Anna Marie Duke was born on the 14th December, 1946 in Elmhurst, New York USA, and died on the 29th March 2016 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, USA. She was an actress who performed on television, in films as well as on stage. Duke was the winner of an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards and three Primetime Emmy Awards. Patty was the 21st President of the Screen Actors Guild, and served in the position from receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004. Patty Duke was active in the entertainment industry from 1950 to 2015.
How rich was the actress? It was estimated that the net worth of Patty Duke was equal to $5 million, accumulated from her varied acting career.
Patty Duke Net Worth $5 Million
After an unhappy childhood with an alcoholic father and a depressed mother, at the age of eight she was entrusted to managers, John and Ethel Ross, who made her into a child actress. They changed her first name to Patty, as Patty McCormack was very successful at that time. Following a few commercials and small roles, Patty Duke received her first leading role on Broadway in “The Miracle Worker” (1959) in the role of Helen Keller, with Anne Bancroft. This piece was brought to the screen in 1962, and thanks to this film she obtained her first award: the Academy Award for the Best Actress in a Supporting Role. At that time Patty was only 16 years old. In 1963, the sitcom “The Patty Duke Show” was launched in which she played the main characters, Patty and Cathy Lane. The show lasted three seasons and earned her an Emmy and Golden Globe nominations, and also boosted her net worth.
Despite the success of her career, she was unhappy in her teens, a prisoner of her managers, with very little authority in her private life and rights. She slipped into alcohol and drugs at the age of 13, and even wrote in her memoirs of being sexually abused by Ross. She got rid of them at the age of 18, to find that they had robbed her of most of her gains. At the age of 18, she married Harry Falk, a 31 year-old man, but the marriage did not help her to resist alcohol, drugs, subsequent anorexia and suicide attempts. During the marriage, she starred in “The Valley of the Dolls” (1967), which attracted a lot of poor reviews, and raised many questions about her ability to be an adult actress.
In the 1960s, she also sang and reached 8th position on the Billboard chart with the song “Do Not Just Stand There” (1965). As an actress she made her return with the TV movie “My Sweet Charlie” (1970), for which she won her first Emmy Award for the Outstanding Lead Actress. From then she mainly played for television, becoming very popular in 1970s and 1980s. The most important roles – and which brought her nominations or awards – she landed in the television productions the mini-series “Captains and the Kings” (1976); TV films “A Family Upside Down” (1978), “Having Babies III” (1978), “The Miracle Worker” (1979), “The Women’s Room” (1980), “The Girl on the Edge of Town” (1981), “Insight” (1984), “George Washington” (1984) and “Touched by an Angel” (1998 – 2003).
Moreover, she was the author of two books. “Call Me Anna” and “Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic Depressive Illness”.
Finally, in the personal life of the actress, she was married three times: her first husband was Harry Falk (1965-1969), the second John Astin (1972-1985) and the third Michael Pearce (from 1986 until her death). She had two children in the second and one child in the third marriage. The actress died from sepsis from a ruptured intestine in March 2016 at the age of 69.
