Gale Sondergaard(1899-1985)
- Actress
Sly, manipulative, dangerously cunning and sinister were the key words
that best described the roles that Gale Sondergaard played in motion
pictures, making her one of the most talented character actresses ever
seen on the screen. She was educated at the University of Minnesota and
later married director
Herbert J. Biberman. Her husband
went to find work in Hollywood and she reluctantly followed him there.
Although she had extensive experience in stage work, she had no
intention of becoming an actress in film. Her mind was changed after
she was discovered by director
Mervyn LeRoy, who offered her a key role in
his film Anthony Adverse (1936);
she accepted the part and was awarded the very first Academy Award as
Best Supporting Actress. LeRoy originally cast her as the Wicked Witch
in The Wizard of Oz (1939),
but she felt she was not right for that role. Instead, she co-starred
opposite Paul Muni in
The Life of Emile Zola (1937),
a film that won Best Picture in 1937. Sondergaard's most-remembered
role was that of the sinister and cunning wife of a husband murdered by
Bette Davis' character in
The Letter (1940). Sondergaard
continued her career rise in films such as
Juarez (1939),
The Mark of Zorro (1940),
The Black Cat (1941), and
Anna and the King of Siam (1946).
Unfortunately, she was blacklisted when she refused to testify during
the McCarthy-inspired "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. She eventually
returned to films in the 1960s and made her final appearance in the
1983 film Echoes (1982). Gale Sondergaard
passed away of an undisclosed illness at the Motion Picture and
Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 86.
