The Courageous Patricia Neal

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31109, 12 July 1966, Page 2

The Courageous Patricia Neal

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter) LONDON. Eighteen months after a triple brain hemorrhage left her dumb, blind, paralysed and unable to read or write, the Oscarwinning actress, Patricia Neal, is about to resume her career.

Gone are the leg brace, the eye patch, the double vision, the mute speech. “I still limp and find reading very difficult,” she says, calmly in her gentle Tennessee drawl. ‘That makes it hard to memorise lines. The muscles in my right side are not very good, but they will be normal again.” IMss Neal is counting her blessings—especially four children, the youngest born six months after she became ill. Lucy, born In August last year, is called her “mail-order baby” because the Oxford doctor who delivered her decided to let the pregnancy continue on the basis of X-rays mailed from Hollywood. There were fears that seven hours of anaesthesia, during which a neuro-surgeon, Dr. Charles Carton, saved Miss Neal’s life, might have caused irreparable damage to the unborn baby. Lucy was perfectly normal at birth and, according to Miss Neal, “the easiest baby I have ever had.”

Now, after recuperating In her rural Buckinghamshire home, the actress is looking ahead.

“I don’t think my illness has impaired my ability as an actress,” she says. That ability was good enough to win her the 1963 Academy Award for her portrayal of a sloppy, but sexy housekeeper in “Hud.” Her comeback performance will be in Strindberg's "The Stronger” for 8.8. C. television this autumn. The play has only two characters, one of them a mute. It is not yet known which part Miss Neal will play. She also has an offer from the British actor, Peter Sellers, to make a film. Miss Neal stands in need of the courage for which she has won wide praise. In 1960, her only son was hit by a New York taxi and slammed into the back of a bus. He has since needed eight skull ope--1 rations.

Three years later, her eldest daughter died suddenly of encephalitis. “Our house has always had lots of love,” she said when they brought her home just over a year ago. “We shall survive.” Miss Neal has been married for 13 years to the English novelist, Roald Dahl. Before she became ill, she was only a part-time film star. She spent six months making films, and six months in the English countryside. She has never lived a star’s life and her only concession to a star’s image was changing her name from Patsy Louise Neal to Patricia Neal at a Broadway producer’s request She always wanted to be an actress. After high school in Knoxville, Tennessee, she went to North Western University in Chicago, a finishing school for several actors. She worked as a doctor's receptionist a cashier, a model and a jewellery store clerk while waiting for a break as an actress. She was spotted by both Lillian Hellman and Richard Rodgers. Both offered her Broadway roles—Rodgers in “John Loves Mary” and Miss

Hellman in “Another Part of the Forest.” She chose the ; Hellman play and won five i acting awards for her perform- . ance. 1 Within a year, she did "John ; Loves Mary” but as a film— i her first Soon she was costarred with Gary Copper in 1 “The Fountainhead.” 1 What has Miss Neal herself j to say about courage? ;

“It is not something you are botn with,” she says. “It comes to you with experience . . . when bad things happen, the shock makes you sit back and just ask: why me? You do not feel courageous at all. "But after a while you realise you have built up something like resilience. I suppose that is it That could be a form of courage.”