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[This is at a google place that seems to be a collection of obituaries about Neal. The quote seems to be attributed to her -CB] "I loved Ronald Reagan," ... "He was a very good friend and very good to me."
^^^^^ CB: To my mind's eye, Neal was sort of Rand in the way that Hollywood puts a face on public figures , but I guess Rand was a Hollywood person. Was Rand _in_ any movies ?
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http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/10/local/la-me-patricia-neal-20100810
Patricia Neal dies at 84; Oscar-winning actress found triumphs in a life of tragedies
'Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison,' she wrote in her 1988 autobiography, 'As I Am.' August 10, 2010|By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times
Her life was marked by professional triumphs, including a Tony Award-winning debut on Broadway in Lillian Hellman's 1946 drama "Another Part of the Forest" and a best actress Oscar for her role in the 1963 drama "Hud."
But for Patricia Neal, the husky-voiced actress with a strong screen presence, life also was marked by personal tragedies: the death of one of her children and brain damage to another, and her own battle to overcome the debilitating effects of a ruptured aneurysm in her brain in 1965 that temporarily halted her career. Advertisement Ads by Google
"Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison," Neal wrote in her 1988 autobiography, "As I Am."
Neal, 84, died of lung cancer Sunday at her home in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard. But in the end, she told family members who had gathered around her the night before: "I've had a lovely time."
Neal's daughter Ophelia Dahl said her mother, who was divorced from British writer Roald Dahl and once had an affair with married actor Gary Cooper, "recognized the extraordinary opportunities she had, and she also recognized that she was dealt a bad hand at times."
"The thing about my mother, it would seem she was really able to make the most of when times were good, and she'd find things to be positive about," Dahl told The Times on Monday.
After her Tony Award for best featured actress in a play for "Another Part of the Forest," Neal was signed to a contract with Warner Bros., where she was cast in "John Loves Mary," a 1949 comedy starring Ronald Reagan and Jack Carson.
She went on to appear in a string of films and live TV productions over the next decade, including the 1949 film adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel "The Fountainhead" (co-starring Cooper), the 1951 science fiction classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and director Elia Kazan's 1957 drama "A Face in the Crowd."
"There was a directness and honesty to her approach to acting that was kind of inspiring," movie historian Richard Schickel told The Times on Monday. "As a young actress, she had kind of a quiet ferocity. She was a woman of great quality and emotionally very truthful."
Neal's Oscar-winning role as the weary housekeeper in "Hud," starring Paul Newman as the ruthless son of a Texas rancher, came in the wake of two family tragedies.