Will A Hot Dog Still Make Patty Lose Control, Now That She Is In Heaven????????????????????

                            Girls, I am telling you, I am sure I speak for the entire Baby Boomer generation, when I say how rocked I was by the death of Patty Duke.  At only 69, to have perished from sepsis from a ruptured intestine, though son Sean, in one obit I read, said she had been in severe pain for the last two years of life, so I think there was more going on.  Which Patty did not let out, because she was a trouper.

                             When I was eight, and her show was the height of television, all the older kids in my neighborhood could tell you about the thing I had for Patty Duke. She supplanted Hayley Mills, for a time, because I wanted to be Patty Duke, who I thought really was Patty Lane.  I would watch this show, avidly looking forward to my adolescence, imagining it would be exactly like this. Well, dears, if you have been on here long enough, or peruse this blog, you will find out how wrong I was about that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                Add to this I was so young, I had no idea what "The Miracle Worker" was, or who Helen Keller had been, and when I discovered she had played it, I aimed to find out all about it.  That was a start in acting, for me; I wanted to play that role, gender or not. I would lie in the grass, doing sensory exercises with my eyes shut, walking into walls, and almost falling down our huge flight of stairs walking as though blind.  It was a learning experience, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                   Then came the novel, "Valley Of The Dolls," and, of course, I related to Neely. I was so young when I read it, I did not the know what Neely meant when she said to Anne, "He went down on me!"  I certainly knew, somehow, I could not ask my parents.  And they did not say that in the movie.

                                     Oh, yes, the movie.  If "The Miracle Worker" solidified Patty's artistic status, "Valley Of The Dolls," with her as Neely, made her a gay icon.  A role it took a long time for her to accept.

                                       As did dealing with bipolar disorder, and depression, which she brilliantly chronicled in "Call Me Anna."  Reading it was when I finally realized that no one's adolescence, not even hers, was like "The Patty Duke Show."  And if anyone says it was, they are lying to themselves.

                                        Patty did so much--actress, mental health advocate, SAG actress, giving us another talented actor, Sean Astin--in just 69 years, it seems as if she lived twice as long. Alas, she has left us all too soon. And we who remember will miss her so much.

                                         Now--how to showcase Patty?  Well, let's start with the theme song!!!!!!!

                                          Then, "The Miracle Worker!!!!!!!!!!"

                                           And, of course, "Valley Of The Dolls!!!!!!!!!!"

                                           As for me, darlings, I still adore the minuet, the Ballet Russe, and crepes suzette!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!