Gertrude Hoffman — The Thin Woman (1954) 🇺🇸

A diet paid off for “My Little Margie’s” oldest friend

While there is hardly a female star in Hollywood who will admit to having been born before 1915, providing she is not under oath, Gertrude Hoffman states blandly that she was married, for landsakes, in 1894. Furthermore, she turned 83 just this past May and doesn’t care who knows it.

Mrs. Hoffman, of course, is the Mrs. Odetts of the “My Little Margie” TV series and is perhaps the only working actress extant who can look down on Ethel Barrymore (74) as something of a youngster.

Up until 1932, Gertrude Hoffman tended to look down on all actresses. After all, she was the wife of Ralph Hoffman, a widely known Latin professor, museum director, ornithologist and author; and acting was hardly uppermost in her mind. When her husband died, however, she found herself a lonely woman and decided suddenly to investigate the possibilities of character acting. Her first year in Hollywood (1933) was a pretty miserable one. She was rather stout, and so were all the other character actresses. So she decided to diet and landed a role calling for an older thin woman, the housekeeper in Before Dawn. She’s been acting ever since.

Spry, alert and intensely practical, Mrs. Hoffman maintains an apartment in Hollywood (on the second floor, to give her exercise walking up) and a permanent home in Santa Barbara. She drives her own car, somewhat to the despair of the people who populate the narrow streets of the Hal Roach lot where Margie is filmed. “We love her dearly,” says Margie’s Charles Farrell, “but behind the wheel of that car she scares us to death.”

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Gertrude Hoffman: at 83, she not only acts but keeps house for exercise.

Collection: TV Guide (Washington | Baltimore), 23 October 1954