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Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on August 9, 2010

Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal has died at age 84... rest in peace

One of the most remarkable actresses of Hollywood, one who overcame incredible odds after suffering a nervous breakdown, several strokes and a 3-week coma while she was pregnant, and whose daughter Olivia died from measles at age 7, has passed away. Oscar-winning Patricia Neal has died at age 84 from cancer.

Rest in peace, dear Patricia. Your courage and tenacity in the face of personal tragedies have been inspiring, as has your incomparable gift for acting.

Oscar-winner Actress Patricia Neal Dies at 84

From MTV, Patricia Neal, Oscar-Winning Actress, Dies At 84:

Oscar-winning Patricia Neal died on Sunday at the age of 84, The New York Times reports.

In 1964, Neal won a Best Actress Oscar for her turn as the resilient housekeeper Alma opposite Paul Newman in “Hud.” A year after her Academy Awards triumph, though, the actress suffered three strokes that left her in a three-week coma. Afterwards she was semi-paralyzed and without the ability to speak, though she eventually learned to walk and talk again.

Despite an impaired memory, the actress returned to the big screen for 1968′s “The Subject Was Roses,” playing a vindictive mother. She again secured an Oscar nomination, but this time lost out to dual winners Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand.

Neal got her start at the age of 21 opposite Ronald Reagan in the 1949 comedy “John Loves Mary.” She went on to star in films like “A Face in the Crowd” (1950), “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961). One of her most prominent roles came in 1949, when she nabbed the coveted lead role in “The Fountainhead,” an adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel.

The role also lead to a love affair between Neal and co-star Gary Cooper, a relationship that lasted for three years but ended when Cooper declined to leave his wife and family. Neal became pregnant during the affair and had an abortion, as she revealed in a 1988 memoir.

“If I had only one thing to do over in my life,” she wrote, according to the Times, “I would have that baby.”

Neal was married for 30 years to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” author Roald Dahl, with whom she had five children. They divorced in 1983.

Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper in 'The Fountainhead' (1949)

From New York Times, Patricia Neal, an Oscar Winner Who Endured Tragedy, Dies at 84:

Patricia Neal, the molasses-voiced actress who won an Academy Award and a Tony but whose life alternated surreally between triumph and tragedy, died at her home in Edgartown, Mass., on Sunday. She was 84 and lived in Manhattan and Martha’s Vineyard.

The death was announced by a friend, Edward S. Albers.

In 1964 Ms. Neal received an Oscar as best actress for her performance as the tough, shopworn housekeeper who did not succumb to Paul Newman’s amoral charm in “Hud.” But a year later she had three strokes, leaving her in a coma for three weeks. Although she was semiparalyzed and unable to speak afterward, she learned to walk and talk again.

Clip from 1949 “The Fountainhead” – Patricia Neal, Gary Cooper – “Riding Crop” Scene

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” Trailer (1951)

From Wikipedia:

Neal was offered the role of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), but turned it down, feeling it had come too soon after her three 1965 strokes. She returned to the big screen in The Subject Was Roses (1968), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.

She later starred as Olivia Walton in the television movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), which was the pilot episode for The Waltons. Although she won a Golden Globe for her performance, she was not invited to reprise the role in the television series; the part went to Michael Learned. (In a 1999 interview with the Archive of American Television, Waltons creator Earl Hamner said he and producers were unsure if Neal’s health would allow her to commit to the grind of a weekly television series.) Neal played a dying widowed mother trying to find a home for her three children in a moving 1975 episode of NBC’s Little House on the Prairie.

In 1978, Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center in Knoxville dedicated the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center in her honor. The center serves as part of Neal’s paralysis victim advocacy. She has appeared in Center advertisements throughout 2006.

In 2007, Neal worked on Silvana Vienne’s innovative critically-acclaimed art movie Beyond Baklava: The Fairy Tale Story of Sylvia’s Baklava, appearing as herself in the portions of the documentary talking about alternative ways to end violence in the world. Also in 2007, Neal received one of two annually-presented Lifetime Achievement Awards at the SunDeis Film Festival in Waltham, Massachusetts. (Academy Award nominee Roy Scheider was the recipient of the other.)

She often appeared on the Tony Awards telecast, possibly because she was the last surviving winner from the first ceremony. Her original Tony was lost, so she was given a replacement by Bill Irwin when they presented the Best Actress Award to Cynthia Nixon in 2006.

In April 2009, Neal received a lifetime achievement award from WorldFest Houston on the occasion of the debut of her film, Flying By. Neal was a long-term actress with Philip Langner’s Theatre at Sea/Sail With the Stars productions with the Theatre Guild.

“A Face in the Crowd” Trailer (1957)

Clip from “A Face in the Crowd” (1957) – “Dark Night of the Soul” scene

1982 Commercial: Patricia Neal for Anacin

From People:

Among her many memorable performances are those in 1950′s A Face in the Crowd, 1951′s The Day the Earth Stood Still and 1960′s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as the older benefactor of the handsome young writer. Equally memorable was her role as the heiress Dominique opposite Gary Cooper’s uncompromising architect Howard Roark in 1949′s The Fountainhead, the adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel.

For three years afterward, Cooper and Neal carried on a torrid romance that ultimately ended when he refused to leave his wife and young daughter.

Pregnant with Cooper’s child in 1950, Neal underwent an agonizing back-room abortion while Cooper, anxious and soaked with sweat, waited in his car. “I’ve wept and wept over that,” Neal told PEOPLE in 1988. “That abortion is my greatest regret, but I wasn’t as gutsy as Ingrid Bergman [who scandalized Hollywood that year when she gave birth out of wedlock to Italian film director Roberto Rossellini's son]. That I, this little Southern girl, should have had the guts to do that … nevah, nevah.”

Neal was said to have remained in love with Cooper, who was 25 years her senior, the rest of her life, though in 1953 she married the former RAF pilot Roald Dahl. A writer, Dahl’s best-known works include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

The couple remained married for 30 years, until they divorced. They had five children, and, here too, tragedy struck: Neal’s infant son’s brain was damaged when a New York City taxicab struck his stroller, and a daughter died of measles. Dahl died in 1990.

Born Patsy Louise Neal in a Packard, Ky., coal-mining camp where her father was transportation manager, Neal grew up in Knoxville, where she displayed a gift for reciting monologues at church gatherings.

Paul Newman and Patricia Neal in her Oscar-winning role in 'Hud'

From The Hollywood Gossip, Patricia Neal Passes Away at 84:

Oscar-winning actress Patricia Neal, whose life was marred by both success and tragedy, has died at the age of 84 of cancer, according to media reports.

Neal won an Academy Award for her role in the 1963 film Hud alongside Paul Newman and boasted a long list of stage, film and TV credits over decades.

She once had an affair with actor Gary Cooper with whom she starred in The Fountainhead and Bright Leaf but it ended in disaster after his wife found out.

She was married to the British writer Roald Dahl for 30 years with whom she had five children. Their son suffered severe injuries after being hit by a taxi when he just four months old and their oldest child, daughter Olivia, died from the measles.

Hollywood legend Patricia Neal on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse

Movie Legends – Patricia Neal

1963 Oscar Winners

From IMDb.com, Patricia Neal: 1926-2010:

Patricia Neal, the Oscar-winning actress whose life off-screen life contained as much drama, tragedy, and inspiration as any of her film or theater roles, died Sunday at her home in Martha’s Vineyard of lung cancer; she was 84.

An Oscar, Tony and Golden Globe winner, Neal was just as well-known for the trials, tribulations and triumphs she lived through, including a nervous breakdown, the death of one of her children, and a series of strokes that left her in a three-week coma while pregnant at the age of 39. Her subsequent rehabilitation, with the help of her then-husband, author Roald Dahl, led to yet another chapter of her acting career, as well as her pioneering for the cause of stroke rehabilitation.

[...]

Though The Subject Was Roses was her last major film role, Neal continued to work in television despite fears regarding her health. She was the first actress to play the role of Olivia Walton in The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, for which she received an Emmy nomination and Golden Globe award; when the telefilm was turned into the series The Waltons, she was recast with Michael Learned. A two-episode guest spot on Little House on the Prairie in 1975 garnered acclaim, and she received two more Emmy nominations in the 1970s; Oscar-winning actress Glenda Jackson also received an Emmy nomination in 1981 for portraying Neal in the telefilm The Patricia Neal Story, which chronicled her stroke, recovery, and advocacy for stroke rehabilitation. Neal also appeared as the wife of Fred Astaire in the thriller Ghost Story, as an imperious schoolmistress in the TV film Caroline?, and as the titular “Cookie” in the Robert Altman film Cookie’s Fortune. A final note of drama in Neal’s life came in 1983, when she and Dahl separated after it was discovered he was having an affair with one of Neal’s friends.

In her later years, Neal retired to New York, and maintained a second home in Martha’s Vineyard. She is survived by four children, and seven grandchildren, including model/actress Sophie Dahl.

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