Geraldine Mary Wilma Fitzgerald (November 24, 1913 – July 17, 2005) was an Irish American actress. She received the Daytime Emmy Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. She was a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame and was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2020 she was listed at number 30 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
She made her film debut in the British thriller Blind Justice (1934). She went on to receive a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Isabella Linton in the William Wyler-directed romantic drama Wuthering Heights (1939). She acted in classic Hollywood films such as Dark Victory (1939), Watch on the Rhine (1943), and Wilson (1944). Her later films included The Pawnbroker (1964), Rachel, Rachel (1968), Harry and Tonto (1974), Arthur (1981), Easy Money (1983), and Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986).
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Early life
Fitzgerald was born at 85 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, the daughter of Edith Catherine (née Richards) and Edward Martin FitzGerald, who was a lawyer. The family would later live in Greystones, County Wicklow. Her father was Roman Catholic, and her mother was a Protestant who converted to Catholicism.
She studied painting at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (which became the National College of Art in 1936 and, later again in 1971, the National College of Art and Design). 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, 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 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 in 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 such a clash 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), 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. However, during the 1960s she asserted herself as a character actor, and her career enjoyed a revival. Among her successful films during 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.
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. She had one son, director Sir Michael Lindsay-Hogg, with Edward and a daughter, Susan Scheftel, during her second marriage to American businessman Stuart Straus Scheftel, grandson of Ida and Isidor Straus who perished in the sinking of the Titanic.
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 his father.
A 2015 biography of Welles by Patrick McGilligan argues that Welles' paternity is unlikely. Fitzgerald left the United States for Ireland in late May 1939, and her son was born in early May 1940, meaning that he was conceived before her return to the U.S. 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, next to her husband, Stuart Straus Scheftel.
