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Geraldine Fitzgerald (24 November, 1913 - 17 July,
2005)  was an Irish-American actor|actress. 

Fitzgerald was born in Greystones, County Wicklow,
south of Dublin, Ireland.  Inspired by her aunt,
the actress Shelah Richards, Fitzgerald began her
acting career in 1932 in theatre in her native
Dublin before moving to London in 1934 to appear
in United Kingdom|British films. She quickly came
to be regarded as one of the British film
industry's most promising young performers and her
most successful film of this period was The Mill
on the Floss (1937).  

Her success led her to America and Broadway in
1938, and while appearing opposite Orson Welles in
the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak
House, she was seen by the film producer Hal B.
Wallis who signed her to a seven-year film
contract.  She achieved two significant successes
in 1939; she received a nomination for an Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as
Isabella Linton in Wuthering Heights and had an
important role in Dark Victory, with both films
achieving great box office success.  

She appeared in Watch on the Rhine (1943) for
Warner Bros. and Wilson (movie)|Wilson (1944) for
20th Century Fox|Fox, but her career was hampered
by her frequent clashes with the management of the
studio, and the suspensions that resulted. She
lost the role of 'Brigid O'Shaughnessy', the
villainess of The Maltese Falcon due to her
clashes with Jack Warner. Although she continued
to work frequently throughout the 1940s the
quality of her roles diminished and her career
began to lost momentum. She became a U.S. citizen
during World War 2 in a display of solidarity with
her adopted country. In 1946 she left Hollywood to
return to New York, New York|New York where she
married her second husband Stuart Scheftel, a
grandson of Isidor Straus. She returned to Britain
to film So Evil My Love (1948) and received strong
reviews for her performance as an
alcoholism|alcoholic adultery|adultress.  In 1951
she appeared in The Late Edwina Black before
returning to America. 

The 1950s provided her with very few opportunities
in film, but in the 1960s she asserted herself as
a character actress, and her career enjoyed a
revival.  Among her successful films of this
period were Ten North Frederick (1961), The
Pawnbroker (1964) and Rachel, Rachel (1968).  Her
other films include The Mango Tree (1977), for
which she received an Australian Film Institute
"Best Actress" nomination,  Arthur (1981) and
Poltergeist movie series|Poltergeist II: The Other
Side (1986).  

From the 1940s she began to act more on stage and
she won acclaim for her performance in the 1971
revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night.  She
also achieved success as a theatre director. 
Among her accomplishments on Broadway is a Tony
Award nomination in 1982 for the production Mass
Appeal, one of the first women to receive a
nomination for directing. 

She also appeared frequently on television in such
series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Robert
Montgomery Presents, Naked City, St. Elsewhere and
Cagney and Lacey.  She received an Emmy Award
nomination for a guest role in The Golden Girls in
1989.  She starred in a pilot for her own
television series, produced by Barbra Streisand
and titled Mabel and Max, but it was not a
success.

In 1990 she began a career as a cabaret singer
with the show Streetsongs which played three
successful runs on Broadway and was the subject of
a PBS television special. 

Geraldine Fitzgerald has a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame for her contributions to television,
at 6353 Hollywood Boulevard. 

Fitzgerald died in Manhattan, New York, on 17
July, 2005, following a long battle with
Alzheimer's Disease.

She was the mother of the film director Michael
Lindsay-Hogg (Let It Be and  Brideshead Revisited)
and a daughter, Susan Scheftel.  She was also a
great-aunt of the actress Tara Fitzgerald, and a
cousin of the Australian novelist Nevil Shute.

==External links==
*imdb name|id=0280242|name=Geraldine Fitzgerald
*http://www.hurrellphotos.com/default.asp?ID=4&act
ion=largeimage&imgid=132 Portrait of Geraldine
Fitzgerald c. 1936 by George Hurrell.
*http://www.hurrellphotos.com/default.asp?ID=4&act
ion=largeimage&imgid=69 Portrait of Geraldine
Fitzgerald c. 1939 by George Hurrell.
*http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/a
rticle300086.ece Independent's obituary
*http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/19/
obit.fitzgerald.ap/index.html CNN.com 'Wuthering'
actress Fitzgerald dead