Saying Farewell to Patty Duke, #RIP #WomensHistoryMonth #HelenKeller

Most know actress Patty Duke as Helen Keller, in the famous water pump scene from the 1962 screen adaptation of “The Miracle Worker”, but few have seen the movie in its entirety.

Patty Duke as Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker”

For a role where she hardly said a word, making mostly sounds (cries, moans, and the word “water”) – this character had a profound effect on me, since I was quite young. Of course, the effect had a lot to do with Anne Bancroft (Anne Sullivan) and the other characters with more of the speaking roles, but as a blind child watching the movie, I felt Duke’s determination to portray Keller as authentically as possible.

I held the VHS case in my hands. I remember the iconic picture on the front, the one from the end of the film where Helen (Duke) spelled out the word “teacher” into Anne’s hand. I stared at that black and white image again and again, as I probably checked the video out from my local library dozens of times.

After learning about who Helen Keller was, when I was read a book about her by someone when I was eight years old, I became fascinated by the story. When that same someone informed me there was a film based on the story, I proceeded to rush right out and find it in the movie section of the library. This was my first introduction to old movies and I liked them, this one in particular.

She was an actress, a singer, author, and advocate. I don’t know Patty Duke from anything else, not from “The Patty Duke Show”. I really can’t even picture what she sounded like, as I said, I hardly heard her speak in the film or afterword. I did not know her in any other roles, but she did something great for me.

People who are blind are not represented, in great numbers, in society or the media. Helen Keller became famous for several reasons, but finally I saw her story shown in the most moving and beautiful of ways, Oscar worthy performances all around in my opinion, but Patty Duke was at the centre of what gave me something, in the world of others with disabilities, in history, to look up to. I would never get to see Helen Keller, as she passed away around the same time “The Miracle Worker” was made. However, there existed an amazing representation of the girl she must have been.

I wish I could have been around to witness the original portrayal of “The Miracle Worker” and Patty and Anne’s portrayals of Helen and Anne on Broadway, in the late 1950s. Though Duke went on to switch roles in later years, playing Anne Sullivan in a later version of the film, her iconic role, played with skill, this will be a special one to me always.

Finally, years after I held that VHS and stared at the cover, imagining that relationship between student and teacher, although fictionalized, I held my very own DVD copy. This was the first DVD I ever owned.

A few years later, upon stumbling on a new film obsession (Lord of the Rings), I learned one of the main characters of the trilogy (Sean Astin) was Duke’s son.

Patty Duke was the youngest person to win an Academy Award, at the age of just sixteen and she went on to speak up for mental illness awareness, after being finally diagnosed, after years of turmoil, living with bipolar disorder.

On this second last day of Women’s History Month, I wanted to pay my respects to Patty Duke, a woman who brought awareness to mental illness when it was just beginning to truly be understood, the one who took on a role that must have been a difficult one, hard to live up to in her performance of a once living person who stood for so much in the disabled community, over the last one hundred years. That must have been a mighty big pair of shoes to fill, a difficult task to take on, but she did a marvellous job. She managed to make me feel, so deeply, and to find a relatable personality, brought to life for me, on screen.

RIP Patty, (1946-2016).

Carpe Diem

At first, with the immediacy of social media these days, we must let the sources and updates build up and hold truth before a rumour of a star’s death is to be fully believed.

Robin Williams had a big influence on the comedic distraction of my childhood. I loved him as Genie in Aladdin and just recently revisited his performance when I watched that childhood Disney classic again, after more than fifteen years, with my young niece. That was such a fun part for him to play and he would be forever imprinted in the imaginations of children like me everywhere.

As a child I also loved Mrs. Doubtfire. It was just the sort of family film that I gravitated toward. The scene at the end of the movie where he speaks as his old maid alter ego, about family in all its guises still being family, still profoundly affects me to this very day.

Mrs. Doubtfire: final scene.

I last saw it on Boxing Day.

I loved going to the movies and my friend and I saw Jumanji together, (my favourite Glossette Raisins in hand) and the over-the-top jungle scenery and animals blew me away. His role in that film was a very under-rated children’s epic adventure story. I was thrilled when I got the film on video for Christmas when I was eleven and I even got the board game to go along with it.

In this clip he is his usual wild and wacky self while promoting the release of the movie.

Jay Leno interview.

Of course I am not old enough to know his early roles (the biggest being Mork from Mork & Mindy). His last attempt at a sitcom seemed to be welcomed with relatively positive reactions, but I never did get hooked. To me he was and always would be a movie actor.

Each time a celebrity dies I already, in a sort of morbid curiosity, start to wonder which of them will be the next headline. They die like everyone else and often in tragic ways, but this sort of thing happens to the rest of us as well and the widespread headlines only serve as reminders of the suffering that many people experience.

This summer I’ve already written about such things in my own family and I can’t not write here when these things happen once more. I see them as the most appropriate time to explore what’s really going on with people. Suicide happens at any age.

He was the ultimate picture of the dark and the light battling for supremacy. Often, it is known, that comedians are the most dark deep down and in their pasts and their private lives. I happen to believe that comedy, laughter, and humour are the only antidotes for Sadness, despair and depression. Without the latter there would not be the former, but they each only serve to highlight the other in sheer contrast.

Never Had a Friend Like Me

This song is in your-face and attention-grabbing, just like Williams always was. HE couldn’t seem to be serious in his many interviews over the years. He seemed crazy and out-of-control through that television screen…to me.

I ask myself tonight: What kind of a friend was he? What kind of father was he? In Jumanji the young boy says to him:

“You’re afraid. It’s okay to be afraid.”

Just what was Robin Williams afraid of?

These are the questions I’d ask when I’d see the man in the media and realize he couldn’t possibly always keep that kind of energy up. He must have been all sorts of things off camera that people didn’t see.

Reports of suicide as cause of death are still being confirmed, but reports aren’t often wrong about these things. The most obvious explanation is probably the correct one, even now. Which one of us is going to be surprised at this conclusion? His depression was widely known. He battled drug addiction and alcoholism throughout his life.

He was a Stand-up who, like many comedians, was shy as a child and used the stage and screen to bring himself out of that shyness. HE went to Juilliard with life-long friend Christopher Reeve. He won an Academy award. All of this gave him credibility.

His role in Hook made him beloved. He seemed, a lot of the time, to be a big kid and perfect to act as a character in a world where you never had to grow up. He could be utterly creepy in movies such as Insomnia and One Hour Photo…both of which my brother introduced to me. Great movie roles such as the psychiatrist in Good Will Hunting and radio personality in Good Morning Vietnam showed his true acting brilliance. He made me smile as a barely competent Russian doctor in the movie Nine Months. He had a gift for improvisation and imitation.

I never did see Dead Poets Society, but it sounds like one I would probably enjoy. Any literary themed movie is one I aim to watch, but up until now I suppose I didn’t have it at the front of my mind or at the top of my to-watch list.

On reading up on all the internet traffic since the death announcement I came across a scene from the movie where the Latin expression I have always loved is discussed. I am titling this sad blog post Carpe Diem because it is fitting.

Carpe Diem

Williams seems to philosophize and reflect on the expression while simultaneously putting the fear into his young students about making the most of life before it’s too late…a lesson we often forget ourselves.

This is something I strongly subscribe to in my own life and, especially lately, have been striving for. None of us usually know how much time we have left. Sadly Williams probably knew by the end, if he made that decision to end it all.

I choose to speak, on this occasion, about what I believe is the important take-away. I know how many people suffer in silence or who are desperate for help to be led out of the darkness they are lost in. Sometimes there is no answer that will satisfactorily appease everyone involved or looking in.

Seize the day or one of these days it will be too late.
RIP Robin.