Patty Duke is dead at the age of 69, passing away from a ruptured intestine as a true star of stage, screen and television. Patty won an Oscar after becoming a young star with her Broadway role in the Helen Keller bio “The Miracle Worker.”
She was only 12 years old when Patty had her name above the title on Broadway, Then she became the youngest Oscar winner at the time when that same role won the 16-year-old an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1962.
Patty then had a hit series playing identical twins on “The Patty Duke Show” in 1963 — and she accomplished all that while battling severe mental problems!
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Patty had to survive an early stardom filled with wild spending sprees, sexual promiscuity, multiple suicide attempts, and crazed screaming fits! She also suffered from paranoid delusions — all during a time when Hollywood dismissed mental illness as simply bad behavior.
Patty — who played a woman caught up in Hollywood drug culture in 1967’s “Valley of the Dolls” — later credited the drug lithium for turning her life around in 1982, after she had been diagnosed with manic-depressive illness.
The actress continued to work steadily from there — with only a few public episodes, including a return to playing identical cousins Patty Lane and Cathy Lane in a 1999 TV-movie revisiting the characters from “The Patty Duke Show.” In a surprising twist, beloved character actor William Schallert, who played Patty’s father, remains alive at the age of 94.
