Patricia Neal's Legacy

Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center: "A House of Heroes"

By Mary Claire Kendall



Patricia Neal as "Alma Brown" in Hud. 
Credit: Paramount Pictures

Patricia Neal, exquisite actress of stage and film, known for Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Hud (1963), for which she won a Best Actress Oscar, died some forty-five years after she suffered three debilitating strokes in one day—on February 17, 1965—that nearly took her life. At the time, just 39, she was pregnant with her daughter Lucy Neal, whom she gave birth to six months later on August 4, 1965.

“I was as one dead,” she wrote in her classic autobiography, As I Am. “My right side was completely paralyzed and I had been left with maddeningly double vision. I had not power of speech and my mind just didn’t’ work.”

Hers was a miraculous recovery—the fruit of sheer grit, determination, and just plain stubbornness.

She also had amazing support systems. Valerie Eaton Griffith, her tutor, helped lift her “out of the cabbage patch,” she wrote. “A master (her husband’s role) can tell you what he expects… a teacher though awakens your own expectations.”

“Suddenly Patricia Neal wanted to live,” Life Magazine headlined its feature story about her. Patricia countered, it would be truer to say, “Suddenly I realized I was, in fact, living and was starting to like the experience again.”

She returned to public life with her debut speech in March 1966 at The Waldorf Astoria in New York. The occasion was “An Evening with Patricia Neal.” It was a signal achievement for someone who had had to learn how to walk and speak again—and, perhaps most dauntingly of all for an actress, remember lines.

“Tennessee hillbillies don't conk out that easy,” she quipped at that pivotal moment dramatizing her triumph over the tragedy.

Cover photo of As I Am.
From the Author's Collection; Globe Photos

When she finished her speech, she wrote, “I knew my life had been given back to me for one reason.” Unsure what it was at the time, she credited her husband, Roald Dahl, famed writer of children’s books, for throwing her back into the deep water “where I belonged.”

As her post-stroke life unfolded, besides resuming her acting career with a notable performance in The Subject Was Roses (1968), she began bringing the reality of stroke to the public’s attention in speeches around the country in the 1970s, spotlighting its debilitating effects and how to surmount the practical obstacles to resuming normal life, or a semblance thereof, in the wake of a stroke’s neurological devastation.

Patricia Neal as "Nettie Cleary" in The Subject Was Roses.
Credit: Metro Goldwyn Mayer

Her story—initially publicized in the Life Magazine article, from which flowed a cascade of publicity—not only served as an inspiration to stroke victims worldwide, but soon began to catalyze the establishment of many hospitals and centers focused on helping patients rehabilitate to the fullest extent possible.

One such hospital is the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center in Knoxville—one of the finest in the country, according to surveyors for the Council on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF).

When Fort Sanders Presbyterian Hospital in Knoxville—now the Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center—wrote Patricia to inform her they were building a wing dedicated to rehabilitation and wanted to name it after her, she replied “Great, Great, Great, Great.”

In her speech at the dedication ceremony, she dubbed it a “House of Heroes,” which the center put on an engraved plaque in the foyer.

This “House of Heroes” is one her most enduring legacies.

Since its opening in 1978, it has offered a comprehensive, team approach to care, whereby physical, occupational, recreational, behavioral medicine and speech language therapists work with physicians to develop individual plans of care designed to return patients to as normal a lifestyle as possible.

Ironically, on February 17, 2005—forty years to the day after she suffered her three massive, nearly fatal, strokes—Patricia Neal was admitted to the center for two weeks of therapy helping her recover from recent surgeries with complications.

“I was so thrilled to learn that I would be able to come to my hospital for treatment,” Patricia said. “I’ve always said there is no better place for rehabilitation patients …and now I have experienced that care personally!”

Patricia Neal proudly displays her
“House for Heroes” medallion.
The medallions are presented to patients
who are completing their inpatient therapy
at Patricia Neal Rehab Center

Dr. Mary Dillon, PNRC Medical Director, recalled, “She went through therapy just as any of our other patients do, and progressed beautifully. She also brightened the spirits of PNRC patients with whom she worked side by side.”

At the time, Patricia was splitting her time between New York City and Martha’s Vineyard, where she participated in Theater Guild “Theatre at Sea” programs. In May 2005, she traveled to Hollywood to receive a star on the Walk of Fame. While she told the Center’s “News,” she was “thrilled,” she also added, with that hearty laugh of hers, “It’s about time!”

Every year she attended the Patricia Neal Golf Classic in August that brings Tennessee pro golfers together with local amateurs for a worthwhile cause at one of the state’s top courses—raising more than $3 million in net proceeds since 1985 to support the many programs and services of the rehab center.

In 2011, they held the tournament on August 8, the first anniversary of her death. It was a special occasion—honoring a woman who helped other stroke victims survive and thrive, just like her, the ‘Tennessee hillbilly,’ who rose to become one of the 20th century’s greatest actresses of stage and film.

Mary Claire Kendall has written about notable stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, including, most recently, screen legend Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.

Mary Surratt: 'An Innocent Woman'

Robin Wright and James McAvoy in The Conspirator (2011)

Robert Redford's latest film, The Conspirator — released just days after the Sesquicentennial of the attack on Fort Sumter, the Civil War's start — stirred many childhood memories.

My great-grandmother, Lillian Webster Keane (pictured left), who was a longtime Washingtonian, frequently spoke about the injustice the film portrays.

Fittingly, The Conspirator opened April 15 — the same day, 146 years earlier, President Abraham Lincoln was celebrating the end of the Civil War.

The bloody conflict that ripped our nation apart for four years, North against South, was now over — ending officially on April 9, 1865, when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

After enjoying a pleasant carriage ride with first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, soaking in springtime Washington, this president, a lover of literature, was soaking in Our American Cousin at his box in the new Ford's Theatre.

Of course, drama of an epic nature would soon envelop the audience, when Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and familiar face at the theater, slipped into Lincoln's box and fatally shot him, yelling, "Sic semper tyrannus" (thus always to tyrants), as he plunged onto the stage and injured his leg, limping to his well-planned escape.

In the ensuing investigation into the tragedy, Mary Surratt, a Maryland Catholic, was accused and convicted of conspiring to kill the president. She was executed by hanging on July 7, 1865. She is played by Robin Wright in Redford's film.

Lillian Webster knew Father Jacob Walter, who was close to Surratt. (In fact, he heard Surratt's last confession before she was executed.) Lillian said Father Walter always contended, "They hung an innocent woman."

Ironically, Lincoln foreshadowed this injustice.

As he wrote to close friend Joshua Speed 10 years earlier, "As a nation, we began by declaring that 'All men are created equal.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'All men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

My great-grandmother's father, Bradshaw Hall Webster, had worked on Lincoln's presidential campaign fresh out of college. In the course of campaigning, this son of the North met my great-great-grandmother, Martha Mungen Starrett, whose family owned a plantation in Jacksonville, Fla.

When Bradshaw's lumber mill in Orono, Maine, burned down, he took up the cause of temperance, as a "writer and orator," traveling up and down the Eastern seaboard. After Martha died in 1881, the 33rd-degree Mason remarried — of all things, a Catholic, whom he met through the convent school his daughters attended.

Lillian, born in 1878, was only 3 at the time of her father's remarriage, and she soon became a Catholic. She noted in her diary how the faith "lightened the burdens of life." In 1888, after President Benjamin Harrison's election, Bradshaw moved his family to Washington.

So it is that my "blue blood" great-grandmother, related to Daniel Webster and President William Henry Harrison, grew up in a social and cultural milieu in which the Civil War conflict still burned brightly so many years later.

She mingled with Washington's Catholic community, which included friends of the wrongfully accused and executed Southern sympathizer Mary Surratt, and dated the son of Dr. Samuel Mudd, the doctor who set Booth's broken leg.

After Lincoln's assassination, the desire for retribution was so intense, a kangaroo military tribunal, portrayed in The Conspirator, sent Surratt to her death — a fate she faced with faith, clinging to her constantly held rosary beads and praying until the end.

As my great-grandmother always wisely counseled, "Two wrongs don't make a right."

Her daughter, my grandmother Helena (shown left), like Surratt, died much too young — the victim not of injustice, but of a heart weakened by rheumatic fever that just stopped one day, on the way home from grandma's, as she held my mother, then 6 months old, in her arms.

Like Dr. Mudd, whose ancestors have tried in vain posthumously to overturn his conviction — though President Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869 largely because of his work saving yellow-fever victims at his military prison, as portrayed in The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) — Mary Surratt's name is still mud — something The Conspirator will hopefully help correct.

Thus would she finally rest in peace right there in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Northeast Washington, not far from where my grandmother Helena is buried.

"The Conspirator" DVD is being released on August 16, 2011.

---

This article was originally published under the title, "Mary Surratt, 'An Innocent Woman'" in the National Catholic Register, July 3-16, 2011 Issue 

There Be Saints and Sinners

By Mary Claire Kendall

There Be Dragons, like a fine delicacy, can only be fully appreciated, it seems, through an acquired taste.

This newly released film, written and directed by Roland Joffe, of Oscar-nominated The Killing Fields and The Mission fame, tells the story of St. Josemaria Escriva, who founded “The Work of God” (“Opus Dei” in Latin), a world-wide phenomenon infused with the spirit of early Christians, where God is found in ordinary work.

That Escriva’s approach is utterly grounded in what it means to be human is revealed in the opening Oscar Wilde quote, “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future”—a recurring theme, which provides the rationale for the quest for God, given our weak human nature, and the corresponding role God gives each of us.In Escriva’s case, the role was rather large; thus the epic nature of the film.

When There Be Dragons opens, it’s 1975. Escriva has just keeled over from a heart attack whereupon his cause of canonization surges—the requisite miracle for “beatification” provided when a nun with a tumor prays to God through Escriva’s intercession, and is cured. A journalist, who’s writing about him, realizing his father is from the same town, decides to try and reconnect with his estranged elder to see what, if anything, he knows about Escriva: A mother lode, it so happens.

Some critics have less appreciation for Joffe’s substantial achievement—if not a masterpiece, then certainly masterful—because their base of understanding is limited.

Manolo, St. Josemaria's friend, played by Wes Bentley

But, for those, for instance, whose lives were directly and intimately affected by the Spanish Civil War—Spain devastated; beloved relatives, one of 500,000 souls, lost forever in the fighting—the appreciation is immense. As one Spaniard commented on The Hollywood Reporter review, rating the film full of missing pieces, it had one piece right, namely: “… from most Spanish people’s point of view (it) is the best approach Hollywood has done to our civil war.”

While the film is not without its flaws, as a screenwriter, I marveled at the craft Joffe brought to the story: the element of surprise, conflict, and more conflict—the very essence of drama—and directorial skill and cinematic vision on par with David Lean.

Of course, flashbacks are generally a “no, no.” That’s because the action derives from the storyline—in this case an artifice—from which you are flashing back, lessening the forward-momentum.

And, while Charlie Cox, who played Escriva, gave an overall masterful performance, sometimes he seemed to translate Escriva’s cheerfulness without enough reference to the weight of his human frailty, making that smile he would flash seem more a preternatural gift than a triumph over weakness—for love.

As the current prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Echeverria, commented on the portrayal of Escriva, while it was impressive, he was “mucho mas!”

All of which means, Escriva’s story will just have to be told free of the artifice, dramatic though it may be.

Joffe certainly whets the appetite for that story!

For more information on There Be Dragons, including cinema locations and times, see http://dragonsresources.com/.

Published in The Wanderer on Sunday, May 26, 2011.

Here’s a PDF version of the published article
http://www.stjosemaria.org/dragons/pdf/ThereBeSaintsandSinners.pdf.

Mary Surratt, 'An Innocent Woman'



Robin Wright and James McAvoy in The Conspirator
Note: DVD being released on August 16, 2011


 http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/mary-surratt-an-innocent-woman/

National Catholic Register
July 3-16, 2011 Issue
Posted 6/24/11 at 4:53 PM

BY Mary Claire Kendall

Robert Redford’s latest film, The Conspirator — released just days after the Sesquicentennial of the attack on Fort Sumter, the Civil War’s start — stirred many childhood memories.

My great-grandmother, Lillian Webster Keane, who was a longtime Washingtonian, frequently spoke about the injustice the film portrays.

Lillian Webster Keane, c. 1938

Fittingly, The Conspirator opened April 15 — the same day, 146 years earlier, President Abraham Lincoln was celebrating the end of the Civil War.

The bloody conflict that ripped our nation apart for four years, North against South, was now over — ending officially on April 9, 1865, when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

After enjoying a pleasant carriage ride with first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, soaking in springtime Washington, this president, a lover of literature, was soaking in Our American Cousin at his box in the new Ford’s Theatre.

Of course, drama of an epic nature would soon envelop the audience, when Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and familiar face at the theater, slipped into Lincoln’s box and fatally shot him, yelling, “Sic semper tyrannus” (thus always to tyrants), as he plunged onto the stage and injured his leg, limping to his well-planned escape.

In the ensuing investigation into the tragedy, Mary Surratt, a Maryland Catholic, was accused and convicted of conspiring to kill the president. She was executed by hanging on July 7, 1865. She is played by Robin Wright in Redford’s film.

Lillian Webster knew Father Jacob Walter, who was close to Surratt. (In fact, he heard Surratt’s last confession before she was executed.) Lillian said Father Walter always contended, “They hung an innocent woman.”

Ironically, Lincoln foreshadowed this injustice.

As he wrote to close friend Joshua Speed 10 years earlier, “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘All men are created equal.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘All men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

My great-grandmother’s father, Bradshaw Hall Webster, had worked on Lincoln’s presidential campaign fresh out of college. In the course of campaigning, this son of the North met my great-great-grandmother, Martha Mungen Starrett, whose family owned a plantation in Jacksonville, Fla.

When Bradshaw’s lumber mill in Orono, Maine, burned down, he took up the cause of temperance, as a “writer and orator,” traveling up and down the Eastern seaboard. After Martha died in 1881, the 33rd-degree Mason remarried — of all things, a Catholic, whom he met through the convent school his daughters attended.

Lillian, born in 1878, was only 3 at the time of her father’s remarriage, and she soon became a Catholic. She noted in her diary how the faith “lightened the burdens of life.” In 1888, after President Benjamin Harrison’s election, Bradshaw moved his family to Washington.

So it is that my “blue blood” great-grandmother, related to Daniel Webster and President William Henry Harrison, grew up in a social and cultural milieu in which the Civil War conflict still burned brightly so many years later.

She mingled with Washington’s Catholic community, which included friends of the wrongfully accused and executed Southern sympathizer Mary Surratt, and dated the son of Dr. Samuel Mudd, the doctor who set Booth’s broken leg.

After Lincoln’s assassination, the desire for retribution was so intense, a kangaroo military tribunal, portrayed in The Conspirator, sent Surratt to her death — a fate she faced with faith, clinging to her constantly held rosary beads and praying until the end.

As my great-grandmother always wisely counseled, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Her daughter, my grandmother Helena, like Surratt, died much too young — the victim not of injustice, but of a heart weakened by rheumatic fever that just stopped one day, on the way home from grandma’s, as she held my mother, then 6 months old, in her arms.

Helena Keane Biberstein, c. 1920

Like Dr. Mudd, whose ancestors have tried in vain posthumously to overturn his conviction — though President Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869 largely because of his work saving yellow-fever victims at his military prison, as portrayed in The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) — Mary Surratt’s name is still mud — something The Conspirator will hopefully help correct.

Thus would she finally rest in peace right there in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Northeast Washington, not far from where my grandmother Helena is buried.

Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based journalist and screenwriter.

Copyright © 2011 Circle Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

John Tracy's Inspiring Life

By Mary Claire Kendall

It is said—our strength is our weakness. In the case of Spencer Tracy and his son John Ten Broeck Tracy, who died in Acton, California on June 15, 2007—five days after the 40th anniversary of his father’s death—nothing could be truer.

“Spence was considered by many to be the greatest actor the screen had ever seen,” his good friend, 82-year Paramount veteran, A.C. Lyles told me.

Yet, the painful emotion he felt upon learning, in 1925, that his baby son, John, was deaf was the hardest of blows. The only thing Spencer Tracy was not good at, he candidly admitted, was “life.”

Spencer Tracy with his son John, c. 1928-29,

prior to his film debut in 1930 in Up the River

His son John, on the other hand—dealt a whole series of setbacks, in what, at age 22, he would term “My Complicated Life”—was great at life.

If only Spencer Tracy could have read the script, he would have discovered John would soon hear the voice of God a little more loudly; see with the eyes of faith a little more clearly; and grow a big heart, drenched with hope and optimism.

As John’s daughter-in-law Cyndi Tracy said, “he just always had an uncanny ability to accept God’s love and always knew (his suffering) was going to be for a greater good.” It was never “Why me?” or “Poor me.”

God, he felt certain, had a plan.

The Plan’s Unfolding

When Louise Treadwell met Spencer Tracy, her theatrical star was rising. Spencer, four years her junior, was just starting out.

It was early 1923. They were both arriving in Grand Rapids, Michigan to play in the same stock company. As fate would have it, they alighted the train station platform simultaneously.

The attraction between these two polar opposites, descended from, respectively, English blue bloods and working-class Irishmen, was immediate. Six weeks later, in between the matinee and evening shows in Cincinnati, Ohio, they got married. Nine months and two weeks hence, on June 26, 1924, in Spencer’s hometown of Milwaukee, their little bundle of joy arrived.

Turning Point

One day, while John lay napping, the screen door accidentally slammed behind Louise and he kept peacefully slumbering on. She immediately, instinctively knew he was deaf. The diagnosis came back as nerve damage of unknown origin. Unbeknownst to them, he had what’s known as Usher Syndrome, which also causes gradual blindness due to Retinitis Pigmentosa—starting at birth.

The doctors said the Tracy’s best option was to place John in an institution for retarded children at age six. The Tracys would hear none of that and promptly went to work talking to him, reading him nursery rhymes, playing games with him… loving him.

“Spence,” said Lyles, “was absolutely marvelous with him;” but “gave all credit to (Louise)” for John’s progress.

Early on she “kept repeating the word ‘talk’… a hundred… sometimes three hundred times” in twice or thrice daily “exercises.” One day, said Lyles, when she finished, John, then 3 or 4, leaned his head close to hers and said, “talk”—his very first word.

Tragedy again visited when John contracted polio at age six, leaving him with a withered right leg. That same year, Lyles recounted, Louise “gave up her career to devote herself entirely to her son and studied everything she could get her hands on about (educating deaf children).” No institution existed that worked with parents of deaf children, teaching them how to help their children develop a bridge to the speaking, hearing world.

Meanwhile, John’s travails motivated Spencer to work that much harder so he could give his son all the financial help he needed to overcome his disability. Thus did he overcome what his good friend and fellow actor Lynne Overman said was a tendency toward laziness, thereby becoming the acting legend he was.

John learned how to lip-read perfectly and to speak, read and write and was fully functioning by age 11, when he began to write his daily journals. Three years later, he started “publishing” his “Newsy News” for friends and family.

When John was 17, Louise first spoke publicly, in her lovely English-accented tones, about raising and educating a deaf child. Her speech at the University of Southern California led her, a year later, in 1942, to found, in a campus bungalow, with Spencer’s money, the John Tracy Clinic. http://www.jtc.org/ It became the only such entity worldwide to provide gratis service to parents of infants and preschool children born with hearing losses.

Walt Disney, with whom the family played polo at the Will Rogers Ranch and The Riviera Polo Club, was one of the original board members.

In 1975, poignancy overflowing, Louise was the first recipient of the Father Flanagan Award for her special service to youth; and, around the same time, she helped establish the Boys Town National Research Hospital for Usher Syndrome: Boys Town, saved from bankruptcy and oblivion by Spencer Tracy’s Oscar-winning performance as Father Flanagan, was now rescuing those who suffer John’s same sensory afflictions.

“Our Everyday Blessing”

John was always intent, as his son and fellow artist, Joseph Spencer Tracy, characterized it, on living “each day to the fullest, regardless” of his daily challenges.

“I’m an artist, writer, photographer; I played polo, tennis; swim, water-ski, dance,” he wrote in his journal in 1975. “ I got married, had a family. I’m also profoundly deaf, going blind, had polio. What can you do?”

Well, apparently everything!

Endowed with a high IQ and an athlete’s body, he energetically poured himself into life, blissfully unaware of his multiple disabilities until he was in his twenties.

He loved horses, which mirrored his own “gentle” spirit, and the invigorating sense of freedom riding gave him: It reminded him of his “favorite” times of life at the family ranch in Encino (1936-1955), so full of fond memories like the day he started playing polo at age 12. (He had only begun riding three years earlier.) That day, one of the players was injured and Spencer summoned him to come on down!

Through it all, he had, said Cyndi, a “tremendous sense of humor” and the “charm of an angel.” Fittingly, he did a dead-on impersonation of his father, which no professional comedian has ever attempted.

John graduated from Pasadena City College then attended Chouinard Art Institute, graduating in 1955, the same year his son was born. He subsequently worked at Walt Disney Studios in the props department for nearly five years, until his eyesight started failing. But, he continued doing his watercolor paintings and pen and ink and pencil drawings, as he was able to: He was declared legally blind in the early eighties and, by 1994, was totally blind.

John Tracy in 2004

“The moment you met him,” said Cyndi, “your life was changed. You knew that you were in the company of someone… great, who was, at the same time, the most humble person you would ever meet.” Quite simply, he had no idea how positively he impacted others’ lives.

“Pa Pa Johnny,” said Cyndi, “was truly ‘our everyday blessing.’”

John attended Sunday services at All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills for decades with his mother, who died in 1983. He would also pray nightly in an elaborate ritual that, Cyndi said, revealed his “darling personality.” The family—Joe’s family, sister Susie, the cousins, among others—“was lined up in the (same) order every night.” But “all his friends and acquaintances were always jockeying for position.”

“He was strong until the end,” said Joe, and “always prayed for other people, didn’t pray for himself”—a lesson in selflessness he communicated to his three grandchildren.

As for actually communicating with words, John could talk, but his deafness combined with his blindness required some special techniques for his family to reply back.

Cyndi described how he loved to converse and remembered with particular warmth those special times, often at the end of a long day, she would be perched next to him as he would regale her with fascinating stories. And, she would reply by spelling words on his back. Or, for shorter responses, she would spell words on his hand—a hand that so often held her hand, while tapping her other hand, as he said, “God bless you, Cyndi. Thank you. ”

For, whatever else he was, John Tracy was always profoundly grateful for all life’s blessings.

Originally published in DBI Review, Number 45, January-June 2010. http://www.deafblindinternational.org/

Today is the 111th anniversary of Spencer Tracy's birth. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 5, 1900.

God Bless Dame Elizabeth "Liz" Taylor, Hollywood Legend, Dead at Age 79

CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

God bless Elizabeth “Liz” Taylor, glittering and beloved Hollywood icon, who died today of congestive heart failure, with family at her side, at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles... she was 79...

In a statement to ABC News, her son Michael Wilding said: “My Mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love. Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world.”

It gives me goosebumps to think of her in National Velvet (1944), not to mention her Oscar-winning performances in Butterfield 8 (1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and stellar performances in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Giant (1956), A Place in the Sun (1951)... Lassie Come Home (1943)...

Here's Elizabeth Taylor receiving the Oscar for Butterfield 8 and Anne Bancroft accepting the Oscar on behalf of Elizabeth Taylor who won for Best Actress in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

RIP Dame Elizabeth Taylor.

Oscar Crowns "The King's Speech"

                                                    Monica Almeida/The New York Times

What a joy it was to see Colin Firth basking in Oscar's glory... he's such a decent chap, and such a great actor, it was a pleasure indeed to see him win!  All hail and congratulations to Colin Firth and his fellow actors, including Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Anthony Andrews, Claire Bloom -- what a cast!!! -- who turned in marvelous performances, to complement Firth's magnificent portrayal of King George VI, struggling with a speech impediment to rise to the awful challenge of leading England in time of war -- World War II, when the freedom of the West was at stake... For more, read: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/movies/awardsseason/28oscars.html