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Geraldine Sue Page (November 22, 1924 – June 13, 1987) was an American actress. She starred in at least two dozen feature films, but she was primarily known for her performances in American theater. She was nominated for an Academy Award eight times, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Carrie Watts in The Trip to Bountiful in March 1986, just over a year before she died.

Early life[link]

Page was born in Kirksville, Missouri. She attended the Goodman School of Drama (later renamed The Theatre School at DePaul University) in Chicago and studied acting with Uta Hagen in New York. She began appearing in stock theatre at 17 years of age.

Stage career[link]

Page was a trained method actor and worked closely with Lee Strasberg.

Her appearance as Alma in the 1952 Off-Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke at the downtown Circle in the Square Theatre is as legendary as anything^{[peacock term]} that has ever happened in the American theater. Summer and Smoke had not been particularly well received in its Broadway incarnation. Page's performance (as the minister's daughter consumed with infinite longing) and that 1952 production, directed by José Quintero, gave the play a new life, and, according to common wisdom^[who?], it was that production (for its daring, for its fervor, for its being "downtown" rather than in the artistically "safe" realm of Broadway) which gave birth to the Off-Broadway movement in New York theatre. Her work continued, on Broadway, as the spinster in The Rainmaker and as the frustrated wife whose husband becomes romantically obsessed with a young Arab, played by James Dean, in The Immoralist.

She earned critical accolades for her performance in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth opposite Paul Newman. She originated the role of a larger-than-life, addicted, sexually voracious Hollywood legend trying to extinguish her fears about her career with a young hustler named Chance Wayne, played by Newman. Page received her first Tony Award nomination for the play, as well as the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance in Chicago.^[1] She and Newman later starred in the film adaptation and Page earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the film.

In 1964, she starred in a Broadway revival of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters playing eldest sister Olga to Kim Stanley's Masha with Shelley Winters as the interloper Natasha. Both Shirley Knight and Sandy Dennis played the youngest sister Irina at different stages in this production. It was directed by Lee Strasberg (and a version of it was preserved on film). She also starred in Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy/White Lies, in 1967, which was the production in which both Michael Crawford and Lynn Redgrave made their Broadway debuts. Page received her second Tony nomination (for Best Featured Actress in a Play) for a successful production of Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular with Sandy Dennis and Richard Kiley. Page also starred as Zelda Fitzgerald in the last major Broadway production of a Tennessee Williams play, Clothes for a Summer Hotel, which did not succeed financially on Broadway, in 1980. And, also in New York, she played Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Maya Angelou in a two-character play by Jerome Kilty called Look Away.

Page starred in another successful Broadway play, Agnes of God, which opened in 1982 and ran for 599 performances with Page performing in nearly all of them. She received a Tony Award nomination, for Best Lead Actress in a Play, for her performance as the secretive nun Mother Miriam Ruth. The acclaimed production garnered co-star Amanda Plummer a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Elizabeth Ashley played the court-appointed psychiatrist Dr. Martha Livingstone. In 1985-6, Page starred in Sam Shepard's award-winning A Lie of the Mind Off-Broadway, with a cast including Harvey Keitel, Plummer, James Gammon, Aidan Quinn and, as a replacement (for Jake), David Strathairn.^[2] After winning an Academy Award in 1986, Page returned to Broadway in a revival of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit in the role of the psychic medium Madame Arcati. The production, which also starred Richard Chamberlain, Blythe Danner and Judith Ivey, was Page's last. Page was again nominated for a Tony Award, for Best Lead Actress in a Play, and was considered to be a favorite to win. However, she did not win, and several days after the awards ceremony, she died. The show lasted several weeks more, with co-star actress Patricia Conolly taking over Page's role.

Film career[link]

Page gave celebrated performances in films as well as her work on Broadway. Her film debut was in Out of the Night (1947). Her role in Hondo, opposite John Wayne, garnered her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In all, despite her relatively small filmography, Page received eight Academy Award nominations. She finally won the Oscar in 1986 for a performance in The Trip to Bountiful, which was based on a play by Horton Foote. When she won (F. Murray Abraham, upon opening the envelope, exclaimed "I consider this woman the greatest actress in the English language"), she received a standing ovation from the audience. She was surprised by her win (she openly talked about being a seven-time Oscar loser), and took a while to get to the stage to accept the award because she had taken off her shoes while sitting in the audience. She had not expected to win, and her feet were sore.^{[citation needed]}

Her other notable screen roles included Academy Award-nominated performances in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke (1961), Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), You're a Big Boy Now (1966), Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), Woody Allen's Interiors (1978), and The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). She also appeared in such roles as a psychotic, mass killer in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969); a repressed schoolmistress in the Clint Eastwood film, The Beguiled (1971); a charismatic evangelist (modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson) in The Day of the Locust (1975); a nun, Sister Walburga, in Nasty Habits (1977); and as 'Aunt' Beverly in Harry's War (1981).

She did various television shows in the 1950s through the 1980s, including movies and series, such as Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, and several episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, including "The Sins of the Fathers" and "Something in the Woodwork". She also was a voice actress and voiced the villainous Madame Medusa in the Disney animated film The Rescuers.

Page has also appeared in television productions and won two Emmy Awards as Outstanding Single Performance By an Actress in a Leading Role in a Drama for her roles in the classic Truman Capote stories, A Christmas Memory (1967) and The Thanksgiving Visitor (1969). Her final film was the 1987 Mary Stuart Masterson film My Little Girl, which was the film debut of Jennifer Lopez.

Death[link]

Page, who also suffered from kidney disease, died of a heart attack in 1987 during a run on Broadway in Sir Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit at the Neil Simon Theatre. She did not arrive for either of the show's two June 13 performances; at the end of the evening performance, the play's producer announced that she had died at the age of 62.^[3]

Five days after her death, "an overflow crowd of colleagues, friends and fans", including Sissy Spacek, James Earl Jones, Amanda Plummer and husband Rip Torn filled the Neil Simon Theatre to pay tribute.^[4] Her achievements as a stage actress and teacher were highlighted; actress Anne Jackson stated at the tribute that "[Page] used a stage like no one else I'd ever seen. It was like playing tennis with someone who had 26 arms."^[4] Torn called her "Mi corazon, mi alma, mi esposa" ("My heart, my soul, my wife") and said that they "never stopped being lovers, and ... never will".^[4] She was cremated.

Personal[link]

Page was married to violinist Alexander Schneider from 1954 to 1957. In 1963 she married actor Rip Torn, who was 7 years her junior. They remained married until her death. Page and Torn had three children, a daughter (actress Angelica Torn) and twin sons (actor Tony Torn, and Northern Arizona University professor Jon Torn).

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Geraldine Page at the Internet Movie Database
• Geraldine Page at the Internet Broadway Database
• Geraldine Page at the Internet Off-Broadway Database