Actors - Geraldine Fitzgerald

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	Actors - Geraldine Fitzgerald

Geraldine Fitzgerald (November 24, 1913 – July 17, 2005) was an Oscar-nominated Irish/American actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Early life

Fitzgerald was born in Greystones, County Wicklow, south of Dublin, Ireland, to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother who converted to Catholicism. She was a great-aunt of the actress Tara Fitzgerald, and a cousin of the Australian novelist Nevil Shute.

Inspired by her aunt, the actress/director Shelah Richards, Geraldine Fitzgerald began her acting career in 1932 in theatre in her native Dublin before moving to London in 1934 to appear in British films. She quickly came to be regarded as one of the British film industry's most promising young performers and her most successful film of this period was The Mill on the Floss (1937).

Career

Her success led her to America and Broadway in 1938, and while appearing opposite Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak House, she was seen by the film producer Hal B. Wallis who signed her to a seven-year film contract. She achieved two significant successes in 1939; she received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Isabella Linton in Wuthering Heights
and had an important role in Dark Victory
, with both films achieving great box office success.

She appeared in Watch on the Rhine
(1943) for Warner Bros. and Wilson (1944) for Fox, but her career was hampered by her frequent clashes with the management of the studio, and the suspensions that resulted. She lost the role of 'Brigid O'Shaughnessy', the villainess of The Maltese Falcon due to her clashes with Jack Warner. Although she continued to work frequently throughout the 1940s, the quality of her roles diminished and her career began to lose momentum. She became a U.S. citizen during World War II in a display of solidarity with her adopted country. In 1946 she left Hollywood to return to New York City where she married her second husband Stuart Scheftel, a grandson of Isidor Straus. She returned to Britain to film So Evil My Love (1948) and received strong reviews for her performance as an alcoholic adultress. In 1951 she appeared in The Late Edwina Black before returning to America.

The 1950s provided her with very few opportunities in film, but in the 1960s she asserted herself as a character actress, and her career enjoyed a revival. Among her successful films of this period were Ten North Frederick (1961), The Pawnbroker
(1964) and Rachel, Rachel
(1968). Her other films include The Mango Tree (1977) (for which she received an Australian Film Institute "Best Actress" nomination), Arthur (1981), Poltergeist II: The Other Side
(1986) and 'Arthur 2 (1988).

From the 1940s she began to act more on stage and she won acclaim for her performance in the 1971 revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night. She also achieved success as a theatre director, becoming one of the first women to received a Tony Award nomination for directing (1982) for the production Mass Appeal.

She also appeared frequently on television in such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Robert Montgomery Presents, Naked City, St. Elsewhere and Cagney and Lacey. In 1987, she played the title role in the TV pilot Mabel and Max, (Barbra Streisand
's first television pilot production). She received an Emmy Award nomination for a guest role in The Golden Girls in 1989.

In 1990 she began a career as a cabaret singer with the show Streetsongs which played three successful runs on Broadway and was the subject of a PBS television special.
[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Geraldine Fitzgerald ]

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