Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke (22 page)

The worst time of all was midnight, the panic hour. I couldn’t sleep, there was nobody to talk to, it was too late to call anyone. The idea of sitting peacefully reading a book didn’t occur to me—there was a motor running inside that wouldn’t stop or even slow down. I’d take a walk or drive around and wind up at the beach in the middle of the night. I spent many a night just sitting there, afraid of being alone in my apartment.

This kind of behavior came partly from a sense of release, a feeling of “I’m going to taste it all at once, because somebody might slam the door again.” But it also indicated a serious problem: I was panicked at not being prepared to live life. I was fine on the set; I knew how to hit my marks and say my lines—this was where I belonged. But as soon as it was time to go home, I was lost.

It was at this time that I began traveling with the remnants of the Rat Pack. Because Peter Lawford was one of the show’s producers, I’d met him early on, but at first he was just a movie star to me, extremely handsome with that studied casualness that is so sexy and appealing—someone who didn’t wear socks but did wear velvet slippers with wolves on them. But during the filming of Billie, which he had a hand in, and the beginning of the show’s third season, I spent more time with him than I ever had. Also, Peter was much more vulnerable by then; Marilyn Monroe had died, J.F.K. had died, his world was crashing.

Carousing with these people was very heady for me; I didn’t realize I was palling around with the remnants, I thought this was it. It was dinner at Matteo’s every night, occasional visits from the likes of Warren Beatty, Lee Marvin, and Sammy Davis, Jr., lots of show biz and Kennedy stories, much drinking of Jack Daniel’s but, oddly enough, no sex. The drinking got so heavy that I was called on the carpet many times for looking hung over during filming, because I was. My not-so-affectionate nickname on the show became the “little shit,” as in “get the little shit up here.”

During those days I met a woman named Molly Dunn, a friend of Peter’s, who was a good twenty years older than me. She became my stand-in on the show, we started hanging around together, and, frankly, Molly became much too involved in my life. She had a place of her own, but she stayed at mine a lot, and slept over so much when we’d go out drinking that she became like a part-time roomie. There was a period when you had to go through Molly to get to me; since I didn’t want to be bothered with anyone anyway, I figured, “Let big, bad Molly take care of it.” Rumors apparently cropped up, which I didn’t hear about until much later, that there was a lesbian relationship going on between us, which was simply not true.

I learned more than just drinking and cavorting with this group. I also started smoking. I’d never so much as sneaked a puff of a cigarette before, so I sat in my car and taught myself how. I threw up, got sick as a dog—for hours I practiced. When I came out, I was a smoker. Sick, but I was a smoker.

The same thing happened with swearing. Except for the night Gramma Howe died, I barely did it at all until I was eighteen, and, until the final blowups, not a single bad word passed my lips during the entire “reign of terror” with the Rosses. I even remember Harry once telling me in a startling statement, “You wouldn’t say shit if you had a mouthful.” But once I started to hang out with him and with the Rat Pack, where I was the smallest and youngest in the crowd, talking like a sailor, the same as smoking and drinking, was a way of
saying, “I’m one of the gang. I’m a grown-up, too, even if you are much older than me.” One day, only a couple of years later, I was cooking for Harry and I dropped a whole pot of peas on the floor. They rolled all over the kitchen, and I let out with a colorful, cleverly tied together stream of eight- and ten-letter words that would’ve done justice to the entire Sixth Fleet. And from the dining room Harry says, “Jesus, Pat, you really ought to do something about your language.” Go figure it!

By the time I had to go on the set for the beginning of the third season, my determination to get back at the Rosses led me to overkill, and I came out with all kinds of demands, things like having Harry direct half the season. All the resentment that had been pent up for all those years came flying out. I turned down no opportunity to humiliate them or hurt them. If one or the other, usually John, would come on the set to ask me about something, I would refuse to speak to them. If he was standing there, I would turn and speak to someone else, ask that person to answer him. It was that petty, that rude. I eventually had them barred from the set; I said it was too upsetting for me to have them around. I turned into a loud, crass, borderline-manic young lady. It was their worst nightmare come true.

Things got so bad, the Rosses brought my mother out to L.A. at one point to try to talk me into going back with them. They wined and dined her, but it blew up in their faces, because she said, “I’m not doing this anymore, I’m not making her come back. You took her away from me. She wasn’t my business for all these years, and she’s not my business now.” Then I got into a fight with my mother and I put her in some dreadful motel room until I could get her on a plane the next day. People called it rebellion then, but I don’t think it was that at all. It was just total rejection of anyone who claimed to have loved me. I didn’t believe them for a minute.

All this was politically stupid, of course, because no one who was around the show knew the history that I knew, so it looked as though I were being nothing more than a smart-ass kid. I wasn’t trained to do anything but follow orders, but there I was, giving them, and ill equipped to do it. I was a
little twerp. And until the last few years, when I made my peace with the reasons for that behavior, I used to be mortified that I’d ever acted like that. Those aren’t memories I’m proud of. Yes, I felt justified, it’s not as if the Rosses didn’t deserve to have to deal with my feelings, but for my own sake as well as theirs, I wish I’d done it some other way. I could, for instance, just as easily have killed them with kindness as overwhelmed them with bile; I could have been more clever instead of being so infantile.

What’s strange now is to look back and see that most of my bad behavior was textbook, it wasn’t creative at all. The smoking, drinking, swearing, and hostile actions were all attention-getting devices. It didn’t matter that it was bad attention I was attracting, it was attention all the same. So I was just running all hours, all directions, wanting to do it all and be the king. It was my turn to be in charge and I wasn’t going to let it pass.

In September of 1965, I had a ruptured appendix and, simultaneously, a corpus luteum cyst on my right ovary. Since being diagnosed as a manic-depressive was still nearly two decades away, I had no idea that any kind of a drug, especially an anesthetic, is very dangerous to someone with that condition. So after the surgery I headed into the first major manic episode I can now identify, the first time I exhibited the kinds of off-the-wall behavior that were to plague me until I got a handle on what was wrong with me.

I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I spent great sums of money, and even though I was still too physically uncomfortable to go running around town, I was on the phone constantly. Bill Schallert, my TV father, came to visit and thought I was behaving strangely. Then Bob Sweeney, the show’s producer, came out a few times and didn’t like what was going on either. So Bob invited me to come to recuperate at his and his wife Bev’s house. Actually, it was more than an invitation, it was “This is what we’re gonna do. Period.” And a good thing, too, because between their issuing the invitation and their arriving to pick me up, I lost it. Hallucinations, strange mental ramblings and rantings—really out-of-control behavior began.

I stayed with the Sweeneys for six weeks. They were very loving and fun, their house felt like a safe haven to me, and it was a really healthy environment in which to recover. Harry came out for a couple of visits after the surgery, and after the first one we became engaged. He came out again in November, and we got married.

My parents, John and Frances
Duke, on their wedding day.

The me that my managers, the Rosses, saw—young and eager to please. AP/WIDE WORLD

Proud as I can be at my First Communion, I wore a dress that, to my horror, was later dyed pink by Ethel Ross for an early acting role.

The four faces of Patty. An early publicity photo with credits, not all of them genuine, listed on the back. © JUSTIN KERR

Travels with Bambi, the dog I couldn’t escape: a staged showing of her to my mother, my sister Carol, and my brother Ray, and shopping for an appropriate carrying bag for the beast with Ethel Ross (below). NEW YORK DAILY NEWS (above) JACK STAGER/GLOBE PHOTOS (below)