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 WrightasAnne 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.
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]
Mark Twain: A Biography.
