Oscar-Winning Actress Patty Duke Dies At 69

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NEW YORK (AP) — Born Anna Marie Pearce in Queens, New York, on Dec. 14, 1946, Duke had a difficult childhood with abusive parents. By 8 years old she was largely under the control of husband-and-wife talent managers who soon found her work on soap operas and print advertising.

In the meantime, they supplied her with alcohol and prescription drugs, which accelerated the effects of her undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

In her 1988 memoir, "Call Me Anna," Duke wrote of her condition and its diagnosis only six years earlier, and of the treatment that subsequently stabilized 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.

With the end of "The Patty Duke Show" in 1966, which left her stereotyped as not one, but two squeaky-clean teenagers, Duke attempted to leap into adulthood in the 1967 melodrama "Valley of the Dolls," in which she played a showbiz hopeful who falls prey to drug addiction, a broken marriage and shattered dreams.

The film, based on the best-selling Jacqueline Susann pulp novel, was critically slammed but a commercial smash.

During her career she would win three Emmy Awards, for the TV film "My Sweet Charlie," the miniseries "Captains and the Kings" and the 1979 TV remake of "The Miracle Worker," in which Duke played Annie Sullivan and "Little House on the Prairie" actress Melissa Gilbert as Keller.

In the 1980s, she starred in a trio of short-lived sitcoms: "It Takes Two," ''Karen's Song" and "Hail to the Chief," in which she was cast as the first female president of the United States.

She starred in several stage productions, including a return to Broadway in 2003 to play Aunt Eller in a revival of the musical "Oklahoma!"

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.

In describing the role of Aunt Eller, and perhaps herself, to The Associated Press, she said, "This 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."

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