Guest blogger ClassicBecky writes:
Patricia Neal was a woman whose career was marked by a diversity of movie roles as well as illness and tragedy in her personal life. As an actress, she was wonderful. As a person, she was strong and resilient. She is remembered for her beauty, her infamous affair with the married Gary Cooper, her marriage to author Roald Dahl, two beloved children who died under tragic circumstances, and the terrible series of strokes in a period of hours while she was pregnant. Pat Neal was left severely debilitated by these cerebral aneurysms, and had to fight her way back to learning to talk and walk. Her baby was born healthy, and Pat won her fight back to health.
Pat’s breakthrough role was in 1949’s The Fountainhead ,which starred Gary Cooper. She was 23 years old and Hollywood-gorgeous. She did many films, and is probably best remembered for The Fountainhead, the science fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, and her Academy Award-winning performance in Hud.
Her role as Alma Brown, a cook and housekeeper for a rancher and his sons, was relatively small but powerful enough to bring her acclaim as Best Actress of 1963. She was 37 at the time, still strikingly attractive, but the role of the world-weary Alma, speaking in a Texas drawl, no make-up or hair styling, a woman who had been kicked around a lot by life and men, was played by her to perfection. Hud was supposed to be only Paul Newman’s movie, in which he was at his most handsome, playing a charming but brutal and callous man. He did so beautifully, and was nominated for Best Actor (but lost to Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field). However, Pat Neal stole every scene in which she appeared, not an easy task since she was also working with veteran actor Melvyn Douglas as Hud’s father, a role for which he won Best Supporting Actor.
Hud has many women in his little black book, but he is attracted to Alma, partly because she rejects his advances, and his ego cannot accept that. He is rude and crude to Alma, but she takes it in her stride. It’s very difficult to explain Pat Neal’s abilities in this role because so many of them are in her delivery, her reactions and body language, but a few scenes give a good example of the treatment she receives from Hud and her refusal to give in to him.
In one scene, Hud is getting ready to go out on the town and wants a clean shirt:
“Alma, get me a clean white shirt!”
“Boy, you’re really big with the please and thank you, aren’t you?”
“Please get off your lazy butt and get me a clean white shirt, thank you!”
In another scene, Hud visits Alma in her little detached cabin and tries his alleged charm on her:
“You’re a good cook, a good laundress, good housekeeper – what else you good at?”
“Taking care of myself.”
Alma’s contemptuous reactions to Hud are tempered with her own reluctant attraction to him, which she does not allow him to see. She is a lonely woman, with needs that the ultra sexual Hud could satisfy, but Alma is well aware of his casual cruelty to women. The other members of the household are like family to Alma. The father, an old man of high principles, for whom she has great affection, and the young nephew (played by Brandon deWilde) who loves Alma with the confused feelings of a teenage boy becoming a man – with these, Alma is happy and contented. Hud can easily destroy this and Alma knows it.
I don’t like to reveal too much about a movie like Hud by telling the story beginning to end. Anyone who would like to see it deserves to see it for themselves without spoilers. It is of course much more than the story of Alma, and a truly great movie.
Because Pat’s performance relies so much on delivery and reaction, I thought it would be a good idea to give you one of the best examples of Pat Neal’s portrayal of Alma in a short portion of the movie I found on YouTube. To see just the scene between Alma and Hud, fast forward to about 3:26. It is funny and sad, and shows much of the reason for Pat’s well-deserved award as Best Actress.
ClassicBecky is an Indiana Hoosier born and bred. She describes herself as a strange personality mix — half Bohemian, half conservative. Classic movies, classic literature and classical music are her passions. Thus her nom de plume was her first choice. For more information, visit http://classicbeckybrainfood.blogspot.com.