After playing the part of “Perdita” in “A Winter’s Tale” at the Theatre Guild, she was signed by Warner Bros. Following her performance in a pre-Broadway test of “Follow the Girls” in 1944, Geraldine accompanied the play when it transferred to Broadway in May of the same year, where it had a successful run of nine months. Prior to beginning her apprenticeship in summer stock performances in New York, Geraldine received her training at the American Academy of Dramatic Art as well as the Neighborhood Playhouse. Gloria Stroock, the older sister, also became an actor, largely working on television.

She began her education at the Hunter Modeling School when she was a preteen and went on to graduate from Julia Richman High School in 1942 while serving as president of her school’s theatre club. She was brought up in an environment filled with theatrical types, so it was only inevitable that she would pick up some of those traits herself. Putting on her first pair of tap shoes at the age of two, her immediate family members were also heavily active in the performing arts, with one aunt having been a Ziegfeld Follies girl and another aunt having been a contralto with the Metropolitan Opera. Both of her parents had extensive experience in the theatrical industry. Her mother, Bianca, was a costume designer and stylist, and her father, James Stroock, ran a prominent costume firm. Her parents were immigrants from the Netherlands. On October 29, 1925, in New York City, stubborn, blue-eyed brunette Geraldine Brooks with lovely, somewhat pinched features was born to a Dutch couple.

Geraldine brooks biography