Hermione Gingold

Infobox Actor
bgcolour = silver
name = Hermione Gingold
birthname = Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold
birthdate = December 9, 1897
location = London, England
deathdate = May 24, 1987 (aged age|1897|12|9|1987|5|24)
deathplace = New York City, New York
spouse = Michael Joseph (1918-1926)
Eric Maschwitz (1926-1945)
goldenglobeawards = Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
1959 "Gigi"
grammyawards = Best Album for Children
1977 "Prokofiev": "Peter and the Wolf"/"Saint-Saëns": "The Carnival of the Animals"

Hermione Gingold (December 9, 1897 – May 24, 1987) was an English actress known for her sharp-tongued, eccentric persona, an image enhanced by her sharp nose and chin, as well as her deepening voice, a result of vocal nodes which her mother encouraged her not to remove. Fact|date=May 2007 She appeared on stage, on radio, in films, on television, and in recordings.

Biography

Born Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold in London, England, she was the daughter of a high-standing Vienna-born Jewish financier James Gingold and Kate Walter or Walters, an English-born housewife. Her mother may also have been Jewish as her marriage to Lionel in 1894 was conducted by the Chief Rabbi. Her paternal grandparents were the Turkish-born British subject, Moritz "Maurice" Gingold, a London stockbroker, and his Austrian-born wife, Hermine, after whom Hermione Gingold was named. On her father's side she was descended from the celebrated Solomon Sulzer, a famous synagogue cantor and Jewish liturgical composer in Vienna. Gingold was a childhood friend of Noel Coward until her mother warned her away from him.

Career

First appearing on stage in 1909, she was originally a coloratura soprano and performed in Shakespearean dramas such as "The Merchant of Venice" and "Troilus and Cressida" and worked with Charles Hawtrey as an understudy. In the 1930s, her quirky, ribald comedic sense became famous through musical revues. She married British publisher Michael Joseph in 1918, with whom she had two sons, Stephen and Leslie. After her divorce in 1926, she married writer and lyricist Eric Maschwitz, whom she divorced in 1945. Gingold was also known for her unruly hair. It was said she styled it by sticking her head out the window and letting the wind sculpt it.

Gingold was introduced to U.S. servicemen during World War II through the London revue "Sweet and Low." After moving to the United States in 1951, Gingold became a great success there as well. She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1958 movie "Gigi" in which she played Madame Alvarez, Gigi's loving grandmother. She sang "I Remember it Well" with Maurice Chevalier. In Chevalier's biography by Michael Freedland she said "It was my first American film and I was very nervous," But Maurice put her at ease. "I had to sing and I hadn't got a great voice, but with him I felt the greatest prima donna in the world."

She succeeded Jo Van Fleet as the monstrously possessive mother who is driving her son crazy in Jewish American playwright Arthur Kopit's "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad" (1963) on Broadway and also in London, which role was played in the 1967 film by Rosalind Russell.

Gingold played the mayor's snooty wife Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn in "The Music Man" (1962), starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones, and was part of the original 1973 Broadway cast of "A Little Night Music" in the role of the elderly Madame Armfeldt, a former courtesan, this time Swedish, which she reprised in the unsuccessful film version of the musical.

In 1977, with conductor Karl Bohm, she won a Grammy Award for Best Album for Children for "Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf and Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals". She was a regular guest on television talk shows, especially Jack Paar's, where audiences loved her stories. She is quoted as saying, "Fighting is essentially a masculine idea; a woman's weapon is her tongue."

Death

While touring as the narrator in the Stephen Sondheim compilation show "Side By Side By Sondheim" she tripped and fell at a railway station and became bedridden. She died shortly afterwards of heart problems and pneumonia in 1987 at the age of 89. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Hermione Gingold, English Actress, Dies At 89 |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5DF133FF936A15756C0A961948260 |quote=Hermione Gingold, the irrepressible English-born comedienne whose tart, quick-witted repartee became her trademark, died yesterday at Lenox Hill Hospital. She was 89 years old and lived on the East Side. |work=New York Times |date=May 25, 1987 |accessdate=2008-07-27 ] She disputed the year of birth, 1897, assigned to her. She was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Legacy

Her autobiography "How to Grow Old Disgracefully" was published posthumously in 1988.

References

Filmography

*"Dance Pretty Lady" (1932)
*"Someone at the Door" (1936)
*"Merry Comes to Town" (1937)
*"Meet Mr. Penny" (1938)
*"The Butler's Dilemma" (1943)
*"Cosh Boy" (1952)
*"The Pickwick Papers" (1952)
*"Our Girl Friday" (1953)
*"Around the World in Eighty Days" (1956)
*"Gigi" (1958)
*"Bell, Book and Candle" (1958)
*"The Naked Edge" (1961)
*"The Music Man" (1962)
*"Gay Purr-ee" (1962) (voice)
*"The World of Henry Orient" (1964) (scenes deleted)
*"I'd Rather Be Rich" (1964)
*"Harvey Middleman, Fireman" (1965)
*"The Itch" (1965) (short subject) (voice)
*"Promise Her Anything" (1965)
*"Munster, Go Home" (1966)
*"Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon" (1967)
*"Tubby the Tuba" (1976) (voice)
*"A Little Night Music" (1978)
*"Garbo Talks" (1984)

###@@@KEY@@@###succession box
title=Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
years=1959
for "Gigi"
before=Elsa Lanchester
for "Witness for the Prosecution"
after=Susan Kohner
for "Imitation of Life"

Television Work

*"The Jack Paar Tonight Show" (frequent regular from 1958-1962)
*"The Johnny Carson Tonight Show(some of his first shows after the famous Parr walkout)
*"Beyond the Fringe" (1967) (cancelled after 14 episodes)
*"Winter of the Witch" (1969)
*"Banyon" (1971) (pilot for series)
*"Simple Gifts" (1977) (voice)
*"Amy & the Angel" (1982)
*"How to Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days" (1983)

External links

*imdb|0320006
*ibdb|42261
* [http://users.bestweb.net/~foosie/gingold.htm Hermione Gingold -Foosie] focuses on her revues