Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke (8 page)

As determined a little person as I was, I didn’t get every part I wanted. One of my biggest disappointments came in 1959 when Pollyanna was being cast. Because of the way the Rosses worked, I’d prepared for weeks for that part. That meant not only reading the book but discussing it, imagining dialogue, learning to dress the way Pollyanna dressed and behave the way Pollyanna behaved. If I messed up, their response was, “Pollyanna wouldn’t do that, would she?” And after all that, I never even got to the audition. One was set up, with the help of David Niven, but I got very sick, possibly with hepatitis, and during the postponement Hayley Mills, whose look was more classically Pollyanna, was found. I was heartbroken, heartbroken at not playing that role. That had nothing to do with a fear of the Rosses’ reaction. Pollyanna would have meant going to California and working with Walt Disney! It took me a while to get over that one.

One of the Rosses’ better traits was that they were surprisingly reasonable about rejection. Before I’d go in to try out for something, they’d deliver an effective kind of coach’s pep talk, saying, “Okay, it’s your part, just go claim it.” I’ve used a similar thing with my own kids when they want to get a hit in Little League: “It’s yours, just go do it.” And if I didn’t succeed, they never openly said, “You blew it.” I would feel very frustrated and discouraged, something I now know adult actors go through also, because you never find out why you didn’t get the part. Were you too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, or did your reading stink? Or were you great and they didn’t know it? John Ross was very philosophical about all this. He’d say, “Hey, there’s another one coming. Don’t worry about it.”

We went to Long Branch, New Jersey, to audition for a summer stock production of The Bad Seed. We’d worked on the part a lot, drilling for days and nights, so I did extremely well, and the reaction was so good afterward that I thought I had the part. We all went out into the lobby and John Ross and the producer went into a corner to talk. I thought they were making a deal, because in the theater in those days, talking in a corner was how all deals were made. I was sitting on a bench, anticipating the summer and my first stage role, when all of a sudden the producer walked up to say good-bye.
I said good-bye back in my best Sparkle Plenty manner, but I noticed that John was acting really disturbed.

We walked down the gravel driveway to the waiting taxi to go to the train station, and John, to his credit, told me how wonderful I had been and how thrilled and proud of me he was, but that I didn’t get the part because I had no previous stage experience. He said there was no point in arguing with these people, their minds were set; they were afraid I wouldn’t be able to cut it when there was an audience in the house. Actually, that was probably one of the moments when he thought he should have put more lies on my credits.

Not getting that role was another tremendous disappointment because I knew I’d been good, I knew that this was a real injustice. We got on the train and Ross said, “Don’t you worry, honey. You’ll open on Broadway, and you’ll never have to set foot on a summer stock stage.”

Nineteen fifty-nine was also the year in which, though I didn’t know it at the time, I would make the front page of The New York Times. It had all started the year before, with Irving Harris, the man who had introduced my brother to the Rosses. Harris had connections with The $64,000 Challenge, a TV quiz show that was the successor to The $64,000 Question, and he arranged for me to go to a kind of audition, really just to see if I had the personality they were looking for. Then I was informed that I was going to do the show and the producers were trying to decide on a category of expertise for me; naturally, I didn’t get to volunteer what I thought I’d be good at. In a few days I was told that popular music had been chosen. It could have been anything; they might as well have said Chinese.

The person I dealt with most on the show was a woman named Shirley Bernstein, who was the associate producer and composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein’s sister. She was very attractive, an elegant-looking high-class New York lady with a husky voice who was always willing to caress me or pat me on the head when I needed it. We had several meetings the week before each show. At the first one I was told about material “it would be a good idea for you to familiarize yourself with.” It was never “This is what you must know,”
rather, “Maybe you ought to read x or y in Cashbox or Billboard,” or “You might want to get hold of these ten records.” I would also be asked specific questions, things like what label ‘Shaboom, Shaboom’ was on or what instrument was featured in a particular arrangement. If I answered correctly, they’d let me know I was right and wasn’t that good that I was right. If I gave a wrong answer or didn’t know, they wouldn’t supply the answer but they’d say, “Gee, it might be a good idea for you to study some more in that area.” And I’d go tell John Ross what they’d said and we’d go home and study the material furiously.

John Ross was never present at these meetings and I was discouraged from taking notes. Why they didn’t want me to write down information I was supposed to know didn’t make a lot of sense to me then. What I know now is that they wanted to have deniability in case any of this came out. Which, of course, it did.

By Saturday morning, the day before the show, I would’ve accumulated an incredible amount of knowledge. And I’d go down to the show’s offices, there’d be nobody around but me and Shirley, and she would narrow it down to, say, ten items I was most secure about. Then I would go home again and Ross would just drill me to death, on and on and on until the wee small hours of Sunday morning, when I was bleary-eyed from it all. I was allowed to sleep in after that and late Sunday afternoon, just before the show, I was taken to the studio and Shirley would ask me just four questions. Usually I knew the answers by then, but a couple of times, when I faltered, Shirley got really nervous. And that would finally be the time when she would supply the answers.

By the time the show went on the air, my guts would be in an uproar. Not only was I intimidated by stuff like orchestrations and arrangements, I didn’t understand in general why the Rosses had changed their style for this show, why they suddenly didn’t want to be present for all meetings and know every single detail. But still I’d go on with Eddie Hodges of The Music Man; I’d be adorable, and everybody would go “ooh” and he’d be adorable, and everyone would go “aah.”

After a few weeks Eddie and I progressed far enough to
go into the isolation booths, where it had to be 112 degrees. They had a little fan going in one corner and a lot of Wash ’n Dris in front of you; the whole place smelled of Wash ’n Dris. One week, when we were up to $32,000, I almost blew it. My mouth was very dry, so I licked my lips before answering, but I moved too close to the microphone and got a shock. I was very startled and jumped back and when I told Ralph Story, the emcee, he said, “A lot of people have gotten shocks in these booths,” which was very funny except that I now couldn’t remember what he’d asked me and he wouldn’t repeat the question. I really thought, “They’re gonna kill me. I can’t even get out of this booth and they’re gonna kill me.” And suddenly, just when I was about to cry, I remembered the question and out came the answer.

Eddie and I both answered all our questions (no surprise here), so the last show ended with us splitting the $64,000. It’s difficult to describe how relieved I was when that show was over. The pressure I’d felt was enormous, much worse than anything involved with acting. For one thing, the hype for those high-stakes game shows was pretty hefty then—people didn’t leave their homes when they were on—and the award money seemed astronomical to me. My winnings were supposed to go into a trust fund but, like the rest of my earnings, what really happened to them is a mystery.

So while I may have seemed to be a very composed little girl, with pigtails and bows and perfect little dresses, I was actually much too terrified to be anything like excited. I was afraid of the Rosses and their browbeating kind of consequences if I messed up: “You didn’t study enough.” “You didn’t practice hard enough.” “You knew that answer, how could you be so stupid?” “If you had done what we told you, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

I knew the difference between right and wrong; I’d taken tests in school and knew you weren’t supposed to give the answers to anybody. But whom could I tell about what was going on? Whom could I tell about being so afraid? My mother? When I finally told John they were giving me the answers, what he said was, “It’s a secret, you mustn’t tell anyone.” Eventually, though, not only did it come out, but everyone in America knew.

Things began to fall apart in 1959, the year after my appearance, when first the New York district attorney’s office and then a grand jury began to investigate both The $64,000 Challenge and Twenty-one. John Ross said to me, “We’ve got to go to the district attorney. All the people connected with the show are going to tell the same story, that you were not given the answers, you were only given general areas to study.” Later, when the whole thing burst wide open, he said, “Remember, you would come out of the meetings and say that what went on was a secret, that you couldn’t tell me.” Which, of course, wasn’t true, but it was my cue. Now I could see how he expected me to play this game.

By the time I went to see the district attorney in one of those ancient New York municipal buildings, I was seriously scared. His office was stark, with those brown wooden chairs with arms that smell from all the sweaty palms that have been rubbed over them. My feet didn’t touch the ground, so I couldn’t even feel physically grounded. The meeting was very brief and, as instructed, I lied to him about what went on before the show.

The grand jury was worse. For one thing, they subpoenaed my mother to testify. Now, there was one person who truly knew nothing about the show. She fell apart in the hall, got hysterical and fainted. Next came my turn. I was dressed like Shirley Temple and I carried a little stuffed dog, Scotty, with a Catholic medal pinned to his underside. It was the same kind of chair, the same kind of smell, but I was taken aback by seeing forty people in the room: the only juries I knew about were the small ones I saw on TV.

When a tiny girl walks into a jury room carrying a stuffed dog, everyone starts to sigh. My feet still didn’t touch the ground, but I wanted to look relaxed. So I put my elbow on the armrest and placed my chin in my hand, but, of course, the elbow slipped off, and my head went flying. I got a big laugh and I was enough of a show business veteran to know I had a favorable audience, that if I didn’t screw up, I’d be okay here. I’d been coached by John not to volunteer anything, so when I was asked a direct question, I gave the shortest possible answer. When they said, “Can you be more specific?” I’d pretend I didn’t know what that meant. Once
again I gave out the party line, that there had been talk in general areas. I never revealed that I was given any answers.

At the same time, I was again very frightened. I was a year older than when I’d been on the show, and what was right versus what was wrong was even clearer to me. I knew what perjury was and I knew I was committing it. I really felt I was selling my soul to stay out of trouble with the Rosses. Also, I had all these gothic fantasies going. I thought I’d committed a crime and I’d end up like a kid in one of those old movies who gets shipped off to reform school and has to live on bread and water. No one ever explained to me the legal consequences of what I’d done; I didn’t know that it was not a crime, that it was immoral but not illegal. I don’t remember the questions I was asked or the answers I gave anymore; I just know that I was told to lie and I did.

The worst terror of all, however, was still to come. In November, 1959, I had to fly down to Washington, D.C., to testify before the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight. By now the hearings had been on television, Xavier Cugat was there with his dogs—it was like a Barnum & Bailey production. John Ross told me one more time, “This is what everybody’s doing. You have to do it, too, or else everyone will be in trouble.” I was filled with feelings of having been betrayed, of terrible remorse and humiliation at having to perform again in front of all these people.

Because of my age—which I revealed under oath to be twelve, two years older than the Rosses had been saying, leading the press to joke about how much I’d aged in front of the House—the subcommittee decided to hear my testimony in executive session. Though I didn’t know it, they’d already pretty much figured out what had happened and wanted my testimony largely for corroboration. I remember the room as being huge, with lots of microphones, but since it had just been cleared, it looked strangely empty. The initial questioning was very similar to the grand jury’s, aimed at determining whether I knew the difference between right and wrong. Direct question: “Did I know the questions ahead of time?” “No, I did not.”

Then there was a lull and the congressman in charge, Oren Harris of Arkansas, very sweetly said in his Southern
accent, “Now, Anna Marie”—I’d told them my real name—“are you sure you’ve told us the truth?” And I don’t remember any time passing between the moment he said “truth” and my saying, “No sir, I have not.”

Why did I finally break down? Partly because I think I’d guessed, from the nature of their questions, that someone else had already told the truth. But more than that, some thing told me that enough was enough; the basic honesty of this child had been violated for too long and she cracked. The fear of how the Rosses would retaliate no longer mattered in the face of this real need to be relieved of that burden.

Then the questioning started again, to establish not only that these people had perpetrated a hoax on the public, but that they’d gone so far as to use children to do it. The Washington Post editorialized the next day: “What they did to Patty Duke amounted, in the real sense of the phrase, to a corruption of innocence.” And one of the congressmen let John Ross have it, saying he shared “a very heavy part of the responsibility” and noting that Patty Duke seemed to be “exploited at the moment very profitably by quite a number of people, and not with the test as to what is for her own best interests.” If he only knew.