Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke by Patty Duke Read Free Book Online Page B

had a special rapport with him. He was my pop. He was tall and handsome and gentle, all those good fantasy things you want in a dad. Because we had a scene together in which wetalked about tortoises and how long they live, he gave me a turtle-shaped hassock, which I still have, plus a gold turtle from Tiffany that was my first good piece of jewelry. The Rosses, naturally, took it away from me. It was mine, but it was to be worn only when I was told I could wear it.
    Actually Walter Pidgeon was only one of a series of surrogate fathers I created on almost every set I was on. I was very affectionate, and I was addicted to sitting on people’s laps. That became a running joke in my grown-up years. People still see me at parties and say, “She sat on my lap!” and someone else will chime in, “She sat on my lap too! She’d sit on anybody’s lap.” And it was true.
    I found another surrogate in one of the first major film roles I did, Happy Anniversary in 1959, and that was David Niven. He was even more elegant than the other dads. He and Mitzi Gaynor, who was the costar, and Mitzi’s husband, Jack Bean, were all loving, bright, sunshiny people. And Mitzi looked so glamorous. I remember her wearing a sort of negligee thing for a breakfast scene and my being so impressed with her breasts because they would rise and fall when she talked. I was mesmerized by that. Actually, the story line of the film had to do with sex, and the awful consequences of my blurting out on a television quiz show that my parents, David and Mitzi, had had premarital relations. I think I was smart enough to figure out what premarital relations were, but the Rosses led people to believe that I was a total innocent, all sweetness and light. So someone was delegated to take me aside and gingerly tell me that sex was something adults did and which I shouldn’t have mentioned, and that was all I needed to know in order to play the scene.
    Before Happy Anniversary, however, came The Goddess. The film was written by Paddy Chayefsky about a Marilyn Monroe-type movie star, played by Kim Stanley. I played her as an eight-year-old girl. It was shot at Ellicott City, Maryland, and my mother, who was delegated by the Rosses to take me there, freaked out on the airplane. It was her first time on a plane and she got frantic, saying, “I want to get off! I want to get off! I want to get off!” And I’d say, “Mama, you can’t get off. We’re ten thousand feet in the air.” Thenshe really started throwing a fit and the stewardess had to come over and calm her down. I was so embarrassed.
    My scene in the movie was a brief one, but it was lovely. I was Emily Ann, the little girl no one paid any attention to. She gets her report card at the end of the school term and she goes to tell her mother, who works in a five-and-dime store, that she got promoted to the next grade. Her mother is annoyed and tells her to go home. Then you see her at a girlfriend’s house, calling, “Sylvia! Sylvia!” But Sylvia never comes and Emily Ann has nobody to tell. She goes home and you see that she’s a latchkey kid before we had the phrase. She’s going to eat a snack in this depressing, hideous-looking kitchen, when suddenly a tough alley cat wanders in through an open window. A funny look comes over the girl’s face. She very carefully gets up from the table, finds a bowl, pours some milk into it, and puts it on the floor. While the cat is drinking, she swoops it up, envelops it in a hug, and says, “I got promoted today.”
    It’s a strong scene, just a little vignette but very well written, with a beginning, middle, and end. You could have had the whole movie stop there and you would have gotten the message. Getting that part, which involved a pantomime audition for Paddy Chayefsky, after which he called up and raved about me, was one of the few times I was aware that the Rosses were really excited, really proud of me. When I think about what was the first film I ever