Trivia

The "At The Theater Last Night" column in the "Pittsburgh Press" of 3/11/1919 gives a glowing review of her vaudeville performance at the Davis Theater the prior evening. Alone on the stage, she performed "The Dance of the Allies" and did impressions of Eddie Foy, Fanny Brice and other stars of the day.

Went to Hollywood at age 60 (after raising two daughters and a son) to begin a film career.

She gained brief notoriety during a series of shark attacks off the New Jersey coast in 1916 when the "New York Times" reported on her encounter with a shark on Coney Island Beach. At the time, Hoffman boasted that she had the presence of mind to hit the water and drive the shark away.

Ex-mother-in-law of Thelma White and Helen Kane.

Mother-in-law of British composer and Master of the Queen's Music Sir Arthur Bliss.

Mother-in-law of Luana Walters.

Made her film debut at age 62 (Before Dawn (1933)) and played a succession of grandmothers, elderly maidens, and/or elderly wives over the next 30 years in film and television.

Though German by birth, her father was raised in Cambridge, MA, where a number of his relatives had established themselves in the medical community there. He received his medical degree from Harvard University in 1859 and upon graduation began his practice in Halifax. In time he became associated with the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital and a frequent lecturer at Boston University Medical School. At the time of his death in 1920, aged 80, Dr. Wesselhoeft was Emeritus Professor of Clinical Medicine in the School of Medicine, a position he had held since 1908.

Her youngest child, Gertrude "Trudy" Hoffmann, was born on 4/2/1904, in Belmont, MA. Trudy married British composer Sir Arthur Bliss on 6/1/25, in Santa Barbara, CA, and relocated to London, England, where she lived until her death in 2008.

On 6/23/1894, in Cambridge, MA, she married Ralph Hoffmann (1870-1932), a native of Stockbridge, whose family had emigrated from Germany a generation earlier. He was a teacher of natural history and had a keen interest in ornithology. He co-founded the Alstead School of Natural History in Alstead, NH, and taught there for several summers while the rest of his year was spent teaching at Buckingham Browne and Nichols in Cambridge, MA. He died from a fall while on a scientific expedition to California's Channel Islands in 1932.

Her husband Ralph Hoffmann died from a fall while on a scientific expedition to California's Channel Islands in 1932.

She had two daughters and a son. Eleanor Hoffmann was born on 12/21/1895, in Belmont, MA, and died on 12/20/1990, in Santa Barbara, CA. Walter Wesselhoeft Hoffmann was born on 12/20/1897, in Belmont, MA, and died on 5/7/1977, in Cambridge, MA.

Great-grandmother of Caroline Bliss.

Mother of Max Hoffman Jr..

Her father was a German-born doctor who at the time of her birth had left his medical practice in Halifax, Nova Scotia, behind to volunteer his services after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He returned to North America in early 1873 and opened a general practice in Cambridge, MA, where Gertrude was raised along with her six siblings.

Her youngest sister, Eleanor Wesselhoeft (1882-1945), was a stage actress and playwright who also found some success late in life as a character actor in Hollywood. Eleanor was married to Albert Christian Henderson von Tornow (1867-1938), a Shakespearean actor who performed under the stage name Albert Henderson.

Gertrude W. Hoffmann's first Hollywood role was playing Mattie in Before Dawn that premiered on August 4, 1933. She would go on to have a thirty-year career as a character actor appearing in a number of movies and television shows.

Interred at Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, CA.