Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life

16. Career

183 16 Career I always should have been an equal partner. Well I’m gonna be an equal partner. And I want it on paper! —Marcia to Lonesome, A Face in the Crowd (1957) Patricia and Roald spent part of the spring and summer of 1956 restoring their Georgian house, Little Whitefield. They added a small guesthouse, which Roald quickly turned into a workshop for restoration of antique mirrors . Roald’s sister Alfhild gave them an old gypsy caravan, which they made into a playhouse for Olivia and the other children they were planning. Before heading for England that year, Patricia had two acting jobs. The most significant one was replacing Barbara Bel Geddes in the demanding role of Maggie for three weeks during the spring, in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof while Bel Geddes was vacationing in Spain. Patricia was the choice of director Elia Kazan, who had been impressed with her work at the Actors Studio. She took over the very long role on short notice, memorizing her lines on just six days’ notice. There are no reviews of Patricia’s portrayal of Maggie. Her performance is well remembered, however, by those who happened to see it. Said Eli Wallach many years later, “Patricia’s performance in ‘Cat’ was stunning. She gave a much more honest performance of the desperate ‘Maggie,’ with more depth and understanding of the role than, in all respects, did Barbara Bel Geddes. Perhaps because she is a true southern woman.”1 The play had opened March 24, 1955, starring Geddes and Ben Gazzara. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Best Play of 1955 for Williams. Patricia also filmed an episode of the Matinee Theatre for NBC, “The Good-Time Boys,” that finally aired on June 4, 1956. Adapted by Nicholas Baehr from a short story by Ira Avery, it told the story of the conflict between Facing page: Patricia Neal in A Face In the Crowd, 1957. Courtesy of Photofest. Shearer฀book.indb฀฀฀183 3/16/2006฀฀฀12:16:14฀PM 184 Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life an established and well-respected publisher and his son. It was hosted by John Conte and costarred Addison Richards. At Little Whitefield, soon to be called Gipsy House, Roald and Wally Saunders began remodeling a garden shed into a work space for Roald’s writing . Roald wrote his friend Charles Marsh, “It’s marvelous, isolated, and quiet .”2 After he completed the renovation, he told an interviewer, “It’s a lovely place to work. It’s small and tight and dark and the curtains are always drawn and it’s kind of a womb—you go up here and you disappear and get lost.”3 Surrounded by his childhood trinkets and family pictures and mementos, this became Dahl’s refuge from the world, a place where he would write and think—and also find momentary and precious solace during the bleak times to come. His hut became his sanctuary, where he could be alone and create. Wrote Barry Farrell in his dual biography Pat and Roald, “Equipped with a thermos jug of hot coffee, he would stride the fifty paces from the house, light the Aladdin Blue Flame heater against the permanent chill of his hut, sharpen a half-dozen Dixon Ticonderogas to an accountant’s taste and settle down into his chair.”4 All Dahl’s writing was done in longhand on legal-size yellow writing pads. With steady concentration he would produce about three short stories, going through a gross of pencils, each year. Also in the hut was a lamp connected to the house. When it flashed once, it meant that someone at the house was asking for him. If it flashed twice, there was an emergency. Over the years, Roald planted hundreds of varieties of roses on the property , as well as a vegetable garden with plenty of his favorite varieties of onions . He also renovated an outdoor teahouse into an aviary in an attempt to imitate the one at Moynes Park, the Elizabethan mansion of his friend Ivar Bryce, complete with several varieties of brilliantly colored budgerigars. “This was Olivia’s special place,” wrote Patricia in her memoirs. “She loved to come with me to feed the birds and help me clean. Her favorites were the rare, pure white and yellow parakeets that somehow were always disappearing . . . . For Olivia these vanishing beauties were like tiny angels who could evaporate...