Patty Duke

Born on December 14, 1946, in Elmhurst, New York, Anna Marie Duke (her real name) had a tragic childhood, due to her father’s alcoholism, which exacerbated the clinical depression suffered by her mother, prone to violence. When she was six years old, her mother kicked her husband out of the house, and she put her little girl in the hands of artistic managers John and Ethel Ross, who exploited her as a child actress without many qualms. “Anna Marie is dead,” they told the girl. “Now you will be called Patty” (they chose this stage name because they wanted her to achieve the success of Patty McCormack).

They ended up looking for all kinds of jobs for him, especially small roles in television series, although he came to participate in a rigged contest on the small screen, for which he came to testify in court. In her memoirs, she remembers having lived through a real ordeal, because her guardians controlled her money, and they barely gave her and her mother enough to survive.

At the age of 14, she obtained the role of the deafblind Hellen Keller in the Broadway stage version of The Miracle of Anna Sullivan , where Anne Bancroft embodied the governess alluded to in the title. The smart Arthur Penn recruited both actresses to star in the film version, for which the girl won the Oscar for best secondary, becoming at that time, at sixteen, the youngest person to have won a statuette. Many years later she would star in a not-so-quality telefilm of the same name, in which she would take over the role of Bancroft, while Melissa Gilbert , Laura in Little House on the Prairie , played her ward.

After spending three years starring in The Patty Duke Show on television, a sitcom that had a certain impact, she began an adult career with Valley of the Dolls , where critics were not convinced by her change of register, from candid teenager to drug addict singer.

When picking up an Emmy Award, for her work on the telefilm My Sweet Charlie , she caused some controversy because she behaved erratically and seemed angry. She explained her cause in her 1986 autobiography, “Me, Patty,” which made her the first Hollywood actress to disclose that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. From that moment she became an activist to raise awareness of the risk of mental illness.

At the same time, he was a regular character in the tabloids, due to his addictions, and his unsuccessful search for sentimental stability. She married director Harry Falk, but she was hospitalized several times for pill overdoses in the four years before she filed for divorce. At the age of 23, she had an affair with Desi Arnaz Jr., 17, who caused a furor in the gossip press due to their age difference. In June 1970, in the midst of a manic-depressive phase, she became pregnant without knowing who her father was. She ended up together with actor John Astin , who adopted the baby, Sean, as her own son and would later have another child with her, Mackenzie.

After the commercial failure of I, Natalia , where he shared the screen as a very young Al Pacino , Duke concentrated mainly on TV Movies, where he lavished himself mainly in the 80s. He has continued to work until an advanced age. His last relevant appearance was in 2013, in the series Glee , where he was Jan, a jewelry saleswoman from Ohio, who became a mentor to one of the protagonists.