Oscar Profiles: Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth

Best Actress nomination, 1962
Lost to Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker

Geraldine Page's sodden, washed-up actress crawls into Sweet Bird of Youth through a sludge of booze, pills, and self-pity before spreading her tattered but still lily-white wings into the kind of grotesque diva only Tennessee Williams could concoct. While escaping from a blown comeback film, she drugged herself into the arms of scheming gigolo Paul Newman, who's now trying to parlay his manipulation of her addled affections into a shot at Hollywood stardom. Page reels through the film like an emotional bumper car, alternately needy, savage, full of self-pity and eager to dig her claws into someone other than herself. She demonstrates an almost supernatural gift of changing the entire feeling of a scene, a line, or a closeup with a pregnant pause, an evaluating squint, an unexpected emphasis; she never lets us know exactly how in control she is at any given moment. If she convinces us that she's the kind of person a pretty-boy empty-head like Newman's Chance Wayne can manipulate, it's only a part of her self- and other-destructive game, because it's clear, once she dries out, that Newman is no match for her. The highlight of the role is a big speech, delivered after she's menaced by Rip Torn's redneck papa's boy, about how she is finally able to feel something for someone other than herself. It's such a great, sad, and hilarious insight into her character. It's mostly self-serving, fulsome praise about how great this new aspect of her personality is, but Page allows some room around the edges of the self-obsession for some genuine, touching affection and care for Newman, even if it is only a brief instance of her deigning to let her own internal spotlight cast more than a shadow on another person. I shouldn't overstate her self-sufficiency, because she is a wreck when she has to come into contact with people she can't control, but in the stagey confines of the hotel suite she shares with Newman, she's queen even when she's barely conscious. The only implausibility in the character—built into the script but exacerbated by Page's near-brilliant performance—is that this particular diva could ever go three months without searching for her own name in the entertainment pages, the gossip columns, or perhaps the police blotter. Performance rating: 4.5 goats