What you remember about Patricia Neal, who died Sunday at the age of 84, is the tobacco-cured voice and appraising eyes that in a glance could take the measure of a man to the millimeter.
In her two best roles, The Fountainhead (1949), as absolutist architecture critic Dominique Francon, and A Face in the Crowd (1957), as radio journalist Marcia Jeffries who midwives a maleficent media personality, the way she looked at Gary Cooper's pneumatic drill and Andy Griffiths' acoustic guitar was positively indecent. And incandescent.
As a screen presence, she was not prolific. Apart from Fountainhead and Face, her most memorable movies were The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), where she was decorative; Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), where she was imperious, and Hud (1963), where she effectively won a best actress Oscar for resisting the charms of Paul Newman (and for surviving a debilitating stroke in real life).