Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke

by Patty Duke

  I spoke to someone at the kennel and was told that the dogs had been left alone, unfed and locked in the house for more than a week. The neighbors had complained, the police had broken in practically with gas masks, and found a disaster. The dogs were so hungry, they’d eaten the walls; they’d chewed on the plaster to get filled up. Since there was no way out for them, they’d relieved themselves everywhere and spread the excrement all over the house. It was an utter nightmare—as if some ritualistic weirdness had taken place there. It cost me an absolute fortune to pay for the repairs to that house. And all my furniture was gone, not to mention Bobbie Jo. I was never able to track her down again.

  When I’d moved back to L.A. I’d gone first to a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and then, presumably right before the law came to take me out, I rented an ugly furnished apartment on Doheny Drive. That’s when the manic phase ended, the depression started, and I crashed. For the last month and a half before Sean was delivered, I stayed in bed twenty-four hours a day. I barely ate, slept sometimes, but mostly I watched television around the clock. I saw no one and did nothing. I’d go for my doctor’s appointments, that was it, and even that felt like a real chore. The only excitement I experienced was when a sizable earthquake hit. I’d never been in one before and I kept screaming at God, “You son of a bitch! You couldn’t let me have this baby! You couldn’t just let me see what it looks like!” I thought it was the end of the world.

  When I went into the hospital to deliver, Lucie Arnaz came and sat with me. We had been friendly off and on, and I think she felt there should be someone with me and she seemed the logical choice, given that my mother was in New York. It was very sweet of her, especially because the tiny little room they put me in barely had space for the bed and a chair. I was in there for a day and a half, which seemed like an eternity, and then the doctor came in and announced they were going to do a cesarean. I didn’t question why, but I heard from a nurse later that the doctors couldn’t hear the baby’s heartbeat. The reason was, the baby wasn’t even in the birth canal yet. That’s how I wound up having a cesarean—they listened to his ass instead of to his heart.

  I was incredibly happy with Sean (Gaelic for John, like my father and Sean’s) even though he was so tiny he had to be put into an incubator, and it was terribly frustrating not to be able to hold him until the third day. I was in ecstasy over my son, but there was a kind of melancholy that went along with it because I was alone. Without grandparents oohing and aahing and especially with no husband, I felt the picture wasn’t exactly the way it was supposed to be. In fact, I felt like a scarlet woman. I’d like to be able to say I was more sophisticated than that, and had a truer grasp of what was important, but I didn’t. I felt outcast and unclean, as if I really didn’t fit anywhere. These folks didn’t want me. Those folks didn’t want me. My mother wasn’t there. My sister wasn’t there. My brother wasn’t there. And there I was, like Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, dependent “on the kindness of strangers.” It had been a pattern in my life, so part of me was accustomed to things being that way, but how the baby would fit into this pattern presented a new wrinkle.

  I must say, though, that Desi, Sr., came to see the baby along with his wife, as did Lucie Arnaz with her husband, all behaving as if he were part of their family. And I thought, considering the ugliness of the circumstances that had been created by the movie magazines, and the fact that there were reporters literally camped out in the stairwells of the hospital, that was a very brave and gracious thing to do. And I don’t know that I’ve ever really told them that until now.

  Lucille Ball, however, did not come to the hospital, which, considering the media circus, was probably wise. There were so many photographers around that Sean’s name couldn’t be used on his little bassinet or on the bracelet they put on his wrist. Lucy had tried very hard to be kind when I was pregnant since everyone thought Desi was the father, but in the end she was not going to sacrifice her son by giving her official sanction to the relationship. I was not her idea of how Desi was going to spend his life.

  In truth I had thought about marrying Desi, as a way out if nothing else, but he’d told me specifically that he wasn’t interested, that he never wanted to get married to anyone. I’m sure there were times when he thought the baby was his, as well as times he was convinced it wasn’t, but either way he definitely didn’t want any part of that whole scene. It had been a great game for a while, but it was getting too real, is probably how he felt. He didn’t want to play anymore.

  I think I’d always known somewhere in the back of my head that having a child and being responsible for a child would cause me to behave in a more responsible way, and that’s exactly what happened. Once Sean was born, all those vague words became a reality, something I could touch. There was no more running, running, running. I bought a small house and spent a lot of time alone with the baby. Within a couple of weeks I became almost a recluse. Having a child may have been only a Band-Aid on the disease I had, but it was one of the bigger, cleaner, stronger Band-Aids, something I was able to count on until the real thing came along.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Although I barely remember it, I first met John Astin at an ABC affiliates convention when I was only seventeen. He liked to claim that he was attracted to me even then, and while that may be true, he told those stories only to confuse people so they wouldn’t find out that we’d conceived Sean while he was still married to someone else. In fact, we found each other very early in May of 1970, and what brought us together was a mutual obsession with death. That’s how we met, over a conversation about the fear of death.

  It was at a wrap party for a mutual friend’s film, both of us had had quite a lot to drink, and we found ourselves part of a bunch of people sitting around a table having a conversation about whether President Kennedy would have remained a hero had he lived. I’d noticed John earlier, because he’s an extremely handsome man (he’d starred as Gomez in TV’s The Addams Family), tall and slender with a great voice and eyes that can look like a Frenchman’s bedroom eyes or those of a basset hound. And when he gets involved in a conversation, the scope of things he considers is extraordinary and usually unique, so he seemed quite fascinating to me.

  When the conversation turned to J.F.K., I happened to be turned in John’s direction and I noticed a look on his face that had nothing to do with Kennedy at all. I immediately recognized the terror in his eyes, the panic about death that I, of course, shared and that’s so enormous, the word fear doesn’t begin to do it justice. It was as if my own adrenaline had started to really pump. John had apparently noticed a similar look on my face, and we just kept staring at each other.

  Finally, I got so agitated I couldn’t stand it anymore, I wanted to scream, “Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” I began climbing over the people sitting between us, saying, “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,” and when I finally got next to him I just said, “You’re probably going to think I’m very weird, but do you have an obsessive fear of death?” And he smiled that charming, wonderful smile of his and said, “Why, yes.” And I said, “Me too!”

  Then I started jabbering, jabbering, jabbering. I found myself desperate to commune with this kindred spirit, which is not a phrase I use lightly. I truly believe souls were meant to spend time together, and that John and I are two such souls.

  At any rate, we went home and spent the night together. A few days later John went down to San Diego to do a movie and I visited him there a couple of times. He was wonderful to be with, brilliant and older, sixteen years older than my twenty-three, in fact, and a magnificent lover. It was very passionate, very loving, and, or so I thought, very temporary. He told me he was separated from his wife, Suzanne, that the marriage had not been good for many, many years, and, of course, I felt sorry for the poor, misunderstood husband. At that point in my life I was pretty confused about whom I loved and even what love was, but still I felt I really did love this man. I wished and fantasized that this could be a r
eal relationship that could work out, but I sensed that he was so concerned about his wife and their three sons that the odds were he was going back there. So I tried not to get too attached.

  Once the momentum of my manic episode got rolling, with John Ross’s death, the Emmys, and Michael Tell to cope with, it was as if the whole thing with John had never happened. Then he called me after The Dick Cavett Show, and I admitted I was pregnant but even though I was sure by then the child was his, I told him I didn’t know who the father was. Everything was denial, denial, denial.

  That’s the way things stayed. No one knew about us at all, until Sean was about eight months old. At that point, both John and I were cast in a Link and Levinson TV movie called Two on a Bench, a fairly silly love story between a hippie and a right wing guy, very different from My Sweet Charlie. We reestablished our sexual relationship and one day John told me that he had been doing some “calculating”—that’s how he talks, other people might say “I was thinking about it and I figured out,” but not him—and according to when Sean was born and the last time I’d been with Desi, the child was not Desi’s but his. I admitted he was right but said I had figured I shouldn’t go around telling that to people since he was married and had three children.

  John and his wife had separated again before the movie started, and he finally went to Suzanne and said he was going to move the rest of his things out. He didn’t tell his wife he was going to live with me, and as he was walking out the door, she said to him quite sardonically, “The real tragedy is you’ll probably go out with some big-titted Hollywood starlet. Why don’t you find yourself somebody nice, like Patty Duke.” It was totally out of nowhere, and it’s the first thing John told me when he came to the house: “You’re not going to believe what she said.”

  So John and I began our life with each other, in late 1971, still undercover. For several months we went literally nowhere together, the idea being there’d been enough nonsense in the magazines, we weren’t going to give them anything more to play with. It was perfect for me, idyllic. I was romantically in love with this man, he symbolized security, it was as if all those puzzle pieces that had been broken and mutilated were now being properly put back together.

  We went back east at Christmas and told John’s parents that we planned to get married. Being introduced as the intended mate always made me nervous—there seemed perpetually to be some dark cloud hanging over me—but his folks were wonderful. I felt instantly welcomed with unrestrained love and have evermore. It was the first parental relationship I had experienced in which I could do absolutely no wrong, and I cherish it to this day.

  It was kind of a nirvana, those early times with John. He truly seemed to love unconditionally, and I obviously had long been in need of that kind of safety in love. We were literally bankrupt, even though we didn’t file, and there were slings and arrows thrown from outside, but we were in a home filled with love. We didn’t have much else in it, but it was a home. And we were a pair of hippie types, willing to live on bread and roses, and that felt awfully good.

  John and I always wanted to get married, right from the beginning, but we had to wait until his divorce was final. It’s not that I don’t think commitment can exist without a ceremony, I just believe in the institution. I’m a person who puts a great deal of stock in symbols, and this is a very special one, which we as a society have passed along from generation to generation as a meaningful expression of love and bonding.

  The wedding took place on August 5, 1972, in the rose garden of John’s folks’ house in Bethesda, Maryland. The heat and humidity at that time of year were not to be believed, the steam was practically coming up from the grass, but the whole event was just lovely. Everyone was there, including my mother and a lot of my relatives. I wore an off-white lace dress with flowers in my hair, and eighteen-month-old Sean, his little Shirley Temple curls bouncing, wore a dark blue suit with short pants. I tried to get him a three-piece suit, even though he was barely walking, but they didn’t have one small enough.

  The wildest dresser of all, however, was the man who married us, William Wendt, kind of a renegade Episcopal minister. He had on an orange robe appliquéd with giant butterflies of a reddish color. A musician friend of John’s named Willie Ruff went out behind the trees and played a love theme on the French horn, and that soulful, otherworldly sound coming out of nowhere really flipped the emotional switch for everyone.

  John and I both shed tears and promised each other things like “forever.” Since he got to speak first, he stole something I wanted to do, which was to sign “I love you,” so I ended up laughing through my tears. Then Father Wendt asked if anyone had something they’d like to say, and relatives and friends from both sides chimed in with their approval and good wishes. Then he asked, “Is there anyone else?” and that’s when Sean said, “Da-daa, Da-daa!” and everyone roared. Father Wendt said, “Well, I guess that about says it all. I now pronounce you man and wife.” And we partied on the lawn until four o’clock in the morning, then went on to a tiny old hotel in Annapolis, where we stayed up until ten, laughing and opening our presents. It was wonderful.

  Our second son, Mackenzie, was born on May 12, 1973, and I was thrilled. This time we’d done it exactly the way you’re supposed to: we’d gotten married first and then we’d had the baby! And I loved being pregnant; perfect strangers are nice to you. We didn’t have a name for our son, though, until he’d been delivered. I kept saying, “This one’s going to be a girl” just to keep everybody interested. I knew it wasn’t so: all John can make is boys. Still, we couldn’t come up with anything until right after he was born. I asked the anesthesiologist if he could ask John, who was standing by the door, what he thought of the name Mackenzie, which moved John greatly because that was his mother’s maiden name. It hadn’t hit me until I saw the baby that Mackenzie was a great name. Mack. Quarter-pounder. Absolutely.

  After we were married, as a sign of love and commitment I added Astin to my professional name. It was something I knew John would like and I liked it too. It brought a certain maturity to the name I wanted to establish. And though I’ve been accused of using it because it starts with A and would help me for billing purposes (I swear, I’ve actually heard that!), the simple truth is I was proud to have chosen to be married to him, and proud of his choosing me, and I wanted to show it.

  John had another impact on my name, and my identity, that was much more long-lasting and profound. It began in the earliest days of our relationship, when we were still undercover—and under the covers. We used code names in leaving messages for each other; his was Jack Allen, and mine was “Sally, Mr. Riviera’s secretary,” which John commemorated by getting me about a dozen miniature “Sally” license plates from all over the country.

  “You’re not a ‘Sally,’ ” John said to me casually one day when this had been going on for a while. “And you’re not a ‘Patty’ either. What are you?”

  “No,” I said, smiling. “I’m an ‘Anna.’ My name’s Anna.”

  “Well,” he said. “Why don’t we call you Anna? That’s your name.”

  My initial reaction to that was one of sheer delight mixed with nervousness. I felt I was ready to be Anna, to reclaim myself, but as much as I loved the idea, I was afraid to get too attached to the name, afraid it would last a bit, as it had with Harry, but never stick. At first I felt ludicrous introducing myself as Anna, but John was so dedicated to it, he didn’t merely philosophize or talk about what ought to be, he acted. In situations in which the two of us were working together, which happened frequently, he never called me anything but Anna, and that helped people get used to it. It was much tougher when I worked without him; then I got called every name under the sun, because no one could quite remember what they were supposed to call me, but even there Anna won out.

  Because of what I’d been through with the Rosses, being Anna again was much more than a superficial change, it symbolized what felt like the rebirth of the core of my soul. Working from
the outside in, my new/old name became a powerful emotional tool. It wasn’t just that I stood taller around the house because I no longer had a babyish name; I could feel, almost day by day, the sensation of this person who was myself coming back to life after all those years. John was responsible for giving me the freedom not only to use the name Anna but to be Anna as well, which was truly a lifelong gift.

  For a while, during the transition period, John would revert to my old name when he was angry and wanted to hurt me. Then it was, “Okay, Patty Duke, if that’s what you think,” which was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. I’m not so sensitive about Patty anymore, however. My names are part of me and I them; all of them are okay now. Patty may not be my favorite, it doesn’t feel like me anymore, but because it symbolizes a large part of my life that I’m no longer trying to reject, I don’t shudder anymore when a stranger calls me Patty in a shopping mall. I turn around comfortably and say hello. That’s my name for that minute, and I’m at ease with that because I know it’s only for that minute; I’m able now to be myself whenever and wherever I need to.

  TWENTY-NINE

  After Mackie was born, John’s three sons, twelve-year-old David, eleven-year-old Alan, and eight-year-old Tom came to live with us, and my honeymoon with John came to an abrupt end. It had always been rough when the kids stayed over on weekends, and I was simply not equipped for their presence full-time. I remember very few major arguments with John until they came, and then we argued all the time about how to raise them. People have babies and they learn about children as they go. You don’t, when you’re twenty-four, take on a kid who’s twelve. Especially when you’ve had the retarded development that I had, and when the twelve-year-old is seriously rebellious and acting out all over the place.