Hermione Gingold

Hermione Gingold was an English actress known for playing sharp-tongued, eccentric characters and for a drawling, deep voice. Born in London, she began as a child performer, making her professional debut in 1908 in Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Pinkie and the Fairies, and trained at Rosina Filippi's stage school. Her adult stage career was slow to build, but she found her milieu in revue, appearing in nine West End productions in the decade from 1938, often alongside Hermione Baddeley. From the early 1950s she worked mainly in America, where John Murray Anderson's Almanac (1953) made her a Broadway success and won her a 1954 Donaldson Award. On screen she specialized in formidable elders, in The Pickwick Papers (1952), Gigi (1958), which brought her a Golden Globe for best supporting actress, Bell, Book and Candle (1958), The Music Man (1962) and A Little Night Music (1977). She also made a jazz cabaret album and wrote memoirs and plays. She died in 1987.