https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miracle_Worker_(1962_film)
I have no memories of the TV show, but who could forget the Helen Keller movie?
The Patty Duke Show reruns are being aired on the cable channel MeTV (6am Pacific time). I’m up early and have had it on in the background lately. Fun show, but the theme song is a real ear worm. RIP to a talented complex woman.
Really?? I’m 33 years younger and I know who she was. Atlhough more from The Miracle Worker and being Sean Astin’s mother than from her TV show. Thoughts and prayer to her family.
Pizzagirl, have you ever heard of Clark Gable? Gary Cooper? Charlie Chaplin? Betty Grable? Etc. They were before your time, too!
The Miracle Worker was actually one of the very first movies I was taken to see in a movie theater – I must have been 6 or 7 years old. I remember it vividly, especially certain scenes, like the one where she first says “water.” (If it came out in 1962, I was also taken around that time to see To Kill A Mockingbird and the Marlon Brando remake of Mutiny on the Bounty – and remember them vividly as well.)
I’m 59 and a huge fan of Patty Duke. Can still sing the theme song to the Patty Duke show and have watched The Miracle Worker countless times. Only watched The Lord of the Rings because her son was in it but loved Rudy
Pizzagirl, have you ever heard of Clark Gable? Gary Cooper? Charlie Chaplin? Betty Grable? Etc. They were before your time, too!"
Yes, I’ve heard of all of them, just like I had heard of Patty Duke. I would know certain iconic scenes of Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin. I think of Betty Grable in a pin-up girl pose and that’s about the extent of my associations. I don’t have any real associations with Gary Cooper and I wouldn’t be able to pick him out in a crowd. Just never an old movie fan. Now if you ask me about music that was around either before my time or right around my time, you’ll have a different answer since I love lots of '60s music. But no - Patty Duke was just a name to me, no real associations! Sorry!
That doesn’t prevent me from realizing that she must have had a major impact for her to be missed so! She’s just not a face I’d recognize. Which means nothing to anybody but me!
Pizzagirl, she was before my time, also, (as was Leave it To Beaver), but I watched both of those shows in re-runs.
I’ve seen the Miracle Worker, of course, but can’t remember a whole lot of her other stuff.
Her autobiography was fascinating, though. I think she may have been the first person I knew of to describe what it’s like to be bipolar. I had read that Vivien Leigh was severely afflicted with it, but all of the accounts of her behavior were from others, not from her own perspective.
Now I think I will have to re-read Patty’s book.
I heard yesterday that The Patty Duke Show was written about identical cousins with totally different personalities because the producer thought it matched Patty’s personality. Her bipolar personality disorder was apparently evident before it was diagnosed.
I hope you mean you’re 33 years younger than Patty, not PizzaGirl!
ETA: never mind, I’ve been educated. 
If she did do work to demystify mental health, then I say good for her!
I’ve been singing the theme song to The Patty Duke Show in my head since yesterday, and I found an interview with her online where she said that she preferred playing Cathy to playing Patty. I liked Cathy better, too.
I also remember her PSAs for the Social Security Administration, urging people to go online to apply for Social Security and Medicare rather than going to a Social Security office. I ran across them when I started trying to educate myself about Social Security a few years ago. She did some in which she portrayed Patty and Cathy from the Patty Duke show (sometimes with former co-stars) and others with George Takei (complete with Star Trek uniforms). They’re all on the Social Security Web site, and some of them are quite funny (better, anyway, than the current PSAs starring lazy cats).
So, Marian, you prefer a minuet, the Ballet Russe and Crêpe Suzette? I prefer to rock n roll and a hot dog makes me loose control. :D/
Hot dogs have an unfortunate effect on your lower intestinal tract?
I liked Cathy because she was kind of nerdy but people liked her anyway. I was also kind of nerdy, but I got some grief for it from other kids. I fantasized about having Cathy’s life.
No. I’m certain that the lyrics had a Freudian context. But YES to being the glamorous Cathy.
I was happy to read that she had a wonderful, supportive 30 yr marriage to her last husband.
I was about 10 when The Patty Duke Show was on, and of course I loved it. 
Just wanted to post my recollection that on the Patty Duke Show, Patty got into the gifted and talented program at her high school, because her test for entry into the program was mis-scored, due to the chewing gum that she had left on her answer sheet. Relevant to CC discussions! I think there were a pair of students playing mental chess in the room for gifted and talented students–I don’t remember what other students were doing.
she had quite a story, in some ways it was the darkness that can happen to child actors, the couple that managed here were as vile as you can get, I didn’t read her book, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they got away with it, these days they would go to jail for a long, long time.
I think the more amazing part of her life was she was open about her life, her struggles, and used that to advocate for better mental health care. It takes more than a certain amount of courage to do that, a lot of people who had the abuse she had had and the issues she did would be too ashamed to talk about it.
I don’t remember much of her book. Can you expound upon that?
@nrdsb4:
She was found by this husband and wife team (she lived in Brooklyn I believe), who actually were representing her brother. When she was 12, she was cast in the play of “THe Miracle worker”, and became something of a star because of it (then she later did the movie). Her parents were divorced, and the couple convinced the mother that the best thing for Patty was to live with them, so at 15 she basically was isolated from her parents. The couple basically exploited her, and they both physically and sexually abused her as well. Once Patty became an adult, she broke away from the couple, and then found that they had embezzled pretty much all her earnings (from what I recall, when she lived with them, they handled all her money, and also refused her requests to give money to her family). I don’t know if the law was ever involved with them, given this was the 1960’s, I suspect that the law wouldn’t do much even if Patty had said she was abused, those were the dark ages when people and the law often looked the other way.