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Patty Duke (born December 14, 1946) is an actress
of the stage and screen.  Born Anna Marie Duke in
Elmhurst, Queens, New York, United States|USA, she
won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
in 1962 for her role as Helen Keller in The
Miracle Worker.  She also won a Golden Globe
Award|Golden Globe for  Me, Natalie in 1969, which
also featured the first on screen role of actor Al
Pacino.  From 1972 to 1985, she was married to
John Astin, the father of her actor children, Sean
Astin and Mackenzie Astin (the former being
conceived before her marriage to Astin, and who
was subsequently adopted by Astin).  In 1986 she
married Michael Pearce.

Many attribute some of Patty Duke's extraordinary
abilities to her being affected by bipolar
disorder, commonly known as manic depression. 
Duke's personal life from childhood resembled
something out of Dickens.  Her father was an
alcoholic, and her mother suffered from bipolar
disorder and was prone to violence.  When Duke was
6, her mother threw her father out.  When she was
8, her life was essentially turned over to her
managers John and Ethel Ross who recognized her
talent and promoted her as a child actress.

The Rosses methods were somewhat unscrupulous:
they consistently billed her as two years younger
than she was, and padded her resume with some
false credits. Ethel Ross gave the sweeping
name-change order "Anna Marie is dead, you are
Patty now" which, though perhaps innocently
intended, resounded painfully with Anna for
decades to come. (Her professional name was chosen
because the Rosses wanted her to achieve the
success of Patty McCormack).

One of Duke's first acting jobs was on the soap
opera The Brighter Day, in the late 1950s.
However, Duke's first major role was playing Helen
Keller (with Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan) in
the Broadway play The Miracle Worker which ran for
nearly two years.  Midway through the run, she was
honored by having her name placed above the title
on the marquee.  The play was made into the 1962
film version, for which Duke received the Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actress; she was the
youngest person to receive an Academy Award at age
16.  In 1963 Duke landed her own series The Patty
Duke Show in which she played both the main
characters Patty Lane and her "identical cousin"
Cathy Lane.  The show lasted for three seasons,
and earned her one Emmy Award nomination.

Despite the success of her career, Duke was deeply
unhappy during her teenage years.  She reports
being treated as a virtual prisoner by her
managers the Rosses and had little control over
her own life and her own earnings.  The Rosses
kept control over Duke and her mother by allowing
them only a pittance.  The Rosses also began
providing Duke with alcohol and prescription drugs
starting when she was as young as 13, which led to
substance abuse problems later.  At the same time,
efforts were taken to portray her as a normal
teenager; publicity shots of Duke in her room
showed a telephone which was not even connected. 
The phone was later connected when she befriended
Frank Sinatra, Jr.  Duke accused both John and
Ethel Ross of sexual abuse.  

Upon turning 18, Duke became free of the Rosses,
only to find that they had squandered most of her
earnings (although she has stated that the money
was nothing compared to what they had done to her
life).  Furthermore, she was not socially or
emotionally prepared to live on her own.  At the
age of 18 she married director Harry Falk who was
nearly twice her age at the time.  Duke's heavy
drinking and drug abuse, coupled with suicide
attempts and anorexia drove the man into an affair
that ended the marriage after four years.  It was
during the marriage to Falk that she made Valley
of the Dolls, a critical disaster that raised
questions as to her ability as an adult actress.
However, she did start a successful singing
career, producing Top 40 hits such as Don't Just
Stand There in 1965, and Dona Dona in 1968, both
of which she performed on The Ed Sullivan Show.

However, Duke made a strong career comeback in the
1970 TV movie My Sweet Charlie, for which she won
her first Emmy Award|Emmy. Around this time she
became romantically involved with actor John
Astin, and also entered into a short-lived but
highly publicized affair with Desi Arnaz, Jr.. The
relationship did not last, partially because
Arnaz's mother, TV legend Lucille Ball, did not
approve and reportedly ordered her son to stop
seeing Duke. In what was likely to have been a
depressive episode Duke quickly married rock
promoter Michael Tell, who she had literally just
met. The marriage was annulled two weeks later.

After the marriage Duke was pregnant with her
first child. Much of the public assumed that the
father was Arnaz, due to the media hype of the
affair, and therefore Duke was carrying the
illegitimate grandchild of Lucille Ball and Desi
Arnaz. Duke believed the father to be the somewhat
older actor John Astin, however.

On February 21, 1971 she gave birth to her first
son Sean Astin (who has since become a major actor
in his own right). Even though the affair with
Desi Jr. had long since ended, Desi Arnaz|Desi
Arnaz, Sr. made a kindly visit to Duke when she
was in the hospital.  This was a daring thing for
him to do, as there reporters outside the hospital
that were eager for news that the newborn was his
grandson. In 1972 John Astin married Duke and
fathered her second son Mackenzie Astin born in
1973.

Duke and Astin worked together extensively during
their marriage. For a time, Patty Duke even added
Astin to her professional name.  The marriage and
her children greatly improved her self confidence
and her career.  She received her second Emmy
Award|Emmy for the TV mini-series Captains and the
Kings and her third for a TV version of The
Miracle Worker in which she played Annie Sullivan
to Melissa Gilbert's Helen Keller. Duke still
suffered from depression, however, and the work
put a strain on her marriage. She and Astin
divorced in 1985, then in 1986 she married drill
seargent Michael Pearce, who is her present-day
husband. They have one son together.  

In 1982 an unusual reaction to a cortisone shot
she received on a set led to her being diagnosed
with bipolar disorder.  Its treatment, which
included lithium as a medication, put her on the
true road to recovery.  Ms. Duke has since become
an activist for numerous causes, including an
important spokesperson for mental health.  In 1984
she was elected president of the Screen Actors
Guild, the second woman to hold the position (Duke
held the job until 1988).  She has written her
autobiography Call Me Anna (ISBN 0553272055) and
Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive
Illness (ISBN 0553560727)

On November 2, 2004, it was announced that Duke
would undergo single bypass surgery in her
adoptive home state of Idaho. In 2005, she
returned to New York to attend a memorial service
for actress Anne Bancroft who had died of cancer
earlier in the year.

==Filmography==
*Country Music Holiday (1958)
*The Goddess (1958)
*4D Man (1959)
*The Miracle Worker (1962)
*Billie (1965)
*The Daydreamer (1966) (voice)
*Think Twentieth (1967) (short subject)
*Valley of the Dolls (1967)
*Me, Natalie (1969)
*You'll Like My Mother (1972)
*The Swarm (1978)
*By Design (1982)
*Willy/Milly (1986)
*The Hitch-Hikers (1989)
*Prelude to a Kiss (1992)
*Kimberly (1999)
*Wrong Turn (2003) (short subject)
*Bigger Than the Sky (2005)

==External links==
*imdb name | id=0001157 | name=Patty Duke

==References==
*Duke, Patty.  Call me Anna Bantam, 1998. (ISBN
0553272055)