Rick McKay's PATRICIA NEAL TRIBUTE

maybe you can tell me how you are first decided that it was an actress that you wanted to be I was 11 years old and I was belong to a Methodist Church which is just down the street from us and I was there one night and I watched a glorious lady getting my rose my heart was pounding I wanted to study drama more than anything in the world so I asked for it and my father's boss's daughter she just come back from New York and she was teaching drama and I asked for it for Christmas and they gave me a card saying you may study drama and that started me monologues that's what I wanted to do and then I think I must spend three or four years with her and I saw a play and not the Tennessee Valley players well I fell in love with this man wanted to join it and I did and was offered a part in the first one and that's when I knew I wanted to be an actress because and I know that the darling Critic he got me into the barter theatre which was in Abingdon Virginia he soon thereafter and I love that I knew I wanted to be an actress well I from the barter theatre I came to New York on Christmas just for about two weeks and I stayed with people that were at the bar the theatre like like Phyllis Jenkins and she was there and she put me up for a week and then I say with somebody else for a week and Oh Broadway that's what I wanted I wanted to go to Broadway but they insisted I go to Northwestern for two years and then I went to al Viner Krauss was great summer theater she was my teacher at Northwestern a fabulous teacher she was and I was there for the whole summer and from there I went to New York and I set up an apartment with four other girls that had gone to Northwestern with and we got long fabulously and I loved it plays plays plays that's how matinees and evening and I would I would go where the actors were you know what then I don't know if they if it's still going on but it was a drugstore and all the actors were there and Sardis and author and oh it's such fun you know and I loved it oh wow I really wanted a job and I was so friendly and everybody it was very good I loved it and I got a job almost at once it was fantastic I was there I was in New York about two months making a living as cutting ties and scooping ice cream and a Greenwich Village gaff a and making the rounds and I was an agent he sent me to read four voices of the turtle that was the name of the one that I understood it first and I did that for about a year I think and I got a job in a play which flopped and the night it flopped I got a telegram from Alfred Delhi Agra our producers saying in effect come back to us and I was sent to Chicago to understudy and unsaid Katie Stevens and Vivian Vance and I took over from her for about Oh three weeks I think she had a nervous breakdown and I took over from her for about three weeks and but I was not nearly I was I was 19 then and that was not nearly old enough to play I think she was in her 40s or 50s but I had a lovely time too that's good now how did you end up going from an understudy to suddenly starring on Broadway and Lillian Hellman well I wasn't starring but I was I played Regina that's what Tallulah Bankhead had played and the little foxes which was about 20 years before another part of the forest it's a really fascinating story if you like I was understudying for it's the journal and I had done this thing at oh dear where was a theatre Gill Westport Westport I had done a thing for them the summer before and it was I play the hillbilly and I am a hillbilly so it were fitted very well and it was in the in the smoky I mean I was the seductive woman which I was and those day and I know that Richard Rogers or Lillian Hellman's divine director saw it the one who had been heard directed all of her plays until that time and Richard Rodgers oh he liked me so he was he wanted me to read for all sorts of things that he got read for john loves Mary and I got the part of mary and john loves Mary and I hadn't signed and I went to the theater that night I was understudying and and there was a woman standing in the alley and she said to me would you like to read for Lillian Hellman for another part of the forest and I said well I've got a job and she panicked and she said oh please you must come so I said okay I'll go and so I went the next day and I read and I got it which was fantastic so I had to choose between them and I chose another part of the forest which I liked me and Richard Rogers a little astonished he said nothing you can do because answer do you remember the opening night of another part of the force I do remember because I was so frightened I was this scariest woman you've ever seen in your life my mother and my brother who was about nine years old or ten I guess he's 10 years younger than me they came up and I'd been in a hotel with him and my mother she was so scared of the whole thing and I've gotten panicky you know and I don't see how I did it but I did and you're Mildred dunnock was my mother in it and she knew Tallulah very well they had done plays together and she took me to meet Tallulah and Tallulah said when when she saw the play she said you were as good as I was and if I'd said you're only half as good it would have been a hell of a compliment ha ha ha she was a good woman she did it was their first directorial thing can you tell me what it was like to be directed by Lillian Hellman to play she wrote well I know she's dead not only shame I don't care because she was not the best director I've ever worked with but she's a fantastic playwright you know just an exceedingly divine playwright but not the best director it took her some years to discover that but we we thought we would get raves because it really done beautifully we'd been to Boston and all kinds of places and we thought it's gonna get raised but it was not as good as little boxes so but we ran about six months I think that was good oh yes it was a great success for me and when the Tonys first started Antoinette Terry something award I won the first award for the Best Newcomer oh I was thrilled you know but when you're young you expect everything I mean snow it's not surprising you when you get raped ha ha ha I loved it she directed me in another part of the forest and then I went to Hollywood for about five years and then I came back to New York and I read that Kermit room garden was the producer of another part of the forest that he was going to do the Children's Hour which was Lillian Hellman's again and it had been done before and I wanted to read for it so I called Kermit and I said could I read for your play and he yeah I was the first to read I read so magnificently they let me choose between the parts and I chose to play Martha come on oh yeah oh yes we loved it we love this yes he directed this one that one as well and well we it was a shoe Bakura all right she just was not she was a much better writer than that director well you know if you're an actress you are an actor and you have all the confidence in the world and I've always wanted to be an actress and I had a lot of confidence and it was as it should be which was great fun but I know I expected to be I expected to be a successful actress you know I really did and I have been I have been so you ready come here if you don't mind and we will say cheese

Channel: Rick McKay's Second Act Productions

Views: 16,207

Rating: 4.8064518 out of 5

Keywords: Patricia Neal, neal, hollywood, hud, oscar, memorial, pat neal, mckay, rick mckay, broadway, broadway: The Golden Age, broadway the golden age, tony award, tonys, dahl, roald dahl, eli wallach paul newman, gary cooper, lillian hellman, another part of the forest, peccadillo, peccadillo theatre

Id: AX-eYuWM19M

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2010