by Patty Duke
One of the curious and scary things about that brief stage run was that I occasionally felt my manner with Melissa getting a little too Ethelish. One night during curtain calls, for instance, she was absentmindedly picking her nose. She realized where she was, the audience began laughing, and she sort of looked down at her finger and then took my hand. It wasn’t my place to say anything, but I was livid. She was not Half-Pint on that stage, she was Melissa Gilbert playing Helen Keller, and that kind of behavior was not adorable. I felt so close to her, I wanted her to be so good and so perfect that when the curtain came down I turned and said, “If you ever, wherever you are in your whole life, behave that way again onstage, I will find you and I will whack you. You are never to be anything but dignified during a curtain call, and don’t you ever forget it.” Boy, did that make an impression. Whew. She certainly didn’t fool around in curtain calls anymore; she may not even have picked her nose anywhere since.
One of the bittersweet aspects of getting involved with the remake was being reunited with Fred Coe. I had not seen him since 1968, when my behavior on the Me, Natalie set had not been up to the standards I would have liked, and certainly not up to his standards, so our parting had not been pleasant. It was good seeing him again under saner circumstances, but he was in very poor health, in fact he could barely walk. He was hospitalized for open heart surgery during the filming and he died on the table. His death really hit me hard. I remember going to work the next day and wailing out loud in my car. He was my last connection to the past, and I missed him so.
When I think about both film versions of The Miracle Worker, it’s inescapable that the second wasn’t as powerful as the first. Not that some things about the remake weren’t improvements. The play’s original ending was restored, you have the boom-boom-boom momentum of the miracle, Helen giving the keys to teacher, sitting on her lap, kissing her cheek, and teacher signing, “I love Helen forever and ever.” For me, that will always be the ending. And even though I still admire the courage of not going to closeups in 1961, I think in the newer version the more personal, quieter moments were well captured because they were done in that television closeup style.
One reason we had to go to closeups in the remake, however, was that the director was unable to build emotional momentum any other way; the choreography of the production was in general lacking in intensity. And doing the picture in color bothered me. Even though The Miracle Worker really is a black-and-white movie, you can shoot something in muted colors and come pretty close to that feeling. But the house they used was a yellow gingerbread and it looked wrong, like something from Oklahoma! Everything was a little too vibrant for my taste.
As for my own performance, if people were going to dislike it on its own merits, I was prepared to live with that. My fear was that instead, people might accuse me of having done an imitation of Anne Bancroft. I hadn’t watched the original for many years, but the night we wrapped I called John and said, “I’m finished and I’m coming home. I’m having a large drink and I’m going to watch The Miracle Worker.” And I did. And a fascinating thing happened. For the first time I realized that that ghost of a voice I’d kept hearing, the one whose rhythms and patterns I was so afraid of imitating, wasn’t Annie’s after all. It was my own voice of all those years of reciting the play as I lay in my bed at night. There was no similarity at all between that ghost in my head and Annie Bancroft. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” I said. “I fought myself.”
And though I’m in general ambivalent about awards, I have to confess that the Emmy I won for The Miracle Worker is my favorite acting honor. My enthusiasm wasn’t even dampened by not being able to accept in person; there was a Screen Actors Guild strike and I had to watch the ceremony on a snowy little TV on a cross-country train—John and I were touring again. I don’t know whether it was the competition with that authority figure of my youth or wanting to be recognized for having the tenacity to hang around long enough to play the Annie Sullivan role or both, but I wanted that award and I was thrilled to have it. It was the perfect end of a perfect fantasy.
My last involvement with The Miracle Worker, unfortunately, was a sour one. I’d always been fascinated with the later years of Helen and Annie Sullivan, and my enthusiasm fired up Ray Katz, one of the producers of the TV version, who in turn convinced William Gibson to write a new piece called Monday After the Miracle. I was shown an early draft, which we all knew wasn’t there yet, and I was told they’d get back to me when the kinks were worked out.
The next I heard about the project, however, was an article in The New York Times announcing that it was going to be done as an Actors Studio showcase directed by Arthur Penn and starring Ellen Burstyn. I was shattered. And suddenly, Ray Katz was unavailable for my phone calls or my agent’s. When we finally got in touch with him, he said he had done what he could, but he could not convince Arthur Penn and William Gibson to use me. He didn’t go into details about what their objection was, and he didn’t apologize. I was devastated.
About ten weeks later I got an urgent call from Ray Katz saying that things had not gone well in the showcase and there was renewed interest in me. Even though I knew better, I got caught up once more in the excitement of possibly doing the show. But the same thing happened a second time: I got turned down without any reason being given. Even forgetting about our past relationship, to have a director of Arthur’s stature reject me out of hand was a hurt that was insurmountable for a while.
As an actress, you can reject me for a lot of things, and though I won’t like it, I’ll get by. But The Miracle Worker is something else. It’s intertwined with a very complex emotional history, and being rejected for that play touched a raw nerve ending. When people speak of my career, even those in the business, rarely do they remember that I started in live television and had played many roles before The Miracle Worker. I’m an actress because of Helen Keller; that role was the very foundation of the one area in my life that remained steadfast while all the rest, more often than not, went to hell in a handbasket. Being rejected for Monday After the Miracle was like being stripped of my epaulets. It was as if someone had said, “You’re not Helen Keller anymore, and you’re not Annie Sullivan either!” If I’d had more perspective at the time, more of a sense of humor, I’d have been in a lot better shape.
THIRTY-THREE
From almost the moment he began to talk, my son Sean was constantly saying, “Can I be in the movies? Can I be in the movies? Please. I can act. Please! Please! Please!” I mean the kid has been running for mayor since he was eighteen months old. John and I didn’t ignore him but we really played down that acting bent. Initially, my approach was, “No kid of mine will ever do this.” Given what I’d been through, it was the most honest attitude I could have.
It was John who helped me realize how unreasonable I was being, who pointed out that my situation had been unique, that the chances, thank God, of our sons having similar problems were slim to none. These kids weren’t being given over to the Rosses or anyone like the Rosses, they were staying with their parents, no matter what. John also used a clever lobbying tactic. He’d say, “Hey, this is an honorable profession. What are we so ashamed about? If we were doctors, we’d want them to be doctors. If we were in the dry-cleaning business, we’d want them to take over that.” All those arguments helped to allay my big fear, that it was bad enough to screw up your kids under any circumstances, but to put them into show business, with all the special risks that entails—that was a heavy-duty responsibility.
Then, in 1981, when Sean was ten years old, I was offered an Afterschool Special about child abuse called “Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom.” I wasn’t particularly interested, but out of courtesy I agreed to read the script, and when I saw that there was a lovely part for a boy Sean’s age, I thought, “What the hell—it would be kind of fun to do it with him.” I discussed the idea with John, who hemmed and hawed as he does, and finally he said, “Okay. Take a shot at it.”
I didn’t feel it
was terribly honorable to blackmail the production company by saying I would do the show if they’d use Sean, so I told them I would do it if they’d just audition him, no matter what the outcome. They were delirious at the chance, for the P.R. value if nothing else. And when Sean got the part, he was jumping out of his skin, he was so happy.
Sean was absolutely adorable to look at, and given the irrational behavior he’d witnessed, courtesy of me, he had no problem understanding the feelings of the kid he was playing. The only thing he had a problem with was a scene in which I had to scream at him. Screaming was something private that happened at home, you didn’t do it in front of people. He was so embarrassed, he would laugh on camera, which was not exactly what the director had in mind. We were having a real problem, so at one point, just before a take, I looked at him not like the character but with a genuine mean-mother look. Sean was brilliant in the scene, but the poor kid was petrified. I instantly regretted what I’d done, and I told Sean so as soon as the scene was over. I said it was something I would not repeat—from now on he was on his own. He could stink up a scene for all I cared, I was not going to put either of us through that again.
Sean loved everything about the whole movie-making process. He loved the equipment, he loved the people, he loved the attention, he even loved the doughnuts. He just took to it like a duck to water, which frankly didn’t surprise us at all. Because Sean’s true gift, which becomes so apparent on a set, is that he is completely guileless. His confidence is not an ain’t-I-the-cat’s-pajamas kind of thing; it comes out of a wisdom, far beyond his or even my years, that this kid just has. And, of course, that makes everyone just want to hug and touch and love him, which can lead to difficulties.
The problem is not with other actors, who, in my experience, are awfully good at parenting a kid on the set. But the people who need something from the child—the director, the assistant director, the wardrobe and makeup people, the crew—will find themselves, even if they’re against it in theory, pandering to that kid to get what they need out of him. That makes it very difficult for the parent to monitor and control the child. And if the kid is getting all kinds of approval for what may be aberrant behavior, it’s very confusing for him as well: “Mom and Dad keep saying it’s wrong, but everybody else seems to like me. Maybe Mom and Dad are wrong.”
I’ve very often found myself, for instance, going to people on a set and saying, “Excuse me. I know you enjoy Sean (or Mack) and that you want to do something nice for him, but I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t give him any more candy. Why don’t you play a game of cards with him instead.” I had a problem with one guy who was just crazy about Sean and wanted to be the bad guy with him behind Mommy’s back. He was feeding him crap all day long and, because Sean is a high-energy kid anyway, if you shoot him some sugar, forget it, you’re scraping him off the walls. I told Sean that if he didn’t cooperate, I would go so far as to have memos typed and put up around the set. He said he’d be good, but by then he was out of control—we were finding Hershey bar wrappers and Winchell’s doughnut boxes under his bed—so up went the notice. It was very humiliating for him, but once you make a threat like that, you have to follow through.
As opposed to Sean, Mackie was very shy, and at first I didn’t believe he’d be able to act. I thought if you told Mack to do something he didn’t want to, he would either cry or go stand in the corner until he turned blue, and he certainly would never repeat something more than once for anyone. But the competition between the two boys is intense, and once Sean was on his way, there was no holding Mack back. And he has amazed me with the way he takes direction. His instincts are great, but unlike Sean and me, who are largely instinctive, he’s a very intellectual actor, terrific at sizing up a situation, figuring out how to allow the director to believe Mack’s taking his direction, and then doing it the right way. Sean doesn’t have the time or the patience to go through that.
Mack has been a regular on The Facts of Life for the past few seasons, and as pleased as I am that they want him in every episode possible because he’s such a draw, I do have qualms about his being in a series. There is always the danger of bad acting habits and sitcom tricks developing; they’re very easy for anyone, even an adult, to fall into. And because of the hours he has to work, not only do we have scheduling problems as a family, he’s spending most of his time with adults, and that’s not as balanced a situation as I’d like it to be.
On the other hand, because Sean and Mack and I have so much in common now, the conversations we have over the dinner table are stimulating and fun. I’m so proud of the work they’ve done, I really wish parents didn’t have to hide just how proud they are in order to be socially acceptable. To go into a theater in Westwood when Sean was in Goonies, to sit down in a seat and look at a forty-foot screen with that kid on it—I don’t know that I will ever find words to describe how that felt. It was a validation of everything I’d been through, everything that was important to me. Even though his father and I were separated by that time, we held hands in that movie and we both cried. We cried with pride, and with love.
When it comes to relating my own past to their careers, however, I find that very little applies. One of the things I’ve discovered in general about raising kids is that they really don’t give a damn if you walked five miles to school. They want to deal with what’s happening now. Sometimes my experience can be helpful. I can remember, for instance, how left out I felt when everyone else got to party after a wrap and I had to get back in the pumpkin. So I try to arrange some alternative fun instead of just saying, “Get in the car, you don’t drink vodka anyway.”
Because of my experience, however, I have laid down strict rules in certain areas. For instance, there is no such thing as these kids getting home from school and then being dragged to three or four auditions that afternoon. Although we’re all ambitious, we’re not that ambitious. I don’t want the boys getting involved in the seamy competitiveness that takes place when you look at a kid who happens to be your size and you hate him already. And I don’t want them dealing with rejection on a daily basis. I don’t believe in telling people not to take that stuff personally. When I’ve auditioned and failed to get the part, of course I’ve taken it as a personal rejection, because they were rejecting me. What else could they have been rejecting—the chair I was sitting in?
The other area in which I’m a real tough cookie is money. All expenses that would normally be taken out of a kid’s salary, things like clothing and professional photographs, are paid for, at my insistence, by John and me. It’s probably overkill on my part, but I feel strongly about this issue because I was so used by the Rosses. Even though Sean and Mack are acting because they want to, even though they’re enjoying themselves, they’re also having to give up a certain amount of kid time, and I believe there’s a premium on that. And I know the day will come when they’re going to say, “I could have done this, I could have done that,” so at the very least I want all the money they earn to be at their disposal someday.
Finally, my sons know that until they reach their majority, their parents are the ones in power. They are aware that their situation is under constant reevaluation and that one day their father or I could say, “We’ve been looking at this, and we really feel it’s time for you to stay in high school and play with the other guys.”
They know that whatever they get out of acting, and it is considerable, it’s not worth the expense of their essential selves. Their parents are really taskmasters when it comes to that. If I feel they’re becoming distorted emotionally or spiritually, getting an elevated opinion of themselves, I’m very tough with them, nearly cruel sometimes. I try to cut away the fat and leave them intact. I remind them that there were moments when I thought I was hot stuff, too, but now I’m scrubbing the floor. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that’s who I am and they’re stuck with me.
When it comes to raising Sean and Mack outside of their acting careers, I deal in more obvious limits and fewer t
houghtless indulgences than I did with David and Alan and Tom. On the one hand, the lines of communication are very open—we have great laughs, they know everything there is to know about me. However, Sean and Mack don’t have the same freedom to run off to the local hangouts. I have been through kids who’ve had substance problems, and I do not intend to go through any more. If I have any regrets about my first three sons vis-à-vis my second two, it’s that I wish David and Al and Tom could have learned one tenth as much from me as I did from trying to raise them—and failing. I don’t mean that they’re failures, but that I didn’t do it the way I would have liked. I really went to school on them, and that’s been invaluable in raising Sean and Mack, and in raising me.
One phrase we use a lot around our house was so abused by the Rosses, I thought I would withhold it until the penalty of death was imminent, and that’s “I love you.” Sometimes we use it to say, “I feel vulnerable,” sometimes, “Hey, I’m reassuring you,” but never is it used in that completely thoughtless, transparent Hollywood way the Rosses had. I’ve decided that from the moment we walk out the door until we come back home our sensibilities are so assaulted by the world at large that we have to soak up (and not in a panicked way) as much love as we can get, simply to arm ourselves. It’s like going to the gas station for a refill. We humans need to hear “I love you,” and we need to hear it as often as we can.
THIRTY-FOUR
Working on It Takes Two wasn’t like work at all. Never did I dream that I would fall into a situation that satisfying, and never did I dream that it could end so quickly and mysteriously. But those strong, positive feelings had a crucial side effect. During the show’s run, in 1982, I had a serious manic attack, and it’s only because I felt in such a positive, healthful, safe atmosphere that I didn’t cover up again, but had the courage to face the consequences.
