The Miracle Worker

Kairos is the day that matters." Yeah.

You know what came up for me, this may be a little bit of a stretch, but I, I think I will bring it in anyway, is one of the kind of stories from biography that really grips me is the tale that is well known from the play The Miracle Worker-

Hmm

... which is about the relationship between Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller.

And that's the hard way of doing it.

And my guest, the movie drop was from The Miracle Worker, the Helen Keller story.

And my guest is Cornelia Lockett.

And you have your Master's in Education, Cornelia.

It was being marketed towards American audiences now, and that just would have been too much for them.

Arthur Penn, who had previously been nominated for Best Director for The Miracle Worker of 1962, after winning a Tony for directing it on stage in 1960, was chosen to direct the film.

The exact same career trajectory is what happens with Mike Nichols this year with The Graduate, where he makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which he also directed on stage and won a Tony for, and then he does The Graduate, which is an incredibly revolutionary new wave film.

It's interesting that both of these directors started out in theater.

Our guest this week was born into one of those Hollywood families that not only will be remembered forever, they will stay beloved, a very difficult task in this business.

His father played Gomez Addams, and his mother, Patty Duke, was the youngest actress to win an Academy Award at the time for her portrayal of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, all before she starred on her own sitcom, The Patty Duke Show.

And his brother is freaking Sam Wise.

[laughs]

What do you think the best thing you've ever done and the worst thing you've ever done?

The best thing I ever did, I think, was in high school, The Miracle Worker, when I played...

Helen Keller? Helen Keller.

Annie Sullivan?

People all over the world know the story of Helen Keller, the deaf and blind girl Annie Sullivan taught to communicate by spelling letters on her hands.

And as the whole story was turned into a play in a movie called The Miracle Worker.

But what most people don't know is how Helen's parents found Annie Sullivan.

Helen Keller's mother, Kate, who also happened to be a cousin of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, was inspired by the story of the successful education of another deaf and blind girl, Laura Bridgman.

Following her passing, her body was cremated, and the ashes were placed next to her companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson, inside the Washington National Cathedral.

Both during and after Helen Keller's life, her inspirational story was adapted into many documentaries and biographies over the years, the most famous of which was the 1962 film The Miracle Worker.

Anne Bancroft won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Anne Sullivan, and Patty Duke won Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Helen Keller.

The Miracle Worker was first a play written by William Gibson, which appeared on Broadway.

But the first film about Helen Keller was called Deliverance, and it was produced in 1919.

She was also the subject of a postage stamp in 1980, and she was elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2003.