Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life

25. Independence

313 25 Independence We must all find open doors and make our lives as beautiful as God intended . I never think of my limitations because my life has been happy. —Helen Keller When Tessa asked Felicity if she was having an affair with her father, at first Felicity denied it. Tessa then asked her aunt Else about it, and she suggested Tessa ignore it. Tessa recalled that while the Dahl family “loved to discuss drama, they didn’t like to discuss the effect on people’s emotions.”1 One night she overheard her father talking on the telephone to Felicity, and the next morning she asked him directly about his relationship with Felicity. According to Tessa, he denied everything and then turned on her, saying, “You’ve always been trouble, you’ve always been a nosy little bitch. I want you to get out of this fucking house now.”2 Roald had Felicity apologize to Tessa the following day, and Tessa decided to keep quiet about the issue. She did, however , spend a few evenings with Felicity and sometimes stayed the night on her couch, in effect allying herself with her father and Felicity. When Tessa was in her late teens, she fought her own demons. Roald bought her a London apartment. She had tested for John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine, and was offered the female lead on the condition she lose twenty pounds. When Roald sent her to Champney’s outside of London to fast, Patricia wrote friends, “Her figure looks great now. Tomorrow she is having her two ghastly canine teeth capped, which will make a big difference in her looks.”3 Tessa starved herself thin for the Huston film only to learn that Caine’s wife, Shakira, had been given the part. Tessa, who had grown into a beautiful young woman, embarked on a series of unsuccessful affairs, including a liaison with the fifty-year-old Peter Facing page: Patricia Neal, circa 1980s. From the Patricia Neal Collection. Shearer฀book.indb฀฀฀313 3/16/2006฀฀฀12:17:43฀PM 314 Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life Sellers, with whom she lived briefly. She told the press, “He was a very, very lovely man. My mother was horrified, but I think she knew it would run its course. I know it would never have worked.”4 She next began an intense relationship with thirty-year-old David Hemmings, moving in with him as well. By 1976 she was living with the thirty-two-year-old actor Julian Holloway , son of British entertainer Stanley Holloway. By the time she was nineteen , she was pregnant with his child. On September 15, 1977, Patricia and Roald became grandparents for the first time with the birth of Sophie Dahl, who would later be immortalized by her grandfather in his book The BFG as Sophie, the little girl the giant befriended. Tessa and Holloway chose not to marry. By late fall of 1976, Patricia was back in the United States filming Tail Gunner Joe for NBC. A true story, told in flashbacks, Tail Gunner Joe was based on events of the 1950s, when Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy (Peter Boyle) exploited the fears of the nation by going after high-profile citizens suspected of being Communist sympathizers. His ruthless campaign helped flame the Red Scare across the nation. He ruined the reputations of many people but met his match when he took on the U.S. Army, accusing it of harboring subversives. His attacks provoked attorney Joseph Welch (Burgess Meredith) to say during a televised hearing, “Have you no decency, sir?” He is exposed as a demagogue after a blistering ten-minute speech by Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith (Neal). McCarthy quickly plunged into obscurity and acute alcoholism, dying in 1957 while still in his forties. Hal Erickson in his All Movie Guide said, “this made-for-TV movie works as a brisk, entertaining recollection of an era in which ‘guilt by association’ was a byword. As Joe McCarthy, Peter Boyle’s performance is so convincing that it borders on the supernatural.”5 The real Margaret Chase Smith responded on September 25 to a note Patricia had sent her: “I did not know about the film on Senator McCarthy. I am delighted that you portray me, as I have long admired your acting. Because of your beauty, dignity, and intelligence, there is no one I would...