- Gertrude Hoffman
Gertrude W. Hoffmann (born Eliza Gertrude Hoffmann, in
Cambridge, Massachusetts ) was the second daughter of a prominent physician of the day, Dr. Walter W. Wesselhoeft (born17 May 1871 ). She married inCambridge, Massachusetts to Ralph Hoffmann (born23 June 1894 ), aHarvard -educated teacher andnatural scientist , and had three children, Eleanor (born 1895), Walter W. (born 1897), and Gertrude (born 1904), now Lady Bliss and widow of SirArthur Bliss , "Master of The Queen's Music" and OBE.Gertrude moved to
Santa Barbara, California in 1919, when her husband took a job as a teacher atThe Cate School . Subsequently he became head of theSanta Barbara Natural History Museum and a prominentbotanist ,ornithologist and naturalist, but was killed on a birding expedition in the Channel Islands. Gertrude's brother-in-law, Bernhard Hoffmann, was a prominentphilanthropist , who was well-known in Santa Barbara and Stockbridge. He is credited with rebuilding Santa Barbara after a devastating earthquake in the 1920s, and with preserving the Spanish Mission architectural style of the area, notablyThe Paseo .Gertrude Hoffmann famously "broke into Hollywood at age 60" (Saturday Evening Post Article, 1941), and was in many movies, most notably Alfred Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent", which was nominated for Best Picture Oscar in 1941. She is also well-known as Mrs. Odetts, the neighbor, in the 1950s TV sitcom "
My Little Margie ", starringGale Storm . "At one point, during the run of "My Little Margie", said Gale Storm, "she went to the producers to change her billing on the show. She was billed as Gertrude Hoffman. She found out that a stripper by the same name existed, and she didn't want the fans to be confused, so she requested that the producers add her middle initial to the credits. From then on she was Gertrude W. Hoffmann." Hoffmann died from a heart attack in 1966.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.