After success as a child actress, she established a stage career spanning comedy, drama, experimental theatre, and radio broadcasting.

[7] The following year she appeared in a musical production, The Marriage Market, in a small role in a cast that included Tom Walls, W H Berry, and Gertie Millar.

[9] In 1918, Gingold married the publisher Michael Joseph, with whom she had two sons, the younger of whom, Stephen, became a pioneer of theatre in the round in Britain.

She played Liza in If at the Ambassador's in May 1921, and the Old Woman in Ben Travers's farcical comedy The Dippers produced by Sir Charles Hawtrey at the Criterion in August 1922.

[5] During this period she broadcast frequently for the BBC and established herself at the experimental theatre-club the Gate Theatre Studio in London, first as a serious actress and later in the genre for which she became famous, revue.

[9] In her sketches, she tended, as Alan Melville recalled, to portray "grotesque and usually unfortunate ladies of dubious age and occasionally, morals; the unhappy female painted by Picasso who found herself lumbered with an extra limb or two … the even less fortunate female who, after years of playing the cello in Palm Court orchestras, ended up bow-legged beyond belief".

[12] In a biographical sketch, Ned Sherrin wrote "Gingold became a special attraction for American soldiers and 'Thanks, Yanks' was one of her most appropriate numbers.

[13] Gingold and Baddeley co-starred in a Noël Coward double bill in November 1949, presenting Fumed Oak and Fallen Angels.

Reviews were poor, and Coward thought the performances crude and overdone, but the production was a box-office success, running until August the following year.

[15] She appeared in cameo roles in British films, of which Sherrin singles out The Pickwick Papers (1952), in which she played the formidable schoolmistress, Miss Tompkins.

[16] In December 1953, she opened in John Murray Anderson's Almanac which made her an instant Broadway success and for which she won the Donaldson Award in 1954.

Blatant as ever, deafeningly loud, strutting like a parody of every tragedy queen, male or female, since time began, she was in splendid relishing form, her lips drawn back over fangs and her voice swooping campingly through a whole two octaves of sneer.

[22] Gingold was a member of the original 1973 Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music in the role of the elderly Mme.

Clive Barnes wrote "Hermione Gingold is immeasurably grande dame as the almost Proustian hostess (I haven't loved her so much since she sang about the Borgia orgies 30 years ago).

[25] At the age of 77, Gingold made her operatic début, joining the San Francisco Opera to play the spoken role of the Duchess of Crackenthorp in Donizetti's La fille du régiment in 1975.

In Kansas City, Gingold suffered an accident that broke her knee and dislocated her arm; these injuries brought her performing career to an end.

During her lifetime Gingold published three books of memoir and anecdotes: She wrote the play Abracadabra and contributed original material to the many revues in which she performed.