Gertrude Hoffman

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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 (born 17 May 1871). She married in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Ralph Hoffmann (born 23 June 1894), a Harvard-educated teacher and natural scientist, and had three children, Eleanor (born 1895), Walter W. (born 1897), and Gertrude (born 1904), now Lady Bliss and widow of Sir Arthur 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 at The Cate School. Subsequently he became head of the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum and a prominent botanist, ornithologist and naturalist, but was killed on a birding expedition in the Channel Islands. Gertrude's brother-in-law, Bernhard Hoffmann, was a prominent philanthropist, 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, notably The 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 1950's TV sitcom "My Little Margie", starring Gale 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.