27 Facts About Hermione Gingold

Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold was an English actress known for her sharp-tongued, eccentric character.

Hermione Gingold's signature drawling, deep voice was a result of nodules on her vocal cords she developed in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Hermione Gingold found her milieu in revue, which she played from the 1930s to the 1950s, co-starring several times with the English actress Hermione Baddeley.

Hermione Gingold became a well-known guest on television talk shows.

Hermione Gingold made appearances in revues and toured in plays and musicals until an accident ended her performing career in 1977.

Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold was born in Carlton Hill, Maida Vale, London, the elder daughter of a prosperous Austrian-born Jewish stockbroker, James Gingold, and his wife, Kate Frances.

Hermione Gingold's paternal grandparents were the Ottoman-born British subject, Moritz "Maurice" Gingold, a London stockbroker, and his Austrian-born wife, Hermine, after whom Hermione was named.

James felt that religion was something children needed to decide on for themselves, and Hermione Gingold grew up with no particular religious beliefs.

Hermione Gingold played the herald in Herbert Beerbohm Tree's production of Pinkie and the Fairies by W Graham Robertson, in a cast including Ellen Terry, Frederick Volpe, Marie Lohr and Viola Tree.

Hermione Gingold was promoted to the leading role of Pinkie for a provincial tour.

On 10 December 1912, the day after her 15th birthday, Hermione Gingold played Cassandra in William Poel's production of Troilus and Cressida at the King's Hall, Covent Garden, with Esme Percy as Troilus and Edith Evans as Cressida.

In 1918, Hermione Gingold married the publisher Michael Joseph, with whom she had two sons, the younger of whom, Stephen, became a pioneer of theatre in the round in Britain.

Hermione Gingold played Liza in If at the Ambassador's in May 1921, and the Old Woman in Ben Travers's farcical comedy The Dippers produced by Sir Charles Hawtrey at the Criterion in August 1922.

Hermione Gingold underwent a vocal crisis in the late 1920s and early 1930s: she had hitherto described herself as "Shakespearian and soprano" but nodules on her vocal cords brought a drastic drop in pitch, about which she commented, "One morning it was Mozart and the next 'Old Man River'".

Hermione Gingold was praised, but the material was judged inferior to that of her earlier shows.

Hermione Gingold appeared in cameo roles in British films, of which Sherrin singles out The Pickwick Papers, in which she played the formidable schoolmistress, Miss Tompkins.

Hermione Gingold became well known to BBC radio audiences in "Mrs Doom's Diary" in the weekly show Home at Eight; this was a parody of the radio soap opera Mrs Dale's Diary in the manner of the Addams Family with Hermione Gingold as Drusilla Doom and Alfred Marks as her sepulchral husband.

Between 1951 and 1969 Hermione Gingold worked mostly in the US.

Hermione Gingold played the haughty Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn in The Music Man, starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones.

In October 1963, Hermione Gingold opened in Arthur Kopit's Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, playing a monstrously possessive mother driving her son crazy.

Hermione Gingold played the role in the London production in 1965.

Hermione Gingold was a member of the original 1973 Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music in the role of the elderly Mme.

At the age of 77, Hermione Gingold made her operatic debut, joining the San Francisco Opera to play the spoken role of the Duchess of Crackenthorp in Donizetti's La fille du regiment in 1975.

Hermione Gingold died from heart problems and pneumonia at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on 24 May 1987 at age 89.

Hermione Gingold is interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Hermione Gingold wrote a play titled Abracadabra and contributed original material to the many revues in which she performed.

The Hermione Gingold Theatrical Group in New York is a company devoted to producing plays about human rights.