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 taking her Broadway role in the Helen Keller bio "The Miracle Worker" to Hollywood. She was only 12 years old when Patty had her name above the title on Broadway,
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Then she took the role to Hollywood — as the film of "The Miracle Worker' won the 16-year-old an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1962. That was followed by a hit TV series, with the rising star played identical cousins 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 studios had no real understanding of mental illness.
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Patty — who played a woman caught up in Hollywood drug culture in 1967's "Valley of the Dolls" — later credited the psychiatric drug Lithium for turning her life around. She finally began taking medication after she had been diagnosed with manic-depressive illness in 1982.
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Patty's personal life still remained one of Hollywood's most turbulent tales. Patty was pregnant with her son Sean — at right, who found stardom in the "Lords of the Rings" films — when she married Michael Tell in 1970, after they'd met when he came to sublet her apartment! The marriage only lasted 13 days, and Patty insisted that the union was never consummated.
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Hollywood whispers said that Desi Arnaz, Jr. was really Sean's father — but Patty would later insist in her 1987 autobiography that Sean's real dad was "Addams Family" star John Astin, whom she had married in 1972. John would later adopt Sean, and the couple had more children together. Later, however, DNA tests would prove that Michael Tell was Sean's real father!
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In a typical Hollyweird development, though, Patty's fast talking came to a happy conclusion. Sean had actually bonded with Desi Jr. over the rumors, and would later be close to Patty's next husband after John. "I can call any of them on the phone anytime I want to," said Sean. "John, Desi, Mike or Papa Mike — my four dads!"
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John and Patty would stay married for 10 years — before Patty suddenly threw him out of their Beverly Hills house. The ENQUIRER reported that the couple had been battling over John's attempts to transform Patty into a housewife. At this point, the couple had five children — including three from John's previous marriage.
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"Patty loves the children, but she's tired of being tied down as housewife and mother," said a close pal. The ENQUIRER revealed that John was devastated by the split. "He's very much in love with Patty, and praying the separation will save their marriage from ending in divorce court."
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After his shattering divorce from Patty, The ENQUIRER discovered that John was regularly kneeling at a shrine in his home and chanting for a new wife who would share his Buddhist faith and his belief in reincarnation. Whenever he sank into deep depression, he called on his close friend Patrick Duffy — and the "Dallas" star would help John chant to find a soul mate!
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Wedded bliss was waiting for Patty in 1986 — but The ENQUIRER had the scoop on how Patty broke up a marriage while romancing Army Drill Sgt. Michael Ray Pearce! "I don't feel that I took Mike from his wife and children," insisted Patty. "If the marriage had been a good one, no woman could have taken him away!"
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The Oscar-winning actress met Pearce when she went to Fort Benning, Ga. to film the TV movie "A Time to Triumph." The Army assigned Sgt. Pearce to teach Patty about military life so she would be believable in her role as a female Army helicopter pilot. After Patty came into his life, Pearce told Debra — his wife of 11 years — that he wanted to separate, said a close friend of the family.
Patty remained quirky all her life — and The ENQUIRER helped the star sell her beloved Idaho home and ranch through the eBay internet site in 2004! Patty decided to make the change as an incentive to go along with a software company that her nephew Mike Kennedy had put on the market! "Once you've played your twin cousin and a blind, deaf and mute girl who learns to communicate," Patty told The ENQUIRER, "nothing sounds outlandish!"
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Sadly, The ENQUIRER was there in 2005 when Patty, only 58 years old at the time, underwent a lifesaving secret bypass operation to clear an artery in her heart. Patty, who married Pearce in 1986 and stayed with him until her death, blamed her heart disease on a 40-year smoking habit — and said she had quit smoking since the surgery last November. The stricken actress said it wasn't easy, though. "I don't have the solution," she said. "It is the most difficult thing I have ever done!"
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Patty also jumped back into her work and stayed in demand — and even leaves behind a posthumous role in the upcoming Christian film "Power in the Air." Her real passion in her later years, however,
was for officiating gay weddings. The ENQUIRER revealed in 2014 that Patty had become an ordained minister — declaring: "I want to marry all the gay couples in our country!” Patty, who had recently played the partner of newly-out real-life lesbian Meredith Baxter in an episode of "Glee" (pictured), recruited couples through her website.
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The ENQUIRER also reported that Patty's busy schedule was taking a toll on her health. She had been hospitalized earlier in the year after experiencing stomach pains while at a screening of her 1962 film “The Miracle Worker” in Omaha, Neb. She was treated for irritable bowel syndrome and released two days later. Sadly, Patty had found her new mission in life while she was in her final days.
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