Read Online Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke by Patty Duke - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Patty Duke
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mother, of course, never had the courage or whatever it would have taken to say, “No, I can’t. I have some things I’m doing.” She would stop whatever she was about, throw herself together, and go into the city. Sometimes they gave her all my fan mail to take care of. She’d take the letters home and sit up till three A.M., addressing envelopes and putting pictures in them, and then drag a suitcase full of them back to Manhattan on the subway the next morning.
After I moved in with the Rosses I mostly saw my mother when she showed up about once a week to do their laundry. She would do the hand laundry and Ethel insisted on most things, especially personal items like pajamas, underwear, and socks, being hand-washed. Not only was my mother never paid, this being kind of a “favor among colleagues,” she was given very specific instructions about how to do things and a critique when she was finished. It was always done in a very patronizing tone, with Ethel saying things like, “Oh, Mrs. Duke, would you mind very much? Oh, thank you so much, Mrs. Duke. Now, Mrs. Duke, you must use the Woolite here and you mustn’t use more than a capful.” No wonder my mother went deaf. Who wants to listen to that?
To this day my mother still gets furious over a phrase in the old stock publicity about me that says how filthy my white shoes and socks were before John and Ethel Ross began to manage me; ask her about the phrase “we took her and her dirty white shoes,” and you still get the whole chapter andverse. When I was a kid, I wondered, “Why is she making such a big deal about the shoes and socks? What does it matter?” But now I realize it mattered a whole lot. It was an attack on her motherhood, and it underlined her guilt about having relinquished that position with me. That tossed-off phrase did it; that was the stake through her heart.
The image comes to me often now of this woman who came from a shabby apartment in Elmhurst, or, later on, a basement place in Astoria to a seemingly flashy Manhattan apartment to launder the personal underwear of people with whom her child was living. It’s cold on West End Avenue, with the wind coming off the Hudson River, and I think of those awful lonely moments she must have had, cold in her heart as well as on the outside, walking those long blocks to the subway in her thin coat. And returning home to a place where there was no one. Who’s going to do her laundry? Who’s going to care if she’s had any dinner? What awful demons she must have been living with. It made me ache. It still makes me ache.
SEVEN
W hen I first started acting, my main motivation was fear, a feeling that if I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, something horrible was going to happen. But once I became a hot little number on live TV, once the work changed from “Daddy, I want ice cream,” to more meaningful parts and I began to feel myself understanding the concepts and getting better, the acting mechanism in me really clicked. I’ve never liked to think of myself as very ambitious, but it’s been there, underneath, and this was when the drive really kicked in. I was no longer doing the work just because the Rosses wanted me to; now I wanted it as well. I liked the feeling of walking into a studio and not only knowing that I belonged but also having other people know it.
That sense of belonging—the attention and affirmation—was really the key element for me. Most performers are very loving, very willing to show affection, and I made attachments quickly. I would love everybody, and there would always be a couple of favorites who loved me back. They were like the family I’d never really had, so it was wrenching when each show came to an end. I was grief-stricken to the point of feeling inconsolable; every one of the good-byes was a real loss to me.
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
After I moved in with the Rosses I mostly saw my mother when she showed up about once a week to do their laundry. She would do the hand laundry and Ethel insisted on most things, especially personal items like pajamas, underwear, and socks, being hand-washed. Not only was my mother never paid, this being kind of a “favor among colleagues,” she was given very specific instructions about how to do things and a critique when she was finished. It was always done in a very patronizing tone, with Ethel saying things like, “Oh, Mrs. Duke, would you mind very much? Oh, thank you so much, Mrs. Duke. Now, Mrs. Duke, you must use the Woolite here and you mustn’t use more than a capful.” No wonder my mother went deaf. Who wants to listen to that?
To this day my mother still gets furious over a phrase in the old stock publicity about me that says how filthy my white shoes and socks were before John and Ethel Ross began to manage me; ask her about the phrase “we took her and her dirty white shoes,” and you still get the whole chapter andverse. When I was a kid, I wondered, “Why is she making such a big deal about the shoes and socks? What does it matter?” But now I realize it mattered a whole lot. It was an attack on her motherhood, and it underlined her guilt about having relinquished that position with me. That tossed-off phrase did it; that was the stake through her heart.
The image comes to me often now of this woman who came from a shabby apartment in Elmhurst, or, later on, a basement place in Astoria to a seemingly flashy Manhattan apartment to launder the personal underwear of people with whom her child was living. It’s cold on West End Avenue, with the wind coming off the Hudson River, and I think of those awful lonely moments she must have had, cold in her heart as well as on the outside, walking those long blocks to the subway in her thin coat. And returning home to a place where there was no one. Who’s going to do her laundry? Who’s going to care if she’s had any dinner? What awful demons she must have been living with. It made me ache. It still makes me ache.
SEVEN
W hen I first started acting, my main motivation was fear, a feeling that if I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, something horrible was going to happen. But once I became a hot little number on live TV, once the work changed from “Daddy, I want ice cream,” to more meaningful parts and I began to feel myself understanding the concepts and getting better, the acting mechanism in me really clicked. I’ve never liked to think of myself as very ambitious, but it’s been there, underneath, and this was when the drive really kicked in. I was no longer doing the work just because the Rosses wanted me to; now I wanted it as well. I liked the feeling of walking into a studio and not only knowing that I belonged but also having other people know it.
That sense of belonging—the attention and affirmation—was really the key element for me. Most performers are very loving, very willing to show affection, and I made attachments quickly. I would love everybody, and there would always be a couple of favorites who loved me back. They were like the family I’d never really had, so it was wrenching when each show came to an end. I was grief-stricken to the point of feeling inconsolable; every one of the good-byes was a real loss to me.
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
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