Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke (15 page)

One of the strongest moments in the film is also the result of an accident. It happens right after the miracle, when Annie spells “teacher” into Helen’s hand and Helen understands. It was a tough day for shooting; the sun was going in and out of very fluffy clouds, forcing a lot of retakes. It was getting cold and dark, there was time pressure because we would soon lose the light, and this scene was unbelievably emotional for me. Not only was it one of my strongest scenes, but I knew that pretty soon Arthur was going to say, “Cut, print” and that would be the last time I’d ever play it. My eyes were out of focus, I couldn’t really see anything, but just as Annie finished spelling “teacher” I suddenly felt an amazing light and warmth on my face. Call it serendipity, God, you name it, but the blessing of having the sun move out from behind a cloud at just that moment really got me by the throat. And one tear, which was also definitely not planned, fell to my cheek. The cloud moved, the light hit the tear, the tear glistened. It was such a dog and pony show, who could believe it all happened by chance.

As the last day of shooting approached, something I’d been dreading for quite some time, I was working my way up to a real fit. The end of the film was a very painful, very lonely time, and an even bigger loss than when Annie left the play because there was no getting around the fact that this was truly final. Even though everyone’s intentions are always to see each other and get together and la-di-da, even by that age I’d learned that that didn’t work out too often, especially when you’re living with Mr. and Mrs. Jack the Ripper.

When the last day came, I tried to be professional but it was very hard. In fact I can pinpoint the scene of the chick being hatched in my hand as being shot at that time because
I can see how swollen my eyes were. The heightened emotion of watching something being born, which I’d never seen before, coupled with the impending grief of being separated, made for two really beautiful faces on the screen. I don’t think Annie and I look as vulnerable anywhere else in the movie as we do there.

Later that same day, I’d recovered enough to at least attend a poolside wrap party. John Ross used to tell the story that when I came out in this little leopard-patterned bathing suit, Arthur Penn supposedly said, “Whoo, we just made it!” I looked like a teenager—small, but a teenager nonetheless.

If anything bothers me about the film version of
The Miracle Worker
as opposed to the play, it’s what they did to the very last scene. It upset me then and it upsets me now. In the play, everything happens at once, a kind of whirling dervish of excitement: Helen says “wah-wah,” she spells half a dozen objects, the parents are called out, Annie screams, “She knows!” and the bow is all tied up with teacher’s, “I love Helen, forever and ever.” The crisis and the catharsis are happening right there for the audience.

In the movie what they did was break it up. The miracle happens, the crescendo builds, and suddenly the family takes the child away. Though it may be dramatically accurate that her mother and father are excited and want Helen to themselves for a while, somehow it cuts everything off and there isn’t the chance to gear up again. You just go right into a nighttime scene, Annie’s sitting on the porch looking much older than the Annie we’ve seen all through the movie. Then this perfectly well-behaved child comes out, kisses her on the cheek, and Annie says, as she spells it, “I love you, Helen.” She doesn’t even say “forever and ever,” even the poetry of that moment is missing. They may have done that because the movie was short and they wanted an additional scene, because of a misguided desire to put a button on the thing, or because it’s more historically accurate, but if dramatic license is ever permissible, it certainly is there. The whole intensity of that scene is simply gone.

Still, I get very emotionally involved with that film whenever I watch it; it’s almost like a potion for me. If people talk while we’re viewing it, I get annoyed, and none
of my other roles affects me that way. Moreover, if I ever have to enter a scene crying, I will very often repeat to myself Annie’s speech at the end, where she says to Helen, “Reach, reach, I wanted to teach you everything the earth is full of,” and it’s like turning a key and unlocking something inside me—the tears always come. Part of that is the identification I’ve always had with the desperation of this woman who’s done everything she can think of—it’s almost there but it’s not and it never will be. That’s very painful to me, but beautiful also, because she won’t give up, and won’t let Helen give up. Most of all, I connect with that desire to enlighten and to be enlightened before you die, so that you leave something behind.

Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of compliments about my role as Helen Keller, but I think the one that means the most was what my son Mack said after he saw the film when he was very little, maybe three or four.

“Mom,” he wanted to know, “when did you get over being blind?”

Never, Mack. I’m still searching.

A
s
The Miracle Worker
filming progressed, the Rosses began drinking even more heavily than usual. Mornings were impossible for them because they were so hung over, but sometimes in the afternoon they’d wander out to the set and talk more to me about my behavior on the set than my behavior in front of the camera. “Why are you running around like that?” “Don’t play with those cats!” “Go sit over there!” Never anything positive, except their standard phrase, “Love ya!” which I heard all the time. Alcohol always made Ethel abusive, while John by contrast got really mellow and faded into the woodwork. The only problem was, when John drank, he would get increasingly sexual with me.

What happened to me was minor compared to the real horror stories some kids have gone through. But the trauma was the same; I was about as molested as I ever want a little girl to get. It’s always been very difficult for me to discuss these “incestuous” attempts, which is what they felt like; it’s very disturbing to me still. In fact I spent years in therapy without even remembering them—I had totally blocked them out. Nothing came back to me until John Astin and I were watching television one night. He was flipping the channels and stopped at a discussion of incest and I freaked out. I
screamed, “Change the channel! Change the channel!” I got really frantic, and John kept saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay. What’s the matter? Why does this bother you so much?” I felt ashamed and embarrassed and all of a sudden I remembered why.

It started comparatively innocently, usually after nights of drinking. John would wear these short pajamas that were very revealing, I would be standing at the sink or getting something out of the closet, and he would accidentally on purpose brush up against me for just those few seconds too long for it to be an accident. There had to be something off-center about these incidents for me to catch what was going on, because I wasn’t sophisticated enough sexually to make up something like that.

The first real incident that’s clear in my mind took place while we were in New Jersey on
The Miracle Worker
location. The rest of the crew was in one hotel and the Rosses and I were in another. It was a broiling hot Sunday and we were sitting around the pool, reading the papers and chitchatting. They started making banana daiquiries, which I liked because they were sweet, and all of us got pretty well plotzed. And sunburned, So much so that Ethel finally noticed and said, “Boy, you better go in and put Sea ‘n’ Ski on. Take a shower first and use a lot of soap, that’ll take the sting out.” She had theories about everything.

Whenever we traveled we all stayed in one room, John and Ethel on two big beds and me on a cot. The shower helped a little, I put on the Sea ‘n’ Ski, but because of all that alcohol I was feeling pretty sick to my stomach. I got in bed and turned out the lights because they were hurting my eyes. The smell of rum and suntan oil was heavy in the air, and I felt close to vomiting.

I heard the door open and when they came in I pretended to be asleep, because if I had to talk to them, I’d throw up for sure. The room was really flying now. I was desperately trying to regulate my breathing, anything to make this sensation go away. John came out of the shower and they began to bicker. She said something like “I don’t care, I’m taking a nap” and got into bed with me. Then he came around and got in bed on the other side.

They were both lying very close to me, and I made some noises to indicate discomfort but nobody changed positions. Then he began to fondle me, and he got an erection, which was up against my rear end. My whole body felt very hot, not just from my sunburn but from the inside, as if all the capillaries were bursting. I was terrified, I didn’t know what to do. Meanwhile Ethel was making similar moves on her side. I made another noise, as if I were asleep but uncomfortable, but he pursued and put his leg over me. And I sat bolt upright and threw up all over him. Thank God for a weak stomach.

Not a word was ever mentioned, then or later, about what happened between us. I never said anything to either of them. I allowed them to believe I had been asleep; we pretended that I’d simply been sick and thrown up. If I hadn’t done that, I’ve never wanted to think what might have happened. And there was another incident, about a year later in Palm Springs, when John left their bed in the middle of the night and got into mine. At first I kept hoping he was going to go away and when he didn’t I just gave him a real kick. He got the message.

On the one hand, it seems impossible that John would have pursued things far enough to really rape me in either situation, because the potential consequences were too dangerous, but that first time it’s entirely possible he was too drunk to care. I really don’t know. I don’t use Sea ‘n’ Ski anymore; that smell brings it back to me. And for years banana daiquiris were one drink I just couldn’t touch.

I think Arthur Penn and Annie and a few people who had contact with me on a steady basis probably surmised that there was trouble in paradise, but they were hard-pressed to do anything about it. People have said to me through the years, “Why the hell didn’t somebody try to help you?” but when you think about it, on a practical level, what were they going to do? No one witnessed any actual abuse, that was certainly well guarded, even by me. If anybody had made an accusation against the Rosses to me, I would have denied it or been very defensive. Because I had the classic reaction: guilt. “I know this is wrong, but it must be my fault, so I
better not tell anybody.” So what was anybody going to do? They’d open up a can of worms they’d have no control over.

Ever since
The Miracle Worker
ended, the Rosses had been searching for a stage role of equal impact, and in 1962 they thought they’d found it. I’m not sure how Isle of Children, written by Robert L. Joseph, came to their attention, but I wasn’t given any choice as to whether I would do the play. Their treatment of me was a briskly patronizing “This is what we’re doing today,” like a nurse saying, “How are we today? Do we have our blue eyes open?”

The play was about a well-to-do couple and their cherished only child who was dying of some unknown disease. Unwilling to admit, as the girl does, that this is happening, her parents schlepp her around the world, searching for a cure. The mother especially is tilting at windmills, and the marriage is not going well because of that and because the girl adores her father and leaves poor mom out in the cold.

The part of Deirdre Striden, the little girl, was a tour de force role. It was a wonderful opportunity for any kid, but especially for this one, because it dealt with death, which was the topic for me, and I was able to hear it explored and discussed in ways that I did not hear in the house I lived in. But more than that, Deirdre was the perfect child you dream about. She was pretty, she was smart, she danced, she told jokes, she did accents and imitated baseball players. I mean, the loss of this child would be felt by every human being in the whole world because she was just this mystical being who could do it all.

Deirdre had a charming scene, beautifully written, that made people terribly uncomfortable. She invites a boy up to her bedroom and asks him to lie down next to her because she’s not going to live long enough to get married and have sex and she wants an idea of what the experience feels like. Deirdre’s emotions went from A to? and back again in that play, so I got to do all kinds of things and show many different sides of myself, and that was part of what was wrong. It was really a one-woman show more than a play; there was nothing for anyone else to do.

The other problem with
Isle of Children
was that if there
were fifty people involved with the play, there were fifty different opinions on what the play was about, and so many different versions of the ending I have trouble remembering them myself. Although I was still too terrified to have an opinion of my own, even as a fifteen-year-old I sensed that the piece was too scattered and didn’t have the courage of its convictions.

The solution that everyone came up with during our pre-Broadway tryout in Wilmington was to introduce a Chinese play within a play for Deirdre’s birthday. To this day I don’t understand why they did that. All of a sudden there’s a bunch of people, the mother, the father, and the maid, all running around in Chinese outfits. The girl had never spoken about anything Chinese, she didn’t even talk about Chinese food! I was playing it and I didn’t know what the hell it was about. I thought I was hallucinating, it was that bizarre.

One of the worst experiences I’ve ever had onstage came during the Wilmington tryout. The play was in such chaos we had new pages and scenes every day. Since I had an excellent memory as a kid, my burden usually was to put all the new material in that same night. One new scene involved Norma Crane, who played my mother. She had to say things like “Yes, dear” and “We’ll see” and I had two pages of dialogue, so much that I wanted to wait until the next day to put it in. Norma, however, strongly wanted it in that night and I agreed to try, with a fail-safe system. If I suddenly lost my place, I would scratch my ear and we’d go back to a prearranged spot in the previous version.