Geraldine Page

About Geraldine Page

Who is it?: Actress, Soundtrack
Birth Day: November 22, 1924
Birth Place:  Kirksville, Missouri, United States
Died On: June 13, 1987(1987-06-13) (aged 62)\nNew York City, New York, U.S.
Birth Sign: Sagittarius
Cause of death: Heart attack
Education: Art Institute of Chicago (BFA)
Years active: 1952–1987
Spouse(s): Alexander Schneider (m. 1954–1957) Rip Torn (m. 1963; her death 1987)
Children: 3, including Angelica Page

Geraldine Page Net Worth

Geraldine Page was born on November 22, 1924 in  Kirksville, Missouri, United States, is Actress, Soundtrack. 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."
Geraldine Page is a member of Actress

💰Geraldine Page Net worth: $6 Million

Some Geraldine Page images

Biography/Timeline

1924

Page was born November 22, 1924 in Kirksville, Missouri, the second child of Edna Pearl (née Maize) and Leon Elwin Page who worked at Andrew Taylor Still College of Osteopathy and Surgery (combined with the American School of Osteopathy, eventually to form A.T. Still University). He was an author whose works included Practical Anatomy (1925), Osteopathic Fundamentals (1926), and The Old Doctor (1932). She had one older brother, Donald.

1941

At age five, Page relocated with her family to Chicago, Illinois. Raised a Methodist, Page and her family were active parishioners the Englewood Methodist Church in Chicago, where she had her first foray into acting within the church's theatre group, playing Jo March in a 1941 production of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. After graduating from Chicago's Englewood Technical Prep Academy, she attended the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago (later renamed The Theatre School at DePaul University), with the intention of becoming a visual Artist or Pianist.

1945

Page, a trained method actor, spent five years appearing in various repertory theater productions in the Midwest and in New York after graduating from college. On October 25, 1945, she made her New York stage debut in Seven Mirrors, a play devised by Immaculate Heart High School students from Los Angeles. The play ran for a total of 23 performances at Blackfriars Repertory Theatre on Manhattan's Upper East Side. In February 1952, Director José Quintero cast Page in a minor role in Yerma, a theatrical interpretation of a poem by Federico García Lorca, staged at Circle in the Square Theatre in New York City's Greenwich Village. Page was subsequently cast in the role of Alma in the Quintero-directed production of Summer and Smoke, written by Tennessee Williams (also staged at the Circle Theatre in 1952). Page's role in Summer and Smoke garnered her significant exposure, including a Drama Desk Award, and was profiled in Time magazine.

1953

A native of Kirksville, Missouri, Page studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and with Uta Hagen and Lee Strasberg in New York City before being cast in her first credited part in the Western film Hondo (1953), which earned her her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was subsequently blacklisted in Hollywood based on her association with Hagen, and did not work in film for eight years. Page continued to appear in television and on stage, and earned her first Tony Award nomination for her performance in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959–60), a role she reprised in the 1961 film adaptation, the latter of which earned her a Golden Globe Award.

1954

Her official film debut and role in Hondo, opposite John Wayne, garnering her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Prior, she appeared in an uncredited role in Taxi. Speaking to a Kirksville newspaper, she said: "Actually Hondo wasn't my first movie. I had one small, but satisfactory scene in a Dan Dailey picture called Taxi, which was filmed in New York." Page was blacklisted in Hollywood after her debut in Hondo based on her association with Uta Hagen, and did not work in film for nearly ten years. Her work continued on Broadway playing a spinster in the 1954–1955 production of The Rainmaker, written by N. Richard Nash; and as the frustrated wife whose husband becomes romantically obsessed with a young Arab, played by James Dean, in the 1954 production of The Immoralist, written by Augustus Goetz and Ruth Goetz and based on the novel of the same name (1902) by André Gide. Page remained friends with Dean until his death the following year, and kept several personal mementos from the play—including two drawings by him—until her death. These items were later acquired by Heritage Auctions in 2006.

1959

In 1959, Page earned an Emmy nomination, of Best Single Performance by an Actress, for her role in the Playhouse 90 episode "The Old Man," written by william Faulkner. She subsequently earned critical accolades for her performance in the 1959–1960 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth opposite Paul Newman, in which 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). For her performance, Page received her first nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, as well as the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance in Chicago. She and Newman subsequently starred in the 1962 film adaptation of the same name and Page earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film.

1963

Page was married to Violinist Alexander Schneider from 1954 to 1957. On September 8, 1963, she married actor Rip Torn, who was six years her junior, in Pinal, Arizona. Page bore him three children: a daughter, Actress Angelica Page, and twin sons, Anthony "Tony" and Jonathan "Jon" Torn, the latter of whom is a professor of communications at Northern Arizona University.

1964

Page was trained as a method actor, and at times worked with psychoanalysts when developing her interpretations of roles. She once told the Los Angeles Times: "If I read a part and think I can connect to it, that I can touch people with it, I will do it, no matter what its size. And if I think I can't do something with a part, I won't take it." In a 1964 interview upon completing the Broadway run of The Three Sisters, Page discussed her method acting at length. When asked if she used emotional recall as a technique, she responded: "I would never shut it out. But I don't try to get one. My whole effort is to relax and keep the doors open so that there's room if one should pop up."

1966

Between 1966 and 1969, Page appeared in two holiday-themed television productions based on stories by Truman Capote: "The Christmas Memory" (for ABC Stage 67) and the television film The Thanksgiving Visitor, both of which earned her two consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Actress. In 1967, Page appeared again onstage in Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy/White Lies, a production which also included Michael Crawford and Lynn Redgrave, who were making their Broadway debuts. The same year, she appeared opposite Fred MacMurray in the Walt Disney-produced musical The Happiest Millionaire. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times was critical of the film, noting: "Geraldine Page and Gladys Cooper...square off in one musical scene of socially up-staging each other that is drenched in perfumed vulgarity. But, then, the whole picture is vulgar. It is an over-decorated, over-fluffed, over-sentimentalized endeavor to pretend the lace-curtain millionaires are—or were—every bit as folksy as the old prize-fighters and the Irish brawlers in the saloon."

1969

In 1969, Page starred opposite Ruth Gordon in the exploitation thriller What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?, the third and final film in the Robert Aldrich-produced trilogy which followed What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). The film is based on the novel The Forbidden Garden by Ursula Curtiss and features Page as Claire Marrable, a recently widowed socialite, who, upon discovering that her husband has left her virtually nothing, hires a number of unsuspecting housekeepers whom she murders one by one and robs them of their life savings in order to keep up her extravagant lifestyle. Writing for The New York Times, Vincent Canby deemed the film "an amusingly baroque horror story told by a master misogynist," and praised Page's "affecting" performance.

1971

Page subsequently appeared in the Don Siegel-directed thriller The Beguiled (1971) opposite Clint Eastwood, playing the headmistress of a Southern girls' boarding school who takes in a wounded Confederate soldier. Director Siegel called Page "certainly as fine an actor as I've ever worked with. I never have gotten along better with anyone than I did with her." This was followed by a supporting role in the comedy Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), for which she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared in three episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery between 1972 and 1973. In January 1973, she returned to Broadway playing Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Maya Angelou in the two-character play Look Away, written by Jerome Kilty. Page received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play (her second Tony Award nomination) for the 1975 production of Alan Ayckbourn's Absurd Person Singular with Sandy Dennis and Richard Kiley.

1975

She also had a supporting role as a charismatic Hollywood evangelist (modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson) in The Day of the Locust (1975), an adaptation of the Nathanael West novel of the same name. In 1977, she appeared as a nun in the British comedy Nasty Habits, and provided the voice role of Madame Medusa in the Walt Disney animated film The Rescuers. During this time, she also appeared on television, guest-starring in the popular series Kojak (1976) and Hawaii Five-O (1977).

1978

In 1978, Page appeared as the mother of three siblings and wife of a prominent attorney in Woody Allen's Interiors. For her performance, Page was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. The New York Times's Vincent Canby lauded her performance in the film, writing: "Miss Page, looking a bit like a youthful Louise Nevelson with mink-lashed eyes, is marvelous — erratically kind, impossibly demanding, pathetic in her loneliness and desperate in her anger." The following year, in November 1979, Page was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

1979

For her stage work on Broadway, Page earned a total of four Tony Award nominations, and was referred to by the New York Daily News as "one of the finest stage actors of her generation." She was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979.

1980

Beginning in the early 1980s, Page and Torn lived separately after he began dating Actress Amy Wright; Torn had first met Wright in 1976 and begun an affair shortly after. Page was aware of Torn and Wright's relationship, and appeared onstage opposite Wright in the 1977 Off-Broadway production of The Stronger, under Torn's direction. In 1983, Torn fathered a child with Wright. Upon the birth of the child, Page was questioned about her marriage by columnist Cindy Adams, to which she responded: "Of course Rip and I are still married. We've been married for years. We're staying married. What's the big fuss?" In spite of their separation, Page and Torn remained married until her death; her daughter described their relationship as still "close" up until Page died in 1987.

1983

Also in 1983, Page invited the young Actress Sabra Jones Strasberg to her dressing room to talk to Sabra about how much she had liked her performance in St. Joan by Maxwell Anderson, in which Geraldine had just seen her play the part originated by Ingrid Bergman. During this conversation Sabra asked her advice in forming a classic theatre based on alternating repertory. This became the Mirror Theater Ltd with its repertory program the Mirror Repertory, and Page accepted the role of Founding Artist in Residence. Page remained continually active in theater, appearing in numerous repertory, Broadway, and Off-Broadway productions throughout the 1980s; this included roles in Inheritors (1983) by Susan Glaspell, Paradise Lost (1983) by Clifford Odets, Rain (1984) by John Colton (based on the short story "Miss Thompson" by W. Somerset Maugham), Vivat! Vivat Regina! by Robert Bolt (in which she played Elizabeth I), Clarence (1985) by Booth Tarkington, and The Madwoman of Chaillot (1985; in which she played the Madwoman to great acclaim).

1984

Page earned her seventh Academy Award nomination for her performance in the dark comedy The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). This marked a record at the time for most Academy Award nominations without a win, for which Page was tied with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton (who themselves had also garnered seven nominations without winning). On television, Page had a supporting role in the miniseries The Dollmaker (1984), opposite Jane Fonda and Amanda Plummer. In 1985, she apepared in the British horror film The Bride opposite Sting and Jennifer Beals; the drama White Nights, directed by Taylor Hackford; and opposite Rebecca de Mornay in the drama The Trip to Bountiful, in which she played an aging Southern Texas woman seeking to return to her hometown. The role earned Page wide critical acclaim, with the Los Angeles Times referring to it as "the performance of a lifetime."

1985

Page earned a total of seven Academy Award nominations before winning her first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1985 for The Trip to Bountiful. She was also a winner of two Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and one BAFTA award.

1986

During her life, Page was regarded as a respected character Actress. Speaking of her stage career in 1986, she said: "I used to think that by opening [night] all the work was done. Now I'm finding how much you can learn from the audience." She described acting as a "bottomless cup," adding: "If I studied for the next ninety years I'd just be scratching the surface."

1987

On June 13, 1987, Page failed to arrive at the Neil Simon Theatre for both the afternoon and evening performances of Sir Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, which had begun its run in March. At the end of the show's evening performance, the play's Producer announced that Page had been found dead in her lower Manhattan townhouse. She was determined to have died of a heart attack.

2016

She was also portrayed by her daughter, Angelica Page, in the stage production Turning Page. A monologue play chronicling Page's life, it was also written by her daughter: "I grew up in the center of her sparkling career," Angelica recalled. "As her only daughter I feel compelled to share her lessons and gifts with others who did and did not have the opportunity to know her magic intimately. She was a true rebel and trail blazer. A masterful woman who was ahead of her time and should not be forgotten anytime soon." The play premiered in Los Angeles in 2016, followed by performances in New York City in 2017.

2017

Page was portrayed by Sarah Paulson in the 2017 anthology television series Feud, which chronicles the rivalry between actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford on the set of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).