famous line and she finally agreed: “Gort! Klaatu Barada Nikto!”
Neal then dabbled in live TV until another great film appearance: 1957’s "A Face in the Crowd."
“I got the part because I was cheap
and I could play sexy. I saw it recently. It was such a right-on
attack on television and American society. No wonder it was so
unpopular.”
Neal did not make another U.S. film for four years. “Then
I got 'Breakfast At Tiffany’s'. OK, I thought, so it’s
Audrey Hepburn’s picture. Well, I’m going to play Mrs.
Failerson twice as sexy as Audrey and we’ll just see whose
bed George Peppard prefers slepping in. And it worked, I was
on the screen for a few minutes but people seemed to remember
me. I was one year older than Audrey but I was suddenly an older
woman type.”
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in this poster for the 1951 sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still." |
As faded housekeeper Alma Brown Neal finally won an Oscar in "Hud" (1962).
“It was all Paul Newman’s
movie. He was so generous to the rest of us but at an early preview
he was shocked. Hud was supposed to be this terrible person and
the fans came out really admiring him. Mine really was in support
but the way Paul treated those scenes it made my part seem bigger.
I got an Oscar, so did Melvyn Douglas (in support) but Paul lost
out –that’s typical of Hollywood.”
For the first time Neal could pick and chose roles: "Psyche
59" (1964) (“Blah!”) and "In Harm’s
Way" (1965) opposite John Wayne (“It’s very
comfortable in Duke’s arms.”) until tragedy struck
when she had just started shooting "Seven Women" (1965)
for John Ford. (She was replaced by Anne Bancroft.)
A series of strokes threatened her life. If husband Roald Dahl
hadn’t been aware of the symptoms and rushed her to the
hospital she would have died. And it was Dahl who got on her
back and forced her into months of painful rehab.
“One eye is shot, hell, one side of me doesn’t work.
I can’t remember names and this hand twitches sometimes.
But the baby I was carrying was fine. And I got a few good roles
after that.”
Those roles included the mother part in
"The Subject Was Roses"(1968) and the little seen British
film "The Night Digger" (1971) and another treasure
"Baxter!" (1973).
In the years since 1973 she worked less frequently–"Ghost
Story" (1981) was one I remember and there were guest spots
on such series as "Highway To Heaven" and such TV movies
as "All Quiet On The Western Front" (1979). She was
exceptional in 1999’s "Cookie’s Fortune"
but her last two films I’ve missed--"For The Love of
May" (2000) and "Flying By: (2001).
In 1982 Glenda Jackson played her in "The Patricia Neal
Story" for TV and Neal joked she was set to star in "The
Glenda Jackson Story."
When Neal and Dahl separated in 1983 the
person who helped her through was none other than Gary Cooper’s
widow Rocky Cooper. Rocky made sure Neal went into retreat at
Regina Laudis Abbey in England where emotional stress is treated.
But Neal still wanted to act even into her eighties. She died
of lung cancer after a brave fight. And talking with her that
day there was every indication she realized her life contained
elements of Greek tragedy.
©2010 by Jim Bawden. The illustrations are from Warner Bros., 20th-Century Fox. This column first posted Aug. 30, 2010.
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