Tales Of Hoffnung Collection TV Series Production Pressbook And Ephemra

Tales Of Hoffnung 1967- Halas And Batchelor Cartoon Films

Hoffnung does not appear to be remembered by many these days, and of those who do still remember him, most of them do so more for either his unconventional musical activities, or for his laugh out loud ‘Bricklayer’s Lament’ monologue, than for his collaborations with Richardson. The whole range of his work deserves reviving, however, because, at a time when true non-conformists seem so hard to find, the brief but bright career of  Hofffnung is as refreshing as it is enlightening.

He was never a conventional character. He never led a conventional life.

Born in Grünewald, Berlin, in 1925, as Gerhardt Hoffnung, the only child of German-Jewish parents, his father fled to Israel in 1938 in the wake of the Nazi persecutions, while he and his mother escaped to England, where they rented a house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, which was to be Gerard’s home for the rest of his life. It was here that, in a remarkably short space of time, he not only learnt the English language but also reached deep into the English psyche, re-emerging as someone who was still very much an outsider, but who could act and sound like an insider, and expose, at will, the intrinsic silliness of a narrow but notable range of native figures like no one else in the country.