Stage and Screen Star Geraldine Fitzgerald Dead at 91

Stage and screen star Geraldine Fitzgerald died on Sunday, July 17 at her home in Manhattan. The cause of death was a respiratory infection, according to The New York Times. She was 91.

Born in 1913 in Dublin, Fitzgerald launched her career at the Gate Theatre. She moved to New York in the late 1930s with her first husband, Edward Lindsay-Hogg, and began working with Orson Welles, whom she had first met at the Gate, at the Mercury Theatre. She was discovered by a film producer during a performance in Heartbreak House at the Mercury and was signed to a Warner Brothers contract. Fitzgerald was nominated for a 1940 Academy Award for her supporting performance in Wuthering Heights. Her other film credits include Open All Night, Blind Justice, Wilson, The Ace of Spades, The Mill on the Floss, Shining Victory, Watch on the Rhine, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, Nobody Lives Forever, O.S.S., Rachel, Rachel, The Mango Tree, Arthur, Easy Money and Arthur 2: On the Rocks.

Fitzgerald never strayed too far from the stage. After Heartbreak House, she appeared on the Great White Way in Sons and Soldiers, Hide and Seek, Ah, Wilderness!, The Shadow Box, A Touch of the Poet and her own special, Geraldine Fitzgerald in Songs of the Street. In 1981, she directed the play Mass Appeal, receiving a Tony nomination for her work. Among her notable off-Broadway credits is a revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night with Robert Ryan, Stacey Keach and James Naughton, and the musical Sharon, which she wrote and directed.

Fitzgerald's first marriage ended in 1946; later that year, she married Stuart Scheftel. They were together at the time of his death in 1994. It was around that time that Fitzgerald developed Alzheimer's disease. In recent years she was basically incapacitated.

Fitzgerald's survivors include her son, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and her daughter, Susan Scheftel.