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 version of “The Miracle Worker”, in which Duke played Annie Sullivan with “Little House on the Prairie” actress Gilbert as Keller. Actors Sean Austin and Mackenzie Austin are her kids.
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In his tribute, Astin referred to his mom as a “tireless warrior” and detailed how she worked and lobbied for mental health awareness, which he now wants to continue.
Patty built on her success in teenhood by playing identical cousins on the popular sitcom The Patty Duke Show. She was born Anna Marie Duke in New York City on December 14, 1946, to a chronically depressed mother and alcoholic father, who left the family when she was a young girl. She also oversaw the establishment of the SAG Foundation and the relocation of the guild’s headquarters, and fought the threats of runaway production and anti-union right-to-work laws in states across the country. But her admirers had no clue about the much-uglied reality of Duke’s childhood, marred by nightmarish abuse and exploitation.
With the help of lithium and psychotherapy treatments, Duke stopped her downward fall and stayed on a healthy path, as she became an outspoken mental health advocate.
They later removed her against her wishes from her mother’s home and took her to live with them, she said.
But fighting back through pain, both physical and mental, was nothing new for Duke, who struggled with bipolar disorder for most of her life.
By then, she already had spent a dozen years living in Idaho with her fourth husband, Michael Pearce (who survives her), seeking refuge from the clutter, noise and turmoil of big cities, and from the tumultuous life she had weathered in the past.
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To extricate herself from their Svengali-like clutches, she married Harry Falk, an assistant director on The Patty Duke Show, when she was still a teenager; the marriage ended in divorce. Her parents split, and her mother handed over the responsibility of caring for Ms. Duke to talent agents John and Ethel Ross. The Rosses were successful in guiding the newly minted Patty Duke’s career, but proved to be exploitive business partners. We’re sending condolences to Patty’s loved ones. “Now she had a new identity and a whole new mission – a whole new sense of objective – and that was to share what she had gone through with other people”. While is true that very young people, the old ones and the ones with chronic diseases like AIDS, cancer, or diabetes are more exposed to sepsis due to their fragile immune systems, it’s also known that a simple scrape, wound or burn poorly healed can lead to sepsis as well. He and Duke adopted a son named Kevin, who became a firefighter.
