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A remarkably versatile veteran of the performing arts in America was Gertrude Hoffmann who began as a
specialty dancer in the late years of the nineteenth century. In New York as one of the first women
choreographers, she specialized in chorus lines and special effects. Her third career, for which she was
most famous, was as an impersonator. Imitations of other vaudeville and musical theatre acts were
tremendously popular in the first decades of the twentieth century for performance by men and women as
their own or cross gender impersonators. With her colleague Julian Eltinge, probably the most famous of
these, Hoffmann often outshone the originals they parodied. In the 1920s she resumed work as a precision
line choreographer and eventually returned to California where as a member of the MGM and WB stock
companies she appeared in almost fifty movies as a mother, grandmother, housekeeper, and nightclubbing
matron. |
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| Gertrude Hoffmann clippings, 1910-1927. |
[between 1910 and 1927]
4 clippings : b&w, col. ;
24 x 27 cm. or smaller. |
| Image ID: WWM9913/HOF006/004 |
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