RIP: PATTY DUKE

Actress Patty Duke, who shot to fame as a teenager in the film The Miracle Worker,died Tuesday morning of sepsis from a ruptured intestine at age 69, her agent said.

"She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a friend, a mental health advocate and a cultural icon," the agent's statement said. "She will be greatly missed."

When Duke was 12, she starred as Helen Keller in the Broadway play The Miracle Worker. She reprised her role in the 1962 film version, winning an Academy Award for best supporting actress when she was 16 — then the youngest person to have won an Oscar.

In 1963, Duke took the starring roles in a popular sitcom called The Patty Duke Show,in which she played identical cousins. NPR reported that she was the youngest actress in television to have a prime-time series built around her.

The Los Angeles Times notes that "after her successful stint as Patty and Cathy Lane on television, Duke tried to transition back to film with a controversial performance as Neely O'Hara in 'Valley of the Dolls,' in which the actress portrayed an alcoholic, drug-addled star."

But Duke's outward success belied her private struggles.

"The success ... masked personal misery which included depressions that led to suicide attempts and a string of failed marriages," NPR reported in 2000.

Diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982, Duke devoted her later years to championing mental health programs and raising her three sons, two of whom — Sean and Mackenzie Astin — followed in their mother's footsteps and became actors as well.

"I love you Mom," Sean Astin, who played Samwise Gamgee in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, said in a statement confirming his mother's death.

Duke, whose real name was Anna Pearce, wrote an autobiography in 1987 titled Call Me Anna that addressed some of these struggles.

Mandalit says Duke served as president of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1980s and adds: "After she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she became an advocate for mental health issues."

After "The Patty Duke Show" was cancelled, Duke starred in the camp classic "Valley of the Dolls." She won a second Emmy for her turn in the 1970 Civil Rights drama "My Sweet Charlie" and a third in 1976 for her part in the TV mini-series "Captains and the Kings." She also appeared in a variety of TV shows ranging from Police Story and Hawaii 5-O to Night Gallery...

REVISITING HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The Thanksgiving film is a bit of a tricky wicket, as the Brits like to say. And to be honest I’m not sure why. The points of drama are pretty obvious: who among us, trapped in a car with parents who are starved for our attentions, has not seen the potential for an angsty comedy about the return home? But there aren’t actually that many Thanksgiving films of this kind — I guess they get overwhelmed by the Christmas releases, every year — and the ones that do pop up tend to be small indie efforts like The Myth of Fingerprints (I am always the only person who knows this one, but surely out there is another Noah Wyle completist who hears me). And no, I don’t count Hannah and Her Sisters as a Thanksgiving movie, because the element crucial to the Thanksgiving movie, it seems to me, is that people leave their big city lives behind, not simply transpose the holiday onto their cosmopolitan Upper West Side classic-six existences.

One of those small movies was Jodie Foster’s second directorial effort, Home for the Holidays. It was released in 1995 to little fanfare — the “directorial debut” publicity push having already been expended on Little Man Tate. I think I must have been so enamored of it because, at the time, I was deep in the throes of a Claire Danes obsession; My So-Called Life had recently gone off the air. Unfortunately for teenage me, she was only in the movie for about five minutes. Still, though I hadn’t (until this weekend) seen it since roughly the year 2000, I’ve always referred to it as my “favorite Thanksgiving movie.” I decided to revisit this opinion.

Well, it turns out that Home for the Holidays hasn’t aged well, which perhaps explains why it’s very hard to obtain. (Your intrepid reporter may or may not have watched it on YouTube.) The premise is this: Holly Hunter is an art restorer who has just been fired from her job as she heads home to Charles Durning and Anne Bancroft. Her brother, Robert Downey, Jr., arrives with his friend Dylan McDermott. Robert Downey, Jr., is clearly gay but the family prefers not to discuss it, particularly not sister Cynthia Stevenson, who is a Republican fond of Peter-Pan collared dresses. Dinner gets served, and grease-laden hijinks ensue.

I had somehow forgotten, in the intervening years, that the chief point of crisis in this film comes when Cynthia Stevenson makes a long speech about how disgusting it is that her brother married his lover. And I realize, in 1995, that wasn’t such an odd position for a family member to take. In fact, around that time I had a friend who came out and his terror at the rejection of his family seemed to us not only rational, but logical. Moreover, I’m quite aware that Jodie Foster, who apparently collaborated quite closely with the screenwriter, was not examining this particular kind of conflict from an abstract place. Even if she hadn’t experienced this kind of rejection personally, she was working from a place of knowing people who had.

But watching it now, it feels false, somehow, for the sister to quite literally complain that her brother kissed another man in public, and that she’s disgusted by it. I am fully prepared to own up to the privilege of that. But it’s a film-ruiner all the same.

We tend to think of the best movies as having a timeless quality. That belief is, in fact, pure bullshit; Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and even Casablanca all bear pretty clear timestamps. They rely on time and place to flesh out the attitudes of the characters, and to elicit particular reactions from the audience. So Home for the Holidays is no different in that regard, I guess. It’s just that a Thanksgiving movie can only succeed if it manages, between all the family infighting and turkey throwing, to give you some flavor of just why we all engage in the ritual anyway. We want the sentiment of Thanksgiving — the ideal of the loud, noisy, boisterous-but-still-loving family to come through. And Home for the Holidays lacks it because it lets that one sister’s sourness ruin the whole. I guess that might be the truth, but it certainly doesn’t make me ever want to go home again...

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TCM IN NOVEMBER: MY TOP PICKS

Hard to believe it is another month. It is another month to see what cinema classics Turner Classic Movies will be showing. This month my picks are heavy into musicals, but there are a lot of goodies on the television this month...

NOVEMBER 3 - 6:30 AM
Jolson Sings Again (1949)

After a premature retirement, the legendary singer revives his career to entertain the troops during World War II. This sequel to the 1946 film is even more enjoyable than the first one, but again there is not much fact to this bio pic. (Cast: Larry Parks, Barbara Hale, William Demarest)

NOVEMBER 4 - 3:45 AM
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

A crazed, aging star torments her sister in a decaying Hollywood mansion. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I never get tired seeing Bette Davis and Joan Crawford going at it! (Cast: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono)


NOVEMBER 6 - 6:00 PM
Trouble Along the Way (1953)

A famous football coach uses underhanded means to turn a bankrupt college's team into winners. John Wayne did not make many comedies, but this one is one of his best. He has a lot of chemistry with Donna Reed as well. (Cast: John Wayne, Donna Reed, Charles Coburn)


NOVEMBER 12 - 11:00 PM
The Producers(1968)

A Broadway producer decides to get rich by creating the biggest flop of his career. Mel Brooks can do no wrong in my eyes, and this film is a true classic. Only Brooks can get away with writing a song about Adolf Hitler! (Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn)


NOVEMBER 14 - 6:00 PM
Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947)

A singer's wife turns to the bottle when she fears she's lost her husband to success. Reportedly when this movie came out it causes quite a sensation because it is reportedly the story of Dixie Lee Crosby, Bing Crosby's first wife. (Cast: Susan Hayward, Lee Bowman, Marsha Hunt)


NOVEMBER 21 - 6:00 PM
Ada (1961)

A call girl weds an easygoing politician and helps him against corrupt state officials. I wish Dean Martin would have done more dramas. This movie has been on my list to see again for years. (Cast: Susan Hayward, Dean Martin, Wilfrid Hyde-White)

NOVEMBER 23 - 8:00 PM
Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943)

When a reporter exposes her past in burlesque, a musical theatre star sets out for revenge. Since AMC stopped showing classic movies, it is hard to see Betty Grable films on television, so this is a rare treat. (Cast: Betty Grable, Robert Young ,Adolphe Menjou)


NOVEMBER 24 - 8:00 PM
Anything Goes (1956)

The members of a song-and-dance duo promise the lead in their next show to two different women. This movie was the second version of the Cole Porter musical, and it would be the last movie Bing made for Paramount after twenty plus years with the studio. (Cast: Bing Crosby, Donald O'Connor, Mitzi Gaynor)


NOVEMBER 27 - 10:15 PM
Strike Me Pink (1936)

An assertiveness course gets a shy guy mixed up with racketeers at an amusement park. Eddie Cantor movies are hard to come by on television, and even though this is not his best effort, it is worth watching. (Cast: Eddie Cantor, Ethel Merman, Sally Eilers)


NOVEMBER 30 - 3:45 AM
Garbo Talks (1984)

A young man risks everything to help his dying mother meet Greta Garbo. Any movie with Anne Bancroft is worth watching, and this is a great movie to just relax on the couch with. (Cast: Anne Bancroft, Ron Silver, Carrie Fisher)

MEL BROOKS (BORN 1926)

When Mel Brooks's movies first gained popularity in the early 1970s, he was considered vulgar and dirty, but looking back at his movies they were really good. Brook was also a talented writer for Sid Caesar in the early days of television. I personally think that he was one of the best directors and funny men of all time...