Free Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke by Patty Duke

being cast. Because of the way the Rosses worked, I’d prepared for weeks for that part. That meant not only reading the book but discussing it, imagining dialogue, learning to dress the way Pollyanna dressed and behave the way Pollyanna behaved. If I messed up, their response was, “Pollyanna wouldn’t do that, would she?” And after all that, I never even got to the audition. One was set up, with the help of David Niven, but I got very sick, possibly with hepatitis, and during the postponement Hayley Mills, whose look was more classically Pollyanna, was found. I was heartbroken, heartbroken at not playing that role. That had nothing to do with a fear of the Rosses’ reaction. Pollyanna would have meant going to California and working with Walt Disney! It took me a while to get over that one.
    One of the Rosses’ better traits was that they were surprisingly reasonable about rejection. Before I’d go in to try out for something, they’d deliver an effective kind of coach’s pep talk, saying, “Okay, it’s your part, just go claim it.” I’ve used a similar thing with my own kids when they want to get a hit in Little League: “It’s yours, just go do it.” And if I didn’t succeed, they never openly said, “You blew it.” I would feel very frustrated and discouraged, something I now know adult actors go through also, because you never find out why you didn’t get the part. Were you too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, or did your reading stink? Or were you great and they didn’t know it? John Ross was very philosophical about all this. He’d say, “Hey, there’s another one coming. Don’t worry about it.”
    We went to Long Branch, New Jersey, to audition for a summer stock production of The Bad Seed. We’d worked on the part a lot, drilling for days and nights, so I did extremely well, and the reaction was so good afterward that I thought I had the part. We all went out into the lobby and John Ross and the producer went into a corner to talk. I thought they were making a deal, because in the theater in those days, talking in a corner was how all deals were made. I was sitting on a bench, anticipating the summer and my first stage role, when all of a sudden the producer walked up to say good-bye.I said good-bye back in my best Sparkle Plenty manner, but I noticed that John was acting really disturbed.
    We walked down the gravel driveway to the waiting taxi to go to the train station, and John, to his credit, told me how wonderful I had been and how thrilled and proud of me he was, but that I didn’t get the part because I had no previous stage experience. He said there was no point in arguing with these people, their minds were set; they were afraid I wouldn’t be able to cut it when there was an audience in the house. Actually, that was probably one of the moments when he thought he should have put more lies on my credits.
    Not getting that role was another tremendous disappointment because I knew I’d been good, I knew that this was a real injustice. We got on the train and Ross said, “Don’t you worry, honey. You’ll open on Broadway, and you’ll never have to set foot on a summer stock stage.”
    Nineteen fifty-nine was also the year in which, though I didn’t know it at the time, I would make the front page of The New York Times. It had all started the year before, with Irving Harris, the man who had introduced my brother to the Rosses. Harris had connections with The $64,000 Challenge, a TV quiz show that was the successor to The $64,000 Question, and he arranged for me to go to a kind of audition, really just to see if I had the personality they were looking for. Then I was informed that I was going to do the show and the producers were trying to decide on a category of expertise for me; naturally, I didn’t get to volunteer what I thought I’d be good at. In a few days I was told that popular music had been chosen. It could have been anything; they might as well have said