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Geraldine Page 1924 - 1987

Geraldine Page of New York, New York County, NY was born on November 22, 1924 in Kirksville, Missouri United States. She was married to Rip Torn on September 8, 1963, and they were together until Geraldine's death on June 15, 1987. Geraldine Page had children Angelica Page, John Torn, and Tony Torn.

Geraldine Page

Geraldine Torn (Page), Geraldine Page

New York, New York County, NY 10036

November 22, 1924

Kirksville, Missouri, United States

June 15, 1987

New York, New York, United States

Female

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Geraldine Page Geraldine Page (1924 - 1987)

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Geraldine Page's History: 1924 - 1987

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Introduction

Was nominated four times for Broadway's Tony Award: as Best Actress (Dramatic) in 1960, for "Sweet Bird of Youth," a role she recreated in an Oscar-nominated performance in the film version, Sweet Bird of Youth (1962); as Best Actress (Play), in 1982, for "Agnes of God;" and in 1987, for "Blithe Spirit," and as Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic), in 1975, for "Absurd Person Singular" -- but never won. In 1983, she co-founded the Mirror Repertory Company, an Off-Broadway theater company dedicated to preserving the art of repertory. She remained an Artist in Residence with the group until her death. In 1985, she became the first woman to receive seven Oscar nominations for acting without winning. The following year, she received her eighth nomination and finally won. As of 2018, her eight nominations required for her first win is still the record among actresses. She received a standing ovation when she won her Oscar. In 1960, she was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Actress for her role in "Sweet Bird of Youth." She lost to Anne Bancroft for "The Miracle Worker." In 1962, she received an Oscar nomination for Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) but lost to Bancroft for the film version of The Miracle Worker (1962). In 1982 she originated the role of Mother Superior in "Agnes of God" but was passed over Agnes of God (1985) that went to Bancroft. Bancroft was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Page. Her husband Rip Torn is the cousin of Sissy Spacek. Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 677-679. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. At the time of her death she had been ill with kidney disease and high blood pressure. Was offered the role of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), but she turned it down. Louise Fletcher, who went on to win the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, was cast instead. When presenting Page's Best Actress Oscar for The Trip to Bountiful (1985), F. Murray Abraham declared her "the greatest actress in the English language" and genuflected when she reached the podium. She studied drama at HB Studio in Greenwich Village in New York City. Was 1 month pregnant with her daughter Angelica Page when she completed her run of the Broadway play "Strange Interlude". Returned to work 4 months after giving birth to her daughter Angelica Page in order to begin performing in the Broadway revival of "The Three Sisters". Was the 92nd actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Actress Oscar for The Trip to Bountiful (1985) at The 58th Annual Academy Awards (1986) on March 24, 1986. Is portrayed by Sarah Paulson in Feud: Bette and Joan (2017). Was born on her father's 30th birthday. Daughter of Leon Elwin (1894-1968) and Pearl (née Maize) Page (1894-1953). Of all the actors and actresses nominated for at least six acting Oscars, she is the only one who has never appeared in a Best Picture nominated film. Of all the actors and actress with at least eight acting Oscar nominations, she is the only one who does not have more lead acting than supporting acting nominations, with four of each. Father: Leon Elwin Page; Mother: Edna Pearl Maize. She was a lifelong Democrat. Maternal granddaughter of Pinkney (1850- 1922) and Susan (nee Grindel) Maize (1847-1925). Both were born and raised in the state of Missouri. Personal Quotes (1) I didn't want to be a Hollywood actress who every so often does a Broadway play. I wanted to be a Broadway actress who every so often does a movie. Salary (1) Dear Heart (1964) $100,000
11/22

1924

Birthday

November 22, 1924

Birthdate

Kirksville, Missouri United States

Birthplace

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Nationality & Locations

American
Professional Career

Famous Actress. Geraldine Page Born November 22, 1924 in Kirksville, Missouri, USA Died June 13, 1987 in New York City, New York, USA (heart attack) Birth Name Geraldine Sue Page Nickname: Gerry and "First Lady of the American Theater" Height 5' 8" (1.73 m) Mini Bio (1) Considered by many to be one of the greatest American actresses of all time, Geraldine Page was a master craftswoman who seemed to bring out the most inner detail of the character she was playing. Her dedication to her craft has earned her the respect of many of today's great actors including Meryl Streep and Michelle Pfeiffer. Geraldine Sue Page was born on November 22, 1924 in Kirksville, Missouri to Dr. Leon Elwin Page, an osteopathic physician and Pearl Maize Page, a homemaker. She had an older brother named Donald. The family moved to Chicago when Page was five years old. Growing up, her interests and hobbies always were directed toward the arts. She tried writing and painting while younger, but that proved to be too frustrating. She wanted to be a concert pianist, but her family couldn't afford all that training. While she was still a preteen, she joined the drama club at her church and soon found her passion. She began reading all kinds of plays as well as reading about actors. She was fascinated with the careers of actresses like Lucille La Verne, Maude Adams, and Eva Le Gallienne. Upon graduation from high school in 1942, she entered the Goodman Theater School, where she performed in just about everything in which students could perform, as well as earning money working for a children's theater group. When she completed the three-year program in 1945, she and several other students organized a summer stock theater in Lake Zurich, Illinois. After the summer season, she headed for New York City. Unfortunately, by Christmas she was working three part-time jobs just to get by and not finding any work as an actress. She returned to Chicago that winter and accepted a position as a part-time instructor in the theater department at DePaul University for the spring semester. After another summer at Lake Zurich, Miss Page headed for New York again, this time joining a stock company in Woodstock, New York. She spent the next two summers in Lake Zurich, and the rest of the time performing in Woodstock playing everything from young girls to grandmothers. In 1948, she made her New York City debut with an Off-Broadway production of "Seven Mirrors." She spent the next four years performing with Off-Broadway groups and summer stock in New Jersey. She also performed character parts on radio shows. In 1952, she had the lead in an Off-Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke." That production caused a sensation, not only with critics but with a growing audience marking the first big hit Off-Broadway. Page won the Drama Critics Award, becoming the first person from a non-Broadway production to receive such an award. Page put off a number of film offers and instead played leading roles on radio and television, and made her Broadway debut in January 1953 in Vina Delmar's play "Mid-Summer." Although the play was dismissed by most critics, she was hailed by critics for her portrayal of an uneducated woman married to a schoolteacher. In the fall of 1953, she made her film debut opposite John Wayne in the western Hondo (1953). Although she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, she wasn't offered any good parts in Hollywood and returned to New York. During the 1950s, Page's theater career flourished. She played a variety of roles on Broadway including a vindictive wife of a homosexual in "The Immoralist," to a lonely spinster in "The Rainmaker." She also made frequent radio and television appearances and honed her craft at the Actors Studio. It was in the fall of 1959 that Page starred opposite Paul Newman in Tennessee Williams's "Sweet Bird of Youth." Her role as a pathetic fading movie star earned universal praise, her first Tony Award nomination, and interest again from Hollywood. It was also when she met and married one of her co-stars, actor Rip Torn. In 1961 she starred in the film version of Summer and Smoke (1961) and in 1962 in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). She earned consecutive Golden Globe awards as well as Academy Award nominations for these two performances. From now on, Page divided her time between the stage and the screen. Her selectivity was high, whatever the medium. She turned down many famous roles, including the role of Martha in the original Broadway production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and the role of Chris MacNeil in the film "The Exorcist." She was first and foremost a character actress who believed in repertory. She tended to accept parts that were very different from the one she had just played and often liked to rotate between leading roles and supporting roles. Despite the fact that she was such a highly respected stage actress, very few of her Broadway productions after "Sweet Bird of Youth" were hits, and often closed after just a few performances. The few productions that were hits included revivals of "Strange Interlude" and "The Three Sisters." Most of her better stage work through the rest of her life came in productions Off-Broadway, or in regional theaters across the country. She liked touring the United States and performing theater in states and cities often neglected by Broadway touring companies. In the 1960s, some of her notable film work included "The Happiest Millionaire," "What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice" and "You're a Big Boy Now." She earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the latter. She also won two Emmy Awards for television work. In the 1970s one of her few hits on Broadway was as a banker's alcoholic wife in "Absurd Person Singular." This role netted her a second Tony Award nomination. One of her bigger triumphs on the stage was the Sanctuary Theater Company which she and her husband Rip Torn founded off-Broadway. Although it only lasted a couple of years, it gave young actors a chance to work, and many of the productions were given rave reviews by critics. Some of her more memorable film roles in the 1970s included a nosy matchmaker in Pete 'n' Tillie (1972) (Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress), a controversial religious leader in The Day of the Locust (1975), the voice of the villain Madame Medusa in The Rescuers (1977) and the suicidal mother in Interiors (1978) (Oscar nomination as Best Actress). In the 1980s, she began teaching acting at the Pelican Theater School. In 1982 she had another triumph on Broadway as Mother Superior in "Agnes of God," a role which earned her a third Tony Award nomination. In 1983 she co-founded the Mirror Repertory Company, an Off-Broadway theater group dedicated to preserving the art of repertory theater. She performed and directed in a variety of productions with the group. She continued to work in films despite her hectic theater schedule. One of her film roles in 1984 was a scene stealing bit part as a chain-smoking mother of a murdered cop in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). She received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. With that she became the first woman to receive seven Oscar nominations for acting without a single win. In 1985, she starred in the independent film The Trip to Bountiful (1985). Based on Horton Foote's play, it tells the story of a 60-year-old woman who yearns to run away from her cramped city apartment that she shares with her son and daughter-in-law, to see the old country town where she grew up. Page's performance was hailed by critics and she began to rack up a number of award nominations. She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, making it her eighth try for the golden boy. Although Meryl Streep looked like a sure bet for Out of Africa (1985), many critics predicted Page would emerge as the dark horse winner. When F. Murray Abraham opened the envelope on Oscar night he announced "Ah! I consider this woman the greatest actress in the English language. The winner is Geraldine Page in 'The Trip to Bountiful!'" As Page scrambled to find her shoes which she had kicked under her seat, Meryl Streep led the long standing ovation for her. In the 1980s she received a number of other honors. She received several lifetime achievement awards from various theater groups. In 1983, she was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. The only thing that seemed to be missing was a Tony Award. In the spring of 1987, Page took a break from the Mirror Theater, to return to Broadway in a revival of "Blithe Spirit." For her leading performance as the wacky medium, she was nominated for her fourth Tony Award. Many critics predicted her to be the sentimental favorite for the award. She did not win. Six days after the Tony Awards ceremony, she died of a heart attack, leaving behind her husband and their three children. She was 62 years old. A memorial service was held at a Broadway theater and numerous actors and celebrities paid their respects including Meryl Streep, Jessica Tandy, and Paul Newman among others. Ronald and Nancy Reagan had flowers sent from the White House to the memorial service. Page dedicated her life to her craft and is regarded as one of the most important actresses of the 20th century. She appeared in 28 films, 16 Broadway plays, memorable television plays and radio plays, and innumerable repertory, stock, regional and Off-Broadway performances. As People magazine noted: "Geraldine Page wasn't resting on her laurels at the time of her death; she was on a role. After a performance, she asked, 'I wasn't overdone, was I?' Then she added with a smile, 'Wasn't I exquisite?' As ever, she was." - IMDb Mini Biography By: Brett Walter Spouse (2) Rip Torn (8 September 1963 - 13 June 1987) ( her death) ( 3 children) Alexander Schneider (13 May 1954 - 1956) ( divorced) Trivia (26) Gave birth to her 1st child at age 39, a daughter Angelica Page on February 17, 1964. Child's father was her 2nd husband, Rip Torn. Was starring in "Blithe Spirit" on Broadway at the time of her death. Taught acting at the Actors Studio and Pelican Theater in New York, as well as the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles Gave birth to her 2nd and 3rd children at age 40, twin sons John Torn and Tony Torn on June 1, 1965. Child's father was her 2nd husband, Rip Torn.
Personal Life & Family

Actors' Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild.
06/15

1987

Death

June 15, 1987

Death date

Heart Attack

Cause of death

New York, New York United States
Death location

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Obituary

GERALDINE PAGE, 62, DIES; A STAR OF STAGE AND FILM By Elizabeth Kolbert June 15, 1987 Credit...The New York Times Archives Geraldine Page, dedicated to acting for more than four decades and long identified with the work of Tennessee Williams, died of a heart attack Saturday at her home in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. Both a Broadway star and an Academy Award winner, she was 62 years old. Miss Page, who had been performing in ''Blithe Spirit'' on Broadway since spring, did not arrive for Saturday's two performances. At the end of the evening show, the play's producer, Karl Allison, announced that she had died. Her role in ''Blithe Spirit'' was assumed by her understudy, Patricia Conolly. Mr. Allison described the other members of the cast as devastated by the news. ''She was such a wonderfully sweet person, on top of being such an extraordinary actress,'' he said. Born in Kirksville, Mo., on Nov. 22, 1924, Miss Page grew up in Chicago and later traced her love of acting to plays that she had done with a church youth group. 'To Be Good at Something' ''I always wanted to be good at something, to be somebody,'' she once wrote in a sketch of herself for The New Yorker. ''The minute I got into my first play, which was called ''Excuse My Dust'' - I was 17 at the time - I knew that this was what I'd been looking for.'' After graduating from high school in 1942, Miss Page spent three years studying at the Goodman Theater School in Chicago. With 11 other students - they each chipped in $35 - she formed a stock theater company that operated for four seasons from a playhouse outside the city. In the late 1940s, Miss Page moved to New York, where she worked as a hat-check girl, a spool winder in a thread factory, and a negligee model while stalking the theater district for work. ''The first rule of survival was to stretch every penny,'' she once said. ''I'd eat in a restaurant featuring soup and free rolls for 15 cents and stuff my pockets with rolls. Fortunately, food didn't mean much to me.'' First Big Break in '52 Her first big acting break came in 1952 when the director Jose Quintero cast her as the lovelorn Alma Winemiller in his production of Williams's ''Summer and Smoke,'' which played Off-Broadway at the Circle in the Square. In that role, she attracted such praise that the next year she made her Broadway debut, in ''Midsummer'' by Vina Delmar. Though the show received mediocre reviews, the critics once again raved about Miss Page, and the producers raised her to star billing. On Broadway, she went on to star in ''The Immoralist'' in 1954, an adaption of the Gide novel; in N. Richard Nash's ''Rainmaker,'' also in 1954, and in Williams's ''Sweet Bird of Youth'' in 1959. More recently, she appeared in John Pielmeier's ''Agnes of God'' in 1982, and Off-Broadway in Sam Shepard's ''Lie of the Mind'' in 1985. Miss Page was perhaps best known for her interpretations of Williams's obsessive heroines. In 1980 she played Zelda Fitzgerald in the Williams drama ''Clothes for a Summer Hotel.'' 'Disciplined and Dedicated' The playwright once described her as ''the most disciplined and dedicated of actresses.'' She rejected another characterization of her - as an actress best suited to the roles of neurotic women. ''It's a myth based on nothing,'' she said. ''A lot of people say I always play neurotic women,'' she said. ''Well, who doesn't play neurotic women?'' The career of Miss Page, who shunned many of the trappings of stardom, was marked by periods of relative obscurity broken by sudden rediscovery. In 1962, with the release of the film versions of ''Summer and Smoke'' and ''Sweet Bird of Youth,'' she found herself, after 10 years on the stage, being hailed as an ''overnight success.'' ''That's the longest night I've ever seen,'' she said at the time. Miss Page's film credits included ''Hondo,'' in which she played opposite John Wayne, in 1954; ''The Happiest Millionaire'' in 1967, and ''The Day of the Locust'' in 1975. In recent years, she appeared in ''The Pope of Greenwich Village'' in 1984 and ''The Trip to Bountiful'' in 1985. A Belated Oscar Nominated for an Oscar eight times without winning, Miss Page finally received the award for best actress for her performance in ''The Trip to Bountiful.'' In the movie, she played Carrie Watts, an old woman who finally fulfills her long desire to return to her childhood home of Bountiful, a Texas town that has by then disappeared. Of her performance, Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, ''As Mrs. Watts, Geraldine Page has never been in better form or in more control of that complex, delicate mechanism that makes her one of our finest actresses.'' ''She was not a gal who worried about the fashion of the times,'' said the playwright, Horton Foote, a longtime friend of the actress and the author of the screenplay for ''The Trip to Bountiful.'' ''She had enormous individuality. She just wasn't a theater provincial and her work reflected that.'' In the New Yorker sketch, Miss Page gave her own views on what makes a successful actor: ''The main thing is the ability to control your instrument, which in the actor, is yourself. Look the way you want the character to look. Sound the way you want the character to sound. Once you've trained the instrument to do what you want, you're in control and free.'' Despite her successful Hollywood career, Miss Page remained a strong supporter of repertory theater throughout her life, often acting in them at a low salary and in supporting roles. Recently, as a member of the Mirror Repertory Company, she appeared in ''The Madwoman of Chaillot.'' Miss Page won two Emmy awards for her television performances, both in the late 1960s for roles in adaptations of Truman Capote stories, ''A Christmas Memory'' and ''The Thanksgiving Visitor.'' Miss Page is survived by her third husband, the actor Rip Torn; their three children, Jonathan, Anthony, and Angelica Torn-Burkhardt; a grandchild, Elija Burkhardt, and a brother, Donald. A memorial service will be held at the Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52d Street, at 11 A.M. on Wednesday.

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Geraldine Page lived 10 years shorter than the average family member when died at the age of 62.

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