Awakenings true story oliver sacks biography

The 1990 movie Awakenings is a dramatization of Dr. Oliver Sacks' 1973 memoir of the same name — and the true story behind the semi-fictional Dr. Sayer is just as fascinating. In 1990, viewers were treated to a dramatic story starring Robin Williams (who, even in a more serious role, added a touch of his particular sense of humor) and Robert De Niro. The pair play doctor and patient in a story that’s equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking. Unlike Robin Williams' other medical drama, the historically inaccurate Patch Adams, Awakenings uses its true story to enhance its own semi-fictional narrative.

Directed by Penny Marshall, Awakenings is a retelling of the groundbreaking work carried out by Dr. Oliver Sacks, author of the Awakenings book. While it certainly makes some big changes, including the key characters involved, the important aspects and powerful elements of the Awakenings true story are captured. This helped to make Awakenings a huge hit, making over $52 million (Box Office Mojo) and being nominated for three Oscars, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Robert De Niro), and Best Picture. Additionally, there are many fascinating facts about the true story of Awakenings and how they relate to the movie.

The Inspiration For Awakenings Dr. Sayer Explained

Robin Williams' Character Is Based On Dr. Oliver Sacks

Awakenings follows semi-fictional neurologist Malcolm Sayer (played by Robin Williams), who, in 1969 while working at a hospital in the Bronx, began extensive research on catatonic patients who survived the 1917-1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. Sayer learns of a new drug that helps patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease and beli

This article is about the 1973 non-fiction book. For the 1990 film, see Awakenings. For other uses, see Awakening (disambiguation).

1973 book by Oliver Sacks

Awakenings is a 1973 non-fiction book by Oliver Sacks. It recounts the life histories of those who had been victims of the 1920s encephalitis lethargica epidemic. Sacks chronicles his efforts in the late 1960s to help these patients at the Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing) in the Bronx, New York. The treatment used the new drug L-DOPA, with the observed effects on the patients' symptoms being generally dramatic but temporary.

In 1982, Sacks wrote:

I have become much more optimistic than I was when I […] wrote Awakenings, for there has been a significant number of patients who, following the vicissitudes of their first years on L-DOPA, came to do – and still do – extremely well. Such patients have undergone an enduring awakening, and enjoy possibilities of life which had been impossible, unthinkable, before the coming of L-DOPA.

The 1976 edition of the book is dedicated to the memory of Sacks's close friend the poet W. H. Auden, and bears an extract from Auden's 1969 poem The Art of Healing:

'Healing',
Papa would tell me,
'is not a science,
but the intuitive art
of wooing Nature.'

Prior to his death in 1973, Auden wrote, "Have read the book and think it a masterpiece".

Penny Marshall’s drama Awakenings (1990) centres on Dr Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) and his patient Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro). In the film, Sayer uses a drug designed to treat Parkinson’s Disease to awaken catatonic patients in a Bronx hospital. The most dramatic and excellent results are found in Leonard.  His awakening, filled with awe and enthusiasm, also proves a rebirth for Sayer, as the exuberant patient reveals life's simple but unutterably sweet pleasures to the introverted doctor.  

While the new medication allows Leonard and the other patients a second chance at experiencing life, it also brings some unexpected challenges. Leonard must now cope with his romantic feelings for a visitor at the hospital, the restrictions on his freedom as a patient, and a gradual decline in the effectiveness of the treatment by opening one man's eyes to the world. He opened his own...Based on the true story of Dr. Oliver Sacks, 

See the review by Bruce Dobkin from Los Angeles Times:

People who know me as a neurologist have asked, did those “Awakenings” happen? Did people with Parkinson’s disease who had been inanimate for decades spring from their wheelchairs and boogie after a swig of levodopa? And if the medication worked, why didn’t those miraculous effects last?

“Awakenings” is Hollywood’s cleansed-behind-the-ears and romanticised interpretation of case studies published in the early 1970s by Dr. Oliver Sacks, who sometimes writes nonfiction with a hand slanted by his imagination. But it faithfully captures the Angst and the promise of one of the many remarkable experiences of doctors and patients experimenting with a new drug.

Robin Williams plays Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a timid and quirky Sacks-like good fellow who notices a cluster of common characteristics among the patients warehoused at a chronic care hospital. Their bodies are so rigid that, when supine in bed, their heads must be forcibly pushed back to rest on a pillow. Elbows and wrists flex as jo

British neurologist and writer (1933–2015)

Oliver Wolf Sacks (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in London, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the United States, where he spent most of his career. He interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology and neuropathology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Later, he served as neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic-care facility in the Bronx, where he worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness encephalitis lethargica epidemic, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. His treatment of those patients became the basis of his 1973 book Awakenings, which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated feature film, in 1990, starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.

His numerous other best-selling books were mostly collections of case studies of people, including himself, with neurological disorders. He also published hundreds of articles (both peer-reviewed scientific articles and articles for a general audience), about neurological disorders, history of science, natural history, and nature. The New York Times called him a "poet laureate of contemporary medicine", and "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century". Some of his books were adapted for plays by major playwrights, feature films, animated short films, opera, dance, fine art, and musical works in the classical genre. His book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which describes the case histories of some of his patients, became the basis of an opera of the same name.

Early life and education

Oliver Wolf Sacks was born in Cricklewood, London, England, the youngest of four children born to Jewish parents: Samuel Sacks, a Lithuanian