The Neal Deal
One Oscar, One Tony, this could never sum up the tremendous life of one of cinema's leading angels, her name was Patricia Neal. Born Patricia Louise Neal in a small Kentucky Town in 1926 and reared in Knoxville, Tennessee. Miss Neal took naturally to the high school stage, and pursued her craft diligently, with summers devoted to summer stock. Her precocious passion would inspire her to put college on hold and in 1946, a brand spanking new Broadway baby, who unbelievably secured a Tony award for Best actress for her stunning performance as Regina Hubbard in Lillian Hellman's wower Another Part of the Forest .
It would not be long that Patricia would grace the silvers in her 1949 debut John Loves Mary, Neal portrayed the titular Mary, a role that was intended for Jane Wyman, but given that her and Ronnie Reagan were splitsville at the point of production, Patricia got the part, which was a bit on the twee side and would far from showcase all that was simmering inside of her.
On the heels of John Loves Mary, she would beat Barbara Stanwyck to the proverbial punch to land the role of Dominique Francon in Ayn Rand's existential The Fountainhead. Sadly, this film would be dismissed, even given that King Vidor moved mountains to translate Rand's incongruous work into something visually tangible. Still, it would prove testament that Neal was a veritable force of nature.
Although The Fountainhead would receive lukewarm appreciation at best, something surely was heating up on the set, this would be where she met and fell in love with a very married Gary Cooper, who was twenty-five years her senior . This was an affair that Miss Neal was reluctant to make bones about , and in fact cited Cooper as one of her great loves. Gary secretly felt the same but when the guilt became all too much for the still besotted Cooper, and he had to put and end to their union, Patricia suffered a nervous breakdown, it was also alleged she was pregnant from Cooper at the time. This would spur her on to leave the City of Angels and return to the Broadway roost.
This decision would lead her to kismet, it was then in 1951 that dear friend Lillian Hellman would introduce her to the noted novelist Roald Dahl, and their cosmic connection would lead them down the aisle within a year of them meeting.
Neal would not miss a single year making pictures, and many were unmemorable until 1963 when she would star in the film that would earn her an Ocsar, for one of her most impassioned moments as Alma Brown in the Paul Newman vehicle Hud .
Patricia's life was constantly marked with travesty only a year before her role in Hud, she lost her seven year old daughter Olivia, shockingly to complications of measles. Two years after, she would suffer three strokes, the newspapers even mistakenly announced her death at this time. In the aftermaths of these strokes, which sabotaged her ability to speak, it was her husband Roald, and his method, of refusing to coddle her during her rehabilitation that would inspire the fighter inside. Considered a medical miracle, Patricia eventually would not only speak again and gain her mobility back, she would return to stage and screen once more. She was nearly cast in The Graduate but still needed a bit more recovery time. However, a year after in 1968 she starred in the intense ensemble piece, The Subject Was Roses. There was some hesitation on the directors behalf but lo and behold not only was she back in full regalia, she would be nominated for an Oscar for her role as disillusioned mother Nettie Cleary.
Her road to success was far less rocky than her road to recuperation, and she remained indomitably self-actualized, until the very end when she was diagnosed with lung cancer which would claim her life at 84. She would devote years to helping paralysis victims, always giving, when the world seemed to take so much from her. Patricia Neal, was a star in every connotation of the word.
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