Gertrude W. Hoffmann (born Eliza Gertrude Wesselhoeft; May 17, 1871 – February 13, 1968) was a German-born American character actress who began her Hollywood career in her sixties.
Family
Hoffmann was born on May 17, 1871,[1] at Heidelberg (German Empire), the daughter of Walter and Mary Sara Silver (née Fraser) Wesselhoeft.[2][3] Her father was a German-born doctor who at the time of her birth had left his medical practice in Halifax, Nova Scotia to volunteer his services after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He returned to North America in early 1873 and opened a general practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Gertrude was raised along with her six siblings.
Though German by birth, Dr. Wesselhoeft was raised in Cambridge where a number of his relatives had established themselves in the medical community there. He received his medical degree from Harvard University in 1859 and upon graduation began his practice in Halifax. In time he became associated with the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital and a frequent lecturer at Boston University Medical School.[4] At the time of his death in 1920, aged 80, Dr. Wesselhoeft was Emeritus Professor of Clinical Medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, a position he had held since 1908.[5]
Mary Fraser was a native of Halifax, and she died in 1886, around the age of 40.[6][7][8][9] Dr. Wesselhoeft remarried in 1896 to Mary A. Leavitt, a native of Lowell, Massachusetts, and only a few years older than his eldest child.[10][11] Gertrude's youngest sister, Eleanor Wesselhoeft (1882–1945),[12] was a stage actress and playwright who also found some success late in life as a character actor in Hollywood.[13][14] Eleanor was married to Albert Christian Henderson von Tornow (1867–1938), a Shakespearean actor who performed under the stage name Albert Henderson.[15]
Marriage
On June 23, 1894, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gertrude married Ralph Hoffmann (1870–1932), a native of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, whose family had emigrated from Germany a generation earlier. He was a teacher of natural history and had a keen interest in ornithology. He co-founded the Alstead School of Natural History in Alstead, New Hampshire and taught there for several summers and the rest of his year was spent teaching at Buckingham Browne and Nichols in Cambridge.[16]
From the spring of 1910 until 1917, he was headmaster of the Country Day School founded by Vassie Ward (1875-1954) in Kansas City, Missouri. He later was named director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in California. Ralph Hoffmann died from a fall while on a scientific expedition to California's Channel Islands in 1932.[17][18]
The couple had two daughters and a son. Eleanor Hoffmann was born on December 21, 1895, in Belmont, Massachusetts and died on December 20, 1990, in Santa Barbara, California. Walter Wesselhoeft Hoffmann was born on December 20, 1897, in Belmont, Massachusetts and died on May 7, 1977, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The youngest child, Gertrude "Trudy" Hoffmann, was born on April 2, 1904, in Belmont, Massachusetts. Trudy married British composer Sir Arthur Bliss on June 1, 1925, in Santa Barbara, California and moved to London, England, where she lived until her death in 2008.[19]
Gertrude W. Hoffmann died on February 13, 1968, in Santa Barbara, California. She was interred at Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[20][21]
