Geraldine Fitzgerald

Geraldine Mary Wilma Fitzgerald (November 24, 1913 – July 17, 2005) was an Irish-born actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television across seven decades. Born in Dublin at 85 Lower Leeson Street, she was the daughter of Edith Catherine (née Richards) and Edward Martin FitzGerald, a lawyer. The family later resided in Greystones, County Wicklow. Her father was Roman Catholic and her mother was Protestant before converting to Catholicism. Fitzgerald studied painting at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, which became the National College of Art in 1936 and the National College of Art and Design in 1971. Inspired by her aunt, actress Shelah Richards, she began her acting career in 1932 at Dublin's Gate Theatre.

After two seasons at the Gate, Fitzgerald relocated to London, where she appeared in British films including The Mill on the Floss, Turn of the Tide, and Cafe Mascot, as well as making her film debut in the thriller Blind Justice (1934). Her London work brought her to the attention of American producers, and she arrived in New York in 1938 to make her American stage debut opposite Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak House. Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis saw her in that production and signed her to a contract with Warner Bros.

Fitzgerald's Broadway career had begun earlier, between 1926 and 1928, when she appeared in four productions: the musicals Three Cheers, She's My Baby, and Happy Go Lucky, as well as the play Oh, Please. Her return to the stage in 1938 marked a new chapter in her career, one that would eventually include a celebrated performance in the 1971 revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night. In 1976, she performed as a cabaret singer in Streetsongs, which ran for three successful engagements on Broadway and was the subject of a PBS television special. She recorded an album of the show for Harbinger Records, produced by Bill Rudman and Ken Bloom and distributed by Ben Bagley's Painted Smiles Records. In 1982, she became one of the first women to receive a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Play for her direction of Mass Appeal.

Her Hollywood career produced some of its most significant work in 1939. She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Isabella Linton in William Wyler's romantic drama Wuthering Heights, and she appeared alongside Bette Davis in Dark Victory the same year. Her subsequent Warner Bros. films included Shining Victory (1941), The Gay Sisters (1942), and Watch on the Rhine (1943), followed by Wilson (1944) for 20th Century Fox. Frequent clashes with studio management, including a dispute with executive Jack L. Warner that cost her the role of Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941), hampered her momentum. She co-starred with John Garfield in Nobody Lives Forever (1946) before leaving Hollywood to return to New York City. She then traveled to Britain to film So Evil My Love (1948) and The Late Edwina Black (1951) before resettling in the United States. She became a naturalized United States citizen on April 18, 1955.

During the 1960s, Fitzgerald reasserted herself as a character actor, appearing in The Pawnbroker (1964) and Rachel, Rachel (1968). Her later film work included Harry and Tonto (1974), in a scene opposite Art Carney, and The Mango Tree (1977), for which she received an Australian Film Institute Best Actress nomination. In the comedy Arthur (1981), she played Dudley Moore's wealthy and eccentric grandmother, despite being only 22 years older than Moore. She appeared in Easy Money (1983), the horror film Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986), and Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988). In 1983, she portrayed Rose Kennedy in the television miniseries Kennedy, with Martin Sheen, and in 1985 she co-starred as Joanne Woodward's mother in Do You Remember Love. In 1986, she starred alongside Tuesday Weld and River Phoenix in the television film Circle of Violence, about elder abuse, and she played a title role in the 1987 television pilot Mabel and Max, produced by Barbra Streisand.

Fitzgerald's television credits included appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Robert Montgomery Presents, Naked City, St. Elsewhere, Cagney and Lacey, and The Golden Girls. She held a regular role in the short-lived 1965 CBS serial Our Private World. She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for a guest appearance as Anna in The Golden Girls Mother's Day episode in 1988, and won a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in the NBC Special Treat episode "Rodeo Red and the Runaways." On February 8, 1960, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6353 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to motion pictures. She was also inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2020 was ranked 30th on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

While in New York, Fitzgerald collaborated with playwright and Franciscan brother Jonathan Ringkamp to found the Everyman Theater of Brooklyn, a street theater company that performed throughout the city, including at Ethical Culture and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in Manhattan. The company first performed at La MaMa in September 1972 with a production called Everyman at La MaMa, and returned in July 1973 with The Francis-Day, a musical about Francis of Assisi.

In her personal life, Fitzgerald married Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th Bt., in London on November 18, 1936. She was granted a divorce in Reno on August 30, 1946, after three years of separation. Their son is director Sir Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Her second marriage was to American businessman Stuart Straus Scheftel, a grandson of Isidor Straus, with whom she had a daughter, Susan Scheftel. English actress Tara Fitzgerald is her great-niece. Fitzgerald died at age 91 in New York City following a long battle with Alzheimer's disease and is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, beside her husband Stuart Straus Scheftel.