{"id":23891,"date":"2016-03-30T08:04:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T15:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/oscar-winning-actress-duke-dies-at-69\/"},"modified":"2016-03-30T08:04:06","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T15:04:06","slug":"oscar-winning-actress-duke-dies-at-69","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/oscar-winning-actress-duke-dies-at-69\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar-winning actress Duke dies at 69"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK <\/strong>\u2014 Patty Duke, who as a teen won an Oscar for playing Helen Keller in \u201cThe Miracle Worker,\u201d then maintained a long career while battling personal demons, has died at the age of 69.<\/p>\n

The actress died early Tuesday morning of sepsis from a ruptured intestine, according to her<\/p>\n

agent, Mitchell Stubbs. She died in Coeur D\u2019Alene, Idaho, where she had lived for the past quarter-century, according to Teri Weigel, the publicist for her son, actor Sean Astin.<\/p>\n

Duke astonished audiences as the young deaf-and-blind Keller first on Broadway, then in the acclaimed 1962 film version, appearing in both alongside Anne Bancroft as Helen\u2019s teacher, Annie Sullivan (who won an Oscar of her won).<\/p>\n

Then in 1963, Duke burst on the TV scene starring in her own sitcom, \u201cThe Patty Duke Show,\u201d which aired for three seasons. She played dual roles as identical cousins Kathy, \u201cwho\u2019s lived most everywhere,\u00ac\u2020from Zanzibar to Barclay Square\u201d while (according to the theme song) \u201cPatty\u2019s only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights.\u00ac\u2020What a crazy pair!\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2015, she would play twin roles again: as a pair of grandmas on an episode of \u201cLiv and Maddie,\u201d a series on the Disney Channel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so grateful to her for living a life that generates that amount of compassion and feeling in others,\u201d Astin told The Associated Press in reflecting on the outpouring of sentiment from fans at the news of her death.<\/p>\n

She had \u201creally, really suffered\u201d with her illness, Astin added. From late last week until early Tuesday morning, he said, \u201cwas a really, really, really hard process. It was hard for her, it was hard for the people who love her to help her….\u201d<\/p>\n

But throughout her life, she was \u201ca warrior,\u201d he said. \u201cYou watch this 4-foot-10, tiny imp of a lady who\u2019s more powerful than the greatest military leaders in history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born Anna Marie Duke in the New York borough of Queens on Dec. 14, 1946, she had a difficult childhood with abusive parents. By 8 years old she was largely under the control of husband-and-wife talent managers who kept her busy on soap operas and advertising displays.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, they supplied her with alcohol and prescription drugs, which accentuated the effects of her undiagnosed bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n

In her 1988 memoir, \u201cCall Me Anna,\u201d Duke wrote of her condition and the diagnosis she had gotten only six years earlier, and of the subsequent treatment that helped stabilize her life. The book became a 1990 TV film in which she starred, and she became an activist for mental health causes, helping to de-stigmatize bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n

With the end of \u201cThe Patty Duke Show\u201d in 1966, which left her stereotyped as not one, but two squeaky-clean teenagers, Duke attempted to leap into the nitty-grittiness of adulthood in the 1967 melodrama \u201cValley of the Dolls,\u201d in which she played a showbiz hopeful who falls prey to drug addiction, a broken marriage and shattered dreams.<\/p>\n

The film, based on the best-selling Jacqueline Susann pulp novel, was critically slammed but a commercial sensation.<\/p>\n

During her career she would win three Emmy Awards, for the TV film \u201cMy Sweet Charlie,\u201d the miniseries \u201cCaptains and the Kings\u201d and the 1979 TV remake of \u201cThe Miracle Worker,\u201d in which Duke played Annie Sullivan with \u201cLittle House on the Prairie\u201d actress Melissa Gilbert as Keller.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know she\u2019s in a better place. I will miss her every day but I will find comfort in the words of Helen Keller: \u2018The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched \u2014 they must be felt with the heart,\u2019\u201d Gilbert wrote in tribute.<\/p>\n

In the 1980s, she starred in a trio of short-lived sitcoms: \u201cIt Takes Two,\u201d \u2018\u2019Karen\u2019s Song\u201d and \u201cHail to the Chief,\u201d cast as the first female president of the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer career ebbed and flowed,\u201d said Sean Astin, her son with her third husband, actor John Astin, \u201cand sometimes she was stressed about it and sometimes she was at peace with it. And then she\u2019d get to do something that she could sink her teeth into, that reminded her of what she was capable of.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to her acting career, Duke served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1985 to 1988.<\/p>\n

She starred in several stage productions, including a return to Broadway in 2002 to play Aunt Eller in a revival of the musical \u201cOklahoma!\u201d<\/p>\n

By then, she already had spent a dozen years living in Idaho with her fourth husband, Michael Pearce (who survives her), seeking refuge from the clutter, noise and turmoil of big cities, and from the tumultuous life she had weathered in the past.<\/p>\n

In describing the role of Aunt Eller, and perhaps herself, to The Associated Press, she said, \u201cThis is a woman who has had strife in life, made her peace with some of it and has come to the point of acceptance. Not giving up.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

This story has been corrected to reflect that Patty Duke was born Anna Marie Duke.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Lauri Neff contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Patty Duke, who as a teen won an Oscar for playing Helen Keller in \u201cThe Miracle Worker,\u201d then maintained a long career while battling personal demons, has died at the age of 69. The actress died early Tuesday morning of sepsis from a ruptured intestine, according to her agent, Mitchell Stubbs. She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":23892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23891"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}