The Day The Earth Stood Still

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Klaatu Barada Nixed
Patricia Neal, the only actress in Hollywood for whom strokes had nothing to do with the casting couch, has died at the age of 84. After winning a Tony in her debut performance in Another Part of the Forest, Neal’s first major movie role was almost her last, as Ayn Rand gave her as much trouble as any freshman literature student, and The Fountainhead was a big flop, although it did net her a 3-year affair with 48-year-old co-star Gary Cooper. She was the somewhat dim leg of a love triangle between Whit Bissell-wannabe Hugh Marlowe and suave alien Michael Rennie in The Day the Earth Stood Still. In 1965, she was at the top of her career, a year removed from winning the Oscar for Hud, when a series of strokes left her in a coma for 3 weeks. She emerged semiparalyzed and unable to speak, but after learning to walk and talk again, earned a 1968 Oscar nomination as a bitter mother in The Subject Was Roses. Neal later won a Golden Globe as Olivia Walton in the TV-movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story. Although the movie served as the pilot for The Waltons, producers were concerned her health wouldn’t stand up to the rigors of a weekly series and the role went to Michael Learned.