NEW YORK — Patty Duke, who as a teen won an Oscar for playing Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker” then maintained a long career while battling personal demons, has died. She was 69.
The actress died early Tuesday of sepsis from a ruptured intestine, according to her agent, Mitchell Stubbs. She died in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where she had lived for the past quarter-century, according to Teri Weigel, the publicist for her son, actor Sean Astin.
Duke astonished audiences as the young deaf-and-blind Keller on Broadway then in the acclaimed 1962 film version, appearing in both alongside Anne Bancroft (who won an Oscar of her own) as Helen’s teacher, Annie Sullivan.
In 1963, Duke burst on the TV scene starring in her own sitcom, “The Patty Duke Show,” which aired for three seasons. She played dual roles as identical cousins Cathy, “who’s lived most everywhere, from Zanzibar to Barclay Square,” and Patty, who, according to the theme song, has “only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights.”
The theme song concludes: “What a crazy pair!”
Throughout her life, she was “a warrior,” Astin told The Associated Press. “You watch this 4-foot-10, tiny imp of a lady who’s more powerful than the greatest military leaders in history.”
Born Anna Marie Duke in the New York borough of Queens on Dec. 14, 1946, she had a difficult childhood with abusive parents. By age 8, she was largely under the control of husband-and-wife talent managers who kept her busy on soap operas and advertising displays.
In the meantime, they supplied her with alcohol and prescription drugs, which accentuated the effects of her undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
In her 1988 memoir, “Call Me Anna,” Duke wrote of her condition and the diagnosis she had gotten only six years earlier and of the subsequent treatment that helped stabilize her life.
During her career, she would win three Emmy Awards: for the TV film “My Sweet Charlie,” the miniseries “Captains and the Kings” and the 1979 TV remake of “The Miracle Worker.”
