February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Born on Nov. 24, 1914, the actress was the daughter of a prominent Dublin lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, whose firm, E. & T. Fitzgerald, is mentioned in the early pages of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”
Fitzgerald began her acting career at Dublin’s Gate Theatre, where she encountered Orson Welles, a young actor-director who later founded the Mercury Theatre, of which the actress became an active and prominent member.
Stating in 1934, she appeared in a string of low-budget British movies, and married Edward Lindsay-Hogg, a horse breeder. In 1938, she moved to New York, where she made her Mercury Theatre debut in a production of G.B. Shaw’s “Heartbreak House.”
The next year, Hollywood beckoned, and the actress signed a long-term contract with Warner Brothers, making a series of mainly significant films throughout the 1940s, including “Dark Victory,” which found her working alongside Bette Davis and Ronald Reagan, and “Wuthering Heights,” which starred Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon and brought Fitzgerald a best-supporting actress Academy Award nomination.
In 1944, Fitzgerald played President Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Edith, in a massive, but financially unsuccessful Fox biofilm of the president, who was played by Alexander Knox.
In 1974, the she played opposite the late Art Carney in the beloved film, “Harry and Tonto.”
Her close friendship with Davis lasted until Davis’ death. With Davis, Fitzgerald fought the studio bosses in an attempt to get better parts. Davis often won her battles with Warner Brothers, but the Irish star was less successful, and by the end of the decade, her career had dimmed and she returned to New York, where she lived for the rest of her life.
In later years, she frequently appeared on screen in character roles, one of the most memorable of which was in Sydney Lumet’s “The Pawnbroker,” in which she provided strong support for star Rod Steiger in what was probably his best performance, the equal of his work in Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront.”
In 1971, she played Mary Cavan Tyrone in a solid stage revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” with Robert Ryan as James Tyrone and Stacy Keach and James Naughton as the couple’s sons.
Her marriage to Lindsay Hogg produced a son, Michael, a film and stage director. In 1946, she married her second husband, Stuart Scheftel, a businessman who was the grandson of the founder of Macy’s. Scheftel worked as a “dollar-a-year-man” to head up Mayor John Lindsay’s Youth Board.
The actress’ marriage to Scheftel brought a daughter, Caroline, who is a doctor. Scheftel died slightly more than a decade ago.