page_title: Geraldine Page
section_title: Early stage and film
hierarchical_section_title: Geraldine Page / Career / Early stage and film
caption_attribution_description: English: Geraldine Page in Hondo (1953)
context_page_description: Geraldine Sue Page was an American actress. She earned acclaim for her work on Broadway as well as in major Hollywood films and television productions, garnering an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, a BAFTA Award, and four nominations for the Tony Award.
  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, 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, a role she reprised in the 1962 film adaptation, the latter of which earned her a Golden Globe Award.
  She earned additional Academy Award nominations for her roles in You're a Big Boy Now and Pete 'n' Tillie, followed by a Tony nomination for her performance in the stage production of Absurd Person Singular.
context_section_description: Page, a trained method actor, spent five years appearing in various repertory theater productions in the Midwest and 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 a profile in Time magazine.
  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. After Page's death, these items were acquired by Heritage Auctions in 2006.
  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.
  In 1963, Page starred in Toys in the Attic, based on Lillian Hellman's play of the same name, and garnered a Golden Globe nomination. She received another nomination the following year starring in Delbert Mann's Dear Heart as a self-sufficient but lonely postmistress visiting New York City for a convention, finding love with a greeting card salesman. In 1964, she starred in a Lee Strasberg-directed Broadway revival of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters playing eldest sister Olga to Kim Stanley's Masha with Barbara Baxley as the interloper Natasha. Both Shirley Knight and Sandy Dennis played the youngest sister Irina at different stages in this production.
  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, s
caption: Page in Hondo (1953)
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