Patricia Neal Tribute - (Once I Had a Secret Love)

This is a Genuine G-Shot in tribute to Patricia Neal who died the other day at age 84.
From the N.Y. Times by 84By ALJEAN HARMETZ

Patricia Neal, an Oscar Winner Who Endured Tragedy, Dies at 84By ALJEAN HARMETZ
Patricia Neal, who made her way from Kentucky's coal country to Hollywood and Broadway, winning an Academy Award and a Tony, but whose life alternated almost surreally between triumph and tragedy, died on Sunday at her home in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard.
Ms. Neal received her Oscar, as best actress, in 1964, for her performance in "Hud" as the tough, shopworn housekeeper who did not succumb to Paul Newman's amoral charm. By then she had already endured the death of her first child and a calamitous injury to her infant son, who was brain-damaged in an accident. Then came three strokes, a year after the Oscar, leaving her in a coma for three weeks. Afterward she was semiparalyzed and unable to speak.

But she learned to walk and talk again with the help of her husband, the British writer Roald Dahl. And in 1968 — despite a severely impaired memory that made it difficult to recall dialogue — she returned to the screen as the bitter mother who used her son as a weapon against her husband in the screen version of Frank Gilroy's play "The Subject Was Roses." Once again she was nominated for an Academy Award.

Ms. Neal's career started swiftly and brilliantly. Before she was 21 she won a Tony and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for her Broadway debut in Lillian Hellman's "Another Part of the Forest." Her photograph was on the cover of Life magazine.

Signed by Warner Brothers, she went to Hollywood as the sought-after young actress of her day. She had talent, a husky, unforgettable voice and an arresting presence but no training in acting in front of a camera. Of her movie debut opposite Ronald Reagan in the comedy "John Loves Mary" (1949), Bosley Crowther, the movie critic for The New York Times, wrote that she showed "little to recommend her to further comedy jobs," adding, "Her way with a gag line is painful."
Yet Ms. Neal had already been assigned the role that Barbara Stanwyck and other top actresses coveted — the leonine Dominique in the film adaptation of Ayn Rand's best-selling novel "The Fountainhead" (1949). As Dominique was swept away by the godlike architect Howard Roark, Ms. Neal, at 23, fell in love with the 48-year-old movie star who played Roark, Gary Cooper. Their affair lasted three years but ended when Mr. Cooper chose not to leave his wife and daughter.

"The Fountainhead" was a failure. Ms. Neal saw it at a Hollywood premiere. "You knew, from the very first reel, it was destined to be a monumental bomb," she said. "My status changed immediately. That was the end of my career as a second Garbo."

Ms. Neal's next movie, "Bright Leaf" (1950), an epic story of a 19th-century tobacco farmer played by Cooper, was also a failure. Ill served by Warner Brothers, Ms. Neal acquired screen technique while being wasted in a series of mediocre movies. The exceptions were the screen version of John Patrick's play "The Hasty Heart" (1950), in which she played a nurse who tries to comfort a dying soldier, and "The Breaking Point" (1950), based on Ernest Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not," in which she played a tramp opposite John Garfield.

"Warners finally let me know they weren't so keen on my staying on," Ms. Neal said in an interview. "They didn't fire me. I took the hint."

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[joeystrab]

hi 2010 coment i was wondering if this was the version used in happy days potsie love letter joanie episode could be not sure sounds a bit different