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The Miracle Worker

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Photo of Patty Duke as Helen Keller and Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan in the 1959 Broadway play The Miracle Worker: In this scene, Miss Sullivan tries to teach Helen the meaning of "water".

The Miracle Worker refers to a broadcast, a play and various other adaptations of Helen Keller's 1903 autobiography The Story of My Life. The first of these works was a 1957 Playhouse 90 broadcast written by William Gibson and starring Teresa Wright as Anne Sullivan and Patricia McCormack as Keller.[citation needed] Gibson adapted his teleplay for a 1959 Broadway production with Patty Duke as Keller and Anne Bancroft as Sullivan. The 1962 film also starred Bancroft and Duke. Subsequent television films were released in 1979 and in 2000.

Source of the name

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The title originates in Mark Twain's description of Sullivan as a "miracle worker".[1] He admired both women, and although his personal finances were problematic, he helped arrange the funding of Keller's Radcliffe College education by his friend, financier and industrialist Henry Huttleston Rogers.[2]

Play

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Film

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References

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  1. ^ "Anne Sullivan Macy: The Miracle Worker". American Foundation for the Blind. Retrieved 20 May 2023.
  2. ^ Paine, Albert Bigelow (1912). "196: Mr. Rogers and Helen Keller". Mark Twain, a biography: the personal and literary life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Volume 3. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 1035. Retrieved 22 September 2017. Mark Twain: A Biography.
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