Hermione Gingold

On stage from the age of 10 (in a production of Pinkie and the Fairies), British actress Hermione Gingold studied for her craft under famed instructor Rosinna Filippi. Gingold's subsequent stage career was almost exclusively devoted to the classics, particularly Shakespeare. Nearing 40, Gingold switched professional gears to become a singing comedienne, appearing in such West End revues as Sweet and Low, Sweeter and Lower and Sweetest and Lowest. Appearing on Broadway in the 1952 edition of John Murray Anderson's Almanac, Gingold held off making any American films (though she'd been in British pictures since 1934), until she was flattered by produced Mike Todd into playing a cameo role as a London tart in Todd's cinema spectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Delightfully inhibited and doggedly aristocratic all at once, Gingold continued her U.S. film career in a number of eccentric roles; in Gigi (1958), she shared the poignant song "I Remember it Well" with Maurice Chevalier. The actress also blessed American TV with her talents; in a 1960 Mother's Day special she portrayed the mother of The Three Stooges! Gracing such films as Bell, Book and Candle (1962), The Music Man (1962) and even Munster Go Home (1965) with her regally ribald presence, Hermione Gingold was still at her post in the '70s, as sparkling as ever in the otherwise forgettable A Little Night Music (1976).