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Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold was an English actress known for her sharp-tongued, eccentric persona. She had a strikingly individual voice, drawling and deep, the latter a result of nodes on her vocal chords in the 1920s and early 1930s.
After a successful career as a child actress, she later established herself on the stage as an adult, playing in comedy, drama and experiment theatre, and broadcasting on the radio. She found her milieu in revue, in which she played from the 1930s to the 1950s, co-starring several times with Hermione Baddeley. Later she played formidable elderly characters in such films and stage musicals as Gigi, Bell, Book and Candle, The Music Man and A Little Night Music.
From the early 1950s Gingold lived and made her career mostly in the US. Her American stage work ranged from John Murray Anderson's Almanac to Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, the latter of which she also played in London. She became well known as a guest on television talk shows. She made further appearances in revue and toured in plays and musicals until an accident ended her performing career in 1977.
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