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August 10, 2010

Whitley County’s Patricia Neal dies at 84

The Times-Tribune

CORBIN — By Carl Keith Greene/Staff Writer

Born in the Whitley County mining camp Packard, Jan. 20, 1926, Patsy Louise Neal died Sunday.

She was 84 years old and known as Broadway and movie actress Patricia Neal.

In a 1966 story, Whitley County writer Eugene Siler, Sr., commented on a series of strokes she had sustained the year before. “Pat eventually became a Broadway star, a movie actress and finally a famous Academy Award winner. And of course, she was the envy of 10,000 budding young actress throughout the whole land.”

Noting her illness, he wrote, “She had been very ill, critically ill, but now she seemed to be recovering and the world was glad over this latest report on ‘Pat from Packard’.”

Packard was a coal mining community, established in 1911 by the Mahan-Jellico Coal company. The mines were closed in 1944.

Her father was a bookkeeper for Mahan-Jellico. When she was three-years old they moved to Knoxville where he became the transportation manager for South Coal & Coke Co.

After graduating from Knoxville High School in 1943 she went to Northwestern University, and two years into her classes headed for New York.

Her Broadway debut was as Regina Hubbard in Lillian Hellman’s “Another Part of the Forest” in 1949.

She won a Tony Award and a Theatre World Award and a cover on Life magazine.

Her Hollywood debut was “John Loves Mary,” after signing a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers.

She made a lasting impression in the film version of Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”

She won an Oscar for her performance in “Hud,” and appeared in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “A Face in the Crowd” and others, including “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

In 1955 she returned to Broadway in “A Roomful of Roses” and played Kate Keller in “The Miracle Worker” in 1959.

In 1965 she suffered a series of strokes that left her in a coma for weeks, impaired her speech and left her in a wheelchair, semi-paralyzed.

She recovered and was again on film and the stage.

Her strokes led to the construction of the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center that helps people recover from strokes, spinal cord and brain injuries in Knoxville.

She died in Edgartown, Mass.

 

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