39-789: Gate Theatre Studio , often referred to as simply the Gate Theatre , is a former independent theatre on Villiers Street in London. Founded in October 1925 by Peter Godfrey and his wife Molly Veness, the theatre was originally on the top floor of a ramshackle warehouse at 38 Floral Street, Covent Garden and could hold an audience of 96. Then known as "the Gate Theatre Salon" (The Gate to Better Things), it opened that year on 30 October with Godfrey's production of Susan Glaspell 's Berenice , starring Veness as Margaret, 'the searcher for truth', and ran for
78-450: A Sweet and Low , which was revised and refreshed over a run of almost six years, first as Sweeter and Lower and then Sweetest and Lowest . In her sketches, she tended, as Alan Melville recalled, to portray "grotesque and usually unfortunate ladies of dubious age and occasionally, morals; the unhappy female painted by Picasso who found herself lumbered with an extra limb or two … the even less fortunate female who, after years of playing
117-537: A fortnight. With a series of challenging productions, including August Strindberg 's The Dance of Death , the Gate struggled to survive without attracting any particular attention. The history of the studio was typical of many small independent theatres of the period, until the Sunday Times critic James Agate , enthusiastically reviewed Georg Kaiser 's From Morn to Midnight and urged readers to apply for membership of
156-426: A gloomy, bad witch who becomes a good witch when a young boy and his mother move into her house. She cooks magic pancakes that make people happy and the three of them turn their living room into a successful pancake parlor. The witch tells the boy that she became good because people are already scared nowadays, and that she will go on being good until everyone is happy and they need her to scare them again. In 1972, she
195-604: A parody of every tragedy queen, male or female, since time began, she was in splendid relishing form, her lips drawn back over fangs and her voice swooping campingly through a whole two octaves of sneer. In 1969, she co-starred in Winter of the Witch , a film made for the Learning Corporation of America. It was based on Wende and Harry Devlin 's Old Black Witch! picturebook . The film is narrated by Burgess Meredith . Gingold played
234-833: A parody of the radio soap opera Mrs Dale's Diary in the manner of the Addams Family with Gingold as Drusilla Doom and Alfred Marks as her sepulchral husband. Between 1951 and 1969 Gingold worked mostly in the US. Her first engagement there was at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts in It's About Time, a revue that incorporated some of her London material. In December 1953, she opened in John Murray Anderson's Almanac which made her an instant Broadway success and for which she won
273-594: A part of the Imperial College Faculty of Medicine, was founded here in 1834. Prior to 1865, Villiers Street ran down the hill directly to a wharf by the river, known as Villiers Wharf. This was swept away in 1865 by the construction of the Victoria Embankment , with its sewers, and the District line railway. The river was moved back some 50 metres (164 ft) from the foot of Villiers Street. Housing on
312-622: Is interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Gingold's autobiography How to Grow Old Disgracefully was posthumously compiled in 1988. During her lifetime Gingold published three books of memoir and anecdotes: She wrote the play Abracadabra and contributed original material to the many revues in which she performed. Gingold Theatrical Group in New York is named in her honor. Founded by David Staller in 2006,
351-551: The Donaldson Award in 1954. She also became a regular guest on talk shows. Her jazz cabaret album la gingold , with musical direction by Buster Davis , was released in 1956. She continued making films, playing a London "sporting lady" in Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1958 film Gigi . In
390-628: The Stokes brothers' Oscar Wilde and later took the play to Broadway . In the 1930s The Gate Theatre Studio was one of a number of small, committed, independent theatre companies which included the Hampstead Everyman , the Arts Theatre Club and Q Theatre at Kew Bridge . These theatres were able to avoid the Lord Chamberlain's censorship by operating as theatre clubs, where membership
429-557: The West End . The first four were The Gate Revue (transferred from the Gate to the Ambassadors , 1939), Swinging the Gate (1940), Rise Above It (1941) and Sky High (1942). During this period, she and Hermione Baddeley established a stage partnership that The Times called "briskly sustained mock-rivalry". Their names were often linked for this reason, although they only ever appeared in three shows together. In June 1943, she opened in
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#1732855160447468-622: The fanlight of Gatti's Music-Hall entrance, across the street, almost on to its stage. The Charing Cross trains rumbled through my dreams on one side, the boom of the Strand on the other, while, before my windows, Father Thames under the Shot tower walked up and down with his traffic. After the Second World War Gatti's became the noted Players' Theatre Club, founded by Leonard Sachs , specialising in music hall entertainments. This has become
507-667: The BBC and established herself at the experimental theatre-club the Gate Theatre Studio in London, first as a serious actress and later in the genre for which she became famous, revue . According to The Times it was in Spread It Abroad (1936) a revue at another theatre, the Saville , with material by Herbert Farjeon that she found her milieu. In the 10 years from 1938, Gingold concentrated on revues, appearing in nine productions in
546-723: The Borgia orgies 30 years ago)." When the production transferred to London in 1975, Gingold reprised the role, and later played it in the film version of the musical (1977). At the age of 77, Gingold made her operatic début, joining the San Francisco Opera to play the spoken role of the Duchess of Crackenthorp in Donizetti's La fille du régiment in 1975. In 1977, she took over the narrator's role in Side by Side by Sondheim on Broadway. After
585-599: The Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad (1963), the latter of which she played in London. She became a well-known guest on television talk shows. She 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 (née Walter). Her paternal grandparents were
624-437: The Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad , playing a monstrously possessive mother driving her son crazy. She played the role in the London production in 1965. Reviewing the latter, and noting that the first night had been greeted with cheering at the end, the critic Philip Hope-Wallace wrote: It marks, of course, the return of Hermione Gingold, which would be cause enough for cheering. Blatant as ever, deafeningly loud, strutting like
663-468: The English actress Hermione Baddeley . Later she played formidable elders in the film and stage musicals Gigi (1958), Bell, Book and Candle (1958), The Music Man (1962), and A Little Night Music (1977). From the early 1950s, Gingold lived and made her career mostly in the U.S. Her American stage work ranged from John Murray Anderson's Almanac (1953) to Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in
702-573: The King's Hall, Covent Garden , with Esmé Percy as Troilus and Edith Evans as Cressida. The following year she appeared in a musical production, The Marriage Market , in a small role in a cast that included Tom Walls , W H Berry , and Gertie Millar . In 1914, she played Jessica in The Merchant of Venice at the Old Vic . In 1918, Gingold married the publisher Michael Joseph , with whom she had two sons,
741-740: The New Players' Theatre, adjacent to the Heaven nightclub . Gordon's Wine Bar , in a basement under Kipling House and with cellars below street level and a terrace overlooking Embankment Gardens, is a popular refreshment and eating place. "Villiers Street" in Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (1983) The London Encyclopedia . 51°30′29″N 0°07′26″W / 51.5080°N 0.1238°W / 51.5080; -0.1238 Hermione Gingold Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold ( / ˈ ɡ ɪ ŋ ɡ oʊ l d / ; 9 December 1897 – 24 May 1987)
780-475: The New York run, the show toured the U.S. In Kansas City, Gingold suffered an accident that broke her knee and dislocated her arm; these injuries brought her performing career to an end. Still, she appeared in a 1980s Goya commercial for its drink Coca Goya Colada, shaking the two cans like maracas . Gingold died from heart problems and pneumonia at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on 24 May 1987, aged 89. She
819-586: The Ottoman-born British subject, Moritz "Maurice" Gingold, a London stockbroker, and his Austrian-born wife, Hermine, after whom Hermione was named (Gingold mentions in her autobiography that her mother might have got 'Hermione' from Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale , which she was reading shortly before her birth). On her father's side, she was descended from Solomon Sulzer , a synagogue cantor and Jewish liturgical composer in Vienna. James felt that religion
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#1732855160447858-566: The West End following censorship troubles with the Lord Chamberlain , included Oscar Wilde 's Salome (1931), Laurence Housman 's Victoria Regina (1935), Elsie Schauffler 's Parnell (1936), Lillian Hellman 's The Children's Hour (1936), John Steinbeck 's Of Mice and Men (1939) and Reginald Beckwith 's Boys in Brown (1940). In 1936 the young Robert Morley , played the lead in
897-470: The cello in Palm Court orchestras, ended up bow-legged beyond belief". In a biographical sketch, Ned Sherrin wrote "Gingold became a special attraction for American soldiers and 'Thanks, Yanks' was one of her most appropriate numbers. During the astringent, name-dropping 'Sweet' series, she played 1,676 performances, before 800,000 people, negotiating 17,010 costume changes". Gingold's first new revue after
936-679: The film, she sang "I Remember It Well" with Maurice Chevalier . She said "It was my first American film, and I was very nervous." Chevalier put her at ease. "I had to sing, and I hadn't got a great voice, but with him, I felt the greatest prima donna in the world." Gingold followed this with another hit film Bell, Book and Candle , also 1958. She played the haughty Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn in The Music Man (1962), starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones . In October 1963, Gingold opened in Arthur Kopit 's Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in
975-450: The following year. She cited working in interior decoration and collecting china as her hobbies in 1951. She appeared in cameo roles in British films, of which Sherrin singles out The Pickwick Papers (1952), in which she played the formidable schoolmistress, Miss Tompkins. Gingold became well known to BBC radio audiences in "Mrs Doom's Diary" in the weekly show Home at Eight ; this was
1014-511: The lead, again produced by Godfrey and receiving 53 performances. By 1934, Godfrey, a man grown tired of shouldering the administrative burden of a theatre, handed it over to a new company formed by Norman Marshall , who took over and refurbished the Gate Theatre Studio, reviving the theatre's reputation, often financing his productions by running highly successful theatrical revues in parallel. Productions, several of which transferred to
1053-625: The leading role of Pinkie for a provincial tour. Tree cast her as Falstaff's page, Robin, in The Merry Wives of Windsor . She attended Rosina Filippi's stage school in London. In 1911, she was cast in the original production of Where the Rainbow Ends which opened to very good reviews on 21 December 1911. On 10 December 1912, the day after her 15th birthday, Gingold played Cassandra in William Poel 's production of Troilus and Cressida at
1092-644: The same air raid that destroyed the Little Theatre in the Adelphi , the theatre was finally forced to close. It was never to re-open although, according to Norman Marshall, the manpower and material needed to resuscitate it would have been very small. Villiers Street Villiers Street is a street in London connecting the Strand with the Embankment . It is partly pedestrianised; traffic runs northbound only up to John Adam Street, where vehicles must turn right. It
1131-581: The theatre and go and see the production. At the end of a scheduled three-week run, the play was transferred to the Regent Theatre in King's Cross when Claude Rains took over the leading role from Godfrey. In March 1927 the Gate Theatre Salon closed and the company moved to a site at 16A Villiers Street,'underneath the arches' close to Charing Cross Station . Peter Godfrey entered into a new business partnership with Miss Velona Pilcher. The new Gate Theatre Studio
1170-514: The war was Slings and Arrows at the Comedy in 1948. She was praised, but the material was judged inferior to that of her earlier shows. Gingold and Baddeley co-starred in a Noël Coward double bill in November 1949, presenting Fumed Oak and Fallen Angels . Reviews were poor, and Coward thought the performances crude and overdone, but the production was a box-office success, running until August
1209-417: The west side of the street was demolished in the 1860s to make way for Charing Cross station. From 1889 to 1891, Rudyard Kipling lived at small rooms with windows facing the street, at number 43 (later renamed Kipling House). He there wrote the partly autobiographical novel The Light That Failed , which contains references to the area. Kipling remarks that: From my desk I could look out of my window through
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1248-479: The writer and lyricist Eric Maschwitz , whom she divorced in 1945. She 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'". The critic J. C. Trewin described her voice as "powdered glass in deep syrup". During this period she broadcast frequently for
1287-812: The younger of whom, Stephen , became a pioneer of theatre in the round in Britain. Gingold's adult stage career was slow to take off. She 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. In 1926 Gingold was divorced from Joseph. Later in the same year she married
1326-506: Was among the guests in David Winters ' musical television special The Special London Bridge Special , starring Tom Jones , and Jennifer O'Neill . 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. Armfeldt. Clive Barnes wrote "Hermione Gingold is immeasurably grande dame as the almost Proustian hostess (I haven't loved her so much since she sang about
1365-433: Was an English actress known for her sharp-tongued, eccentric character. Her signature drawling, deep voice was a result of nodules on her vocal cords she developed in the 1920s and early 1930s. After success as a child actress, she established a stage career spanning comedy, drama, experimental theatre, and radio broadcasting. Finding her milieu in revue, she played from the 1930s to the 1950s, co-starring several times with
1404-628: Was built by Nicholas Barbon in the 1670s on the site of York House , the property of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham , whom the street commemorates. A watergate in nearby Embankment Gardens is the only remnant of the mansion and shows the original position of the north bank of the River Thames . John Evelyn lived here in the 17th century and the Irish writer Richard Steele , who founded The Spectator and The Tatler magazines, lodged here from 1712. The Charing Cross Hospital Medical School , now
1443-612: Was constructed out of a complex of premises acquired by Carlo Gatti which included Gatti's Underneath the Arches Musical Hall (now the Players' Theatre ). Reconstruction delayed the first two productions of the third season which were given at the Rudolph Steiner Theatre . It was not until 22 November 1927 that the newly named Gate Theatre Studio opened with Maya , a play by Simon Gantillon , with Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies in
1482-428: Was obligatory, and took risks by producing new and experimental plays, or plays by unknown or commercially unviable writers. Norman Marshall refers to these as ‘The Other Theatre’ in his 1947 book of the same name. The Gate Revues , several starring Hermione Gingold who made her first professional appearance at the Gate, restored intimate revue to favour in the West End. However following serious bomb damage in 1941,
1521-522: Was something children needed to decide on for themselves, and Gingold grew up with no particular religious beliefs. Gingold's professional début was in 1908 when she had just turned 11. She 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 Löhr and Viola Tree . She was promoted to
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