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Geraldine Fitzgerald 1913 - 2005

Geraldine Fitzgerald was born on November 24, 1913 in Limerick, County Limerick Ireland, and died at age 91 years old on July 17, 2005 in New York, New York County, New York United States. Geraldine Fitzgerald was buried in July 2005 at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx..

Geraldine Fitzgerald

Geraldine Mary Fitzgerald at birth.

November 24, 1913

Limerick, County Limerick, Ireland

July 17, 2005

New York, New York County, New York, United States

Female

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Geraldine Fitzgerald Geraldine Fitzgerald (1913 - 2005)

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Geraldine Fitzgerald's History: 1913 - 2005

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Introduction

Geraldine Fitzgerald (1913 - 2005). When Geraldine Fitzgerald directed her Tony-nominated production of Mass Appeal on Broadway in 1981, she explained: "I was forgotten, so I had nothing to live up to. It was the best thing in the circumstances. I could start at the bottom learning the new craft of directing." It was a modest statement from someone remembered by film fans as a 1940s Hollywood star, and by playgoers for some classical performances in the 1970s. Born in Dublin, the daughter of a prominent lawyer - his firm, E&T Fitzgerald, was mentioned in James Joyce's Ulysses - Geraldine was educated at a convent school. Gifted in drawing, she persuaded her parents to enroll her at the Dublin School of Art, whose head suggested marriage as the next step. Her shocked response was to take up acting, so she went to her aunt, Shelagh Richards, whom she had seen perform at the Abbey Theatre, for coaching. Fitzgerald began her acting career at the Gate Theatre in 1932, where she met another aspiring beginner, the 17-year-old Orson Welles. He was infatuated by the fiery, auburn-haired beauty, six months his senior, and would later have a brief affair with her. She also bewitched Patrick Hamilton, who used her as the basis for the character of Neta in his 1941 novel, Hangover Square. In 1934, Fitzgerald began acting in low-budget British films, notably Turn Of The Tide, about two feuding fishing families. In 1936, she married Edward Lindsay-Hogg, a horse breeder, and after she appeared as an effective Maggie Tulliver in The Mill On The Floss (1937), they moved to New York. There, Welles gave Fitzgerald her American start, as Ellie Dunn in George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House, with the 22-year-old Welles playing the octogenarian Captain Shotover, and a young Vincent Price as Hector Hushabye. The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson found her showing nothing more than an ability to memorise lines; the producer, John Houseman, accused Welles of directing her with more indulgence than the rest of the cast. Despite this, Fitzgerald was offered the role of Isabella, to be seduced and abandoned by Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights (1939), for which she was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actress. On the strength of a sensitive performance, she got a contract with Warner Bros, for whom her first film was the classic weepy, Dark Victory (1939), in which she was touching as the devoted friend of dying Bette Davis. But Warner Bros failed to utilise Fitzgerald's undoubted talent, casting her instead as second female leads, notably again with Davis in Watch On The Rhine (1943), to which she brought beauty and conviction as Countess Marthe de Brancovis, the unhappy wife of Nazi agent George Coulouris. On loan to other studios, she was an upstanding US president's wife in the biopic Wilson (1944), her first col-our film; the jealous spinster sister of George Sanders in Uncle Harry (1945), on trial for the murder of his fiancée; and calm and intense as Alan Ladd's fellow spy in occupied France in OSS (1946). Her last two films for Warner Bros, both directed by Jean Negulesco, were Three Strangers (1945), in which she shared a sweepstake ticket with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, and Nobody Lives Forever (1946), playing a rich widow swindled out of a fortune by John Garfield. Yet even these leading parts did not bring her satisfaction, and her film career faded as she lost her battle with the studio bosses for more suitable roles. It was disappointing, but Fitzgerald hardly needed the money, having divorced Lindsay-Hogg in 1946 and married Stuart Scheftel, the businessman and grandson of the founder of Macy's department store. In 1955, she returned to the theatre, taking up again with Shaw, as Jennifer Dubedat in The Doctor's Dilemma, and Welles, who cast her as Goneril to his King Lear in his ill-received production at the New York City Center. In 1961, she appeared off-Broadway in William Saroyan's one-woman play, The Cave Dwellers, under the direction of her 21-year-old son, Michael Lindsay-Hogg. She worked only spasmodically in the 1960s, her few films including Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker (1965) and Paul Newman's Rachel (1968), in which she played a revivalist preacher. But, in 1971, she made a triumphant comeback off-Broadway as Mary Tyrone, the drug-addicted mother in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, winning a New York Critics' award. She continued to be very active in the 1970s and 80s, making an impression on stage as Aline Solness in Ibsen's The Master Builder, and as Amanda Winfield in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, as well as singing Irish folk songs in a one-woman cabaret show. Her screen performances included a moving old lady in Harry And Tonto (1974); a love scene with Gérard Depardieu in Bye Bye Monkey (1978); the role of a billionaire matriarch in Arthur (1981) and Arthur 2: On The Rocks (1988); a clairvoyant in Poltergeist II (1986); and the presidential matriarch Rose Kennedy on television in 1983. During the run of Fitzgerald's Mass Appeal, Michael Lindsay-Hogg's production of Agnes Of God opened, making it the first time that two directors, mother and son, had separate plays running on Broadway at the same time. Scheftel died in 1994; their daughter Susan survives her, along with Michael. · Geraldine Mary Fitzgerald, actor, born November 24 1913; died July 17 2005 Ronald Bergan in “The Guardian’.
11/24

1913

Birthday

November 24, 1913

Birthdate

Limerick, County Limerick Ireland

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

Born in Dublin, the daughter of a prominent lawyer - his firm, E&T Fitzgerald, was mentioned in James Joyce's Ulysses - Geraldine was educated at a convent school. Gifted in drawing, she persuaded her parents to enroll her at the Dublin School of Art, whose head suggested marriage as the next step. Her shocked response was to take up acting, so she went to her aunt, Shelagh Richards, whom she had seen perform at the Abbey Theatre, for coaching. Fitzgerald began her acting career at the Gate Theatre in 1932, where she met another aspiring beginner, the 17-year-old Orson Welles. He was infatuated by the fiery, auburn-haired beauty, six months his senior, and would later have a brief affair with her. She also bewitched Patrick Hamilton, who used her as the basis for the character of Neta in his 1941 novel, Hangover Square.
Religious Beliefs

Catholic.
Professional Career

QUICK FACTS Intro Irish-American actress Was Singer Actor Stage actor Film actor Television actor Theatre director Theater professional Theater director From United States of America Ireland Type Arts Film, Television, Stage and Radio Music Gender Female Birth 24 November 1913, Dublin, Ireland Death 17 July 2005, New York City, United States of America (aged 91 years) Star sign SagittariusSagittarius Family Children: Michael Lindsay-Hogg THE DETAILS BIOGRAPHY Geraldine Mary Fitzgerald (November 24, 1913 – July 17, 2005) was an Irish actress and a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame. EARLY LIFE Fitzgerald was born in Greystones, County Wicklow, south of Dublin, the daughter of Edith Catherine (née Richards) and Edward Martin FitzGerald, who was a lawyer. Her father was Roman Catholic and her mother was Protestant, but converted to Catholicism. She studied painting at the Dublin School of Art. Inspired by her aunt, actress Shelah Richards, Fitzgerald began her acting career in 1932 at Dublin's Gate Theatre. After two seasons in Dublin, she moved to London, where she found success in British films including The Mill on the Floss, The Turn of the Tide, and Cafe Mascot. CAREER Fitzgerald's success led her to New York and the Broadway stage in 1938. She made her American debut opposite Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak House. Hollywood producer Hal B. Wallis saw her in this production and subsequently signed her to a contract with Warner Bros. She had two significant successes in 1939: a role in the Bette Davis film Dark Victory, and an Academy Award nomination for her supporting performance as Isabella Linton in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights. She then appeared in Shining Victory (1941), The Gay Sisters (1942), and Watch on the Rhine (1943) for Warner Bros., and Wilson (1944) for 20th Century Fox, but her career was hampered by her frequent clashes with studio management. She lost the role of Brigid O'Shaughnessy, villainess in The Maltese Falcon (1941), after clashes with executive Jack L. Warner. Although she continued to work throughout the 1940s, co-starring with John Garfield in the Warner Bros. crime drama Nobody Lives Forever (1946), and Between Two Worlds (1944) the quality of her roles began to diminish and her career lost momentum. In 1946, shortly after completing work on Three Strangers, 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), receiving strong reviews for her performance as an alcoholic adultress, and The Late Edwina Black (1951), before returning to the United States. She became a naturalized United States citizen on April 18, 1955. The 1950s provided her with few opportunities in film, but during the 1960s she asserted herself as a character actor and her career enjoyed a revival. Among her successful films of this period were Ten North Frederick (1958), The Pawnbroker (1964), and Rachel, Rachel (1968). Her later films included The Mango Tree (1977), for which she received an Australian Film Institute Best Actress nomination, and Harry and Tonto (1974), in a scene opposite Art Carney. In the comedy Arthur (1981), she portrayed Dudley Moore's wealthy and eccentric grandmother, even though she was only 22 years older than Moore. In 1983, she portrayed Rose Kennedy in the miniseries Kennedy with Martin Sheen, and co-starred as Joanne Woodward's mother in the 1985 drama Do You Remember Love. Fitzgerald appeared in the 1983 Rodney Dangerfield comedy Easy Money, the horror film Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986), and the comedy Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988). In 1986, she starred alongside Tuesday Weld and River Phoenix in Circle of Violence, a television film about elder abuse. Fitzgerald returned to stage acting, and won acclaim for her performance in the 1971 revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night. In 1976, she performed as a cabaret singer with the show Streetsongs, which played three successful runs on Broadway and was the subject of a PBS television special. She recorded an album of the show for Ben Bagley's Painted Smiles label. She also achieved success as a theatre director; in 1982, she became one of the first women to receive a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Play for a production of Mass Appeal. While in New York, Fitzgerald collaborated with playwright and Franciscan brother Jonathan Ringkamp to found the Everyman Theater of Brooklyn, a street theater company. The company performed throughout the city, including at Ethical Culture and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, both in Manhattan. The company first performed at La MaMa in September 1972, with a production called Everyman at La MaMa. They then performed The Francis-Day, a musical about Francis of Assissi, at La MaMa in July 1973. She appeared on television, in such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Robert Montgomery Presents, Naked City, St. Elsewhere, The Golden Girls, and Cagney and Lacey. She had a regular role in the short-lived 1965 CBS serial Our Private World. In 1987, she played a title role in the television pilot Mabel and Max, produced by Barbra Streisand. She received an Emmy Award nomination for a guest role playing Anna in The Golden Girls Mother's Day episode in 1988, and played a different character in the episode "Not Another Monday". She won a Daytime Emmy Award as best actress for her appearance in the NBC Special Treat episode "Rodeo Red and the Runaways". On February 8, 1960, Fitzgerald was recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6353 Hollywood Boulevard, for her contributions to motion pictures. PERSONAL LIFE Geraldine Fitzgerald and three-year-old Michael Lindsay-Hogg (1944) 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. She had one son, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, by her first marriage, and a daughter, Susan Scheftel, by her second marriage to American businessman Stuart Straus Scheftel, grandson of Ida and Isidor Straus. Her son's resemblance to Orson Welles, with whom she worked and was linked romantically in the late 1930s, led to rumors that Welles was his biological father. Fitzgerald never confirmed this to her son, but in his 2011 autobiography Lindsay-Hogg wrote that this question was resolved by his mother's close friend Gloria Vanderbilt, who had written that Fitzgerald told her that Welles was the father. A 2015 biography of Welles by Patrick McGilligan argues that Welles's paternity is unlikely; Fitzgerald left the United States for Ireland in late May 1939, and her son, born early May 1940, was conceived before her return in late October. Welles did not travel overseas during that period. English actress Tara Fitzgerald is Fitzgerald's great-niece. DEATH Fitzgerald died at age 91 in New York City, following a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. She is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx. FILMOGRAPHY Year Title Role Notes 1934 Blind Justice Peggy Summers Open All Night Jill 1935 The Lad Joan Fandon Three Witnesses Diana Morton Department Store Jane Grey The Ace of Spades Evelyn Daventry Turn of the Tide Ruth Fosdyck Lieutenant Daring R.N. Joan Fayre 1936 Debt of Honour Peggy Mayhew Cafe Mascot Moira O'Flynn The Mill on the Floss Maggie Tulliver 1939 Wuthering Heights Isabella Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Dark Victory Ann King A Child Is Born Grace Sutton 1940 'Til We Meet Again Bonny Coburn 1941 Flight from Destiny Betty Farroway Shining Victory Dr. Mary Murray 1942 The Gay Sisters Evelyn Gaylord 1943 Watch on the Rhine Marthe de Brancovis 1944 Ladies Courageous Virgie Alford Wilson Edith Bolling Galt 1945 The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry Lettie Quincey 1946 Three Strangers Crystal Shackleford O.S.S. Ellen Rogers / Elaine Duprez Nobody Lives Forever Gladys Halvorsen 1948 So Evil My Love Susan Courtney 1951 The Late Edwina Black Elizabeth 1958 Ten North Frederick Edith Chapin 1961 The Fiercest Heart Tante Maria 1964 The Pawnbroker Marilyn Birchfield 1968 Rachel, Rachel Rev. Wood 1973 The Last American Hero Mrs. Jackson 1974 Harry and Tonto Jessie 1976 Echoes of a Summer Sara Diary of the Dead Maud Kennaway 1977 The Mango Tree Grandma Carr 1978 Bye Bye Monkey Mrs. Toland 1981 Arthur Martha Bach Lovespell Bronwyn 1982 Blood Link Mrs. Thomason 1983 Easy Money Mrs. Monahan 1986 Poltergeist II: The Other Side Gramma-Jess 1988 Arthur 2: On the Rocks Martha Bach
Personal Life & Family

Geraldine Fitzgerald Famous memorial BIRTH 24 Nov 1913 Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland DEATH 17 Jul 2005 (aged 91) Upper East Side, New York County, New York, USA BURIAL Woodlawn Cemetery Bronx, Bronx County, New York, USA Show MapGPS-Latitude: 40.8897070, Longitude: -73.8746917 PLOT Chestnut Hill, Section 111, Lot 12461 (Scheftel family plot) MEMORIAL ID 11383726 · View Source MEMORIAL PHOTOS 4 FLOWERS 853 Actress. Her role in the 1939 motion picture "Wuthering Heights," earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared in films such as "Dark Victory" (1939), "Wilson" (1944), "Three Strangers" (1946), "Harry and Tonto" (1974) and "Arthur" (1981). In the theatre, she played 'Goneril' in "King Lear" (1956), 'Gertrude' in "Hamlet" at Stratford, Connecticut, in 1958, and 'Juno' in "Juno and the Paycock" at the Long Wharf Theatre at New Haven, Connecticut in 1973. In April 1971 she won acclaim for her role of 'Mary Tyrone' in "Long Day's Journey into Night," playing opposite actor Robert Ryan. In 1969, she founded the Everyman Street Theatre Company to take drama out to the most depressed sections of New York City, New York. She also started a career as a singer and toured with a cabaret act, "Street Songs," during the 1980s in which she sang a wide range of songs from the Beatles to Edith Piaf. She was the mother of director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Bio by: José L Bernabé Tronchoni Inscription Beloved Wife And Mother Family Members Parents Edward Martin Fitzgerald unknown–1950 Spouses Edward William Lindsay-Hogg 1910–1999 (m. 1936) Stuart Scheftel 1910–1994 (m. 1946) Flowers • 853 Plant Memorial Trees Left by Nancy on 22 Nov 2023 Happy "110th" Heavenly Birthday to a very Talented Actress and Singer in Motion Pictures. RIP dear Geraldine....always..... Left by Rosie on 14 Nov 2023
07/17

2005

Death

July 17, 2005

Death date

Respiratory Infection.

Cause of death

New York, New York County, New York United States
Death location

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07/dd

2005

Gravesite & Burial

July 2005

Funeral date
Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
Burial location
Obituary

Geraldine Fitzgerald, 91, Star of Stage and Film, Dies By Rick Lyman July 19, 2005 Geraldine Fitzgerald, a feisty, gravel-voiced Dublin redhead who drew instant acclaim in her first Hollywood films, including a 1939 Oscar nomination for "Wuthering Heights," before carving out a long, varied career in films, television, cabaret, and theater, died on Sunday afternoon at her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was 91. She had Alzheimer's disease for more than a decade and was essentially incapacitated in recent years, leading to a respiratory infection that finally killed her, said her daughter, Susan Scheftel, a clinical psychologist in New York. Ms. Fitzgerald appeared on the New York stage and as a highly coveted character actress in dozens of Hollywood films, including "Watch on the Rhine" in 1943, "Ten North Frederick" in 1958, "The Pawnbroker" in 1964, "Harry and Tonto" in 1974, and "Arthur" in 1981. But she may have been best known in New York for what many critics considered one of the definitive Mary Tyrones, opposite Robert Ryan, in a 1971 revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Witty and intelligent, she was also notoriously combative and blamed herself for sabotaging her early Hollywood success by battling with studio executives over roles. "My mother was just way too feisty to be in bondage to the Warner Brothers," Ms. Scheftel said. Born in 1913, the daughter of a Dublin solicitor, Geraldine Fitzgerald was drawn into the legendary Gate Theater by her aunt, Shelagh Richards, one of its stars. Ms. Fitzgerald performed there alongside James Mason and Orson Welles. She married Edward Lindsay-Hogg, an Irish aristocrat, and after a stint at art school in England she moved to New York in 1938 to further her husband's songwriting ambitions. Money grew tight, and she noted that her old friend Welles was directing something called the Mercury Theater. She called and he hired her for a role in "Heartbreak House." Norman Lloyd, a longtime friend and founding member of the Mercury Theater, described the effect she had. "She was a staggeringly beautiful girl with the most delightful speech, a slight Irish tinge, not a thick brogue, and this glorious red hair," he said. Hal Wallis, a major Hollywood producer, saw her in Shaw's "Heartbreak House" and signed her to a Warner Brothers contract. She was told to play best friend to the dying Bette Davis in "Dark Victory" (1939), and her performance persuaded Samuel Goldwyn to cast her as the tragic Isabella Linton in "Wuthering Heights." In the 1940's she mingled with Hollywood's intellectual elite, counting among her friends Laurence Olivier, Charlie Chaplin, Davis, Welles, and the screenwriter Charles Lederer. When World War II separated Ms. Fitzgerald from her husband, then back in England, she stayed in Los Angeles with their son, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, later to become an acclaimed film, television, and Broadway director. Her first marriage ended in 1946. By then, she had worked her way up to leading roles. A performance as Woodrow Wilson's wife, Edith, in "Wilson" (1944) earned her a glamorous photo on the cover of Life magazine. It also attracted the attention of Stuart Scheftel, the grandson of Isador Straus, the co-owner of the R.H. Macy Co. who went down with the Titanic. Scheftel asked a friend to introduce them, and they were married in 1946. They moved to New York and joined the rarefied circles in which the city's cultural and political worlds mingled. The couple stayed together until his death in 1994. She continued to work steadily and in the 1960's formed the Everyman Street Theater, which ventured into the city's poorest neighborhoods to recruit and train street performers. This led to an interest in directing, and she staged several productions, including all-black productions of O'Neill classics. In 1982, she received her only Tony nomination, as a director, for "Mass Appeal." Among the directors she aced out of a nomination that year was her son, who staged "Agnes of God" a couple of blocks away. He survives her, along with Ms. Scheftel, two grandchildren and one step-grandchild. In the 1970s, after a small role in "Rachel, Rachel" required her to sing on camera, the unpleasant results caused her to take voice lessons. Thus she began yet another career, as a cabaret artist. Her show "Streetsongs" was a nightclub hit and appeared three times in Broadway theaters over the years. When young actresses went to her for advice, she remembered her own regrets about having looked down her nose at early Hollywood offers. "Her advice to young actresses was to always say yes," Ms. Scheftel said. "She had learned that the hard way by saying no all the time. So she would tell them, when offered work, always say yes." Correction: July 27, 2005, Wednesday An obituary of the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald on July 19 misspelled the given name of the Macy's co-owner whose grandson she married. He was Isidor Straus, not Isador. A version of this article appears in print on July 19, 2005, Section B, Page 7 of the National edition with the headline: Geraldine Fitzgerald, 91, Star of Stage and Film, Dies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe How The Times decides who gets an obituary. There is no formula, scoring system or checklist in determining the news value of a life. We investigate, research and ask around before settling on our subjects. Suggest an obituary for consideration by writing to [contact link] Learn more about our process.

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