Patricia Neal: 1926-2010

"All the world's a stage,
"And all the men and women merely players;
"They have their exits and their entrances,
"And one man in his time plays many parts,
"His acts being seven ages."

William Shakespeare, As You Like It, II, vii.

The sentiment was already a cliche when Shakespeare wrote it circa 1600, so whether it was his sentiment or just that of his character Jacques is not the point. The point is that it is a cliche and, contrary to Shakespeare's implied determinism, some men and women are anything but "merely players."

Actress Patricia Neal, who succumbed to lung cancer yesterday at her Martha's Vineyard home, was living proof, on stage, on screen, and beyond.

The poised, elegant leading lady brought much of the same onscreen elan to the turmoil of her often troubled personal life. Thanks to the work she left behind, she will continue to be a beacon of heroism in these troubled times, in which people are starving for such a thing more than ever.

It is appropriate that the first major role to introduce the world to her raspy voice and classical pulchritude was Dominique Francon in The Fountainhead (1949), the flawed, egregiously inadequate adaptation of Ayn Rand's then-recent bestseller and future modern classic. Her performance, opposite the miscast Gary Cooper, is one of the few reasons to watch the film aside from Ayn Rand's screenplay. Some of Ayn Rand's most fascinating, complex characters are her bitter, malevolent heroes--Rand once described Dominique, a character only she herself could have created, as herself "in a bad mood"--and it is unlikely anyone could have personified the unique heroine's transformation from the pessimistic value-seeker and spiritual mercy-killer to the happy, joyous, triumphant woman at story's end. If that does not make much sense, it is nearly impossible to adequately explicate here--read the book. I would recommend the film, but if ever there was a case in which one should read the book first, this is it. With the exceptions of Ayn Rand and Patricia Neal, virtually everything else went wrong with the production, but the latter's performance cemented her status as a first-rate actress immediately.

First, watch her performance two years later in The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which her character, with calm, confident (if nervous) aplomb, saves the entire planet from impending doom. Compare and contrast it with other analogous roles and actresses in similar films of the era. In the 1950's, a typical female role in a world-on-the-brink science fiction film might call for feckless screaming (if not caterwauling histrionics). The producers needed something else, and sought Patricia Neal. (Who else but the only American actress who had attempted--let alone succeeded--at portraying an Ayn Rand heroine?)

Her career and private life continued to thrive. She starred in several more films and married writer Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Then, tragedy.

First, she lost a daughter to measles in 1962. Proving that some cliches are often true and that nothing can keep a good woman down, she won the Best Actress Oscar for Hud the following year. But the tragedy would not abate.

She was hardly a stranger to it. So it must have seemed relatively benign to her (if few others) when she suffered a series of strokes in 1965, at the age of thirty-nine.

Neal went through extensive rehabilitation just to relearn to walk and talk. And, despite continued, extensive memory problems, she returned to her profession with understated self-confidence, garnering another Academy Award nomination (for The Subject was Roses) within three years. (In 1978, The Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center was founded in her hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee; it has helped stroke and paralysis victims to this day.

Her life and career continued, and she soldiered on through similar peaks and valleys (she divorced Dahl in the early 1990's when she discovered his adultery). While decades passed and many forgot her pioneering work (and a generation of philistines raised on Sesame Street and MTV--including, to some extent, this writer, it must be admitted--largely never discovered it), those who loved cinema and bold, efficacious heroines never did. As Brenda Daverin of gather.com writes in an exemplary, superlative, exhaustive obituary that is entirely worthy of its subject:

"Patricia Neal will be remembered for her husky voice, her powerful presence, and the dedication she had to everything she did. Her movie roles provided many girls and young women with the image of how a woman could be, not what society taught they should be. Her impact in that area as well as what she has done for stroke survivors cannot be measured."

If you have a daughter (or even a son), you could do much worse than to temper their diet of modern, neurotic trash culture and its celebrity wastrels and trollops with the sunlit romanticism of Patricia Neal. The heroism she brought to this world, onscreen and off, will never be forgotten.