Hester Sondergaard (July 5, 1903 – February 26, 1994) was an American actress.

Early years

Born in Litchfield, Minnesota, Sondergaard was the daughter of Hans T. Søndergaard, a dairy instructor at a university, and the sister of actress

Gale Sondergaard Gale Sondergaard (born Edith Holm Sondergaard; February 15, 1899 – August 14, 1985) was an American actress. Sondergaard began her acting career in theater and progressed to films in 1936. She was the first recipient of the Academy Awar ...

. When she was a child, she played violin with Midwestern Chautauqua companies. She attended the University of Minnesota, where she was active in productions of the Masquers Club.

Career

Sondergaard's first professional speaking part came in 1924. After college, she acted with the Wisconsin Players and in venues that included the Civic Repertory Theater in New York. Her Broadway credits include ''Galileo'' (1947), '' My Heart's in the Highlands'' (1939), ''

Marching Song A march, as a musical genre, is a piece of music with a strong regular rhythm which in origin was expressly written for marching to and most frequently performed by a military band. In mood, marches range from the moving death march in Wagner's ...

'' (1937), ''Bitter Stream'' (1936), ''Mother'' (1935), and ''Black Pit'' (1935). On radio, Sondergaard was an organizer of ''

The American School of the Air ''The American School of the Air'' was a half-hour educational radio program presented by CBS as a public affairs teaching supplement over an 18-year period during the 1930s and 1940s. CBS followed the lead of the first ''School of the Air'' w ...

''. She also acted on ''

Portia Faces Life Portia Faces Life, is an American soap opera first broadcast as a radio series from 1940 to 1953, and then on television for a single season in the mid-1950s. It began in syndication on April 1, 1940, and was broadcast on some stations that carri ...

'', ''Road of Life'', ''

Wendy Warren and the News ''Wendy Warren and the News'' was a radio soap opera in the United States. It was broadcast on CBSSies, Luther F. (2014). ''Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920-1960, 2nd Edition''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . P. 746. weekday afternoons, June 23, ...

'', and ''We Love and Learn''. An article in the December 1949 issue of ''Radio and Television Mirror'' magazine described Sondergaard as having "one of the largest repertories icof dialects of any actress", being able to sound authentic in roles using any of 11 accents. Sondergaard taught dramatics at the Dramatic School of New York.

Personal life

In 1949, Sondergaard married politician

Hugh De Lacy Hugh de Lacy may refer to: * Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Lassy (c.1020–1085), first recorded member of the Norman noble family de Lacy * Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath (died 1186), 4th Baron Lacy * Hugh de Lacy, Abbot of Shrewsbury (died c. 1215/18) *Hug ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sondergaard, Hester 20th-century American actresses Actresses from Minnesota American radio actresses American stage actresses 1903 births 1994 deaths