Oscar Profile #183: Geraldine Fitzgerald

Born November 24, 1913 in Dublin, Ireland, the daughter of a prominent lawyer and his wife, Geraldine Fitzgerald had a multi-faceted career as an Oscar nominated actress; Tony nominated director and cabaret star. Her father’s law firm, D&T Fitzgerald, is mentioned in James Joyce’s classic novel “Ulysses”. Joyce was a close friend and client.

On the London stage and in British films in the 1930s, her most notable film was 1937’s The Mill on the Floss. She married Edward Lindsay-Hogg, a British aristocrat who wanted to be a songwriter in 1936 and moved with him to New York in 1938 to further his ambitions. Having worked with Orson Welles on the London stage, she joined his Mercury Theatre. Her son, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was the result of an affair with Welles, a longstanding rumor not confirmed until after her death.

Discovered by producer Hal Wallis and given a Warner Bros. contract, Fitzgerald’s first Hollywood film was Wuthering Heights on loan-out to Samuel Goldwyn for which she received her first and only Oscar nomination.

Equally memorable in her first Warner Bros. film, Dark Victory, her refusal to appear in films she felt beneath her resulted in Jack Warner denying her the part of Brigid O’Shaunessey in The Maltese Falcon which went to Mary Astor instead.

She was unforgettable in such early 1940s films as Watch on the Rhine; Wilson; The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry; Three Strangers and Nobody Lives Forever. She was divorced from Lindsay-Hogg in August, 1946. She married second husband Stuart Scheftel in 1946 and remained married to him until his death in 1994. Scheftel was the grandson of Isodor Straus, co-founder of Macy’s and his wife, who went down with the Titanic. Scheftel, a baby at the time, was scheduled to make the voyage with them but was kept home because of a cold.

Mostly on TV and the stage in the 1950s, she made only one film late in the decade as Gary Cooper’s embittered wife in 1958’s Ten North Frederick. Her film career was almost as sparse in the 1960s and early 1970s when she appeared in just four films: 1965’s The Pawnbroker; 1968’s Rachel, Rachel; 1973’s The Last American Hero and 1974’s Harry & Tonto, each of them a gem. She was so taken aback with her singing in Rachel, Rachel that she took singing lessons which led to a late career turn as a cabaret star.

Fitzgerald was nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award for 1979’s The Mango Tree.

Her portrayal of Mary Tyrone opposite Robert Ryan in the 1971 revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night earned her a Drama Desk Award. She received a Tony nomination for directing Mass Appeal in 1982, three years after her son received similar recognition for directing Whose Life Is It Anyway? .

Seen mostly in comedic roles beginning with 1981’s Arthur, she was last seen in the 1991 TV movie, Bump in the Night.

Geraldine Fitzgerald died of complications from Alzheimer’s Disease on July 17, 2005 at 91.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939), directed by William Wyler

The smoldering romance of Heathcliff and Cathy is the centerpiece of Emily Bronté’s classic novel and all the films made from it, but this most famous of all the film versions comes very close to being stolen by Geraldine Fitzgerald’s haunting portrayal of the long-suffering Isabella.

Fitzgerald’s brilliant performance garnered the actress a well-earned Oscar nomination alongside Laurence Olivier, also Oscar nominated as Heathcliff; Merle Oberon as Cathy; David Niven as Edgar and Flora Robson as Ellen. She was equally memorable in the same year’s Dark Victory, almost stealing that one from Bette Davis in one of her most famous roles.

WILSON (1944), directed by Henry King

Fitzgerald’s second husband, Stuart Scheftel fell in love with her on the basis of her portrayal of the second Mrs. Wilson in this Oscar nominated biography of Woodrow Wilson. Alexander Knox starred as Wilson with Ruth Nelson also memorable as the first Mrs. Wilson.

Fitzgerald’s portrayal is especially moving during the Presidential crisis when the second Mrs. Wilson essentially runs the country during the President’s recovery from a debilitating stroke.

TEN NORTH FREDERICK (1958), directed by Philip Dunne)

John O’Hara’s best-seller was supposed to be a showcase for Gary Cooper in one of the few non-action roles of his late career; former model Suzy Parker and emerging star Diane Varsi, fresh from her Oscar nominated performance in Peyton Place. It was Fitzgerald, however, who walked off the film’s best notices as Cooper’s embittered wife in her first film role in six years.

It would be ten years before film audiences would be graced with her presence again.

RACHEL, RACHEL (1968), directed by Paul Newman

Paul Newman directed Joanne Woodward in one of her best roles as the small-town schoolteacher in Rachel, Rachel featuring strong supporting work from Estelle Parsons; James Olson and Kate Harrington and a very charismatic one from Fitzgerald as an evangelical minister.

Fitzgerald was embarrassed by her singing in the film to the point that she took singing lessons immediately after seeing and listening to herself on screen. The result was a successful side career as a cabaret singer.

HARRY & TONTO (1974), directed by Paul Mazursky

Art Carney won a surprise Oscar as the retired schoolteacher, a lifelong New Yorker in his 70s, who travels cross country to visit his estranged children played by Ellen Burstyn and Larry Hagman. Along the way he makes a side visit to an old flame now suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. She’s played by Fitzgerald in a cameo that foretells her own fight with the disease that would eventually take her life.