What Patty Thinks About ‘Patty’

What baby boomers could ever forget that memorable theme song to The Patty DukeShow?: “Meet Cathy who’s lived most everywhere, from Zanzibar to BerkeleySquare, but Patty’s only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights,what a crazy pair. . .”

But they’re cousinsI”

Now seen in reruns on Nickelodeon, the 1963-66 ABC comedy featured then16-year-old Patty Duke, fresh from her Oscar-winning role as Helen Keller in”The Miracle Worker.” Duke’s real life, not the sitcom-perfect world at all, istold this week on ABC’s “Call Me Anna,” airing Sunday at 9 p.m. See Page 87.

In the series, Duke played the dual role of Patty Lane, your typical early ‘60steen-ager, and Cathy Lane, her quiet Scottish cousin who comes to live withPatty and her family in Brooklyn Heights.

The look-alike girls would switch identities at the drop of the hat and confuseeveryone from Patty’s harried father Martin (William Schallert), her motherNatalie (Jean Byron), younger brother Ross (Paul O’Keefe) and Patty’slong-suffering boyfriend Richard (Eddie Applegate).

During its three seasons, the series featured such dreamy heartthrob guests asBobby Vinton, Chad and Jeremy, Frankie Avalon and Sal Mineo, as well as suchveterans as Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Jean-Pierre Aumont.

And a young woman named Rita McLaughlin served as the Patty/Cathy double, onlyseen from the back of her head.

And what does Patty Duke think of her show almost three decades later?

“I am only catching up now on ‘The Patty Duke Show’ on Nick at Nite,” sheconfesses. “I used to be mortified when people would say ‘The Patty Duke Show.’I would hide my head and be snotty. Now little kids, little 4 year-olds, come upto me and look (at me) because it’s a little different and then they say, ‘PattyDukes,’ like there are two of us. All kinds of people love it. I love it.”

“The Patty Duke Show” airs Monday-Friday at 11:30 p.m. and 4 a.m. andSaturday-Sunday at 4 a.m. on Nickelodeon.