Hermione Gingold

Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold was born on 9 December 1897 in Carlton Hill, Maida Vale, London, the elder daughter of James Gingold, a prosperous Austrian-born Jewish stockbroker, and his wife, Kate Frances, née Walter. Her paternal grandfather, Moritz "Maurice" Gingold, was an Ottoman-born British subject and London stockbroker, and her paternal grandmother, Hermine, was Austrian-born, after whom Hermione was named. On her father's side, Gingold was descended from Solomon Sulzer, a synagogue cantor and Jewish liturgical composer in Vienna. She died on 24 May 1987.

Gingold made her professional debut in 1908 at the age of eleven, playing the herald in Herbert Beerbohm Tree's production of Pinkie and the Fairies at a cast that included Ellen Terry, Frederick Volpe, Marie Löhr, and Viola Tree. She was subsequently promoted to the title role for a provincial tour, and Tree also cast her as Falstaff's page, Robin, in The Merry Wives of Windsor. She attended Rosina Filippi's stage school in London and in 1911 appeared in the original production of Where the Rainbow Ends. On the day after her fifteenth birthday, 10 December 1912, she played Cassandra in William Poel's production of Troilus and Cressida at the King's Hall, Covent Garden, alongside Esmé Percy as Troilus and Edith Evans as Cressida. In 1914 she played Jessica in The Merchant of Venice at the Old Vic. Gingold married the publisher Michael Joseph in 1918; they had two sons, the younger of whom, Stephen, became a pioneer of theatre in the round in Britain.

Her adult stage career developed gradually through the early 1920s, with roles including Liza in If at the Ambassador's in May 1921 and the Old Woman in Ben Travers's The Dippers at the Criterion in August 1922. She divorced Joseph in 1926 and later that year married the writer and lyricist Eric Maschwitz, whom she divorced in 1945. A vocal crisis in the late 1920s and early 1930s, caused by nodules on her vocal cords, produced a dramatic drop in pitch that became her signature. The critic J. C. Trewin described the resulting voice as "powdered glass in deep syrup." During this period she broadcast frequently for the BBC and established herself at the experimental Gate Theatre Studio in London, moving from serious acting into revue. It was in Spread It Abroad at the Saville Theatre in 1936, with material by Herbert Farjeon, that she found her particular milieu in the genre.

Over the ten years beginning in 1938, Gingold appeared in nine West End revues, including The Gate Revue, Swinging the Gate, Rise Above It, and Sky High. She and the English actress Hermione Baddeley developed a stage partnership during this period, appearing together in three productions, though their names were frequently linked by critics. In June 1943 Gingold opened in Sweet and Low, a production that was revised and refreshed over nearly six years under the titles Sweeter and Lower and Sweetest and Lowest, during which she played 1,676 performances before 800,000 people and executed 17,010 costume changes. Her first postwar revue, Slings and Arrows at the Comedy in 1948, was praised for her performance though the material was considered inferior to her earlier work. In November 1949, she and Baddeley co-starred in a Noël Coward double bill presenting Fumed Oak and Fallen Angels, which ran until August 1950 despite poor reviews.

Gingold appeared in cameo roles in British films during this period, with her performance as the formidable schoolmistress Miss Tompkins in The Pickwick Papers in 1952 receiving particular notice. She also became well known to BBC radio audiences through "Mrs Doom's Diary," a parody segment on the weekly program Home at Eight, in which she played Drusilla Doom opposite Alfred Marks as her sepulchral husband.

From the early 1950s, Gingold relocated to the United States and built her career primarily there. Her first American engagement was at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in It's About Time, a revue incorporating material from her London work. In December 1953 she opened on Broadway in John Murray Anderson's Almanac, earning immediate success and winning the Donaldson Award in 1954. Her Broadway career extended from 1953 to 1977 and included From A to Z, the musical First Impressions, Sondheim: A Musical Tribute, and Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad. She opened in the Arthur Kopit play Oh Dad, Poor Dad in October 1963, a production she also performed in London. Her performance in A Little Night Music earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 1973, and she returned to that material in the 1977 film adaptation. She also became a regular presence on American television talk shows throughout this period.

Her film work during the American years included a London "sporting lady" in Around the World in 80 Days in 1956. She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1958 film Gigi, in which she sang "I Remember It Well" with Maurice Chevalier. Also in 1958 she appeared in Bell, Book and Candle, and in 1962 she played the haughty Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn in The Music Man alongside Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. Her jazz cabaret album la gingold, with musical direction by Buster Davis, was released in 1956. An accident in 1977 ended her performing career.