Book description
The internationally acclaimed actress Patricia Neal has been a star
on stage, film, and television for nearly sixty years. On Broadway she
appeared in such lauded productions as Lillian Hellman's Another Part
of the Forest, for which she won the very first Tony Award, and The
Miracle Worker. In Hollywood she starred opposite the likes of Ronald
Reagan, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Paul Newman, Fred Astaire, and Tyrone
Power in some thirty films. Neal anchored such classic pictures as The
Day the Earth Stood Still, A Face in the Crowd, and Breakfast at
Tiffany's, but she is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Alma
Brown in Hud, which earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in
1963. But there has been much, much more to Neal's life. She was born
Patsy Louise Neal on January 20, 1926, in Packard, Kentucky, though
she spent most of her childhood in Knoxville, Tennessee. Neal quickly
gained attention for her acting abilities in high school, community,
and college performances. Her early stage successes were overshadowed
by the unexpected death of her father in 1944. Soon after she left New
York for Hollywood in 1947, Neal became romantically involved with
Gary Cooper, her married co-star in The Fountainhead, an attachment
which brought them both a great deal of notoriety in the press and a
great deal of heartache in their personal lives. In 1953, Neal married
famed children's author Roald Dahl, a match that would bring her five
children and thirty years of dramatic ups and downs. In 1961, their
son, Theo, was seriously injured in an automobile accident and
required multiple neurosurgeries and years of rehabilitation; the
following year their daughter, Olivia, died of measles. At the
pinnacle of her screen career, Patricia Neal suffered a series of
strokes which left her in a coma for twenty-one days. Variety even ran
a headline erroneously stating that she had died. At the time, Neal
was pregnant with her and Dahl's fifth child, Lucy, who was born
healthy a few months later. After a difficult recovery, Neal returned
to film acting, earning a second Academy Award nomination for The
Subject Was Roses. She appeared in a number of television movie roles
in the 1970s and 1980s and won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a
Dramatic TV Movie in 1971 for her role in The Homecoming. Patricia
Neal: An Unquiet Life is the first critical biography detailing the
actress's impressive film career and remarkable personal life. Author
Stephen Michael Shearer has conducted numerous interviews with Neal,
her professional colleagues, and her intimate friends and was given
access to the actress's personal papers. The result is an honest and
comprehensive portrait of an accomplished woman who has lived her life
with determination and bravado.
""Patricial Neal has traveled the road from tirumph to
despair in ways few of us can imagine. There is sincerity and
dedication behind this work." --Paul Newman" --
Stephen Michael Shearer, who has worked as a professional actor,
has written for The Film Collectors Registry and contributed research
to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
