patricia neal
Patricia Neal has died at her home on Martha’s Vineyard, of lung cancer. She was 84. Neal started out strong as a Hollywood leading lady, a beautiful and powerful character actress in such films as The Fountainhead, co-starring her lover Gary Cooper, The Day the Earth Stood Still, In 1964 Ms. Neal received an Oscar as best actress for her performance as the tough, shopworn housekeeper who did not succumb to Paul Newman’s amoral charm in “Hud.” But a year later she had three strokes, leaving her in a coma for three weeks. Although she was semiparalyzed and unable to speak afterward, she learned to walk and talk again.
Despite a severely impaired memory that made it difficult to remember dialogue, she returned to the screen in 1968 as the bitter mother who used her son as a weapon against her husband in the screen version of Frank Gilroy’s play “The Subject Was Roses.” Once again, she was nominated for an Academy Award.
Her career had started swiftly and brilliantly. Before she was 21, she had swept the major acting prizes for her Broadway debut in Lillian Hellman’s “Another Part of the Forest.” As the rapacious Regina Hubbard who could hold her own in a family of vipers, Ms. Neal received a Tony, a Donaldson Award and a New York Drama Critics Award. Her photograph was on the cover of Life magazine.
