Geraldine Page

Geraldine Page

NEW YORK - Actress Geraldine Page, 62, best known for her portrayal of neurotic, tortured heroines in the plays of Tennessee Williams and winner of a 1986 Academy Award for her role in the film "A Trip to Bountiful," has died of a heart attack.
Page was found dead at about 6 p.m. Saturday in her New York townhouse, according to the city medical examiner's office.
She had been appearing on Broadway as the madcap medium in a revival of "Blithe Spirit," with Richard Chamberlain, Blythe Danner, and Judith Ivey.
"Gerry's death is a devastating loss to the theater and film community," said the play's producers, Karl Allison, Douglas Urbanski, and Sandra Moss, in a statement. "We have lost a dear member of the "Blithe Spirit" company, and we will miss her gentle manner, sweet disposition, and her delicious sense of humor."
Although she was nominated eight times for Academy Awards and finally received one last year for her performance in "A Trip to Bountiful," Page first gained prominence as a theater actress.
Audiences and critics first noticed her in 1952 in the landmark, off-Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' "Summer and Smoke," in which she played Alma Winemiller, a sexually frustrated spinster who succumbs to promiscuity.
Among her other major Broadway roles were Marcelline, the wife of a homosexual in "The Immoralist" (1954), an adaptation of the Andre Gide novel; Lizzy Curry, the forlorn spinster whose life is transformed by a dazzling con man in N. Richard Nash's "The Rainmaker" (1954), and Princess Kosmonopolis, the vengeful, decaying movie star in Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1959), a role she repeated on screen.
Although Page's stage career spanned more than 40 years, she never won a Tony award for best actress. She received several nominations, including one this year for her portrayal of Madame Arcati in "Blithe Spirit."
Besides "A Trip to Bountiful," her Oscar-nominated performances were for "Hondo," "Pete and Tillie," "Interiors," "You're A Big Boy Now," "The Pope of Greenwich Village" and the film versions of "Summer and Smoke" and "Sweet Bird of Youth."
Page won two Emmys for her television work, both in the late 1960s in adaptations of Truman Capote stories, "A Christmas Memory" and "The Thanksgiving Visitor."
Page was born in Kirkland, Mo. Her father, Leon Page, was an osteopathic physician who encouraged his daughter to become an actress. He sent her to the Goodman Theater Dramatic School in Chicago, and she later worked in a stock company in Lake Zurich, Ill before coming to New York.
Page was married twice. Her first marriage to Alexander Schneider ended in divorce, as did her second marriage to actor Rip Torn. She is survived by two sons, Anthony and Jonathan, and a daughter, Angelica.