Gale Sondergaard

Biography: Of Danish parentage, Gale Sondergaard knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life after starring in a high school play in 1916. She continued acting in college and summer stock, at one point appearing opposite fellow aspirant Melvyn Douglas in a regional repertory production of Hamlet. She made her Broadway bow in the 1923 production What's Your Wife Doing?, achieving stardom six years later when she replaced Lynn Fontanne in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude. Journeying to Hollywood in the company of her screenwriter husband Herbert Biberman in 1935, she was persuaded to accept the role of the scheming housekeeper Faith in Warner Bros.' Anthony Adverse (1936) -- and as a result became the first-ever recipient of the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. Typecast in villainous or at the very least suspiciously sinister roles, she occasionally broke away from this stereotype with such sympathetic parts as Mrs. Alfred Dreyfuss in Life of Emile Zola (1937) and the stoicOf Danish parentage, Gale Sondergaard knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life after starring in a high school play in 1916. She continued acting in college and summer stock, at one point appearing opposite fellow aspirant Melvyn Douglas in a regional repertory production of Hamlet. She made her Broadway bow in the 1923 production What's Your Wife Doing?, achieving stardom six years later when she replaced Lynn Fontanne in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude. Journeying to Hollywood in the company of her screenwriter husband Herbert Biberman in 1935, she was persuaded to accept the role of the scheming housekeeper Faith in Warner Bros.' Anthony Adverse (1936) -- and as a result became the first-ever recipient of the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. Typecast in villainous or at the very least suspiciously sinister roles, she occasionally broke away from this stereotype with such sympathetic parts as Mrs. Alfred Dreyfuss in Life of Emile Zola (1937) and the stoic Lady Thiang in Anna and the King of Siam (1946). She was also a favorite of comedian Bob Hope (the feeling was mutual!), and could be seen slinking her way through Hope's Never Say Die (1939), My Favorite Blonde (1942), and Road to Rio (1947). Her delightfully wicked performance in the Sherlock Holmes opus The Spider Woman (1944) led to a top-billed role in the Universal horror flick The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946), an assignment which she hated at the time but later admitted "didn't kill me." Her screen career came to an abrupt end in 1948 when she and her husband (one of the notorious "Hollywood Ten") were blacklisted after appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee. She would not work as an actress again until 1965, when she appeared in the off-Broadway production Woman. Slowly but surely, she reactivated her career by starring in such stage productions as The Crucible (significantly a thinly disguised attack of McCarthyism). She returned to films in 1969, and that same year landed a starring role on the ABC soap opera The Best of Everything. Despite her long involuntary exile from Hollywood, Gale Sondergaard refused to display any bitterness over her ill-treatment, remaining upbeat and optimistic until the end of her days (though she generally refused to discuss her blacklisting -- not because she didn't want to but because "There is so much to say").… Expand