Lunch Break Video: Geraldine Page gives the performance of a lifetime in 1985’s “The Trip to Bountiful”

I’m on an 80s kick this week it seems.

Yesterday was Broadcast News and today, another one of my all-time favorite films: The Trip to Bountiful. It’s a simple plot: an old woman desperately wants to visit her hometown once before she dies but has to hurdle all kinds of obstacles (mainly, her family) to do it.

I love this film so much and have seen it countless times. The great Geraldine Page finally won the Oscar (it was her seventh nomination) and it was completely deserved even if she had to edge out Meryl Streep in Out of Africa and Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple to do it.

Rebecca De Mornay has a nice role as a young Army wife and it is just a few years after her hooker Risky Business so she got to really show a different side here. John Heard was solid as Page’s son but also superb in this film is  Carlyn Glynn as the daughter-in-law from hell. Glynn had just won the Tony Award for Best Little Whorehouse in Texas when she made the film. She is also the mother of actress Mary Stuart Masterson.

The first video is a real showcase for Glynn while the second starts a little slow but around the middle has some lovely scenes between Page and De Mornay.