Geraldine Page

Geraldine Sue Page (November 22, 1924 – June 13, 1987) was an American actress whose career in film, theater, and television lasted over forty years. She won an Academy Award, a BAFTA, two Primetime Emmys, and two Golden Globes, and was nominated for four Tony Awards.

Early life and education

Born in Kirksville, Missouri, Page was the first child of Edna Pearl Maize and Leon Elwin Page, an author and employee at what is now A.T. Still University. She had a younger brother, Donald. When she was five, her family moved to Chicago, where she was raised Methodist and became active in the Englewood Methodist Church’s theater group.

Her first play there was Excuse My Dust; she later played Jo March in a 1941 production of Little Women. After graduating from Englewood Technical Prep Academy, she studied at the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago, initially considering careers as a pianist or visual artist. At 17, she performed in her first amateur production and decided to pursue acting professionally.

After graduating in 1945, Page trained in New York at the Herbert Berghof School and the American Theatre Wing under Uta Hagen for seven years, then at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg. Summers, she returned to Chicago to perform with an independent repertory company in Lake Zurich, Illinois, and spent two successful winters with the Woodstock Players at the Woodstock Opera House. Critic Claudia Cassidy of The Chicago Tribune predicted she would become a star. Known as "the lady with the thousand faces" for her transformative abilities, Page worked odd jobs—hat-check girl, usher, lingerie model, factory laborer—while establishing her career.

1945–1969: Early stage and film

Her New York stage debut came on October 25, 1945, in Seven Mirrors at Blackfriars Repertory Theatre, which ran 23 performances. In February 1952, director José Quintero cast her in a minor role in Yerma at Circle in the Square Theatre, then as Alma in his production of Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke later that year. That role earned her a Drama Desk Award and a Time magazine profile.

Her official film debut was in Hondo (1953) opposite John Wayne, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. (She had an uncredited role in Taxi beforehand.) Due to her association with Uta Hagen, Page was blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy era and did not appear in another film for nearly a decade. She continued on Broadway, playing a spinster in The Rainmaker (1954–1955) and a frustrated wife in The Immoralist (1954), opposite James Dean.

Page won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Trip to Bountiful (1985). She received Oscar nominations for Hondo (1953), Summer and Smoke (1961), Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), You're a Big Boy Now (1966), Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), Interiors (1978), and The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). Her other notable films include What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969), The Beguiled (1971), and The Rescuers (1977).

Acting credits and accolades

On stage, she made her Broadway debut in the 1953 play Mid-summer and earned Tony nominations for Princess Kosmonopolis in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), Marion in Absurd Person Singular (1974), Mother Miriam Ruth in Agnes of God (1982), and Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit (1987). She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1979. For television, she won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Drama, for adaptations of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory (1967) and The Thanksgiving Visitor (1969).