One to One with Bill Goodman:
Patricia Neal
aired December 15 and 17, 2006
She won an Academy Award for best actress for her role alongside Paul Newman in Hud, and she became a powerful voice for stroke victims after suffering a series of strokes herself. Actress and Kentucky native Patricia Neal is Bill Goodman’s guest on this edition of One to One.
Born Patsy Louise Neal in Packard, Neal grew up in Knoxville, TN. She became a Hollywood star with acclaimed performances in The Fountainhead, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But in 1965, she suffered three burst cerebral aneurisms while pregnant and was in a coma for three weeks. Her long struggle to recover helped shed new light on the treatment of stroke victims. In 1978, Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center in Knoxville dedicated the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center in her honor.
In the One to One interview, taped at the new Paul Sawyier Public Library in Frankfort, Neal talks about her early life in Kentucky and how she was bitten by the acting bug in high school. She recalls her years in summer stock and her first trip to New York and shares memories from her years as an actress.
Neal also tells Goodman about her 1983 visit to a monastery in search of solace following her divorce from author Roald Dahl after 30 years of marriage. She found a haven among the sisters there, one of whom was a former actress, and was inspired to begin her autobiography, As I Am. A biography, Stephen Michael Shearer’s Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life, was published in 2006 by the University Press of Kentucky.
